... g the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. The psychic is the true being here—the ego is simply a mental, vital, physical formation of the mobile consciousness in Nature which is wrongly taken for our true being so long as the psychic is veiled and the consciousness... The Concentric System: Outer to Inner Letters on Yoga - I Chapter II The True Being and the True Consciousness The True Being The true being may be realised in one or both of two aspects—the Self or Atman and the soul or antarātman , psychic being or caitya puruṣa . The difference is that one is felt as universal, the other as individual supporting... 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 mental and vital being supported by the psychic—this true being is calm, wide, peaceful. By drawing back and becoming separate one creates the possibility of living in the peace ...
... Being), which is the essential or true being, and the Nature side of Being called Prakriti (Nature), which is the phenomenal or instrumental being. Both the outer being and the inner being described previously belong to Prakriti. Behind the outer mind and the inner mind, the outer vital and the inner vital, the outer physical and the inner physical, lies the true being, the Purusha, in the form of... universal being. Ego and Individuality In our normal consciousness, as stated previously, we are not conscious of our true being; we are aware only of our outer being — body, life and mind — with which we identify our self. This identification of the true being with the outer being gives rise to an ego — physical, vital, and mental — which gives us the sense of I-ness, an individuality... at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and the formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place. 34 This persistent soul-existence is the real Individuality which stands behind the constant mutations of the ...
... physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The True Being and the True Consciousness … man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or... Planes and Parts of the Being Our Many Selves True Being and Ego The true being may be realised in one or both of two aspects—the Self or Atman and the soul or Antaratman, psychic being or caitya puruṣa. The difference is that one is felt as universal, the other as individual supporting the mind, life and body. When one first realises the Atman one feels... these remain behind, veiled and 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 ...
... inspires heroism and bursts into love that harmonises and produces tireless labour to work productively and artistically that our true being begins to bloom in fullness and we become free from egoistic limitations and become a harmonious wave of a universal ocean that is our true being. To be is to be integrally and to be at the top of our abilities. In other words, to be is to be excellently and perfectly... and that the fulfilment that humanity is seeking can flower only if human beings strive to develop complete personality, the core of which lies in the light that can enable them to grow in their true being. The twenty-one elements of strategies of innovations and search for alternatives articulated by this Report underline not only the practicability of the new model of education, but also stimulate... activity of the mind; knowledge then means a luminous growth into the higher state of being by the outshining of the light of the integral Reality. Knowledge is the light by which we grow into our true being, — not the knowledge by which we increase our information and our intellectual riches. The Indian tradition admits that there are different kinds of knowledge — scientific, psychological, philosophical ...
... it is necessary to discover the Purusha and live in its consciousness. Sri Aurobindo explains this as follows: "The Purusha or basic consciousness is the true being or at least, in whatever plane it manifests, represents the true being. But in the ordinary nature of man it is covered up by the ego and the ignorant play of the Prakriti and remains veiled behind as the unseen Witness supporting... liberation. But it can also become slowly the 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... overcoming psychological disturbances or for promoting psychological growth. From the viewpoint of yoga, however, identification with mind and ego implies ignorance Page 136 about one's true being. Such ignorance inevitably entails limitation, bondage and suffering. The higher aspects of mind and feeling can indeed bring some amelioration of the suffering, as they also can lead to a relative ...
... knowledge. Knowledge is the light by which the object of knowledge is lit, is perceived, is realised. When the object of knowledge is our true being or our true self, there is a special phenomenon of growth into our true being; it is not information about our true being, it is our inner enlargement by which the limitations of our egoistic consciousness are annulled, and there is the realisation of wideness... makes self revealed is para vidya. And Indian pedagogy has this distinct feature that the aim of its entire programme of education is to nourish the growth of the light by which we grow into our true being. Page 314 Knowledge and Information There is, no doubt, the light of the senses and the light of the intellect; and through this light, too, the corresponding objects of knowledge ...
... the world's chief hero? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and suffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and Page 94 whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga will deliver you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. When you have... fear have passed away, such is the sage whose understanding has become founded in stability." He is "without the triple action of the qualities of Prakriti, without the dualities, ever based in his true being, without getting or having, possessed of his self." For what gettings and havings has the free soul? Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things. And yet he does not... troubled sleep and darkness of the soul; that higher being which is to them a night, a sleep in which all knowledge and will cease, is to the self-mastering sage his waking, his luminous day of true being, knowledge and power. They are troubled and muddy waters disturbed by every little inrush of desire; he is an ocean of wide being and consciousness which is ever being filled, yet ever motionless ...
... in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms—above, it is the Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes,—below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides... experience. The Jivatman or spirit is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being—it is superior to birth and death, always the same; it is the individual self or Atman, the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine in the heart of the living creatures of Nature. It is not seated above the manifested being; it enters into the manifestation of the self,... liberation; but for the transformation of the life and nature the full awareness and awakening of our psychic being also is indispensable. The psychic being realises at this stage its oneness with the true being, the Self, but it does not disappear or change into it; it remains as its instrument for psychic and spiritual self-expression, a divine manifestation in Nature. The bindu seen by you above ...
... 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 can shake them off once it emerges. By taking the right attitude of selfless devotion within and... nature is that in which you have peace and ananda and the love of the Divine. This other is only a fringe of the outer personality which in spite of these returns is destined to drop away as the true being extends and increases. To be miserable may remind you of the defects of your external nature, but I do not see how it is going to cure them. I am not asking you to be frivolously happy, but... decisively against the old influence of vital darkness and confusion—to decide firmly not to let it prevail ever again to this extent. It is not even transformation, but a chance that is needed for the true being that is in you, the being of love and radiance and harmony to come out from the clouds in a lasting way. Once it can do that, all trouble would be over. I must remind you of your promise not ...
... elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground,—and this we now... the dream of the ugly monster and of the resistance of this other personality. If it be so, then this must be regarded not as Page 639 part of oneself but as a foreign element to the true being. It is only by a persistent choice of the dictates of the higher and a persistent rejection of the other that the latter loses ground and finally recedes. This should be met as calmly as possible ...
... of life. It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true being, a life of unity, mutuality, harmony, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life. If our nature is fixed in what it is, what it has... in their wealth of difference. But one must transcend not only the individual formula but the formula of the universe, for only so can either the individual or the universal existence find its own true being and a perfect harmonisation; both are in their outer formulation incomplete terms of the Transcendence, but they are that in their essence, and it is only by becoming conscious of that essence that ...
... to our true being, from an outer phenomenal mental vital material life-existence to an inner spiritual existence and a spiritualised nature. By Yoga we pass from the phenomenal to the real Man, from the consciousness of our own apparent outer nature to the consciousness of our real self, Atman, an inner and inmost man, Purusha, that which we truly and eternally are. This self or true being remains... aware of a cosmic Consciousness which is the secret of the cosmic Energy, a cosmic Self or Spirit, the cosmic Divine, the universal Godhead. But by Yoga we become aware also that our own Self or true being is one with the cosmic Self and Spirit, our nature a play of the cosmic Nature; the wall between ourselves and the Page 330 universe begins to disappear and vanishes altogether. We realise ...
... tainted with a thousand doubtful little motives. Mother, I know with a blinding certitude—even if this certitude is only mental—that the only solution is to come into contact with my true being. I know that by finding my true being I shall find the right action, the right relationships with the outside, and truth, knowledge, joy. I know this now in a profound way, and nothing can ever turn me away from it... truth of the day? Something HAS to explode in me and take possession of my entire being. It is not my force that can achieve this, but yours. Mother, I beseech you to open in me the doors of my true being. I Page 75 no longer want this false relationship with the outside, this life of approximation. I want to be your instrument, not the instrument of this ignorant and suffering ego. Mother ...
... is to open yourself and receive and at the same time, reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge, of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your vital... yourself. 5) How does the psychic being become open ? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the adhar? By the force of aspiration and the grace of the Mother. Psychic : your true being, the being that is in the heart and that is the spark of the Mother's own consciousness. Vital : the part from which proceed desires and hunger and dynamic activities, having its physical basis... Have all visions some real meaning? Should I care to see these things and write to you whatever I see? Yours ... Vishnu Sri Aurobindo's reply : The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and. violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of ...
... 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 consciousness but also to reject its egoic movements. Without rejection... to say, even if "I don't desire" cannot yet be said by the vital. Still there is something in the being that can even say "I don't desire" and refuse to recognise the vital desire as part of the true being. 121 Page 130 No, it is not necessary to lose the mental control; it is best to replace it gradually by the psychic or spirirual. 122 Your theory is a mistaken... desire—the very first precondition laid down by the Gita for a spiritual birth. As Sri Aurobindo explains in his letters to disciples: All the ordinary vital movements 139 are foreign to the true being and come from outside; they do not belong to the soul nor do they originate in it but are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti. The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and ...
... her neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure, when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being? — Certainly. — And in this the philosopher dishonours the body; his soul runs away from his body and desires to be alone and by herself? — That is true. Page 98 ... whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge — who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being? Page 99 — What you say has a wonderful truth in it, Socrates, replied Simmias. — And when real philosophers consider all these things, will they not be led to make a reflection... desire is of the truth. For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all. Whence come wars, and fightings ...
... have no time to see them, so it has to be arranged for another day, — and so much trouble. But for the other visit, I am always free and it is much more real for me, because it is with the true being that I come in contact. And there is no need to fix the time or the day. I am in contact with many people in this way and, moreover, I am much closer to them and not with those who are always with... need his presence before me, but I can easily do everything even while I am very far from him physically, because I receive his vibration. Now if I have to establish a contact with your true being, I have to pass through this body that resists, that distorts the truth, because it is through this ignorant, false and obscure body that one must pass to reach the soul. That is why — it is an... will be all kinds of changes and unlimited powers. And it will not be something funny; of course I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. It will be a true being, perfect in proportions, very, very strong, light, luminous or else transparent; it will have a supple and malleable body capable of doing everything, a creation of the New Consciousness or else ...
... and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear - the true being is felt in its place. * The three Gunas become purified and refined and changed into their divine equivalents: sattva becomes jyoti... it. In our Yoga it is only the first stage of the realisation of the Divine and of that growing of the being into the higher or divine Consciousness which we call transformation. * The true being may be realised in one or both of two aspects - the Self or Atman and the soul or Antaratman, Page 6 psychic being, Chaitya Purusha. The difference is that one is felt as universal ...
... as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being—it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material world. It is... In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one. Thus to find one’s soul is to be united with the Divine. It can therefore be said that the role of the soul is to make of man a true being. The Mother Words of the Mother - II: The Soul (the Psychic) … if there were no psychic in Matter, it would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine. And it is happily due... in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one’s soul, feels the psychic to be one’s true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us. The inner mental, vital, physical are also veiled, but much nearer to the surface and much of their movements or i ...
... being" in our yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms—above it is Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes, —below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides... as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being —it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material world. It is... deliverance: but for the transformation of the life and nature the awakening of the psychic being and its rule over the nature are indispensable. The psychic being realises its oneness with the true being, the Jivatman, but it does not change into it. The bindu seen above may be a symbolic way of seeing the Jivatman, the portion of the Divine; the aspiration there would naturally be for the opening ...
... ( silence ) Terrible. A strange difficulty. If the inner being—the true being—is the ruler, the power of the true being makes the body act automatically; but then it doesn't grow conscious of its own change, it doesn't collaborate in its change, so for the change to happen it would take... maybe millennia. The true being has to be like this ( gesture to the background, standing back ) and the ...
... "the fragile happiness" of "mortal love". Savitri, though intensely in grief, continued her daily routine of work—this work was a mask. During this period her true being was veiled from her, she had occassional glimpses of it but not the presence. She controlled her mind and heart and continued to act normally in the daily round of her works. In her own country... CANTO TWO THE PARABLE OF THE SEARCH FOR THE SOUL Savitri heard the "dumb tread of Time" and also "the approach of ever-nearing Fate". Then she heard a call from her true Being: "A mighty Voice invaded mortal space". It came from the height but was intimate and near. As she heard the Voice her mind became Page 309 quiet: "Why earnest thou to this dumb death... life. It is supported by the "unwounded and immortal self" from behind. The soul gives the human being the power to live and act. Savitri's human personality in her upward ascent met here her true Being, "the secret Deity". "They rushed into each other and grew one". Then Savitri came back to her human surroundings: She was "human upon earthly soil" in the night, in "rain-swept woods" in the ...
... perfection. He put himself more and more in the witness self, and he found that the more this Purusha, this witness self, went on remembering his true being, the greater was the extent to which Nature also responded to it. When his soul forgot his own true being and identified itself with mind, he was one with Nature and one with thoughts, impulses, movements of desire. When he separated himself from Nature... in its natural flow of ignorance and would correspondingly undergo a change. What he found was a double aspect, and in this double aspect, when the Purusha knows his true self and remembers his true being, Nature also changes and reveals her powers that are lying dormant in her own constitution. Nature also shows: I am not dull, I am not always bound to be ignorant, I have also treasures of knowledge ...
... really proceed. All action requires a certain inner formation, an inner detached being. The formation of this inner being requires one to dive into the depth of the being, get the true Being and then prepare the true Being to come to the surface. It is then that one acquires a poise – an inner poise – and can act from there. Political work by Rajasic activity which draws the being outwards prevents... general hints may be given, if you like. Then Sri Aurobindo dictated the following by way of reply : "Firstly, when the psychic awakens you grow conscious of your own soul, you know your true being. You no longer commit the mistake of identifying yourself with the mental or the vital being, you do not mistake them for the soul. Secondly, when it is awakened, the psychic being gives the ...
... error, making no mistakes, knowing exactly at each moment what ought to be done and why. Mother, it is said that there is a true being... but usually when one speaks of the physical it means material, concerning the body, doesn't it? For the moment there is no true being in the most material domain. It is only a kind of subtle prototype which is not materially realised. Page 215 ( To ...
... essence or spiritual substance is the true Material from which all is constituted? It is substance of the Self and Brahman; it is within everything, above everything and when it descends upon one as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda, it enables the soul to separate itself from mind, life and matter, to face them instead of being involved in them and to act upon them and change them. If this is what... substance in which the Divine manifests and which is the true substance of all things, the one substance of which mind, life and body are lesser degrees, then no doubt that when it pours down as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda enables not only to face the universal mental as also the universal vital and physical but to work upon them and transform them. But is this what you have seen or is ...
... it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being—it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or ātman . It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material world. It is... universal Self brings the sense of liberation; but for the transformation of the life and nature the awakening of the psychic being is indispensable. The psychic being realises its oneness with the true being, the Jivatman, but it does not change into it. The bindu seen [ in vision by the correspondent ] above may be a symbolic way of seeing the Jivatman, the portion of the Divine; the aspiration ...
... feel this calmness, strength and light of which you speak, it means a great progress—for this is the real beginning of the spiritual and yogic consciousness and it shows that the foundation of the true being and the true consciousness is being laid in you. The psychic centre is that turned in all things towards the Divine, while the vital is that preoccupied with the desires and sufferings and enjoyments... shutting the doors of your mind and vital to the help and laying stress on a temporary block which would have disappeared if you had dissociated yourself from it. I can only express the hope that the true being in you will awake in time and draw you back from this course, restoring the inner contact with us and the unity with the higher Self, a glimpse of which had come to you for a moment. 31 January ...
... in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms—above, it is the Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes,—below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides... 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. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The True Being and the True Consciousness The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature ...
... dominate the mind, vital and physical so as to change the lower nature. Purusha — Conscious Being; Conscious-Soul; essential being supporting the play of Prakriti; the Purusha represents the true being on whatever plane it manifests — physical, vital, mental, psychic. Page 125 rajasic — of the nature of rajas, the quality of action and passion and struggle impelled by instinct... a change of consciousness, but the bringing down of the higher, divine consciousness and nature into the lower nature of mind, life and body, and the replacement of the lower by the higher. true being — see Purusha. true mental — see Purusha. true physical — see Purusha. true vital — see Purusha. Truth-Consciousness — see Supermind. the vital ...
... too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being. One should rather regard it as something not oneself, a mask of false nature imposed on the true being by the Ignorance. The true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine ...
... definite begins. Remain confident and quiet. The Growth of the Inner Being and the Inner Consciousness What you feel as the new life is the growth of the inner being in you; the inner being is the true being and as it grows the whole consciousness begins to change. This feeling and your new attitude towards people are signs of the change. The seeing Page 223 of inner things also usually comes... External Being It is the past habit of the vital that makes you repeatedly go out into the external part; you must persist and establish the opposite habit of living in your inner being which is your true being and of looking at everything from there. It is from there that you get the true thought, the true vision and understanding of things and of your own self and nature. You must have somehow ...
... spiritual nature that this difficulty Page 251 can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhaks it takes a long time. All the ordinary vital movements are foreign to the true being and come from outside; they do not belong to the soul nor do they originate in it but are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti. The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and... to say, even if "I don't desire" cannot yet be said by the vital. Still there is something in the being that can even say "I don't desire" and refuse to recognise the vital desire as part of the true being. It is that consciousness which the peace and power bring that has to be recognised as the true "I" and made permanent in front. It is difficult to get rid of desires altogether all at once—if ...
... knowledge and will, no disharmonising of our being and its action; everything there is the "straight" and there is no least possibility of crookedness. Therefore this supramental plane of vastness and true being is also Ritam, the true activity of things; it is a supreme truth of movement, action, manifestation, an infallible truth of will and heart and knowledge, a perfect truth of thought and word and... govern the whole world in the power of the Truth. That Maya is established in the heavens, it ranges there as a Sun of light; it is their rich and wonderful weapon. They are far-hearers, masters of true being, true themselves and increasers of truth in each human creature. They nourish the shining herds and loose forth the abundance of heaven; they make heaven to rain down by the Maya of the Mighty Lord ...
... secondly, to the ultimate barrenness and limitation of this knowledge, to the meagreness and insecurity of the power and happiness it brings and to the awareness of an infinite consciousness, knowledge, true being in which alone is to be found a victorious and infinite happiness. Nor would the obstruction of inertia bring with it unrest and dissatisfaction if the vital sentience emerging in Matter were entirely... well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a divine body? or, if the phrase seem to be too startling to our present limited conceptions of human potentiality, may he not in his development of his true being and its light and joy and power arrive at a divine use of mind and life and body by which the descent of Spirit into form shall be at once humanly and divinely justified? The one thing that can ...
... seen the Master of its works and lives in his presence or is consciously contained in his being or is unified with him or feels him in the heart or above and obeys his dictates. It has known its true being and cast away the veil of the Ignorance. What work then remains for the worker in man and with what motive, to what end, in what spirit will it be done? There is one answer with which we are... personality—that passing experimental and structural self which has been made for us by an interaction between our being and the pressure of a lower cosmic Nature. In proportion as we are purified, the true being within declares itself more clearly; our will is less entangled in suggestions from outside or shut up in our own superficial mental constructions. Egoism renounced, the nature purified, action will ...
... only our apparent being as perishable or mutable creatures in a perishable or ever mutable world. We have to know ourselves as the self, the spirit, the eternal; we have to exist consciously in our true being. Therefore this must be our primary, if not our first one and all-absorbing idea and effort in the path of knowledge. But when we have realised the eternal self that we are, when we have become that... entirely in the right poise and the vision of the Truth all that we drew back from in the first movement of recoil and withdrawal. The individual mind, life and body which we recoiled from as not our true being, we shall recover as a true becoming of the Self, but no longer in a purely individual narrowness. We shall take up the mind not as a separate mentality imprisoned in a petty motion, but Page ...
... make you a strong and conscious man who is master of himself—that is, in control of his lower nature and capable of becoming a true Yogi if that be his aspiration. And the more this man realises his true being, the more he will become my very dear child. That is why, now, when the will that is expressing itself is the will of the lower nature, I cannot satisfy all its whims, for that would be the worst... always been persons who have known how to discipline themselves. Always with you in all love. 23 June 1934 Yes, my dear child, I am your true mother who will give birth in you to the true being, the being who is free, peaceful, strong and happy always, independently of all circumstances. Love from your mother. 25 July 1934 My dear Mother, Give energy and force to your ...
... thought. Rtam is the true being, the true consciousness and the true delight of existence which manifests the right action. The right action results from Truth- consciousness which has to be attained, as also the process of that attainment. That process is a process of thoughts, emotions and works in their upward journey, which is guided by the growth of true consciousness, true being and true delight ...
... — your true being — that which we must strive to realise and attain. As the Mother says: It is the Divine personality in each one of us. Your outer personality is sometimes only a caricature, but still it tries to reflect, though with difficulty, something of the needs and urges of this inmost reality of yours. Someone has asked me: "How to find, how to know this inner being, the true being in me?" ...
... of man having no say in it. That was one problem as we saw. The epic also concerns itself with the evolution of man from his natural self to his true being or his spirit./Aswapathy gets this realization of the spirit, leading to a widening of his true being, equating him with the cosmos, with the universal consciousness, the universal being. Marching through all the planes which have their counterpart ...
... essential for a spiritual seeker to avail himself of the most effective means possible for his liberation from the ego. His most vigilant care must be directed to the replacement of the ego by "the true being which feels itself, even though individual, yet one with all and one with the Divine."¹ I shall now proceed to dwell upon the means Sri Aurobindo teaches for a complete expulsion of the ego... more and more to approximate. In course of time, urged by some inner developments, he takes to Yoga and makes remarkable progress in it. Passing through some decisive experiences, he realises his true being, his infinite and immortal Self. How will he now receive the praise and honour which used to gratify him so much? Has he any ambition for philosophical laurels left in him? What if he became as great ...
... To live in the psychic is to be in tune with the Divine Will and work in the unfaltering steps of Truth. But how to discover and realise the psychic ? "How, you ask me, are we to know our true being ? Ask for it, aspire after it, want it as you want nothing else...All urge for perfection comes from it, but you are unaware of the source, you are not collaborating with it knowingly, you are not... take a plunge and sink down. A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of ¹ Words of the Mother, 3rd Series, Page 86 your heart. It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates.”¹ "In the depths of your consciousness is the psychic being, the temple of the Divine within you. This is the centre round which should come about the unification ...
... protection. The danger, not being able to make any dent on the fort, has passed over. I remained safe and sound. Would it mean that the flood of desires comes to carry us away, but if we live in our true being, guarded by the Divine, it passes without touching us and we can witness the dance of the stormy surges in a detached manner? This was the meaning I could gather from the first part of the dream... Aurobindo what I thought and asked what his view was. This is just a part of what I wrote: “I don’t believe that it is our mind that helps us to know the Truth from falsehood and so on, but our true being, our psychic, that helps us to know things; it is when the mind is influenced by the psychic consciously or unconsciously, that the true discrimination can be done, otherwise if the physical mind ...
... elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now ...
... one's use of terms so as to avoid confusion of thought and vision by confusion in the words we use to express them. 31 The Self or Atman, states Sri Aurobindo, is experienced as the true being or self of the individual and as the Self of the cosmos. It has also an existence above the individual and transcending the cosmos in its aspect of Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the Divine. The... or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over.... 39 I suppose the ego came there first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly ...
... mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear — 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 ...
... it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being — it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation Page 85 to support its evolution... 94 daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one's soul, feels the psychic to be one's true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us. Letters on Yoga, p. 1097 Page 95 × ...
... knowledge. “It is only in an upsurge of feeling and in action that one comes into contact with the true being of the world. I don’t like Goethe, but I am inclined to overlook a lot of him for one thing he has said: ‘In the beginning was the deed’. Only the man of action becomes conscious of the true being of the world. Man abuses his intellect. It is not the seat of a special human dignity: it is no more ...
... may term the soul, the true being of us, which is not our body or our life-force or even our mind. Our self of sensations, our self of emotions, our self of ideas are not the fountain of poetic speech. All of them have a part to play, all of them can be instruments, indeed must be instruments if the poetic speech is to be full. But that speech is basically from the true being of us which is not only ...
... Brahman; it is Brahman who within the field of Maya seems phenomenally to be subjected to her as the individual and in the end releases the relative and phenomenal individual into his eternal and true being. In the temporal field of relativities our experience of the Brahman who has become all beings, the Eternal who has become universal and individual, is also valid; it is indeed a middle step of the... proper to the true consciousness. Action does not bind or limit the liberated man; action does not bind or limit the Eternal: but we can go farther and say that action does not bind or limit our own true being at all. Action has no such effect on the spiritual Person or Purusha or on the psychic entity within us, it binds or limits only the surface constructed personality. This personality is a temporary ...
... g, the ego-idea. This ego-sense in the life stuff and this ego-idea in the mind maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being. The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel... self to act out the brief and limited part assigned to it between birth and death as a present living and conscious self-formation of the being in the stuff of a world of inconscient Nature. The true being which we are no more dies by the cessation of one life than the actor ceases to exist when he has finished one of his parts or the poet when he has poured out something of himself in one of his poems; ...
... of birth and the wheel of action, a thing of desires, transient, mortal, a slave of its own nature. Above this inferior power of existence there is a higher divine and spiritual nature of its own true being in which this soul is for ever a conscious portion of the Eternal and Divine, blissful, free, superior to its mask of becoming, immortal, imperishable, a power of the Godhead. To rise by this higher... personality and its interests, it cannot draw back to the possession of its Page 415 impersonal and unborn self-existence. To be able to do that is to find oneself and get back to one's true being, that which assumes these births but does not perish with the perishing of its forms. To enjoy the eternity to which birth and life are only outward circumstances, is the soul's true immortality ...
... detached and observing. The consciousness you speak of would be described in the Gita as the witness Purusha. The Purusha or basic consciousness is the true being or at least, on whatever plane it manifests, represents the true being. But in the ordinary nature of man it is covered up by the ego and the ignorant play of the Prakriti and remains veiled behind as the unseen Witness supporting ...
... The Egoism of the Instrument and the Magnified Ego The form of ego has to be dissolved, 3 it has not to be replaced by a bigger ego or another kind of ego. It has to be replaced by the true being which feels itself, even though individual, yet one with all and one with the Divine. Page 230 The egoism of the instrument can be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress... unegoistic through self-giving and surrender. At the same time the nature opens above and the wider ego-free consciousness comes down and ego disappears and by the power of the psychic you know your own true being which is a portion of the Mother. This is what has to happen, but it cannot happen in so short a time. Do not be always thinking of the vital movements and the ego—you have seen them and know that ...
... true physical being. When 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 are also made free... being" in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms - above, it is Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes, - below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides ...
... want it! What does the Divine want of me? He wants that you first find yourself; that with your true being, your psychic being, you master and govern the lower being, and then you will quite naturally take your proper place in the great Divine Work. Where is my true being? Farther within or higher above, on the other side of the emotions, beyond the mind. Page 154 ...
... spontaneously a trans-mental knowledge of our true being which is then realised as a consciousness altogether independent of the bodily vehicle, as a spiritual entity possessed of a continuous soul-life perpetually developing and determining its own becoming. About this spiritual knowledge, not at all ideative but felt in the very depths of our true being, Sri Aurobindo says: "The soul ...
... while in another place I read that it is to be transformed. The form of ego has to be dissolved, it has not to be replaced by a bigger ego or another kind of ego. It has to be replaced by the true being which feels itself, even though individual, yet one with all and one with the Divine. Is it a fact that R's ego has risen up more than before? It is not more than it was. One... automatically bring love, joy or bhakti. Now I feel that to have desires, attachments, ego, is something strange to my true consciousness! Yes, these things are foreign to the true being. During one of the meditations, I found that the ego was disturbing my life and sadhana. So I separated myself from it and kicked it out. Is there any validity to such a feeling? ...
... confirmed again and again in the physical and objective field. Knowledge that is sought to be attained through Yoga has certain special characteristics; it is the light by which one grows into one's true being, not the knowledge by which one increases information and intellectual riches. It is true that scientific or psychological or philosophical or ethical or aesthetic or practical knowledge help us... indispensable gate of yoga. Yoga proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant of true self, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and into a direct and living contact by experience and then a union with the Divine. For the yogic seeker, this change of consciousness is the one thing that matters and nothing else — belief, dogma ...
... your true being ― that which we must strive to realise and attain. As the Mother says: It is the Divine personality in each one of us. Your outer personality is sometimes only a caricature, but still it tries to reflect, though with difficulty, something of the needs and urges of this inmost reality of yours. Someone has asked me: "How to find, how to know this inner being, the true being in me ...
... has done with desire for pleasure. From him liking and wrath and fear have passed away; (k) he is without the triple action of the qualities of Prakriti, without dualities, ever based in his true being, without getting or having, possessed of his self; Page 307 (l) and yet he does not cease from action; (m) but his actions are not inspired by desires or by claims for the... is from the point of view of the new status a night, a troubled sleep and darkness of the soul. On the other hand, that higher status which is a night to the ordinary people is the luminous day of true being, knowledge and power. (ii) That new status is of a wide ocean of being and consciousness which is even filled, yet ever motionless in its large poise of the soul. (iii) All the desires of ...
... n, by analysis, by experiment and arrives at a generalization by the application of scientific discoveries to life. Consciousness is the fundamental fact of the cosmos and the Sat Brahman is the true being that is Infinite. It is that which is the standing intuition on which this reason can base its operation. Then, perhaps, the reason can give us some clarification of this basis of knowledge. ... order to make the surrender effective. Aspiration and surrender are the two processes of our nature, of the mental and the vital being. They are—even when they act powerfully in nature, from the true being, the true Self trying to express itself. The constantly awake ideal in the mind, a flame in the heart, a will in the vital repeating "I want to change," "I must widen into the Higher Consciousness" ...
... it gets back to its true experience or realization of self. Delight is the true constituent of the Page 214 self of man, not mind, life or body. The mental being in man is not his true being. Mind is his instrument. The true human being is- not the life-being or the vital-being in man. The true human being is not the body or force at work in the physical being. The true human being is... one has to have. What Sri Aurobindo indicates is not only an idea but a realization or a concrete experience, and concrete experience comes to consciousness, not only to mental consciousness. The true being is the psychic being—not the mental being and the psychic is nearest to the universal. Therefore, the psychic being automatically or easily expands into the universal consciousness and realizes oneness ...
... too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being. One should rather regard it as something not oneself, a mask of false nature imposed on the true being by the Ignorance. The true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure ...
... is this complexity of man's inner being that renders the task of the artist very difficult. Very often he mistakes his vital being that is interested in life and movement, his desire-soul, for his true being. It is even true that this Vital being in man, his being of life-force, can and often does create great art. In all true artistic creation this vital element is needed to give life to it. It draws... and feel, perceive or see forms on that plane and can establish contact with them and bring them down in his creation. He can, if he acquires the practice, even contact his true soul, his true being, his inmost self, and see forms on that plane. He can bring them down into his art-creation. Above the mental level there are ranges of consciousness attainable by man. i The greatest artists ...
... life.¹ "It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true being, a life of unity, mutuality, harmony, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life... .If an evolution of being is the law, then what ...
... strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down. "A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates.¹ In these few packed words the Mother outlines the most rapidly effective way of realising the psychic. A sincere, intense aspiration and an unflagging... real soul, the psychic being. In that unconfined consciousness he discovers that the will of his ego was but a puppet will, drunk with the cramping illusion of its separate freedom, and that his true being is not encased in a tiny formation of Nature, but embraces the whole universe and extends even beyond it. He finds his own freedom in the freedom of the Infinite, and his own will in the self-ef ...
... utterance of Kumar Kshitendra Deb, that renowned statesman who is Page 135 standing for the Bengal Legislative Council. This Kumar first carefully differentiates true Swadeshi from false, the true being the kind of Swadeshi which allows Kumars and others to become Legislative Councillors, the false the kind of Swadeshi which doesn't. All this is to prevent misunderstanding about his views which ...
... of the Truth out of the darkness of Ignorance and by the conquest of the Truth the conquest also of Immortality. For the Vedic Ritam is a spiritual as well as a psychological conception. It is the true being, the true consciousness, the true delight of Page 241 existence beyond this earth of body, this mid-region of vital force, this ordinary sky or heaven of mind. We have to cross beyond ...
... perverse and repellent, does not exist as an absolute opposite of the nature of the Godhead, but goes back to something behind itself, goes back to a saving power of spirit in which it can find its own true being and redemption. There is an Page 369 original and originating Supreme Prakriti, in which the divine power and will to be enjoys its own absolute quality and pure revelation. There is ...
... Being, equality as the stuff of the Nature. Always in this sense of a supreme self-knowledge is this word jñāna used in Indian philosophy and Yoga; it is the light by which we grow into our true being, not the knowledge by which we increase our information and our intellectual riches; it is not scientific or psychological or philosophic or ethical or aesthetic or worldly and practical knowledge ...
... this the psychic fire or the psychic being? A fire is not a being—it is the psychic fire, an intense condition of aspiration. "A fire is burning there.... It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates" [ p. 1 ]. I have never seen this fire in me. Yet I feel I know the divinity in me. I feel I hear its voice and I try my utmost to follow its dictates. Should ...
... incidents. This precious oneself is just the present impermanent exterior nature which has absolutely nothing to do with the several other formations behind which, as behind the present one, the true being stands. Only the supramental consciousness holds these births as if strung on one single thread and that alone can give the real knowledge of them all. Page 149 ...
... Education ". Mother, does a person's body-formation express his character? No. Even the character itself is not a simple affair, that is, the character of a person is not the expression of his true being but the result of many things. For example, atavism may be expressed, that is, what comes from the father, the mother, from both together which may have a different result; from what has gone before ...
... the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to find one's soul is to find God; to identify with one's soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a true being of man. The Mother Some Answers from the Mother: 29 September 1959 ...
... voices because I see that they are being misled or in danger of being misled by false visions and false voices. That does not mean that visions and voices have no value. 9 July 1936 If the true being behind the usual emotional heart is the psychic, how is it that Ramana Maharshi says, and all the Upanishads too say, that in the core of the heart is the Self, the Atman? Maharshi says the place ...
... of all power, all 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 a projection of the Divine, - therefore in connection ...
... best way to its cure____ The radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being. The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which after ...
... pressure on the mental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence,—or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital enthusiasm and ardour up-lifted by some kind of strong or high belief or self-dedication or ...
... in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one's soul, feels the psychic to be one's true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us. 94 Sri Aurobindo * Page 90 "To keep the psychic awake and in front": what does ...
... Self, the One and the Infinite The Atma is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless, unaffected by the stains of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is realised as the true being of the individual, but also more widely as the same being in all and as the Self of the cosmos; it has also a self-existence above the individual and cosmos and it is then called the Paramatma, the ...
... with even greater force. Just as each individual has a psychic being which is his true self and which governs his destiny more or less overtly, so too each nation has a psychic being which is its true being and moulds its destiny from behind the veil: it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people, the centre of national aspiration, the fountainhead of all that is beautiful ...
... slavery to the human way of thinking and doing; it is to teach all those who want to listen that there is another and truer way of living, that Sri Aurobindo has taught us how to live and become a true being —and that the aim of the education here is to prepare the children and make them fit for that life . Page 117 For all the rest, the human ways of thinking and living, the world is vast ...
... Page 149 consciousness can be built. A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience ...
... physical consciousness and the emergence of a new consciousness from the now invisible Within, not an illusory periphery like the present mental, vital, physical ignorance but a truth-becoming from the true being within us. He speaks of the transition as a darkness created by the rejection of the outer mental light, a darkness intervening before the true light from the Invisible can come. Certain Christian ...
... ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the Supramental Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole SelfKnowledge and world-Knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and the fulfilment of our spiritual evolution. Page 397 ...
... experiences will not, that has been amply proved by a host of instances. You need not therefore compare that wealth to your poverty. To open yourself to the descent of the higher consciousness (the true being) is the one thing needed and that, even if that comes after long effort and many failures, is better than a hectic gallop leading nowhere. You have missed my rather veiled hint about wealth ...
... its works, says of it “Sukritam”, What I have made, is good. Whoever Page 45 enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smriti—sees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memory—just as we say of ...
... universal renunciation of desire as the condition of universal enjoyment in the spirit, has been explained by the state of self-realisation, the realisation of the free and transcendent Self as one's own true being, of that Self as Sachchidananda and of the universe seen as the Becoming of Sachchidananda and possessed in the terms of the right knowledge and no longer in the terms of the Ignorance which is the ...
... sevenfold Ignorance into the integral Knowledge is the progress of man's being; it is to grow in all his complex existence and consciousness into the full possession and enjoyment of his whole and his true being.—He starts with three categories, himself, Nature or cosmos and God, and though he tries to deny any two of these in order to affirm the third only, he cannot really succeed; for he is neither separate ...
... not greater than Vishnu, nor Vishnu than Shiva, nor the All-Being than Krishna or Kali. Such exaggerated distinctions are the errors of partial or selective Yoga fastening on aspects & ignoring the true being of God in His self-manifestation. We must accept, for our perfection's sake, the multitude of His aspects & even of His divine impersonations, but we must not make them an excuse for breaking up ...
... proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. Morality ...
... in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one's soul, feels the psychic to be one's true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us. The inner mental, vital, physical are also veiled, but much nearer to the surface and much of their movements or i ...
... consciousness to join the Divine. When, liberated from its ordinary identification with the body, it rises upward to have experiences of the higher planes, to link itself with the psychic or the true being or to join the Divine Consciousness, then there is this experience of ascension and of speeding or expanding through space. The joy you feel is a sign of this last movement,—rising to join the Divine; ...
... responds more to these than to the higher consciousness, then he does not get free. Sometimes even the ego gets aggrandised. But if the psychic is awake, then there is not this danger; one finds one's true being in place of the ego. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of the higher consciousness from above that can give a peaceful and beautiful merging ...
... not allowing it to be entirely obscured or long clouded, you can move rapidly towards a new birth of your nature and the foundation of your life and all your thoughts and acts and movements in your true being, the psychic being. Never consent to the ideas, suggestions, feelings that bring back the cloud, the Page 711 confusion and the revolt. It is the consent that makes them strong to recur ...
... is exposed to these touches. The inmost psychic being is not oppressed by them; it stands in its own closeness to the Divine and sees the small surface movements as surface things foreign to the true being. It is regrettable that this attack [ of depression ] should recur. Perhaps it was a little my fault—you were or seemed to me going on so well that I was not on my guard against its possible ...
... inner consciousness and the persistence of the silence and peace is a sign that it is now possible. When one feels this kind of silence, peace and wideness, one may be sure that it is that of the true being, the real self, penetrating into the mind and vital and perhaps also the physical consciousness (if it is complete). The restlessness of the physical is probably due to the peace and silence having ...
... have repeatedly written of your love for the Mother, the Ananda which you received from her and the number of spiritual experiences. Remember that and remember that that is your true way and your true being and nothing else matters. Get back your poise and throw off the lower nature and its darkness and ignorance. 29 March 1933 The Mother and myself deal with all according to the law of the Divine ...
... in order to use it for its own purpose, and is not willing to live for the Divine Purpose,—it is willing to take from the Divine all it can get, but not to give itself to the Divine. The soul, the true being, on the contrary, turns towards the Divine and is not only willing but eager and happy to surrender. In this Yoga one is supposed to go beyond every mental idealistic culture. Ideas and ideals ...
... becomes a dubious and partial ray not in possession of the will, the act and the result, but only striving to possess and inform them. This is because we are not in possession of our self, 3 our true being, but only of the ego. What we are, we know not; what we know, we cannot effect. For knowledge is real and action in harmony with true knowledge only when they proceed naturally out of the conscious ...
... pressure on the mental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence,—or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital enthusiasm and ardour uplifted by some kind of strong or high belief or self-dedication or ...
... the rule or nature of life; so exaggerated, it would only feed and exaggerate the ego of others or magnify some collective ego, not lead us or mankind to the discovery and affirmation of our or its true being. Sacrifice and self-giving are indeed a true principle and a spiritual necessity, for we cannot affirm our being rightly without sacrifice or without self-giving to something larger than our ego; ...
... Absolute. This ideal of self-extinction which is boldly and clearly proclaimed by the Buddhists, is in Vedantic thought a self-finding: but the self-finding of the individual by his growth into his true being in the Absolute would only be possible if both are interrelated realities; it could not apply to the final world-abolishing self-affirmation of the Absolute in an unreal or temporary individual by ...
... possessed of his whole law of nature. Manifested, he grows in the lap of their crookednesses and becomes high, beautiful and glorious. Rig Veda. (I. 95. 4, 5.) From the non-being to true being, from the darkness to the Light, from death to Immortality. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. (I. 3. 28.) A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing ...
... will and delight moving harmoniously in itself. Now we have rather the warped and zigzag movement of mind and life, the contortions created by the struggle of the soul once grown oblivious of its true being to find itself again, to resolve back all error into the truth which both our truth and our error, our right and our wrong limit or distort, all incapacity into the strength which both our power ...
... not been heard, what has been experienced and what has not been experienced, what is and what is not, all it sees, it is all and sees. Prasna Upanishad. (IV. 5.) To dwell in our true being is liberation; the sense of ego is a fall from the truth of our being. Mahopanishad. (V. 2.) One in many births, a single ocean holder of all streams of movement, sees our hearts ...
... desire and responsive consciousness has created in us. And yet the true emotive soul, the real psyche in us, is not a desire-soul, but a soul of pure love and delight; but that, like the rest of our true being, can only emerge when the deformation created by the life of desire is removed from the surface and is no longer the characteristic action of our being. To get that done is a necessary part of our ...
... these things, it abolishes only our ignorance and those circumstances proper to the ignorance which made us bound and subject to the egoistic determinations of our nature. When we get back to our true being, the ego falls away from us; its place is taken by our supreme and integral self, the true individuality. As this supreme self it makes itself one with all beings and sees all world and Nature in ...
... but as the very substance and constitution of the nature and, by the integration of the being, necessarily also the very stuff and constituting nature of the action. To grow into this nature of our true being, a nature of spiritual truth and oneness, is the liberation attained by an evolution of the spiritual being: the gnostic evolution gives us the complete dynamism of that return to ourselves. Once ...
... too easily exalted when they allow ambition, pride or the desire of greatness to enter into their spiritual seeking and vitiate its purity of motive; a magnified ego stands between them and their true being and grasps for its own personal purpose the strength from a greater unseen Power, divine or undivine, acting through them of which they become vaguely or intensely aware. An intellectual perception ...
... why you must not cross limits but do everything in moderation. We Aurobindonians don't agree with these interpreters. We think "Know thyself means what Socrates had in mind: you must know your true being which is more than human, your soul which is divine. Ours is exactly the opposite of the other interpretation. Of course with our interpretation we would not be able to syn-thesise the two aphorisms ...
... in order to become something else or more. In another sense it is a self-becoming, a flowering out of something concealed by our present 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 ...
... all that ( Mother raises an unalterable finger ) has to be swept away. And that which says that we will perish or be destroyed by That is the ego—it is Mr. Ego trying to pass himself off as the true being. But the body has learned that even without ego it is what it is, because it is that by the Divine Will and not at all by the ego—we exist by the Divine Will and not by the ego. The ego was a ...
... as indwelling spirit but also as the name and form, the movement and the master of the movement, the mind and life and body.... The individual mind, life and body which we recoiled from as not our true being, we shall recover as a true becoming of the Self, but no longer in a purely individual narrowness — We shall come to feel all the consciousness of the physical world as one with our physical con ...
... reads ): 8) All division in the being is an insincerity. 9) The greatest insincerity is to carve an abyss between one's body and the truth of one's being. 10) When an abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature immediately fills it with all the hostile suggestions, of which the most deadly is fear and the most pernicious, doubt. I wrote that before reading Sri Aurobindo's ...
... described: "Here is the light of heaven, here all is lovely; here there is radiance, here is air's wide region." 419 The description is not only to tempt Varuṇa: it is as if it reflected Varuṇa's own true being and were a domain which would be natural to it. To present Varuṇa as an Asura who is a lord of demons riddles the hymn with self-contradiction on several levels. Anything built on it would indeed ...
... elements and by a synthesis of diverse lines of intellectual experiment, social combination, practical pursuit. And she has been able to blend so many outwardly differing components because her true being is attuned to that which is other than the visible forms of life and yet is the common origin of them all, that which is capable of differentiating into a myriad forms without losing its essential ...
... incarnated earthlings, the sadhaks, by the fact of their birth, took on the existing ‘impossibilities’ of the current stage of the earthly evolution. Few of them were totally conscious of their true being. Their meeting with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had awakened the soul in some of them, to be sure, while others had felt the irresistible impulse to join in the yoga because of some unforeseen and ...
... mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won’t need any material things to subsist on … It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent …” 33 And the Mother added: “The human body is closer to the animal than to the [supramental] body ...
... born of human parents in a human adhara, he may not be immediately aware of his avatarhood. In his youth Sri Aurobindo was, according to his own statement, an agnostic; he probably united with his true Being during the first years of his stay in Pondicherry, between 1910 and 1914. The Mother was aware of her uniqueness even in early childhood. She was told by Madame Théon during her occultist days in ...
... wideness, impersonality, the sense of the Cosmic Divine, the perception of the universal forces, the realization and understanding of the cosmic manifestation, the play. 4) Find in place of ego the true being—a portion of the Divine issued from the World-Mother and an instrument of the manifestation. This sense of being the portion of the Divine and an instrument should be free from all pride, sense of ...
... is not a hostile suggestion but a partial, incomplete experience. Photographs merely show an incomplete fragmentary image of a form that is itself transient and fleeting. My consciousness, my true being not only has an eternal form but many immortal forms, and each person can see the form that is in accord with him. Some day you will surely see one of my true forms. With my blessings 7 September ...
... ly, I saw this once again yesterday, while you were producing certain specific notes, when — as I told you just now — I saw you no longer as Dilip, but as Music pure: then flashed before me your true being — which, by the way, is an old acquaintance of mine — a splendid being. But about this I would rather not speak now — as I want you to realise it yourself— why, you will know later on." "You ...
... the ego is a falsification of our true individuality by a limiting self-identification of it with one mind, one body and one life which are constantly changing from birth to death. What then is the true being which animates us and is changeless, eternal and infinite ? A little reflection will convince us that it is not the mind much less- our life and body which is eternal and imperishable, and makes ...
... creation and only by a supreme effort at self-finding does he at last discover Ih is true nature, that is the nature of the Sat-chit-ananda. This is the divine play and all those have realised their true being have unanimously testified to this truth of creation. Now with all this data of creation given, of involution and evolution of the -divine consciousness, it will not Page 460 ...
... knowledge. But later I confessed before her. She only smiled because she knew that I could never adopt anybody's technique except her own. She had actually steeped me in her art and method, so my true being refused to accept anything else. This I realised concretely. Now, in addition to all this aid I took from the artist, a woman used to barge into my house without informing me beforehand. She would ...
... SUPREME LORD." The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to be Divine. In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one. The role of the soul is to make of man a true being. The soul is that which comes out of the Divine without ever leaving Him and goes back to Him without ever ceasing from manifestation. The Mother, Words of the Mother - II: The Soul (the ...
... take the Mother's photograph or Sri Aurobindo's, or those of both. He said, "Better take the Mother's feet." I was amazed and was absolutely convinced about the Mother's Force and the feeling of my true being. Then and there I remembered these lines from Savitri : But first high Truth must set her feet on earth And man aspire to the Eternal’s light And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch ...
... is to be sincere. All division in the being is an insincerity. The greatest insincerity is to dig an abyss between your body and the truth of your being. When an abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature fills it up immediately with all kinds of adverse suggestions, the most formidable of which is fear, and the most pernicious, doubt. Allow nothing anywhere to deny ...
... you can retain the same relation with me if you stay away for some time more. Well, it will surely depend on the length of the time. Because little by little you forget that you have (or had) a true being and you will get so accustomed to being a "thoughtful", "tactful" and "reasonable" creature that you will no more dream of being otherwise. In any case you have to make the decision yourself; ...
... the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to find one's soul is to find God; to identify with one's soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a true being of man. 29 September 1959 Sweet Mother, Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is it something that one creates for oneself? There is nothing that can truly be called ...
... 5) How does the psychic being open? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the Adhara? Page 38 By the force of aspiration and the grace of the Mother. Psychic: your true being, the being that is in the heart and that is the spark of the Mother's own consciousness. Vital: the part from which proceed desires and hunger and dynamic activities, having its physical basis ...
... of realisation. Conversion: the turning of all the movements of the being towards the Divine. Resurrection: the falling off of the old consciousness, followed by the awakening of the true being out of it. New birth: birth of the true consciousness, that of the Divine Presence in us. Realisation: the goal of our efforts. Realisation—that is what we aspire for and for ...
... stops and halts the others with a gesture. ASCETIC I have something important to communicate to you. Will you kindly listen to me, both of you? In the course of our ascent I have discovered my true being, my true Self. I have become one Page 508 with the Eternal and nothing else exists for me, nothing else is necessary. All that is not That is illusory, worthless. So I consider that I ...
... letter, and which persists. So it's to get rid at the same time of a certain state of consciousness and, yes, of a certain difficulty. Your true consciousness, you know, the consciousness of your true being, is in a very rapid ascent; something in you isn't aware of that and lags behind, and that's what causes an unease in you. So it's clear that writing is a good means (probably the best means) of ...
... person in question. I saw in an absolute way that it was the best for her. Humanly we may try to find the reasons for this or that, but that's not the point, it's that it was—for her soul, for her true being—the best possible for her. Take her in you. Oh, you needn't worry about that. The last words she told me yesterday evening were, "Ask Mother to make me sleep." She wanted rest. ...
... knocking at the right door that the radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and ...
... these things, it abolishes only our ignorance and those circumstances proper to the ignorance which made us bound and subject to the egoistic determinations of our nature. When we get back to our true being, the ego falls away from us; its place is taken by our supreme and integral self, the true individuality. As this supreme self it makes itself one with all beings and sees all world and Nature ...
... the Reality; as Soul it is the Conscious Being who sanctions the creative adventure of the Consciousness-Force, and as the Lord it controls the process of the self-manifestation of the Reality. The true being in man is a portion of the supreme Reality and is called the soul or psychic being by Sri Aurobindo. The psychic being is of the same essence as God and is other than body, life and mind. ...
... is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or sākṣī, the active and superstrucrural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the sākṣī. 3 The Purusha is the true being, but in the ordinary consciousness it is identified with Prakriti. Therefore, in the ordinary consciousness, one loses the sense of being the witness, Purusha, and thinks of oneself as the active ...
... than the thumb of man... Identified with the mind and body and life, It takes on itself their anguish and defeat, Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross. 38 Our true being is the Psyche that takes a new mind and life and body every time it takes birth. The anguish and defeat undergone by body, mind and life are suffered by Christ-like Psyche, bleeding with Fate's ...
... you. Is it true or I am imagining it? It is true. Whenever you are open to the Mother or turn to her with confidence in your difficulties, if there come any, you will feel the same. It is your true being that comes up—that part which admits these wrong suggestions is something quite external. Sri Aurobindo I heard that today morning R did not come for Pranam and also did not meet Mother ...
... you can retain the same relation with me if you stay away for some time more. Well, it will surely depend on the length of the time. Because little by little you forget that you have (or had) a true being and you will get so accustomed to be a "thoughtful", "tactful" am "reasonable" creature that you will no more dream of being otherwise. In any case you have to take yourself the decision, neither ...
... as usual. What were these parrots and their death? Have all visions some real meaning? Should I care to see these things and write to you whatever I see? The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of flight ...
... consciousness and the emergence of a new consciousness from the now invisible Within, not an illusory periphery like the present mental, vital, physical ignorance but a truth becoming from the true being within us. He speaks of the transition as a darkness created by the rejection of the outer mental light, a darkness intervening before the true light from the Invisible can come. Certain Christian ...
... to become. It is only when there is a right balance of the development of all our faculties that we can reach and attain the state of self-possession and self-mastery. We can then experience our true being and discover the secret of our perpetual being. We need to emphasise therefore, the education of all our parts of being, physical, vital rational, aesthetic, moral and spiritual. And the development ...
... proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into a direct and living contact by experience and then into a union with the Divine. For the yogin, this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters ...
... halts the others with a gesture. ASCETIC I have something important to communicate to you. Will you kindly listen to me, both of you? In the course of our ascent I have discovered my true being, my true Self. I have become one with the Eternal and nothing else exists for me, nothing else is necessary. All that is not That is illusory, worthless. So I consider that I have reached the end ...
... "This precious oneself is just the present impermanent exterior nature which has absolutely nothing to do with the several other formations behind which, as behind the present one, the true being stands." (Ibid.) About remembering former lives: "But this is a dangerous subject, because the human mind is too fond of romance. As soon as it comes to know something of this ...
... progress, and with immortality as a constant underlying fact and as the home to which the soul Page 28 travels as it gradually unfolds and recovers from ignorance its knowledge of its true being, nature and aim. But should then one live by constant killing? How does this knowledge of the immortal Spirit justify the action demanded of Arjuna and the slaughter at Kurukshetra? The war ...
... little. Yoga, after all, is there before you—But meanwhile do you know what sandy deserts you have to cross?... That is of course the whole difficulty—the division in the being. But even so the true being can and surely will prevail. We're giving S calomel and mag. sulph to stimulate the flow of bile and a purge also. Purge quite safe for his weakness? Please concentrate a little on his ...
... has become ugly in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because there are other things that intervene between the Source and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you: "do you know your true being"? what would you say? You do not know; it would be wonderful if you did. It is the same with all beings and things. And yet you are already a sufficiently developed being, a thinking being, and have ...
... word that stands in its own value and glory, maintains its own separate dignity and greatness, giving free scope to the inherent power of sound, voice and articulation. Hence the inner Being, the true Being of delight, does not always relish even the sweet noise – as Hamlet speaks out: it is all words, words, words – or as Jayadeva declares: Mukharam adhiram tyaja mañjiram (Take away your ...
... But these two are outer robes, hanging loose around another person, behind and within, hanging loose and standing aloof even like a clothing enveloping your body. It is that being which is your true being of whom I was telling you so long, the intimate brother and friend of yours, indeed your own true self, incarnating the Mother's presence and the Mother's love. It is only a matter of opening out ...
... and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve. The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinsed mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment ...
... and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve. The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment ...
... committing ourselves and our all to the care of the Primal Power. Otherwise, who will establish law and order in our nature? Nature herself can formulate her own laws, can manifest the Law of her true Being. Man's personal efforts can hardly do that, nor can the static and passive Supreme Being by Himself do that. Page 218 ...
... here, not only understand but become capable of doing what you are here for. Through centuries it has prepared itself in you, not naturally in this body, which is the most recent, but in your true being: for centuries it has been waiting for this occasion. You see how wonderful it all is! You see the things that one has hoped for since long long ago, for which one has prayed so much, laboured so ...
... Light VI The Birth Of Maya THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All- Power-in himself, in his essence and true being, always and for ever. But, somewhere, in a part of universal being the Divine chose to forget the Divine, a veil was allowed to interpose in front of the All-Light ...
... Truth-Consciousness is the same as the Jiva ? Sri Aurobindo : On its highest plane the Jiva is the true Divine being. But it is on every plane. When you realise the Divine you know your true being and also you know God and his purpose in your Jiva. One can get into contact with it through the Central Being, Disciple : I wanted to understand how belief is known Page 132 ...
... must know your own inner y being. This Personality is not the inner mental, the p inner vital and the inner physical being and its consciousness as is many times wrongly described, but it is your true Being which is in direct communication with the Highest. Man grows by gradual growth in Nature and each has to realize his own Divine Person which is in the Supermind. Each is one with the Divine in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Birth of Maya THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All-Power - in himself, in his essence and true being, always and for ever. But, somewhere, in a part of universal being the Divine chose to forget the Divine, a veil was allowed to interpose in front of the All-Light, the All-Bliss, the All-Power: ...
... for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness itself. When one feels the call, turns one's back to the worldly life, moves towards the life spiritual, one follows then the urge of one's true being, the psychic being: one is then naturally sincere, firmly and spontaneously devoted to the Divine, unequivocally loyal and faithful to the Beloved and the Master. This central sincerity, however ...
... being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve. The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment ...
... appearance — all that I do not see, for I am not interested in all that — not what he has as material possession or if he is rich or not. All this does not interest me. When I see someone, I see his true being and it is that which tells me all that this person is. For some, it is a bit hazy and for others, a bit more dear. By seeing that, I know if he has possibilities for a spiritual life or not and I ...
... has become ugly in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because there are other things that intervene between the Source and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you: "Do you know your true being?" what would you say? You do not know; it would be wonderful if you did. It is the same with all beings and things. And yet you are already a sufficiently developed being, a thinking being, and have ...
... soul. In reality we have or are two beings – an external outside being with its outward body and heart and mind, with all their ordinary desire movements and within that as under a cover lies your true being, your soul, that is made not of desire but of Truth. The outer person of desire is made of ignorance and unconsciousness, the true person or soul is made of truth and consciousness. Always there ...
... strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down. A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you - your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates. 14 How easy it all sounds! But how exactly shall we do it? Again, the answer sounds easy: Be conscious! For it is our unconsciousness - or deceptive ...
... into the text but that is not poetry – it is metaphysics. I have explained the terms myself: "star" is the star of creation, and "moon" is the sudden upheaval of the inner life, and "ocean-self" is true-being. There is no philosophy in it. Page 246 5th January, 1940 Disciple : I am trying to get intuition but I fail. Sri Aurobindo : Perhaps you were disappointed ...
... What we have to do is to step back from the lower vital which is a part of the un-universal Nature, abounding with all sorts of desires, cravings, lusts, hungers, etc., and take our stand on our true being. Once we learn how to stand there, we are free, free from the compulsion of the forces of nature. Tranquil witnesses, we can watch the desires invading us like waves from the surrounding sea of ...
... of the body which, in his view, is "the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food, and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being; it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all.... It has proved to us by ...
... 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 from the control of earth. It seemed as if Satyavan and Death would escape now ...
... with him. This world is not his master. Even in the waking consciousness, this perception can come to the human individual in calmness because within him is the realisation of the Lord. It is the true Being that is in him. This self can smile at nature, and it can live in the delight Self, the ā nanda-maya —behind the mental—consciousness, ever blissful. This Self is the truth of self. It is within ...
... without our really realizing what it is at first, so insignificant it is. Was the small protozoan so significant in its pond? The body, the cells of the body would like to make contact with the true being, without having to go through the vital or even through the mind. That is what is taking place. And suddenly Mother remembered: Ah! I noticed that the cells, everywhere, all the time, were repeating ...
... shutting the door of your mind and vital to the help and laying stress on a temporary block which would have disappeared if you had dissociated yourself from it. I can only express the hope that the true being in you will awake in time and draw you back from this course, restoring the inner contact with us and the unity with the higher self a glimpse of which had come to you for a moment. (31.1.37) ...
... the inner consciousness and the persistence of the silence and peace is a sign that it is now possible. When one feels this kind of silence, peace and wideness, one may be sure that that is of the true being, the real self, penetrating into the mind and vital and perhaps also the physical consciousness (if it is complete). The restlessness of the physical is probably due to the peace and silence having ...
... psychic and the external being. About this, however, you need not be anxious at present. The important thing is to keep what you have and let it grow, to live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will then in due time awake and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it ...
... that you write in your letter is perfectly sound and true. The very object of Yoga is a change of consciousness — it is by getting a new consciousness or by unveiling the hidden consciousness of the true being within and progressively manifesting and perfecting it that one gets first the contact and then the union with the Divine. Ananda and bhakti are part of that deeper consciousness, and it is only ...
... Paroles de la Mère 3, p. 184) असतो मा सद्गमय । तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय। मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय ॥२८॥ asato mā sadgamaya, tamaso mā jyotirgamaya, mṛtyormā amṛtaṁ gamaya.2 From the non-being to true being, from the darkness to the Light, from death to Immortality. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself: A Benediction आविरावीर्म एधि। āvirāvīrma edhi. O Luminous One, Thyself manifest to me. ...
... it & we realise that it is our true Self & the true Self of everything in the universe & of the universe both in its sum & in its entirety. We call it then the Atman, a word which originally meant true Being or true Page 402 Substance. We become aware of It as extending itself & filling its extension here for a purpose, the purpose of Ananda, delight in Vidya, delight in Avidya & governing ...
... indicators of a supreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this Truth is not merely intellectual verity,—for that is not the sense of the word in the Vedic writings,—but man's ultimate human state of true being, true consciousness, right knowledge, right works, right joy of existence, all indeed that is contrary to the falsehood of egoism and ignorance. It is by these means, by Page 90 using ...
... creations, then we are naturally & inevitably guided towards the conception of an all-constituting Self-Conscious Existence & Power,—Brahman, Ish, popularly conceived as Bhagavan, as God, which is the true being & governing force of existence,—then the apparent mechanical Force reveals itself as no blind or mechanical movement of dead life, that insoluble riddle, that ultra-Eleusinian mystery of modern ...
... That is what McTaggart bases his argument on, for in that case materialism which itself purports to be a reasoned belief can be logically neither true nor false or is just as likely to be false as true, being merely an effect inexorably determined by physical necessity. Where is any begging of the question in my assertion? I am only clarifying the question - and unless one realises what the question is ...
... prayers, was heard in sweet and sonorous voice the chanting of— असतो मा सद्गमय | तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय | मृत्योर्माऽमृतं गमय || ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः || Lead me From the non-being to the true being, From the darkness to the Light, From death to Immortality. Om. Peace! Peace! Peace! With this a supernal peace spread around everywhere. Then was heard Sri Aurobindo's sweet and sublime voice— ...
... is to open yourself and receive and at the same time, reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge, of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your vital ...
... ion with the mind; the distinction between the temporary form—body, emotions, and mind, with which we identify ourselves in our normal consciousness—and the Formless, which is the essence of our true being and is the Being of the universe; the dysfunctional nature and insanity of the normal egoic consciousness, and the like. Such themes are based on the foremost principle of the Path of Knowledge, ...
... without participating in it. 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 ...
... essential being supporting the play of Prakriti (Nature); a Consciousness behind that is the lord, witness, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for Nature's works; the Purusha represents the true being on whatever plane it manifests — physical, vital, mental, psychic. Purushottama — the supreme divine Person; the Supreme Being who is superior both to the mutable Being and the Immutable ...
... seeker to start with. He therefore regards all seeking, including the quest for the spirit, as stemming from the illusory self, the little "me," out of which one must emerge in order to find one's true being. Eckhart's teachings start at the high level where one is ready to step out of the mode of all personal seeking. So does Sri Aurobindo's yoga, which, however, recognizes that, although we viii ...
... yourself. 5) How does the psychic being become open? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the adhar? By the force of aspiration and the grace of the Mother. Psychic: your true being, the being that is in the heart and that is the spark of the Mother's own consciousness. Vital: the part from which proceed desires and hunger and dynamic activities, having its physical basis ...
... the consciousness to join the Divine. When, liberated from its ordinary identification with the body, it rises upward to have experience of the higher planes, to link itself with the psychic or the true being or to join the Divine Consciousness, then there is this experience of ascension and of speeding or expanding through space. The joy you feel is a sign of this last movement,—rising to join the Divine; ...
... ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the supramental Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-Knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and the fulfilment of our spiritual evolution. October 8, 1945 All true Gurus are the same, the one Guru, because all are the one Divine. That is a fundamental and universal ...
... or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of the consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness in which one finds one’s true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine.” 11 The spiritual life is an individual, inner exploration. The spiritual aspirant undertakes the adventure ...
... wants to control and subjugate others. Yes, all that is true, but it is only part of herself, and the other part is quite courageous, sweet and steady. Let us hope she will soon recover her true being. 7 September 1935 ...
... amply proved by a troop of instances, I refrain from giving names. You need not therefore compare that wealth to your poverty. To open yourself to the descent of the higher consciousness (the true being) is the one thing needed and that, even if that comes after long effort and many failures is better than a hectic gallop leading nowhere. March 13, 1934 You have missed my rather ...
... is exposed to these touches. The inmost psychic being is not oppressed by them; it stands in its own closeness to the Divine and sees the small surface movements as surface things foreign to the true being. _________________________ 1. Nolini Kanto Gupta (13 January 1889 - 7 February 1984), a revolutionary. He was arrested and tried in the Alipore Bomb Case, and freed after one year. He worked ...
... nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun.’ 12 The psychic being is ‘the true evolving individual in our nature.’ It is our central, true being that has taken the plunge into Matter for the joy of participating in the evolution and, in a supreme ecstasy of discovery, to become the divinity that it has been and will be in all eternity. Around ...
... mortality, and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won’t need any material stuff to subsist on … It will be a true being, perfectly proportioned, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or transparent …’ 24 If all this may be thought to be fantastic, it should be pointed out that the Mother actually ...
... reached. Let me try to elucidate this cryptic-seeming statement. When a disciple is accepted by the Mother she does two things. First, she builds a bridge between our outer self and our true being, the real soul of us and starts a traffic from the one to the other and establishes a future in which the erring human is seen as radiantly arriving at his angelic counterpart. However distant that ...
... of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won’t be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. ‘It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; ...
... 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 of itself, intimately embraced in a knowledge and feeling of unity and identity, penetrated by an ...
... intellectual notions of truth and right or with a successful pragmatic knowledge,—an ethical or a vital fulfilment,—is not and cannot be the ultimate aim of our life; our aim must be to grow into our true being, our being of Spirit, the being of the supreme and universal Existence, Consciousness, Delight, Sachchidananda. All our existence depends on that Existence, it is that which is evolving in us; we ...
... something to him about the true object of the Yoga—especially on two points: (1) The object is not philanthropy but to find the Divine, to enter into the Divine Consciousness and find one's true being (which is not the ego) in the Divine. (2) The ripus cannot be conquered by damana ; even if it succeeds to some extent, it only keeps them down but does not destroy them, often compression only ...
... happens when the mukti comes and no one can be Jivanmukta without that—then what remains and perceives and does things is felt as an essential consciousness, the consciousness of the true self or true being. There is a subconscient action of the chitta which keeps the past impression of things and sends up forms of them to the consciousness in dream or else keeps the habit of old movements and ...
... true physical being. When 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 ...
... mistake often for the real soul. The Atma is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless, unaffected by the stains of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is realised as the true being of the individual, but also more widely as the same being in all and as the Self of the cosmos; it has also a self-existence above the individual and cosmos and it is then called the Paramatma ...
... affinity and affinity is a living thing. It is only when the hereditary part is changed that the affinity ceases. It is your own being that seeks for the Divine. The hereditary part is not your true being, but something you have taken up as part of this birth. It can be got rid of or changed. Evolution, Karma and Ethics The question as put in your letter seems to me to be too rigidly phrased ...
... mentality and open his consciousness into that from which mind, life and body proceed. He can even, however imperfectly at present, get at his highest to some consciousness of the Reality which is his true being and possess consciously also, as nothing else in terrestrial Nature can possess, the Self, the Idea, the Will which have constituted him and can become by that the master of his own nature and i ...
... ment and the only thing that is to be eliminated is our own unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of the Ignorance. Eliminate the falsity of the being which figures as the ego; then our true being can manifest in us. Eliminate the falsity of the life which figures as mere vital craving and the mechanical Page 291 round of our corporeal existence; our true life in the power of the ...
... and its involution Page 595 into the passivity, nivṛtti , it is supposed that in the action the individual soul becomes ignorant, nescient of its passive which is supposed to be its true being, and in the passivity it becomes finally nescient of its active which is supposed to be its false or only apparent being. But this is because these two movements take place alternately for us, as ...
... of Yoga Chapter XIV The Passive and the Active Brahman The difficulty which the mental being experiences in arriving at an integral realisation of true being and world-being may be met by following one or other of two different lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his own being and embrace on each successively his ...
... there it is the very principle of its method and its object to raise the mental consciousness into a clarity and concentrated power by which it can become entirely aware of, lost in, identified with true being. But there are two great disciplines in which it becomes of an even greater importance. To these two systems, to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, we may as well now turn; for in spite of the wide difference ...
... knocking at the right door that the radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and tires ...
... universal Force in all the worlds and in all beings who conducts the action of the universe and getting rid of the powers of darkness manifests to men the supreme heavenly world of light and truth and true being. वया इदग्ने अग्नयस्ते अन्ये त्वे विश्वे अमृता मादयन्ते । वैश्वानर नाभिरसि क्षितीनां ह्थूणेव जनाँ उपमिद् ययन्थ ॥१॥ 1) Other flames are only branches of thy stock, O Fire. All the immortals ...
... nature of his faith, the thing in himself or in the universal soul—of which he is a portion or manifestation—to which he directs it and on how near he gets by it to his real self and the Self or true being of the universe. If he is tamasic, obscure, clouded, if he has an ignorant faith, an inept will, he will reach nothing true and will fall away to his lower nature. If he is lured by false rajasic ...
... can possess a true unity with the universal power of the Divine in his world movement. Impersonality is a denial of limitation and division, and the cult of impersonality is a natural condition of true being, an indispensable preliminary of true knowledge and therefore a first requisite of true action. It is very clear that we cannot become one self with all or one with the universal Spirit and his vast ...
... comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. The very object of Yoga is a change of consciousness—it is by getting a new consciousness or by unveiling the hidden consciousness of the true being within and progressively manifesting and perfecting it that one gets first the contact and then the union with the Divine. Ananda and bhakti are part of that deeper consciousness, and it is only ...
... consciousness. You can reply to X that the three experiences he is having are the right ones—viz. the opening of the psychic through the heart, the descent of peace and the consciousness of his true being as the witness. But these experiences must be developed, deepened, completed and made the ordinary state of the consciousness. So established they become the triple foundation of the sadhana. ...
... psychic and the external being. About this, however, you need not be anxious at present. The important thing is to keep what you have and let it grow, to live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will then in due time awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all ...
... in wideness, impersonality, the sense of the cosmic Divine, the perception of universal forces, the realisation and understanding of the cosmic manifestation, the play. Find in place of ego the true being—a portion of the Divine, issued from the World-Mother and an instrument of the manifestation. This sense of being a portion of the Divine and an instrument should be free from all pride, sense or ...
... to come upon you and seize is not part of your true self, but a foreign influence. To yield to it and to express it would therefore be not sincerity, but the expression of something false to your true being, something that will grow more and more foreign to you as you progress. Always reject it, when it comes, even if you feel strongly its touch; open in your mind and soul to the Mother, keep your will ...
... them. You have only to go on firmly and the time will come when the waves no longer rise. The real reason of the difficulty and the constant alternation is the struggle between the veiled true being within and the outer nature, especially the lower vital full of desires and the physical mind full of obscurity and ignorance. This struggle is inevitable in human nature and no sadhak escapes it; ...
... in you from the movements of the mental, vital and physical Prakriti to which these things belong, learn to look upon them and in the end to feel them as not yourself, not a part of the inner or true being but occurring on the surface, and to experience the inner being as the Purusha eternally calm, silent and immovable. This separation once done, learn by abhyāsa to give the effective command of ...
... him. Do not obey the impulse of the vital, but follow rather your true perception and make yourself a channel for the will of the Mother—because her will is always that you should grow into your true being. Page 460 The love which is turned towards the Divine ought not to be the usual vital feeling which men call by that name; for that is not love, but only a vital desire, an instinct ...
... mind and vital and body and look at these as not oneself but only outer instruments or movements of nature. In the end one begins to be aware of something behind them which is the real self, the true being. Is psychic bhakti perfect devotion? It is the basis of perfect devotion. How can I develop psychic bhakti? By sincere aspiration. What is the character of psychic bhakti ...
... is to open yourself and receive it and at the same time reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge. Of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all the obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your ...
... capable of all power, all 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 ...
... is the natural fruit and outward body of surrender. Surrender is from within, opening and giving mind, vital, physical, all to the Mother for her to take them as her own and recreate them in their true being which is a portion of the Divine; all the rest follows as a consequence. It would not then be necessary to ask her word and order outwardly in every detail; the being would feel and act according ...
... to the lower movements; one who refuses to accept them as his real being, can always withdraw from them to the self. The movements of Nature become for them an outer thing not belonging to their true being and having no power to pull them down from it. Is there any difference between our way of seeking the self and that of the old Yogas? Only that they often sought it by one line alone, the ...
... or in one idea or in one condition. Meditation is a general term which can include many kinds of inner activity. Page 301 "A fire is burning there.... It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates." 4 I have never seen this fire in me. Yet I feel I know the divinity in me. I feel I hear its voice and I try my utmost to follow its dictates. Should ...
... between the divine and the undivine. If you have even for a moment contacted it, you will carry with you a conviction about the Divine which nothing will shake. How, you ask me, are we to know our true being? Ask for it, aspire after it, want it as you want nothing else. Most of you here are influenced by it, but it should be more than an influence, you should be able to feel identified with it. All ...
... the strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down. A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates. There are other centres of concentration, for example, one above the crown and another between the eye-brows. Each has its own efficacy and will give you ...
... it constitute our phenomenal or instrumental being and are said to belong to Nature or Prakriti. They have three corresponding parts—physical, vital, mental. The inmost being is the Purusha, the true being. In the Purusha, there is an inmost mental, an inmost vital and an inmost physical, and, at the very core, the psychic being or soul. The psychic being is usually referred to as the inmost being ...
... order to use it for its own purpose, and is not willing to live for the Divine Purpose, - it is willing to take from the Divine all it can get, but not to give itself to the Divine. The soul, the true being, on the contrary, turns towards the Divine and is not only willing but eager and happy to surrender. In this Yoga one is supposed to go beyond every mental idealistic culture. Ideas and Ideals ...
... outside. We reserved the word will to express what in the individual consciousness is the expression of an order or impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual—his true being, his true self, you understand. That we call will. And all the impulses, actions, movements arising in the being which are not that, we said were willings. And I told you in fact that without knowing ...
... and immobile. So, if one becomes conscious of this being in himself, one has the experience of the silent Self. It is an immobile and silent being which is within, which is like an aspect of the true being and also an aspect of the witness we were just speaking about. It is this silent being which, when it turns to things and looks at them, becomes the witness. But it can turn inwards, not look on ...
... . all that ( Mot her lifts a stiff finger ), that must be swept away. And that which says that one shall perish or be destroyed by That, is the ego-it is Sir Ego that tries to be taken as the true being. But the body has learn that even without the ego, it is what it is, because it is that by the divine Will, not by the ego-we exist by the divine Will and not by the ego. The ...
... of development of the mind, the psychic being recedes behind and the mind is more in the forefront. In the state of emergence one is identified with one's psychic being and considers it as one's true being, whereas a little child, even though its psychic is relatively more in front, is identified with its vital and its body, not with its psychic being. xxx psychic light, their confusions ...
... of evolution. See also the psychic, soul , and soul-personality . Purusha —Conscious Being; Conscious-Soul; essential being supporting the play of Prakriti; the Purusha represents the true being on whatever plane it manifests—physical, vital, mental, psychic. Rig—veda —the Veda of the Riks (words of illumination), the most ancient of the sacred books of India. Russell, Bertrand ...
... and doing; it is Page 5 to teach all those who want to listen that there is another and truer way of living, that Sri Aurobindo has taught us how to live and become a true being and that the aim of the education here is to prepare the children and make them fit for that life. For all the rest, the human ways of thinking and living, the world is vast and there is place ...
... Character Mother, does a person’s body-formation express his character? No. Even the character itself is not a simple affair, that is, the character of a person is not the expression of his true being but the result of many things. For example, atavism may be expressed, that is, what comes from the father, the mother, from both together which may have a different result; from what has gone before ...
... lecture on the psychic being? Disciple: Some general hints may be given, if you like. Sri Aurobindo: Firstly, when the psychic awakens you grow conscious of your own soul, you know your true being. You no longer commit the mistake of identifying yourself with the mental or the vital being, you do not mistake them for the soul. Secondly, when it is awakened, the psychic being gives the sadhak ...
... between the divine and undivine. If you have even for a moment contacted it, you will carry with you a conviction about the Divine which nothing will shake. How, you ask me, are. we to know our true being? Ask for it, aspire after it, want it as you want nothing else. Most of you Page 28 here are influenced by it, but it should be more than an influence, you should be able to feel ...
... and... all that ( Mother lifts a stiff finger ), that must be swept away. And that which says that one shall perish or be destroyed by That, is the ego—it is Sir Ego that tries to be taken as the true being. But the body has learnt that even without the ego, it is what it is, because it is that by the divine Will, not by the ego—we exist by the divine Will and not by the ego. The ego was a means—a ...
... proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. ...
... ineidents. This precious oneself is just the present impermanent exterior nature whichhas absolutely nothing to do with the several other formations be hind which, as behind the present one, the true being stands. Only the supramental consciousness holds the se births as if strung on one single thread and that alone can give the real knowledge of them all. Page 80 ...
... the strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down. A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you—your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates. Source ...
... in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one's soul, feels the psychic to be one's true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Emergence or Coming Forward of the Psychic It seems to me that you ...
... Mother. ) Yes, they are the pralayas . "Now it is the body that is putting these questions. The mind has left long ago. But the body, the cells of the body would like to have contact with the true being, without having to pass, so to say, through the vital or even through the mind. That is what is happening. "During this period I have had two or three times the Knowledge." Ah! I have had ...
... the slavery of the human way of thinking and acting; of teaching all those who want to listen that there is another, truer way of living, and that Sri Aurobindo taught us to become and to live the true being—and that the purpose of education here is to prepare the children for this life and to make them capable of it. As for all the others, all those who want the human way of thinking and living ...
... You everywhere, to feel You always, and still to be open to the first thing that comes from outside to give you a blow, a sense of insecurity—how absurd! Of course, with a concentration of the true being ( gesture above ), it disappears instantly—but that means it isn't the body that feels a sense of security! It's the true consciousness (and quite naturally so, for it would not be true if it didn't ...
... In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one. Thus to find one's soul is to be united with the Divine. It can therefore be said that the role of the soul is to make of man a true being. Theories differ according to schools and sects, and each one puts forth excellent reasons to support what it asserts. There is certainly truth in whatever one affirms and any case is not ...
... pourquoi on dit: «Sans le Divin, la vie est une illusion douloureuse. Avec lui tout est felicite.» 17120 bien * A flame burns in the calm depth of our heart: it is the Divine in us—our true being. We listen to its voice. We obey its inspirations. The Divine is the sovereign master of this universe. He is the Unique Reality, Light of light and Life of life. He is supreme Love and saviour ...
... Yes, those are the pralayas. 3 "...Now it's the body that asks those questions. The mind went away long ago. But the body, the cells of the body would like to make contact with the true being, without, so to speak, having to go through the vital or even through the mind. That is what is taking place. "During this period, two or three times I have had the Knowledge.... Ah, I had ...
... powerful, solid, and... Page 250 Yes, yes. And then there's nothing but "that." Yes, that's right, there's nothing but that. But, you know, the more the identification with the true being takes place, the less you have the sense of existing, of being someone. Yes. The body has itself reached that point, it finds it very difficult to feel a separate existence for itself, and ...
... that seizes "beauty". The "sting" of "beauty" corresponds to the "thrilled" state: something smites you, even makes you suffer, but with a certain piercing to the heart which awakens you to your true being, the spark of the Divine in you. Kobrin, however, declares that this double experience of sight and sting gives such an access of "delight", such a spell of "wonder", that you feel they are something ...
... troubled sleep and darkness of the soul; that higher being which is to them a night, a sleep in which all knowledge and will cease, is to the self-mastering sage his waking, his luminous day of true being, knowledge and power." (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p. 140) A psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration ...
... intellectual he may be, cannot differentiate in action between his body-mind-life complex, which he calls himself, and the Spirit within which is his real self. This failure to distinguish our true being from its surface instruments lies at the root of all our failures to tackle human problems. Ordinarily it is the vital being or the desire-self in us that rules and governs our conduct. It is ...
... evince lack of the most elementary knowledge of human affairs. So long as human beings, even the most mentally developed ones, are involved in the life of the ego which is a deformation of our true Being which is the self, soul or the divine reality in us, this higher knowledge is denied to us. Yet, a foreknowledge might be ours if we could always take the Spirit's stand. As Sri Aurobindo says : ...
... assent to the lower movements; one who refuses to accept them as his real being can always withdraw from them to the self. The movements of Nature become for them an outer thing not belonging to their true being and having no power to pull them down from it. Action of World Forces You wrote, "I mean by the universe the forces of the world around." What then is that cosmos which ...
... knocking at the right door that the radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being." "Only in... new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity now only beginning, is there a better hope; for Page 37 by that turning it may discover that the real truth of man ...
... secondary details. This is the whole of religion, says Vivekananda. In the language of the present generation, we would say, this is the whole of spirituality—this discovery of the soul or the true being, the spirit in us. The last part of his observation pertains to religion. The formalities of religion such as those mentioned above end when spirituality or rather spiritual experience begins. We ...
... "proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters". 4 ...
... slavery to the human way of thinking and doing; it is to teach all those who want to listen that there is another and truer way of living, that Sri Aurobindo has taught us how to live and become a true being — and that the aim of the education... is to prepare the children and make them fit for that life." (CWM, Vol. 12, p. 117) So this is the first educational goal set by the Mother: To live ...
... slavery to the human way of thinking and doing; it is to teach all those who want to listen that there is another and truer way of living, that Sri Aurobindo has taught us how to live and become a true being —and that the aim of the education here is to prepare the children and make them fit for that life. For all the rest, the human ways of thinking and living, the world is vast and there is ...
... used as a means of progress, and with immortality as a constant underlying fact and as the home to which the soul travels as it gradually unfolds and recovers from ignorance its knowledge of its true being, nature and aim. 15 But should then one live by constant killing? How does this knowledge of the immortal Spirit justify the action demanded of Arjuna and the slaughter at Kurukshetra? The ...
... Him as at once the frame of the soul's immortality and the support and power of our liberated action in the world and the body. Self-finding consists of the discovery that the essence of our true being is the unchanging, permanent, an eternal Page 146 silence and Self of all existence and that that is quite distinct and independent of all that is mobile and all that we call to be the ...
... Nature of Jn ā na in Jn ā na Yoga Knowledge that is sought to be attained through Jnana yoga has certain special characteristics; it is the light by which one grows into one's true being, not the knowledge by which one increases information and intellectual riches. It is true that scientific or psychological or philosophical or ethical or aesthetic or practical knowledge help us ...
... indicators of a supreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this Truth is not merely intellectual verity, — for that is not the sense of the word in the Vedic writings, — but man's ultimate human state of true being, true consciousness, right knowledge, right works, right joy of existence, all indeed that is contrary to the falsehood of egoism and ignorance. It is by these means, by using works and self-discipline ...
... attacks and revolts on the way? Keep yourself separate always from all attack and revolt, regarding it steadily as the not-I — for these things do not belong to the true self, the true being. This afternoon I met H. A short talk with him had a profound effect on me as he is always full of the Mother's love and joy which he spontaneously communicates to others. But ...
... nothing to do but to refuse to accept it — unless you can use the Force on it to make it go or else change. Has the ego to go or to change? In its place there must be the true being. Some part in the vital wants to make an experiment: to come frequently in physical contact with the Mother to shake off the ego. I don't see how that could get rid ...
... deny rigidly that she, the Divine Mother, can help them adequately by a mere look or a touch. As they are so limited and narrow they take her also to be such! No doubt such foolishness is not in the true being, but in the outer. But then it must be kept outside and not allowed to become a fact. Page 289 All that is very well said. It is the real truth about the matter ...
... assent to the lower movements; one who refuses to accept them as his real being can always withdraw from them to the self. The movements of Nature become for them an outer thing not belonging to their true being and having no power to pull them down from it. These men who live in the self are always there at all times. Nothing in the outer nature can affect that. Is ...
... on of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example, they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure ...
... in the earth atmosphere, even after the death of the man to whom the faculty belonged: it was so well developed, well formed that it continues to retain its independent identity. The soul, the true being of the man is no longer there; I have told you often that after death it goes away as soon as possible to the psychic world, its own world, for rest, assimilation and preparation. Not that it ...
... truly to evaluate him we must consider him as a poet. What he has done or not done as a man is insignificant; he has stored up in his poetry whatever eternal and everlasting was there in him, in his true being and real nature. The rest is of no real significance or value. In that respect he may not have a good deal of difference from others, any marked speciality. The greatest recognition of a poet lies ...
... not only understand but become capable of doing what you are here for. Through centuries it has been preparing itself in you, not naturally in this body, which is the most recent, but in your true being: for centuries it has been waiting for this occasion. You see how wonderful it all is! You see the things that one has hoped for since long ago, for which one has prayed so much, laboured so much ...
... environmental consciousness; they are indeed part of the circumstances in which one is born and lives and moves. It is when one bypasses them or passes through them beyond into one's soul, into one's true being and divine personality that one at last crosses mortality and attains immortality – mrtyum tirtva. . .amrtam asnute.¹ Page 158 ...
... remain in the earth atmosphere, even after the death of the man to whom the faculty belonged: it was so well developed, well formed that it continues to retain its independent identity. The soul, the true being of the man is no longer there; I have told you often that after death it goes away as soon as possible to the psychic world, its own world, for rest, assimilation and preparation. Not that it cannot ...
... healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every object – person or thing – in one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self. ...
... spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each Page 39 and every object—person or thing—in one's own self, in the true being and substance: and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably goes out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self ...
... environmental consciousness; they are indeed part of the circumstances in which one is born and lives and moves. It is when one by-passes them or passes through them beyond into one's soul, into one's true being and divine personality that one at last crosses mortality and attains immortality— mrityum tirtva amritam ashnute. Page 65 ...
... himself. But he has to manifest through the instrumentality of the human medium, through the substance of the medium's mind, life and body. Therefore he cannot easily manifest his real nature or true being, he has to gather his materials from the medium's own substance. Very often it is the make-up of the medium that predominates and the being that manifests preserves very little of his own. But it ...
... himself. But he has to manifest through the instrumentality of the human medium, through the substance of the medium's mind, life and body. Therefore he cannot easily manifest his real nature or true being, he has to gather his materials from the medium's own substance. Very often it is the make-up of the medium that predominates and the being that manifests preserves very little of his own. But ...
... 4 Analyzing the growth and decay of societies, Sri Aurobindo points out that the radical defect of all civilization has been the neglect of the spiritual element, the soul which is man's true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags ...
... word of wisdom. Something from his depth says : "I am capable of knowledge." In man's very constitution there is something that says : "this Ignorance is not native to me, it is not a part of my true being". Monism posits an absolute, infinite Being as the only Reality in which this phenomenon of Ignorance is not given any place—that is, any real existence. It amounts to saying that the experience ...
... You must know your own inner being. This Personality is not the inner mental, the inner vital and the inner physical being and its consciousness as is many times wrongly described, but it is your true Being which is in direct communication with the Highest. Man grows by gradual growth in nature and each has to realize his own Divine Person which is in the Supermind. Each is one with the Divine in essence ...
... concentration : that is,. concentration which puts forward a part of self and holds back the rest of the self-knowledge behind. Thus a self— imitation takes place which gives rise to Ignorance; the true Being is not clouded but kept behind by the exclusive concentration. In fact, this exclusive is purposeful and is. within the exercise of freedom of the Self. A similar phenomenon takes place—on a ...
... all other powers would stem from — and because we have not found that , we wander in our hearts and our thoughts, in our countries and Churches ... in all those ways of being that are not the true being and the true power. What is the lever? She seems to gaze over my shoulder and ask you the question, as if that were what is really worth our staying on for. There is one lever. It would ...
... there is a small plateau with a tiny hut which lures the Ascetic. He calls the other two - the Aspirants - and tells them with due solemnity: In the course of our ascent I have discovered my true being, my true Self. I have become one with the Eternal and nothing else exists for me, nothing else is necessary. All that is not That is illusory, worthless. He has reached his journey's end, and ...
... what is necessary for growth and ascent, 24.7.1970 The loss of the ego, when it occurs, is going to be a great enrichment. It can be said that that is the accomplishment of the true being. 26.7.1970 When one aspires for the participation of one's whole being in the Yoga, has one begun the integral Yoga? Yes, when the consciousness of the body-cells perceives the ...
... disturbed as there was always the inner calm and quiet, I was feeling separately the struggle of this part, which was not violent in its nature but deep and calm too, and I took the watching part as my true being, the psychic, which was feeling so much pain to see the spirit to hide this thing from you and indulge in the insincerity of the mind (and vital perhaps). I had recognised both the parts and was ...
... Rhythm that flows everywhere. Then, slowly, the seeker of the new world will see a sort of little spark of pure truth in the heart of the object, circumstance, face or accident, a little cry of true being, a true vibration beneath all the black and yellow and blue and red coatings – something that is the truth of each thing, each being, each circumstance, each accident, as if the truth were everywhere ...
... is the natural fruit and outward body of surrender. Surrender is from within, opening and giving mind, vital, physical all to the Mother for her to take them as her own and recreate them in their true being which is a portion of the Divine; all the rest follows as a consequence. It would not then be necessary to ask her word and order outwardly in every detail, the being would feel and act according ...
... "supreme," but that's a poor mental translation. So when Mother invokes... when she salutes the "Bhagavate," she doesn't mean a God, of course! It's the very being of the world. But its TRUE being. The one a child knows quite well – without mystery and theology. So: "I salute that well of honey." Towarnicki: What is the translation of the mantra. I am sorry, I have to have it. ...
... the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to find one’s soul is to find God; to identify with one’s soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a true being of man. 29 September 1959 Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is it something that one creates for oneself? There is nothing that can truly be called luck . What men call ...
... between the divine and the undivine. If you have even for a moment contacted it, you will carry with you a conviction about the Divine which nothing will shake. How, you ask me, are we to know our true being? Ask for it, aspire after it, want it as you want nothing else. Most of you here are influenced by it, but it should be more than an influence, you would be able to feel identified with it. All urge ...
... Sincerity All division in the being is insincerity. The greatest insincerity is to dig an abyss between your body and the truth of your being. When an abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature fills it immediately with all kinds of adverse suggestions, the most formidable of which is fear, and the most pernicious, doubt. Allow nothing anywhere to deny ...
... real to the aspirant. 4. The true nature of the pure thought-power is to reveal the mental being by degrees. It is in the true mental being that the real existence and nature of a creature abide. The mental being becomes more and more manifest by fresh flowerings of the pure thought-power. The pure thought power, being manifest, shapes a form of the mental being. Then it plunges into the heart... awakes in him the divine mental being in all its virtues. And the pure thought-powers or the Maruts turn the flow of knowledge and power towards an inner spiritual discipline. Page 109 3. It is the power of pure-thoughts that manifests the light of knowledge in the darkness of Ignorance. With the gradual development of such thoughts the true mental being takes birth in the aspirant... infuse the aspirant with a clear and pointed intellect which can discern the quintessence of truth. Page 110 7. The true mental being and his pure thought-powers, Indra and Maruts, are reflected in that pure divine mind. 8. Indra is the being of knowledge and delight and Marut is his power of divine play. On one side is the pure mental existence, on the other there rise and spread ...
... is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces, good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions... vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive. But the true soul of man is not there; it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark... luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past evolution in Matter, which lives and was born and will die, the other a subliminal force of life which is not cabined between the narrow boundaries of our physical birth and death, but is our true vital being ...
... etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within. Larger mind is a general term to cover the realms of mind which become our field whether by going within or widening into the cosmic consciousness. The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental—true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error... The Parts of the Being and the Planes of Consciousness The Parts of the Being and the Planes of Consciousness The Organisation of the Being Letters on Yoga - I Chapter II Classification of the Parts of the Being Different Categories in Different Systems 1) The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have... have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.) 2) The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is according to the Sankhya System—the Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes ...
... psychic being.—As there is a subliminal luminous mind behind our surface mind, a subliminal life behind our mortal life, a subliminal wider corporeality behind our gross body, so we have a double soul, the superficial desire-soul and the true psychic entity.—The superficial in us is the small and egoistic, the subliminal is in touch with the universal. So our subliminal or true psychic being is open... the outward touches of things, not their essence and therefore not their rasa or true touch; and because it cannot reach the universal world-soul, it cannot find its own true soul which is one with the world-soul.—The desire-soul returns the triple response of pleasure, pain and indifference, but the psychic being behind it has the equal delight of all of its experiences; it compels the desire-soul... there Page 478 are two principles of order and mastery, one false, the ego-sense, the other true, the Lord who is one in the many. By merely suppressing the ego-sense in the impersonal delight we gain the centreless Impersonal and are fulfilled in our static being but not in our active being. We must therefore gain the other centre in the Supermind by which we shall consciously possess and ...
... cannot stand; for it overpowers them by its plenitude and force. This it does on all the successive planes of the soul's labour and in each of them man gets, by this divine Force that is the true and transcendent Being, all the objects of his desire that they contain.] अग्ने सहन्तमा भर द्युम्नस्य प्रासहा रयिम् । विश्वा यश्चर्षणीरभ्यासा वाजेषु सासहत् ॥१॥ 1) Bring to us, O Strength most forcefully... सहस्व आ भर । त्वं हि सत्यो अद्भुतो दाता वाजस्य गोमतः ॥२॥ 2) O Flame, O Might, that rich felicity bring which shall violently overpower the armies that are embattled against us; for thou art the true in being, the transcendent and wonderful, who gives to man the luminous plenitude. विश्वे हि त्वा सजोषसो जनासो वृक्तबर्हिषः । होतारं सद्मसु प्रियं व्यन्ति वार्या पुरु ॥३॥ 3) All these peoples ...
... 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 mental... mental being and in relation to our waking mind it is rather secretly circumconscient; for it envelops as well as supports. Of all this larger part of our being we are ignorant.—We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya... Maya. We are ignorant of the subliminal sea of our being which casts up the wave of our superficial existence; we are ignorant also of the superconscient ether of our being which constitutes, contains, overroofs and governs both the subliminal sea and the superficial wave.—We are ignorant of ourselves in Time, for we know only a part of the present life we are living; yet that exists only by all our past ...
... common purpose, a single aim. That union and harmonisation can be done only through the supreme Purusha, the Divine Witness who is the true conscious Being, the one Purusha behind or above all the others, whose light first of all centralises in the psychic being and then through it is canalised into its delegates or emanations on the lower levels, the mind, the vital and the physical. What... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6 THE CONSCIOUS BEING The conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is behind at present and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. We are conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know and feel it as ...
... that become aware of their true central being; but it is there standing behind the action of mind, life and body and is most directly represented by the psychic which is itself a spark of the Divine. It is by the growth of the psychic element in one’s nature that one begins to come into conscious touch with one’s own central being. When that happens and the central being uses a conscious will to control... light on the mental; otherwise the mental being would not be so sure in its observation and judgement but might make mistakes and be 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... Aurobindo 21 September 1931 The Witness of whom you have become aware is not the psychic but the inner mental being which has come to the front as the psychic came before. It is this mental being in you which watches, observes and passes judgement on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels ...
... a common purpose, a single aim. That union and harmonisation can be done only through the supreme Purusha, the Divine Witness who is the true conscious Being, the one Purusha behind or above all the others, whose light first of all centralises in the psychic being and then through it is canalised into its delegates or emanations on the lower levels, the mind, the vital and the physical. Page 223... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Conscious Being THE conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is at present behind and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. Weare conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know ...
... progressively round the spark of Divine Consciousness which is meant to be the centre of a growing being which becomes the psychic being when it is at last individualised. It is this spark that is permanent and gathers round itself all sorts of elements for the formation of that individuality; the true psychic being is formed only when the psychic personality is fully grown, fully built up, round the eternal... one cannot say that every man has got a psychic being, just as one cannot refuse to grant it to every animal. Many animals that have lived near man have some beginnings of it, while so often one comes across people who do not seem to be anything else than brutes. Here, too, there has been a good deal of levelling. But on the whole, the psychic in the true sense starts at the human stage: that is also... (1929-1931) Psychic Presence and Psychic Being - Real Origin of Race Superiority With regard to the evolution upwards, it is more correct to speak of the psychic presence than the psychic being. For it is the psychic presence which little by little becomes the psychic being. In each evolving form there is this presence, but it is not individualised. It ...
... progressively round the spark of Divine Consciousness which is meant to be the centre of a growing being which becomes the psychic being when it is at last individualised. It is this spark that is permanent and gathers round itself all sorts of elements for the formation of that individuality; the true psychic being is formed only when the psychic personality is fully grown, fully built up, round the eternal... one cannot say that every man has got a psychic being, just as one cannot refuse to grant it to every animal. Many animals that have lived near man have some beginnings of it, while so often one comes across people who do not seem to be anything else than brutes. Here, too, there has been a good deal of levelling. But on the whole, the psychic in the true sense starts at the human stage: that is also... THE PSYCHIC PRESENCE With regard to the evolution upwards, it is more correct to speak of the psychic presence than the psychic being. For it is the psychic presence which little by little becomes the psychic being. In each evolving form there is this presence, but it is not individualised. It is something which is capable of growth and follows the movement of the evolution ...
... perfection of Indra. The diversity in the creation is a profound and sublime Truth. So the sadhaka also has to manifest in his being and nature this immensely diverse play. The manifoldness of Form is revealed consciously through the mind. When the true mental being awakes, all the formations lose their divided and mortal nature and appear as immortal, cadences and expressions of the Truth. That... Indra is the eldest of all, because the primal form of the external manifestation appears first in the heart of the mental being. Later on it becomes manifest in the outward nature. After his very birth Indra wants to be the eldest of all, i.e., as soon as the pure mental being awakes Page 107 in the aspirant, it becomes the master and guide of his sadhana and his new spiritual... with the Will of the Purusha all the forms of Prakriti take shape. The vessel and foundation which Indra is shaping anew in the aspirant is firmly established on Truth and Knowledge. Pure mental being is endowed with knowledge which makes an object stand revealed to the knower. This knowledge of Indra is many-sided. The real function of Indra is to harmonise the hidden truth of all objects and movements ...
... sufficient or finds some other cause for being despondent, revolted or miserable. Something in it enjoys the play of it, as one enjoys a drama. Is that ego to be rejected outright? Or is it to be transformed so that it demands nothing but only gives itself to the Mother? The ego has to be thrown out— it is the true vital being that gives itself to the Mother. ... Page 102 to the other—non-spiritual—individuality which is already there in us? What individuality? If you mean the ego it has to disappear and be replaced by the true individual. If we were conscious surely we would find that the source of all extra capacity of ours lay in the Divine, and that we were mistaken in appropriating it. Obviously... by itself? Not at once, but it is the first step for the disappearance of the ego. After taking something from the universal con-sciousness one returns to his individual being. Can that something now be called one's own? You can consider anything you like as your own, if you look at it from the egoistic point of view. It is of course from Nature ...
... clashing through the symbol worlds °f night, twilight and day, and even in the highest realms of the Supreme; the possibility of any true ideals being quarried out of the crude hard rocks of the Inconscience has been questioned, and the possibility of earthly realisations being permanent has been doubted; the advisability of leaving the earth and mankind to their fate and achieving a personal salvation either... the stars, A dual power of God in an ignorant world, In a hedged creation shut from limitless self, Bringing down God to the insentient globe, Lifting earth-beings to immortality. 88 It is a speech of about 500 lines, and many of the ideas already elaborated in earlier cantos are here gathered up into a comprehensive and significant whole. The intention ...
... round itself all sorts of elements for the formation of that individuality; the true psychic being is formed only when the psychic personality is fully grown, fully built up, round the eternal divine spark; it attains its culmination, its total fulfilment if and when it unites with a being or personality from above. What is particularly interesting is the way in which the... emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensation... FOREWORD The two basic concepts of the Vedanta are the all-pervasive Divine — the Brahman — and the spark or reflection of this Divine within each being, specially human beings — the Atman, and joining these two — Yoga — is the well-established methodology to be found in our scriptures and in the teachings of realised seers and saints down through the millennia ...
... Sometimes, on rare occasions, for a few seconds perhaps, there is all on a sudden just the impression of something, and you say: "there, the Divine Love came to me!" Well, it is a way of saying: the true fact being that for some reason or other you happened to be just a little open and you had the perception of the thing that is always with you. The Love is there, the divine consciousness, too, is there in... in you, perhaps no more than a pinpoint, and that was sufficient for the thing to rush in; for the atmosphere is surcharged with it and wherever there is a possibility of its being received, it is received. The same is true of all things divine. They are there: you do not receive or perceive them, because you are closed, shut off, blocked up. You are ¹ Sri Aurobindo: Elements of Yoga. ... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Love Divine "THE intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturbation in any part of the being".¹ Why should it? If there is a perturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according ...
... Sometimes, on rare occasions, for a few seconds perhaps, there is all on a sudden just the impression of something, and you say: "there, the Divine Love came to me!" Well, it is a way of saying: the true fact being that for some reason or other you happened to be just a little open and you had the perception of the thing that is always with you. The Love is there, the divine consciousness, too, is there in... opening in you, perhaps no more than a pinpoint, and that was sufficient for the thing to rush in; for the atmosphere is surcharged with it and wherever there is a possibility of its being received, it is received. The same is true of all things divine. They are there: you do not receive or perceive them, because you are closed, shut off, blocked up. You are occupied, most of the time with other things. You... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8 Love Divine "The intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturbation in any part of the being" (The Elements of Yoga). Why should it? If there is aperturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according ...
... 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 the Prakriti. It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our true physical being even that we are aware of; these remain behind, veiled and... the evolution. This duality in the being on all its planes — for it is true in different ways not only of the Self and the psychic but of the mental, vital and physical Purushas — has to be grasped and accepted before the experiences of the yoga can be fully understood. Letters on Yoga, pp. 284-85 In a certain sense the various Purushas or beings in us, psychic, mental, vital, physical... not and cannot be a free will. To arrive at freedom, mastery and perfection we have to get back to the real self and soul within and arrive too thereby at our true relations with our own and with universal nature. In our active being this translates itself into a replacement of our egoistic, our personal, our separatively individual will and energy by a universal and a divine will and energy ...
... phenomenal being, certainly – as the neti neti formula enjoins – but also he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and... begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative... the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but ...
... vice versa. Really, both the personal and the impersonal are true; wherever there is the personal there is also the impersonal, and this holds too the other way round. When you transcend both you arrive at the Absolute. SATYENDRA: Of which the two are aspects. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but it doesn't mean that they are less true for being aspects or that the Absolute excludes them. "When you throw aside... than reason? SRI AUROBINDO: Experience is not a criterion. It is a means of arriving at the Truth. But experience is one thing and its expression is another. You are again putting reason up as the true judge over experience which is above reason. When people differ over experience they differ in laying stress on or having a mental preference for this or that side of the experience. It doesn't mean... various points of view. It can't be right if its accounts don't differ. As I said, there are various sides to Reality. If the descriptions of several countries of the world were the same, they wouldn't be true. SATYENDRA: How? PURANI: If you describe Switzerland and the U.S.A. in the same manner, how would you be correct? SRI AUROBINDO: And yet the earth is one and mankind is one! SATYENDRA: It ...
... upon mind, upon body—also the force movements behind events. One becomes too directly aware of the vital plane, its worlds, its beings, and the direct action of their formations on the earthlife. One has to become aware also at the same time of one's own true vital being and act from it and not from the surface or desire vital in relation to all these things. All this effect does not come at once,—it... increases. Page 284 In the universal vital especially there is a deceptive attraction and an exhilarating rush of power (not true quiet power but mere force) which those who yield to it cling to as a drunkard to his intoxicants. It gives them a sense of being strong and great and full of interesting things—when it is taken from them, they feel "like ordinary people" and ask for it back again... in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error. The cosmic Truth is the view on things of a cosmic Consciousness in which things are seen in their true essence and their true relation to the Divine and to each other. The Yogi's cosmic experiences are spiritual experiences—experience of the play of the Forces and its relation with the self, the action of ...
... the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that... time of death—the psychic being then chooses what it should work out in the next terrestrial appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly. Note that the idea of rebirth and the circumstances of the new life as a reward or punishment of puṇya or papa is a crude human idea of "justice" which is quite unphilosophical and unspiritual and distorts the true intention of life. Life here... out its animal propensities there. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: Rebirth The soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal consciousness any more than it can go back into a tree or an ephemeral insect. What is true is that some part of the vital energy or the formed instrumental consciousness or nature can and very frequently ...
... life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in ... divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but... progress, the realisation; but this does not mean that if one doesn't feel this joy, the action of the Grace is not there, the realisation not there. And after all, all the ways of being of the Divine, all the forms of being in the manifestation are necessary to express the Divine. It is this manifestation as a whole, in its totality, which progresses towards a growing, infinite, eternal perfection. It ...
... perversion is to be lifted from Life, the true soul, the psychic being, must be given its leading place and there must be a dissolution of the false soul of desire and ego. But this does not mean that life itself must be coerced and denied its native line of fulfilment; for behind this outer life soul of desire there is in us an inner and true vital being which has not to be dissolved but brought out... out into prominence and released to its true working as a power of the Divine Nature. The prominence of this true vital being under the lead of the true inmost soul within us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects will even remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character. The Divine Life-Power too will be a will... appearance. It is when there is this death of desire and this calm equal wideness in the consciousness everywhere, that the true vital being within us comes out from the veil and reveals its own calm, intense and potent presence. For such is the true nature of the vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa ; it is a projection of the Divine Purusha into life,—tranquil, strong, luminous, many-energied, obedient ...
... progressively round the spark of Divine Consciousness which is meant to be the centre of a growing being which becomes the psychic being when it is at last individualised. It is this spark that is permanent and gathers round itself all sorts of elements for the formation of that individuality; the true psychic being is formed only when the psychic personality is fully grown, fully built up, round the eternal... in the true sense starts at the human stage: that is also why the Catholic religion declares that only man has a soul. In man alone there is the possibility of the psychic being growing to its full stature even so far as to be able in the end to join and unite with a descending being, a godhead from above. The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): Psychic Presence and Psychic Being - Real... evolution of being and of consciousness in the physical birth and the body. But there is the other, the invisible factor; there is rebirth, the progress of the soul by ascent from grade to grade of the evolving existence, and in the grades to higher and higher types of bodily and mental instrumentation. In this progression the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its ...
... secret of direct, supra-mental creation, by-passing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I don't... by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in manifesting the supramental forces; yet since their origin is human, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of human coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret... the idea has been taken up again through Khrushchev and he continues to be quite enthusiastic. [Khrushchev will be dismissed nine months later, on 15 October.] It seems (I don't know if it's quite true, because its [a Russian disciple] who says so)... but [the Russian disciple] sent him my article "A Dream", on the possibility of creating a small "international center" (I don't like the word "int ...
... altogether, and the surface is all crowd and clamour. But in all men there is this silent Purusha, base of the true mental being, the true vital being, the true physical being. It was by your prayer and aspiration that the thing came, to show you in what direction you must travel in order to have the true rasa of things, for it is only when one is liberated that one can get the real rasa. For after this liberation... experience that open to one with the opening of the inner consciousness. The true rasa of poetry, painting or any other activity is truly found when these things are part of the working of the Divine Force in you and you feel it is that and it exists in the joy of that working. This condition you had of the inner being and its silence—separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless... strength of the vision? Maybe. The consciousness was probably nearer to the gross physical which is less responsive than the inner physical being. Mother, it seemed by your looks at pranam that you didn't approve of some of my movements. Is it true? No. It was probably some idea of your own that put that appearance on the Mother's looks. Is it unnecessary to write about these dream ...
... therefore that Agni is guided in his will or his works by the seer's vision of the Truth because he is himself true in his being, free from the cosmic falsehood. What then of chitraҫravastamah ? Has it no connection at all with the two preceding words or does it mean that because Agni is true in being and has the seer-will, therefore he gives man all sorts of food or all sorts of wealth? I suggest that ... seer's), the true, who has most richly-varied (inspired) knowledge, may he come, a god with the gods." In this verse we have two words of doubtful meaning, ҫravas and kratu . Sayana wherever he can, renders ҫravas food, elsewhere fame, or where neither of these will do, ҫravas (also ҫrushti ) is for him wealth Page 546 or rarely hymn. But there is the word satya , true! That he forces... itself on which the divine powers dwell and from which they descend to the aid of the seeker. We must also understand the weal or "good state of being" [in] the closing verse, "Be easy of approach to us as a father to his child; cleave to us for our happy being", as the state of bliss, the good, bhadram, which comes by the possession of the Truth. The Rishi is obviously not asking physical fire to allow ...
... identification with the higher regions, and at the same time that apparent insensitiveness that looks like the negation of divine compassion; there comes a point when you see both as having become true and being able to exist not simultaneously but as ONE thing. As recently as the day before yesterday, I had the perfectly concrete experience of an extremely intense wave of divine Compassion [in the face... dazzling, imperious revelation: "One dies only when one chooses to die." I told Sri Aurobindo, "This is what I saw and KNEW." He said to me, "It is true." Then I asked him, "Always, in every case?" He said, "Always." Only, one isn't conscious, human beings aren't conscious, but that's how it is. But now I am beginning to understand! Some experiences, some examples are given in the details of the body's... I am little by little learning from demonstration the true use that must be made of mental activity. Its purpose is easy to understand: it has been used to educate, awaken and so on; but it's not something that after having done its duty and fulfilled its purpose will disappear. It will be used in its own manner, but in its true manner and true place. And it becomes wonderfully interesting.... For ...
... peace. Page 94 The psychic being is described in the Upanishads as no bigger than the size of one's thumb! That of course is a symbolic image. For usually when one sees anybody's psychic being in a form, it is bigger than that. As for the inner being, one feels it big because the true mental or the true vital or even the true physical being is much wider in consciousness than the external... can change it so as to express the true inner personality of the Light. They [ the outer mind, vital and body ] are small, but not unimportant in spite of their apparent insignificance—because they are a necessary passage of transmission between the soul and the outer world. You take the outer waking consciousness as if it were the real person or being and conclude that if it is not this... utilised for the growth of the being. You are mistaken in thinking that your external being alone is like that. Hardly anybody has the external being of a Yogi—it is the inner being that has the Yogic turn—the external has to be converted and transformed. If the inner being does not manifest or act, the outer being will never get transformed. If the inner being is safe, then there is no ...
... 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 temporary personalities which compose our outer individuality and whose combined superficial... luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves. So also we have two lives, one outer, involved in the physical body, bound by its past evolution in Matter, which lives and was born and will die, the other a subliminal force of life which is not cabined between the narrow boundaries of our physical birth and death, but is our true vital being... joy and refined essence of being which is our true soul behind the outer form of psychic existence we so often dignify by the name. It is when some reflection of this larger and purer psychic entity comes to the surface that we say of a man, he has a soul, and when it is absent in his outward psychic life that we say of him, he has no soul. The external forms of our being are those of our small egoistic ...
... the emergence of the calm, strength and happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. This implies not only the development of spiritual equality so that one becomes equal-soul to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and unpleasant, success or failure, but also the emergence of the Page 12 true vital being which is within us behind the veil of ignorance. According... there is a vital being, pranamaya purusa, which is a projection of the Divine Purusha into life, in its true nature, — the vital being that is tranquil, strong, luminous, many-energied, obedient to the Divine Will, egoless, yet capable of all action, achievement, highest or largest enterprise. But there is a second condition, which also needs to be fulfilled. The pure vital being provides us the... divine life, but the vital being always needs a power that can govern and that can provide divine initiative. The progression of divine life demands that the mind and the life impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. It is true that the psychic being does not provide the supreme ...
... have something to say? Very often, afterwards when I am in front of you, I feel... I can't hear. After Satprem leaves, I come and do my pranam. 3 Then, in front of your gaze, my true inner being seems to come to the front. Yes. And curiously, I have the sensation of a force of... Do you know the Ganges, the goddess Ganga? I feel an affinity with her. With the river? Page... [with the Ganges] is the power of vital plasticity.... Probably there are in that way families of beings. ( Mother plunges in ) Do you get a special sensation when you have that? Do you feel something special? (Sujata:) Right now, it's as if very interiorized, and at the same time with the inner being in front: both at the same time, like that. Yes. ( Mother plunges in again ) ... them at one go, without space to answer each... so I only answer the last one! It would be good to say, "Let our robe of virtue fall so we may be ready for the Truth." That's one of the things being constantly done—oh, it's been like that for a long time, it's a long time since the body has been free from this illusion of sin and virtue, a long time. It finds it quite... quite ridiculous! Page ...
... seems to have reached its highest possible height. But still, man is not fully a mental being, he is rather a mental animal. Page 59 The mind is not yet the master in his Adhara; the true master who rules and handles the mental faculty is the life principle, the animal in him, his vital being, which again in its turn is a slave of the obscure brute matter in him. So man, in spite... sustaining all of us, but supporting us so that we may still cling to Truth, may still serve the Truth. Their love and presence still surround us and support us. And all they do, they do for our true well-being, for saving our souls. Those who live for the soul, Mother's arms carry them forward as always. But still there is a difference. We spoke of the Pralaya; if you look around, you will... came along with them. Mother and Sri Aurobindo offered their physical forms and presence as a ladder for them to climb—no, to be carried up. They arranged so that human beings could grow into superhuman spiritual beings, shaking off their ignorant human consciousness, as the caterpillar grows into a butterfly shaking off its cocoon—but alas, man failed. Perhaps the new destiny was too new for ...
... Mother. What I notice however is that when the Mother says something, the thinking elements very often understand the exact opposite. You write of being responsive to the Mother. You seem to be saying: Don't concern yourself with whether something is true, whether it is a fact, whether it hurts you—always respond as the Mother leads. It is not quite like that. Those who respond find on the contrary... not have, I fail to see how it can be anything but a falsehood. No superhuman motive can make a falsehood not a falsehood. Moreover, if you really believe that the Divine can speak what is not true without being untrue and that that is a part of divinity, why do you resent it when you think the Mother has done it and grow sorrowful and indignant over her supposed unfair and uncandid treatment of you... depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superficial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy,—for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an ānandamaya intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true poise of both the soul and the mind—and of the true vital also—in ...
... should according to the theory of Karma? Also, what becomes of the vital and mental beings after the dissolution of the vital and mental sheaths? A: 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... 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 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... compassion for the fury of the chosen instrument of self-destruction which vainly thinks it can truly hurt her, the call to death to act swiftly and yet the sense of being high above what death can do, which these few simple words convey has the true essence of nobility. 'Impatience' only! You have not caught the significance of the words 'poor venemous fool', the tone of the 'Be angry, and despatch', the ...
... their potentialities in determined forms by determined processes. Because the causal Idea is a real force of existence, it is called Satyam, the True in being; because it is the determining truth of all activity and formation, it is called Ritam, the True in movement; because it is broad and infinite in its self-view, in its scope and in its operation, it is called Brihat, the Large or Vast. Savitri... consciousness and only secondarily a physical formation of things. A world is a loka , a way in which conscious being images itself. And it is the causal Truth, represented in the person of Surya Savitri, that is the creator of all its forms. For it is the causal Idea in the infinite being,—the idea, not abstract, but real and dynamic,—that originates the law, the energies, the formations of things... contains their law and process, compels their right result. There are seven of these sacrificial energies (Hotras) in the human being, one corresponding to each of the seven constituents of his psychological existence,—body, life, mind, super-mind, bliss, will and essential being. Their irregular action or wrong relation, caused and maintained by the obscuration of knowledge in Mind, is the source of all ...
... 1. Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being The Psychic Being What is Meant by the Psychic Being I mean by the psychic the inmost soul-being and the soul-nature. This is not the sense in which the word is used in ordinary parlance, or rather, if it is so used, it is with great vagueness and much-misprision of the true nature of this soul and it is given... parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire —the false soul or desire-soul—is intended by the words 'soul' and 'psychic' and not the true soul, the psychic being. The psychic being is quite different from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but... the vital, provided they are organised by and centred round the true psychic being—for they then share the immortality of the psychic. Otherwise the psychic draws mind and life into itself and enters into an internatal quiescence. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being In the experience of yoga the self or being is in essence one with the Divine or at least it is a portion of ...
... to which man is exposed by the nature of his mentality. Sri Aurobindo The Human Cycle: True and False Subjectivism The ordinary human being is conscious only in his physical being, and only in relatively rare moments is he conscious of his mind, just a little more frequently of his vital, but all this is mixed up in his consciousness, so much so that he would be quite unable to say “This... not directly through these that the life-world enters into relations with us. That is done through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with... directing knowledge. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Parts of the Being Are these forces different for each person? Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual ...
... When the vital aspires, the aspiration becomes so intense that I feel as if it would break the being. Is this the effect of the true vital's activity? If it is the true vital, there is no feeling of breaking the being. That is a rajasic mixture. EMERGENCE OF THE TRUE VITAL BEING Once I had a fear that if the vital aspired it would break the body (because... the beings of the vital world have shapes and moulds (subtle, of course) just as human beings have? Yes — but they can change their shapes at will. Is each person surrounded by a particular number of vital beings or are there different vital beings entangling him at each attack? There is no particular number — but sometimes there are particular vital beings that... see that every evening some being throws false suggestions upon me, saying, "The Divine does not like you." Lately their force of insistence has increased. I try my best to reject them but without any success. May the Mother prevent this being from approaching me ever! What is that being? From some vital world? Yes, it is a being of falsehood from the vital world ...
... and is spontaneous and true. 18 May 1932 It was certainly true that you saw the Mother and she was teaching secrets to your inner being—for your inner being is in close relation with her. It is only by your opening yourself that this inner being can come out and change the relations of Page 449 your external self with her, remove from it its sense of not being connected, its misund... touch with the Force—for it is your inner being that feels naturally in touch with it,—it is only the external and physical mind and vital that feel it is as if it were not real, not truly connected etc. etc. This you have experienced yourself more than once when the inner being came into the front. 3 November 1932 It is perfectly true that in your inner being there is nothing that stands between... ignorant physical Nature. That is why I want you to get rid of this habit of the outer mind and to recognise that it is the inner being which is the real truth of yourself and not this outer consciousness with its confusions which is a present fact but not your true permanent being. 9 December 1932 This morning I sent a letter to the Mother through X, but I have received no reply. Have I done something ...
... the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through the demands and urges of this lower complex, it is always the inner being that gains and has its dictates carried out and... psychic being proceeds through many and diverse experiences – mental, vital and physical. Its consciousness, on the one hand, grows, that is, enlarges itself, becomes wider and wider, from what was infinitesimal it moves towards infinity, and on the other, strengthens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and dynamically. Man's true individual being starts on... sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to deal with them. You raise ghosts and spirits ...
... is not the true spiritual liberation. Moreover, to throw away the active sense of ego is not enough; that may merely bring an inactive state of the mentality, a certain passive inert quietude of separate being may take the place of the kinetic egoism, which is also not the true liberation. The ego sense must be replaced by a oneness with the transcendental Divine and with universal being. This necessity... its own being, it cannot properly control its natural members or accord their tendencies, powers and demands; it has not the secret of harmony, because it has not the secret of its own unity and self-possession; and, secondly, not being in possession of its highest self, it has to struggle towards that, is not allowed to be at peace till it is in possession of its own Page 679 true highest... of unity; for it tries to find the unity of our being in an identification with a shifting mental, vital, physical personality, not with the eternal self of our total existence. Only in the spiritual self can we possess the true unity; for there the individual enlarges to his own total being and finds himself one with universal existence and with the transcending Divinity. All the trouble and suffering ...
... the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through the demands and urges of this lower complex, it is always the inner being that gains and has its dictates carried out and... sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to deal with them. You raise ghosts and spirits... psychic being proceeds through many and diverse experiences mental, vital and physical. Its consciousness, on the one hand, grows, that is, enlarges itself, becomes wider and wider, from what was infinitesimal it moves towards infinity, and on the other, strengthens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and Page 20 dynamically. Man's true individual ...
... jyotiḥ , or, as it is sometimes called, the true Light, ṛtaṁ jyotiḥ . And the connection between the words ṛtam and bṛhat is constant in the Veda. It seems to me impossible to see in these expressions anything else than the indication of a state of illumined consciousness the nature of which is that it is wide or large, bṛhat , full of the truth of being, satyam , and of the truth of knowledge... cetayantī . She is full of energy, suvīrā , and brings knowledge. She also is connected with Surya, the Sun, as when Agni, the Will, is invoked (V.4.4) to labour by the rays of the Sun, Lord of the true Light, being of one mind with Ila, iḷayā sajoṣā yatamāno raśmibhiḥ sūryasya . She is the mother of the Rays, the herds of the Sun. Her name means she who seeks and attains and it contains the same association... the Truth and the Bliss or Ananda. It is by the dawning of the true or infinite consciousness in man that he arrives out of this evil dream of pain and suffering, this divided creation into the Bliss, the happy state variously described in Veda by the words bhadram, mayas (love and bliss), svasti (the good state of existence, right being) and by others less technically used such as vāryam, rayiḥ ...
... Logopoeia of what we may term the vital mind at work: the nerves are at play, the sensations are astir all through the thinking process. In contrast see the working of the mind proper, the true reflective being drawing up the living energy into its own uses: here is a speech made by Milton's Satan at sight of the infernal regions to which he has been condemned: Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal... . This mystery, however, must not be named either Being or Non-being: beyond Being, it passes into Non-being — yet even to say Non-being is to define it too much and also to confine it too much. Observe how Sri Aurobindo compasses the mystery: If all existence could renounce to be, And Being take refuge in Non-being's arms And Non-being could strike out its ciphered round, Some lustre... joined arms of Non-being around Being. And when Non-being is said to strike out its own zero, what do we understand? On the one hand, a deeper negation than Non-being, as if the zero were too concrete as well as too limited to indicate the supreme vacuity which the Ultimate is to our experience. On the other hand, to strike out the zero is to cancel the negation brought by Non-being and suggest a new ...
... failed to develop the gentler and more delicate side of moral character, but this is of no essential importance. The ethical idea in man changes and enlarges its scope, but the kernel of the true ethical being remains always the same,—will, character, self-discipline, self-mastery. Its limitations at once appear, when we look back at its prominent examples. Early Rome and Sparta were barren of thought... given to it by Mazzini. If the ethical impulse is not sufficient by itself for the development of the human being, yet are will, character, self-discipline, self-mastery indispensable to that development. They are the backbone of the mental body. Neither the ethical being nor the aesthetic being is the whole man, nor can either be his sovereign principle; they are merely two powerful elements. Ethical... and large breath; only then does it breathe the natural atmosphere of the developed mental being. Not to live principally in the Page 93 activities of the sense-mind, but in the activities of knowledge and reason and a wide intellectual curiosity, the activities of the cultivated aesthetic being, the activities of the enlightened will which make for character and high ethical ideals and ...
... universal Nature; the human being forms in his superficial parts of being, mental, vital, physical, a habit of certain responses to these waves from outside. It is these responses that he takes as his own character (anger, desire, sex etc.) and thinks he cannot be otherwise. But that is not so; he can change. There is another consciousness deeper within him, his true inner being, which is his real self... peacefulness. Afterwards when one is secure in this inner being, the right thing to do, the right way to deal with men and things will begin to come. It is true that anger and strife are in the nature of the human vital and do not go easily; but what is important is to have the will to change and the clear perception that these things must go. If that will and perception are there, then in the end... quietly for that to develop. True knowledge, Page 268 true perceptions of people and things will come in that new silent consciousness. The mind's view of people and things must necessarily be either limited and defective or erroneous—to go on judging by it is now a waste of time. Wait for the new consciousness to develop and show you all in a new and true light. Then the tendency to anger ...
... 763 No, [ the vital ego is ] certainly not [ a hostile power ]—it is part of the ordinary human nature, everybody has it. It has to be purified and transformed, the ego being replaced by the true vital being of which it is a distorted shadow. The forces of the lower nature are often rebellious and resist transformation out of attachment to the familiar movements of the Ignorance, desire... Yes, certainly [ there are hostile forces active in the outside world ]. Men are being constantly invaded by the hostiles and Page 757 there are great numbers of men who are partly or entirely under their influence. Some are possessed by them, others (a few) are incarnations of hostile beings. At the present moment they are very active all over the earth. Of course in the outside... against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection of the Eternal. Page 764 There are some who are never touched by the hostile forces. The normal resistance of the lower Nature in human beings and the action of the Hostiles are two quite different things. The former is natural ...
... from day to day and, full of hero mights, victoriously attains. O Strength, the sacrifice in its march that thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that reaches to the gods. Strength is the priest of our oblation, he has the seer-will and is true in his being and is rich in varied inspirations; may he come to us, a god with the gods. O Strength, that thou wilt create for the giver of the... in hero-energies. 4) O Will, around whatsoever sacrifice travelling to its goal thou comest into being on its every side, that reaches truly the gods (or goes truly to the gods). 5) God-will is the priest of the oblation, for his is the Seer-will (or who has the will of the seer) true in its being, with a most rich and varied inspiration; let him come to us, a god with the gods. Page 456 ... increases day by day and is victorious in attainment and full of hero powers. That sacrifice which in its journey on the path thou encompassest with thy being on its every side, that travels to the gods. Will the priest, the seer-will, the true in being, richest in his shining inspirations of the truth, may he come divine with all the divine powers. O Will, in that thou wilt surely create his good ...
... personality put forward by the true and persistent being in us for the experience of this brief life; we not only have been in the past and can be in the future but we are much more than that in the present secret totality of our being and nature. Especially, there is a secret soul in us that is our true person; there is a secret self that is our true impersonal being and spirit. To unveil that soul... may come, but they cannot prevail against [the rock] of faith in the centre of the being. The rock may be covered awhile by surges of doubt and despondency, but the rock will emerge firm and indestructible. Faith is of the heart, the inner heart where lives the psychic being. The outer heart is the seat of the vital being, the life personality. That like the mind may Page 347 believe and then... outside of or above or below or beyond or in any way separate from the existence of the one Eternal and Infinite. All that appears as finite, temporal, multiple and phenomenal is still in reality being of the being of the Infinite and the Eternal. Ekam evadvitiyam . This is the first and abiding truth without which no other can be understood in the truth of things or put in its proper place in the ...
... the example of the great ones, to fulfil each his own mission, maybe we will be able one Page 96 day to meet and understand them in the true consciousness, being all one with the One and also with the Many. So what is really our true token of love and gratitude to them is to try to be honest and sincere in our love and self-giving to the Divine just as they were. And Sri Aurobindo... her for the devotees. This communication was sacred to him and he held it in trust for the Mother and the devotee. He was indeed the true trustee of the Mother. When a devotee asked for permission to go to her he never decided beforehand, on the excuse of Mother being busy, whether the devotee should go or not. If refusal had to be there, it had to be only from the Mother. Because of this simplicity... remember that no individual soul, big or small, is complete in his own individual evolution—all souls are parts of the same One, the Unique Divine. As in their human outer being they are aspects of ignorance, so are they in their inmost being the many aspects of the One in this multiplicity of the creation. The great ones, like Amritada, Pavitrada, Nolinida and many others, they form a solar system around ...
... manifestation of him, a being of . his being, a consciousness of his consciousness, a nature of ,his. nature, but in the obscurity of avidya, of this mental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its reality, its true character. Hence, there is the double nature of the Soul in manifestation, — the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived nature... passion the soul is obscured, the intelligence and will forget to see and be seated in the calm observing soul; there is a fall from the memory of one's true self, and by that lapse the intelligent will is also obscured, even destroyed. For the time being, we become passion, wrath, grief and cease to be self and intelligence and will.6' This must be prevented. All the senses must be brought utterly under... insoluble? The Gita's solution is neither to escape from the problem "nor declare it to be insoluble. It asks Arjuna to rise above his "natural being and normal mind, above intellectual and ethical perplexities into another consciousness with another law of being and therefore another standpoint for action. For our problems arise because we do not know the origin of our Page 39 action; we relate ...
... not directly through these that the life-world enters into relations with us. That is done through other sheaths of our being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with... our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle of vijñāna , supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier of seven planes,—sometimes regarded as five only, because, only the lower five are wholly accessible to us,—through which the developing being can rise to... and of its delight of existence in the world. To that all the circumstances and aims of any world-existence must reduce themselves; it is existence developing its terms of being, its power of being, its conscious delight of being; if these are involved, their evolution; if they are veiled, their self-revelation. Here the soul lives in a material universe; of that alone it is immediately conscious; ...
... psychic being—it is the energy of the true vital being, but in the ordinary ignorant vital it is deformed into desire. You have to quiet and purify the vital and let the true vital emerge. Or you have to bring the psychic in front, and the psychic will purify and psychicise the vital and then you will have the true vital energy. Certainly it is better if the vital is brought to the true mo... intellect, and so unguardedly and without restraint, the old mental conventions and restraints being in a state of deliquescence, that catastrophes are likely to be common. The disappearance of conventions and the urge to a larger life are in themselves good things, but on condition that a greater control and a truer harmony are discovered. At present people are going about it in the wrong way—hence the perilous... that coming down, it will be the beginning of the liberation. You were getting the true consciousness down into the vital, but as the old difficulty rose again in the physical, there is again the vital attack. The sign of complete liberation will be when your vital can face this attack always without being upset or crying out, repelling its force by a calm rejecting force from within. The Higher ...
... and aesthetic powers of the mind begin to develop, they begin to collide among themselves. It is, therefore, being recognised that the psychic and the spiritual powers of the human personality need to be brought forward so as to establish the true integration of all the powers of the being. • In our present system of education, we are too occupied with mental development, and we give preponderant... of moral and spiritual values. Spirituality proceeds directly by change of consciousness, change from the ordinary consciousness to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true unegoistic being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Spirit. In spirituality, this change of consciousness is the one thing that matters, nothing else. Spirituality... inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul, which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration ...
... October 1954 This talk is based upon Sri Aurobindo's Bases of Yoga , Chapter 1, "Calm—Peace—Equality". Sweet Mother, what is "the freedom of the Self"? It means that in the true inner being one feels perfectly free, and is free from everything. One has the feeling of a complete freedom—free from all external influences, free from all lower impulses, free from all bondage of thoughts... Mother, there are many elements in our being of which we are not conscious. Isn't that so? Yes, many. Page 385 Can there be some parts which serve the Divine without our being aware of it? Yes, yes. In fact there are some which not only always seek the Divine but have an intense aspiration, and one is not aware of them. The psychic being is like that, and it is always there. But... said at the beginning: every predestined being. What I mean by "predestined" is a being who has come down upon earth to accomplish a precise mission and who, naturally, will be helped in the Page 386 accomplishment of this mission. It may be a very modest mission but it is a precise one that he has to accomplish upon earth. Well, all these beings... their life is organised in this way; but ...
... are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others; for there is a secret solidarity which our egoism may kick at and strive against, but from which we cannot escape. It is the old Indian discovery that our real "I" Page 47 is a Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business to discover and consciously become and, secondly, that that Being is one in all, expressed... the unity and collectivity of his fellow-beings, is his present source and stock; it is the thing whose possibilities he individually expresses, even when he transcends its immediate level, and of which in his phenomenal being he is one result. Its depression strikes eventually at his own sources of life, by its increasing he also increases. This is what a true subjectivism teaches us,—first, that we... Cycle The Human Cycle The Human Cycle Chapter V True and False Subjectivism The subjective stage of human development is that critical juncture in which, having gone forward from symbols, types, conventions, having turned its gaze superficially on the individual being to discover his truth and right law of action and its relation to the superficial and external ...
... consciousness, which culminate in the supramental, which is called in the Taittiriya Upanishad, vijnanamaya, which alone has been found capable of establishing the true integration of all the powers of the being under its natural and spontaneous sovereignty. The knowledge of the secrets of this entire process of development is largely contained in the Page 18 Veda and the Upanishads... abiding and verifiable experience. Spirituality proceeds directly by change of consciousness, change from the ordinary consciousness to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true unegoistic being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Spirit. In spirituality, this change of consciousness is the one thing that matters, nothing else. Both morality and... of the human being, and if humankind comes to the paralyzing situation where the urge to exceed the limits of the mental Page 15 human being is buried under the heavy weight of the civilization of comfort and pleasure, of continuous competition and conflict and of disabling appetites of egoistic life, controlled by dehumanizing machinery of civilization, then the human being will have frustrated ...
... g life and existence that we normally function with is not our true real being. "The real self is not anywhere on the surface but deep within and far "above." (Sri Aurobindo) It becomes then necessary that the sadhaka of our Path should open himself more and more inward till he establishes a direct contact with his psychic being; he has to, at the same time, open Page 78 himself... the life of sadhana by a genuine self-surrender to the Divine, Sri Aurobindo has written in his Essays on the Gita that once the true will of surrender becomes operative in the sadhaka' s consciousness, that by itself opens very soon all the doors and windows of the being and — what is more wonderful — makes possible in its turn the self-giving of the Divine himself in the sadhaka 's ādhāra. Then... preferences and because of that acts as an obstacle to the action of the divine Shakti in its ādhāra; "if it is found that the vital being of the sadhaka is whirling in the vortex of its greeds and desires; "if it is found that the physical being of the sadhaka has mortgaged itself to the inert movements and habits that normally activate it, and because of that is unwilling to admit within ...
... secret of direct, supramental creation, bypassing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I don't know... by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in manifesting the supramental forces; yet since their origin is human, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of human coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret... tilts her hand from side to side as on a narrow frontier ) like this, like that. It makes you sense so clearly that things in themselves don't count. What we call 'things in themselves' are of no true importance! What really counts is the relationship of consciousness to these things. And there's a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while ...
... Knowledge follows the Way of Works, Vedanta comes after Veda. This is as true from the outward, historical point of view as it is true of the lines of inner change. As I have already explained, man begins his career as a vital-physical being, becomes a mental being at a later stage. But the trouble is that when he goes beyond his vital being into the mental, he tends to pass beyond mind into the gnosis and... Grace is descending from on High in a continuous stream, thus is obliterated the sense of Being and Non-Being, all doubts and difficulties as to whether It exists or not. On the screen of the individual consciousness there arises a strange Form, like Uma-Haimavati of the Upanishad. Bhusuku, this is your true Natural Form. Once you know and recognise It, all the bonds of sense are broken, the heart... movements. Its aim has been to establish on a sound basis these so-called lower but stronger movements, by controlling them and purifying them into their true elements. The ordinary man, every man in fact, has to live with his body and vital being, with the physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist, they must have a purpose. They alone can delve into the mystery ...
... she did not want much from him. She just wanted him to grow into a true human being. In French "André means man. That is why Mother had called him André. André-da did not disappoint Mother, he became indeed a true human being. Right from his childhood Andre-da was a brilliant Page 248 student and a human being with a fine temperament. He was especially attracted to Truth and... tireless capacity for work. These are the qualities that make a human being successful." (34) O ne day Mother said: "One who is more enduring will always win. Endurance brings the final victory." Page 222 (35) O n another occasion Mother said: "If you want to know the true nature of a man, give him plenty of money and plenty of power. Within... wrote down what I had said and her answer. Then she gave the paper to me. This is what was written: Page 230 Iam yours for ever. I shall lead you to your true action. 26.10.47 (46) L et me now tell you how once in trying to spring a surprise on Mother I was overcome with embarrassment instead. It happened in 1953. On ...
... the obscurity of this mental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its reality, its true character. The second idea is that of the double nature of the Soul in manifestation,—the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in which it is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and the spiritual has to be... and spirit, we do not lose ourselves, but rather recover our true selves in him poised in the supremacy of this Infinite. And this is done at one and the same time by three simultaneous movements,—an integral self-finding through works founded in his and our spiritual nature, an integral self-becoming through knowledge of the Divine Being in whom all exists and who is all, and—most sovereign and decisive... all these other ways of becoming of its consciousness which are only its phenomena, taṁ taṁ bhāvam , returns to that essential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit, comes to the original status of being which is from the point of view of the return a highest becoming, mad-bhāvam . In a certain sense we may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with nature of the ...
... Lord of all our being and nature. It is true also that the freedom of this silence gives a possibility of a larger play of the intuitive being and admits with less obstruction and turmoil of mental groping and seizing the great intuitions, inspirations, revelations which emerge from within or descend from above. It is therefore an immense gain if we can acquire the capacity of always being able at will... intellectual mixture, separating it from its mental coatings, rejecting the mere rapidities of the mind which imitate the form of the intuition without being of its true substance. It will be easier to discern rapidly the higher planes of the true supramental being and call down their power to effect the desired transformation and to refer all the lower action to the superior power and light that it may reject... logical reasoning intellect of the Page 807 developed human being. The most prominent change will be the transmutation of the thought heightened and filled by that substance of concentrated light, concentrated power, concentrated joy of the light and the power and that direct accuracy which are the marks of a true intuitive thinking. It is not only primary suggestions or rapid conclusions ...
... his nature, but in the obscurity of this mental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its reality, its true character. The second idea is that of the double nature of the Soul in manifestation, — the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in which it Page 74 is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has... instruments of the being as also of the cosmic enjoyment through these instruments. The Tantra not only aims at mukti, liberation, but also at bhukti, enjoyment; and since that enjoyment cannot be perfect without arriving at the perfection of the powers of the being, it also puts forward the aim of perfection. That in the human being and in the universe there are two poles of being whose essential... on to a divine perfection of being. Sri Aurobindo explains the essential foundation of this complex aim as follows: "The first idea on which this possibility is founded, is the conception of the individual soul in man as in its eternal essence and its original power a ray of the supreme Soul and Godhead and here a veiled manifestation of him, a being of his being, a consciousness of his consciousness ...
... and aesthetic powers of the mind begin to develop, they begin to collide among themselves. It is, therefore, being recognised that the psychic and the spiritual powers of the human personality need to be brought forward so as to establish the true integration of all the powers of the being. In our present system of education, we are too occupied with mental development, and we give Page... moral and spiritual values. Spirituality proceeds directly by change of consciousness, change from the ordinary consciousness to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true unegoistic being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Spirit. In spirituality, this change of consciousness Page 417 is the one thing that matters, nothing... becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature. VIII Values of Indian Culture It is natural that Indian education underlines the importance of what can be called Indian values. In Indian thought, a distinction has been made between the ego and the self. According to Indian thought, egoistic personality is ridden with self- contradiction and conflicts and true self is the ...
... search for the Reality, the true self of man, may very easily follow out the natural order described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit;... some advance in the not distant future. And here the first essential sign must be the growth of the subjective idea of life,—the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers, its possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of a true, beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and last importance. The signals must be there that are precursors of a subjective age... waits to master them by their concessions to her own law. If mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in the mass cease to be the material or the vital man and become the psychic and the true mental being. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or conversion is possible; but if it is not, then the spiritualisation of mankind as a whole is a chimera. From this point of view it is an ...
... be connected with the brihat of the superconscient in us containing in itself the Truth or rtam. Ila, the power of revelation or truth-vision is also connected with Surya, the Sun, Lord of true Light being of one mind with Ila, ilayā sajosā yatamāno raśmibhih sūryasa. 40 It would seem that when Bharati or Mahi dawns on man's limited mind and bestows on it the largeness of the Truth-Consciousness... descent of the power of the great godheads, the limitations of the 'physical being are broken; the light of the infinite planes which reigns above enters into lower levels of being right up to physical being; the physical being opens out to the Light and is upheld in its new wideness by the action of Aditi, supreme power of the infinite consciousness. We may take another example of the idea of... this attainment, the yogic process is worked out on all the planes of being, including the physical being. The infinite consciousness, Mother Aditi (which is termed Para Prakriti or Shakti in later systems of yoga) intervenes, and she brings her sons with her, the cosmic gods or the divine Powers of the supreme Deva. The physical being is visited by the greatness of the infinite planes above; by the descent ...
... business. One may think that such lengthy similes are mostly decorative, but in fact when the poet has worked with true imagination they throw a subtle light upon a situation and bring out some truth from behind the surface of things. Sri Aurobindo speaks of a child. Urvasie, by being compared to this child, is revealed as a soul of innocence; she is, after all, a nymph of heaven, an Apsara and, as... Logopoeia of what we may term the vitalistic mind at work: the nerves are at play, the sensations are astir all through the thinking process. In contrast see the working of the mind proper, the true reflective being drawing up the living energy into its own uses: here is a speech made by Milton's Satan at sight of the infernal regions to which he has been condemned: Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal... . This mystery, however, must not be named either Being or Non-being: beyond Being, it passes into Non-being—yet even to say Non-being is to define it too much and also confine it too much. Observe how Sri Aurobindo compasses the mystery: If all existence could renounce to be, And Being take refuge in Non-being's arms And Non-being could strike out its ciphered round, Some lustre ...
... psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is due. This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For example, if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic... his last visit to earth and sown a large crop of virtues and meritorious actions to reap this bumper crop of good fortune. Too symmetrical to be true. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction for good and ill... often, but not quite always, prevent their true nature from being recognised. There are even a number of people who have definite recollections of a past life. But these things are discouraged by education and the atmosphere and cannot remain or develop; in most cases they are stifled out of existence. At the same time it must be noted that what the psychic being mainly carries away with it and brings ...
... everything that came in their way. If not on food-stuff, they would sit on human beings, whoever they might be. Sri Aurobindo and his room were no exception. Flies, silver-fish, cockroaches, were simply taboo and were not to be tolerated. Out of all these, everyone knows, flies are the worst enemies. They don't bite, it is true, like their cousins, the mosquitoes, but they are carriers of all kinds of infection... 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 about it?" Well, as all this is true, surely beings could also come in their subtle forms to do pranam to Sri Aurobindo. "But why bare feet?" one may ask. "That is the Indian custom", would be my, answer. "Did he sleep at night?" was the question... Champaklal had to serve instead. The story goes that once Mridu's dish went back without being touched by Sri Aurobindo, and she raised a storm. Sri Aurobindo had to quiet her with the plea that the Mother being absent he did not know what he had taken or what he had not. On another occasion Sri Aurobindo's meal being over earlier than usual, Mridu's dish arrived late and was left untouched. As soon as ...
... can awaken, and by which he can come to fulfil himself. So Aswapathy follows a triple Yoga. That Yoga we will leave aside for the time being. Now, he is a representative of the human race, and as representative of the human race, he first tries to find out the true self that is in man. And then he finds that man is cosmic. Man is not merely an individual, he is cosmic. Aswapathy finds further that... "The One alone is true, the Divine is only Page 16 one, the Divine is the transcendent, unique, inexpressible, infinite reality. So why do you want somebody else to love? You are trying to introduce a duality into the Ultimate which is single." All kinds of arguments Death puts forward to Savitri, and Savitri answers every time in the light of her inmost being. She is not answering... the values that are there are not worth the grandeur of man. So there we are. We have to see how this journey ultimately results in man seeking his ultimate fulfilment in the blossoming of his true essential being. Page 28 ...
... in civilisation and needed to read into their religion and their deities finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly mentalised concepts and interests and find for them a true spiritual being or some celestial figure as their support and sanction. But the largest part in determining and deepening this inward turn must be attributed to the Mystics who had an enormous influence on... an outward sense which carefully covered their true meaning and secret. This was the substance of Mysticism everywhere. It has been the tradition in India from the earliest times that the Rishis, the poet-seers of the Veda, were men of this type, men with a great spiritual and occult knowledge not shared by Page 6 ordinary human beings, men who handed down this knowledge and their powers... d there are others—that the seer of the Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind of the European scholars. There are certain psychological terms which have to be taken consistently in their true sense if we are to find the inner or Page 17 ...
... and aesthetic powers of the mind begin to develop, they begin to collide among themselves. It is, therefore, being recognised that the psychic and the spiritual powers of the human personality need to be brought forward so as to establish the true integration of all the powers of the being. d. In our present system of education, we are too occupied with mental development, and we give preponderant... system of moral and spiritual values. g.Spirituality proceeds directly by change of consciousness, change from the ordinary consciousness to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true unegoistic being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Spirit. In spirituality, this change of consciousness is the one thing that matters, nothing else. Spirituality not... or new being, a new self, a new nature." VIII VALUES OF INDIAN CULTURE a. It is natural that Indian education underlines the importance of what can be called Indian values. b. In Indian thought, a distinction has been made between the ego and the self. According to Indian thought, whereas egoistic personality is ridden with self-contradiction and internal conflict, a true selfhood ...
... Ignorance [i.e., the world of death]—and isn't being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of soft, unctuous, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps... the problem is no longer that of changing something in Matter to prevent it from being mortal: there is something to be changed in the consciousness. It is purely a phenomenon of consciousness. Nothing is preventing this body from being immortal, nothing is preventing this world from being true—they already are true, already immortal, except for a certain perception clinging to them and covering... evolution or change into what it is hiding. That is the whole study now under way. In the "true position" death no longer exists. Only, the entire body has to know it: when the body is wholly true, it will be wholly outside death. Indeed only Falsehood dies, being the very essence of Death. What is true does not die, at any level whatever, not even at the bodily level. And what is Falsehood in a ...
... principle, has already begun to take secret form; it puts forward and 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;... central government or the disturbance of a formerly achieved partial poise. All must be transitional until a first, though not a final, true harmonisation is achieved by finding our Page 933 real centre. For the true central being is the soul, but this being stands back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say, a constitutional ruler who allows his ministers to... possible to realise oneself as the inner Self of life, the true and pure vital being, the Purusha; there is even a Self of body of which, by standing back from the body and its demands and activities and entering into a silence of the physical consciousness watching the action of its energy, it is possible to become aware, a true and pure physical being, the Purusha. So too, by standing back from all these ...
... n to the surface of our being, by an ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the true motive-forces of our action. It is quite evident that we know ourselves with only a superficial knowledge,—the sources of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the significance of our... and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self,—on one side a Nature constituent of our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created, it has to extend itself... to have the sense or feel the vibration of coming events, of distant happenings, even to look into the future. It is true that this knowledge proper to the subliminal being is not complete; for it is a mixture of knowledge and ignorance and it is capable of erroneous as well as of true perception, since it works not by knowledge by identity, but by a knowledge through direct contact and this is also ...
... forward in their life with an assurance and a certitude all their own, they are masters off their destiny.37 Sri Aurobindo expresses the same idea in this way: .... the true central being is the soul, but this being stand; back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say constitutional ruler who allows his minister to rule for him, delegates to them his empire... human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret... own image, which is not worthy to be taken as a model. A conviction that the child has within himself everything that allows a true education, and particularly a ceaseless activity, incessantly revived, in which he is totally engrossed, the activity of a growing being who is continuously developing and to whom for that very reason, our help may be useful, but our direction is not necessary.4 ...
... নীচে ৷ হৃদয়ে সে হয় emotional being, নাভিতে বাসনাময়, নাভির নীচে sensational অর্থাৎ ইন্দ্রিয়ের টান ও ক্ষুদ্র ক্ষুদ্র প্রাণের ভাব নিয়ে ব্যস্ত ৷ 29.1.35 তােমার অনুভূতি খুব ভাল – উপরের শক্তির চক্র (কাৰ্য্যকরী-গতি) নামছে নীচ প্রকৃতিকে আলােকিত ও সচেতন করবার জন্য, আর এদিকে মায়ের কার্য্যের জন্য ভিতরের higher vital পুরুষ সামনে এসেছে – আমরা যাকে বলি true vital being ! তােমার কাজ দেখে মা খুব সন্তুষ্ট... নয়, মানুষের দুর্বলতা ৷ আত্মা সৰ্ব্বদা শুদ্ধ, psychic being (চৈত্যপুরুষও) শুদ্ধ, সাধনা দ্বারা অন্তরতাও (inner mind, vital, physical) শুদ্ধ হতে পারে অথচ external being বহিঃসত্তা বহিঃ-প্রকৃতিতে সেই চরিত্রের পুরাতন দুর্বলতা অনেক দিন লেগে থাকতে পারে, সম্পূর্ণ শুদ্ধ করা কঠিন ৷ চাই complete sincerity, চাই দৃঢ়তা ও ধৈৰ্য্য, চাই সদাজাগ্রত ভাব ৷Psychic being যদি in frontএ থাকে, সর্বদা জেগে থাকে, প্রভাব বিস্তার... প্রাণপুরুষ, এমনকি নিম্ন প্রাণপুরুষ ৷ প্রাণ হৃদয়ের নীচে থেকে মূলাধার পর্যন্ত বিস্তৃত, তার মধ্যে নাভির নীচে যা তা নিম্নপ্রাণ ৷ তেমনই আত্মা যাকে বল, তাকে আত্মা বলা যায় না, সে psychic being, হৃদয়ে চৈত্যপুরুষ ৷Psychic being (অন্তরাত্মা বলতে পার) জীবাত্মা সঙ্গে যুক্ত, মায়ের সঙ্গে যুক্ত হলে সত্যচেতনার ভিত্তি স্থাপিত হয় ৷ কারণ এই psychic অন্তরাত্মাই মানুষের সমস্ত মনপ্রাণদেহকে ধারণ করে পেছন থেকে, তবে সে ...
... which is the result of evolution of his soul in ignorance, and which is only a representative of his true Self should be dissolved in order to allow the Self to come forward and act. The Self, being Timeless, is able to act on time and snap the chain of the Law of Karma. The true Self being Eternal and Infinite has power to weigh itself against the Whole universe. Savitri has to face the... edge welled out from within "Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's." All his actions sprang out of Light and all his thoughts referred to the True and the One. He saw other worlds, other forms, other gods, other beings and he deafly experienced that his life had emerged from the Divine. Now, his only work in life was to help mankind by raising it to this higher level and "Feeling... Darkness was hidden by darkness, all this was an ocean of inconscience. When universal being was concealed by fragmentation, than by the greatness of its energy That One was born. That moved at first as desire within, which was the primal seed of mind. The seers of Truth discovered the building of being in non-being by will in the heart and by the thought; their ray was extended horizontally; but what ...
... has, in effect, as objective to enable them to raise themselves above Nature—while in the case of the new beings this perception will be purely and simply replaced by another, more complete and true. It will therefore not always be necessary to take recourse to the stimulation of the inner being by psycho-physical practices in order to open oneself to this dimension, as yogis currently do. This dimension... beneath the horror masks and the shame which some accept to bear, their faces shine. Their eyes fill with the vision of the world which comes from the place to which their being is dedicated. They only prepare the way for the true beings who will come tomorrow. This they know and they rejoice, foreseeing that only a beauty even greater than that which floods them within will, through the same, be accessible... are no longer felt, this state, ruler than being the monopoly of a few elected individuals, will one day belong to all. Finally, it would be evident to us that this natural absence of ego indeed represents progress compared with our present condition, for, eliminating all limitations, it liberates us and makes us conscious of the true reality of Being. It is, therefore, in terms of evolution ...
... anything at all. Page 15 It is the action of the psychic being, not the being itself, that gets mixed with the mental, vital and physical disabilities because it has to use them to express what little of the true psychic feeling gets through the veil. It is by the heart's aspiration to the Divine that the psychic being gets free from these disabilities. These things, anger... complains and knows how to wait for the hour of realisation to come. True happiness does not depend on the external circumstances of life. One can obtain true happiness and keep it constantly only by discovering one's psychic being and uniting with it. Page 20 The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to... completely thwarted, then, sometimes this opposition opens to you a door on something truer and deeper. And when you are a little awake and look back, if you are in the least sincere, you say: "Ah! It wasn't I who was right — it was Nature or the divine Grace or my psychic being who did it." It is the psychic being which organised that. Page 5 Man's hopes and longings build the journeying ...
... bring the entire mystical body into being. The priestly act extends beyond the transubstantiated Host to the cosmos itself, which, century after century, is gradually being transformed by the incarnation, itself never complete. From age to age, there is but one single mass in the world: the true Host, the total Host, is the universe which is continually being more intimately penetrated and vivified... resurrection-doctrine is correct, the body-soul unity is contradicted by the body being not properly physical but an invisible one with a capacity to materialise for a while, and the divinisation as a fulfilment of terrestrial history loses its point by being complete only after death so that a divinised physicality in the true sense is absent. By the way, I wonder what would be meant by the physical cosmos... pre-existing substratum for God to work upon. Teilhard 41 confronts the traditional nihil with the words: "No-being coincides, and is one, with completely realised plurality. Pure nothingness is an empty concept. True nothingness, physical nothingness, the nothing found in the threshold of being, that on which at their lowest levels all possible worlds converge, is pure Multiple, is Multitude." Teilhard ...
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