... seated securely in a free harmony with a higher law of Nature. An increasing control of the individual over his own action of nature, a more and more conscious participation in the action of universal Nature, is a marked character, it is indeed a logical consequence, of the evolutionary principle and process. All action, all mental, vital, physical activities in the world are the operation of a universal... enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere of universality into a consciousness be longing to its spiritual... conscious than ideas, are blinder in their response and are more obstinately self-assertive: all have the same or a greater power of resistance and recurrence, or take refuge in the circumconscient universal Nature or in our own lower levels or in a seed-state in the subconscient and from there Page 977 have the power of new invasion or resurgence. This power of persistence, recurrence, resistance ...
... interest in these voices, keep the mind quiet. All these thoughts and influences come really from outside, from universal Nature—they create formations in us or get habitual responses from the individual being. When they are rejected, they go back into the external universal Nature and if one becomes conscious, one can feel them coming from outside and trying to get a lodging inside again or reawaken... perceive as suggestions or voices, are accepted and felt by people to be thoughts of their own mind. When one practises Yoga and observes the thoughts, one sees that they come from outside, from universal Nature, from the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds etc. The proper thing is then to stand back from these thoughts, voices or suggestions, to reject them or else control them, to make the mind... and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these tho ...
... Arjuna might drive him back indeed to the fight but too late to determine its issue; even, it might be, his personal nature, were that God's will, would abdicate its functions, seized & overcome by universal nature, by pity, by vairagya, by fear of sin, and the fateful battle lose its fated nimitta. What is it that, not in free universal potentiality, but in the fixed fact must inevitably determine his return... in Its universal pre-knowledge by that sole Existence which is expressing itself Page 519 here in mind & body, in event & circumstance, and executed by It as its own Will-Force & universal Nature which works out automatically through arranged process & perfectly managed interaction of individual forces that which was foreseen by It & fixed from the beginning of things, vyadadhách chhá... universal Will partly executable by us, but not independently governable or alterable by our effort, is to argue falsely, confusing the Purusha with the Prakriti, that because our action is subject to universal Nature, therefore the soul also is subject to law of Nature & its only refuge is in quietistic renunciation, in indifference or in the withdrawal from phenomenal living. The real refuge is altogether ...
... true peace. Further refining ourselves, this code of ethics would only succeed in refining our aggressiveness; it would not eliminate it. For we would still be compelled by the commandments of universal nature, the first of which we know to be the struggle for life, whether on an atomic or a cosmic scale. There are what astrophysicists term cannibal galaxies, and the hypothesis of the black holes in... being, a change which is scarcely dependent on ourselves, but rather on the law which presides over evolution, and consequently on God as expressed by that law. It is necessary to dominate the universal nature in us if we wish to accede to that which surpasses it. We must be given the means to leave it behind, to wrest ourselves from its fundamental bipolarity, to extricate ourselves from the chrysalis... duality, we will not know the peace to which we aspire to raise the world and will continue to be haunted by its elusiveness. Peace is not inherent to human nature because it is not a part of universal Nature. This our reason must accept if we really want to know peace and find the path leading to it. We must discover the quality of another nature in ourselves and let it act in us so as to become other ...
... adaptability of God." And here too a vast perfection and liberated action are the dynamic result of the soul's surrender. The works of ego personality are a separative running counter to the bias of universal nature. This false movement must be replaced by a wise and still passivity in the hands of the universal and eternal Power, a passivity that makes us adaptable to the infinite action, in harmony with... reflects and is reflected in these workings. He misses the greater inner spirit within which gives to all his mind and life and creation and action an unfulfilled promise and a hidden significance. A universal Nature here obeys the power of the Spirit who is the master of the universe, shapes each creature and determines its action according to the law of its own nature, Swabhava, shapes man too and determines... ignorant in the life and the body, shapes too each man and determines his individual action according to the law of his own distinct type and the variations of his own original swabhava. It is this universal Nature that forms and directs the mechanical workings of the body and the instinctive operations of our vital and nervous parts; and there our subjection to her Page 553 is very obvious. ...
... taking up of it all and an exceeding of its sense by a new power and meaning of the spirit. This is the universal nature of the type man on earth, and it is reasonable to suppose that whatever has been the past history of the individual soul, it must have followed the course of the universal nature and evolution. The separative pride which would break up the unity of Nature in order to make of ourselves... something that exceeds it, must have been a simultaneous and companion growing on the same curve into the soul of humanity. The ancient Indian idea which refused to separate nature of man from the universal Nature or self of man from the one common self, accepted this consequence of its seeing. Thus the Tantra assigns eighty millions of plant and animal lives as the sum of the preparation for a human birth ...
... that the fundamental transformation takes place. The Environmental Consciousness and the Subconscient These cravings and desires are old habits of the physical which came to it from the universal Nature and which it accepted and took as part of itself and its life. When these things are rejected by the waking consciousness they try to take refuge in the subconscient or else in what may be called... subconscient and from there surges up when you least expect it or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal Nature works, and attacks from there as a force from outside trying to recover its kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements. One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These... sleep. Or the thoughts can have gone out from you into the environmental consciousness, that is, an atmosphere of consciousness which we carry around us and through which we are connected with universal Nature and from there they may be trying to return upon you. As it is difficult for them to succeed in the waking state, they take advantage of the absence of conscious control in sleep and appear there ...
... happens to the human person after death or would happen normally. Thus man, the ordinary or "natural" man, has no personality, no real individuality. It is just like a wave-formation out of universal nature, moving in and being moved by the total swell and heave, being formed and being destroyed every moment – as the poet says: They take birth in you and they dissolve in you like ... is a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the first formation but delays and obstructs the true and final formation. For the ego is a formation, an individual formation, but on the level of universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal cosmic movement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general expanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the constituting elements remaining... in and through these the shape of things to come is being built up. In the meanwhile, however, actually the vital is an executive agent of the lower consciousness: it is an anonymous force of universal nature canalised into a temporary figure that is the normal individual man. The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal formulation of an immortal soul as energy consciousness with ...
... not do to ignore. This putting out of action and its return cannot have anything more than a mechanical importance, it cannot have a mental, moral and spiritual significance, if the action of universal Nature is something quite different from the soul's action in character, in meaning, in the law of her being that constitutes it, if it is not itself the energy, the work of a Mind, a Soul, a Spirit... on universal lines and in harmony with its universal law. But if that were all the truth, then there would be no real individual and no responsibility of any kind except the responsibility of universal Nature to carry out the idea or to execute the force put forth in the individual as in the universal by the All-Soul, the cosmic Spirit. But there is also this soul of the individual, and that is a being... present formulation by a precedent will in his spirit. He has risen to humanity by Page 380 the force of his spirit and by the power of the All-Soul out of the vast possibilities of universal Nature. He has developed by his own long evolution of that humanity the character and law of action of his present individual being; he has built his own height and form of human nature. He may change ...
... moulded by it; its thought, its will, its emotional and its life energy are penetrated by waves and currents of thought, will, passion, vital impacts, forces of all kinds from others and from universal Nature. Its wall of defence becomes a wall of obscuration which prevents it from knowing all this interaction; it knows only what comes through the gates of sense or through mental perceptions of which... powerful knowledge. Moreover, we find in this inner or subliminal being the means of directly distinguishing between what rises from within and what comes to us from outside, from others or from universal Nature, and it becomes possible to exercise a control, a choice, a power of willed reception, rejection and selection, a clear power of self-building and harmonisation which we do not possess or can... sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature; there is nothing that it cannot image or visualise or turn into sensory formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance ...
... individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, that is to say, with his mind-created ego, and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences. Less intimately, because of these he can say "my mind, life, body," he... conscious figure, he can get back to the transcendent consciousness of pure Self, absolute Existence or absolute Non-being, three poises of the same eternal Reality. But between the movement of universal Nature and this transcendent Existence, possessor of the one and cosmic self of the other, is the cosmic consciousness, the universal Purusha of whom all Nature is the Prakriti or active conscious Force... being. It Page 409 is the Witness pure and omnipresent who as the silent Conscious Soul of the cosmos regards all the activity of the universe; it is Sachchidananda for whose delight universal Nature displays the eternal procession of her works. We are aware of an unwounded Delight, a pure and perfect Presence, an infinite and self-contained Power present in ourselves and all things, not divided ...
... mrtyu . And even when the body is thrown away, when the process of manifestation is undertaken the Soul has not to gather the physical and the vital and the mental from any of the formations of Universal Nature – as in the case of ordinary souls. In case these are Supramentalised the whole being is quite ready ; one has simply to take up the ready formation and manifest the Divine. Disciple : ... affords" ? It is already there in Nature, as there is electricity, gas etc. Disciple : What is Nature ? Sri Aurobindo : The Universal Divine has projected the Universe and there is Universal Nature which affords all the material for us. Essentially, everything in Nature corresponds to something in the Universal Soul. For instance, the vital corresponds to the divine Tapas. The details... suffer but suffering does not purify them ; on the contrary, it makes them worse. To my mind suffering is a sign of imperfection of nature. It is a stamp of imperfection on the individual and universal nature. You have to learn from suffering : firstly, why it is there, and, secondly, how to overcome it. But if you take delight in it and invite it like the Christian monks who used to get whipped ...
... and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind, or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought... for us. At every Page 51 instant they choose what we want or desire, what we like or dislike. It is as if life took place without us. When does a real "I" burst forth in all this? Universal Nature , Sri Aurobindo wrote, deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that is what we usually call ourselves. 48 Nor can we say... Matter, which obeys universal laws greater than ours. What, then, is the element in us that is not our environment, not our family, not our traditions or marriage or job, that is not the play of universal Nature in us or of circumstances, yet gives us a sense of self, even if everything else collapses – and especially when everything else has collapsed, at our hour of truth? In the course of our ...
... 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 universal Nature. It becomes then increasingly... absolute equality of his liberated soul and nature. It is evident from the foregoing consideration that desire is not the real and ultimate motive-force behind the movements of individual and universal nature, but is only an overt incentive to action, a concomitant of ignorance, entailing conflict and struggle and suffering, which are inevitable, even necessary, in the egoistic phase of evolution.... able to say, 'No, this is not myself, I will have nothing Page 232 to do with it’, it becomes much easier to disperse them. ”¹ In fact, all desires come from outside, from the universal Nature, and take shelter in our subconscient vital. It is only when they rise from there into our conscious mind that we become aware of them. It is our ignorance that makes us think that they are ...
... are liberated from ego, our real self behind comes forward, impersonal and universal, and it sees in its self-vision of unity with the universal Spirit universal Nature as the doer of the work and the Divine Will behind as the master of universal Nature. Only so long as we have not this knowledge, are we bound by the character of the ego and its will as the doer and do good and evil and have the satisfaction... enjoyment, some satisfaction of the mind, the will, the passions or the body. Pain is an experience our nature has to accept when it must, involuntarily as a necessity, an unavoidable incident of universal Nature, or voluntarily as a means to what we seek after, but not a thing desired for its own sake,—except when it is so sought in perversity or with an ardour of enthusiasm in suffering for some touch ...
... subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature,—universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that, whether formed... established his position in the inner self, they can only attack and retire. It is true that we bring most of ourselves—or rather most of our predispositions, tendencies of reaction to the universal Nature—from past lives. Heredity only affects strongly the external being; besides, all the effects of heredity are not accepted even there, only those that are in consonance with what we are to be or... habits. When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Page 220 Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the subconscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone. When the physical consciousness ...
... Anger Comes from Outside The fact that the anger comes with such force is itself enough to show that it is not in you that it is, but that it comes from outside. It is a rush of force from the universal Nature that tries to take possession of the individual being and make that being act according to the will of this outside force and not according to the will of the soul within. These things come in... them as not yours, then by degrees you can get free of anger, desire and other things that trouble you. In fact all these ignorant vital movements originate from outside in the ignorant 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... progresses in his sadhana. As the consciousness of this inner being increases by sadhana, the surface nature and its responses are pushed out and can be got rid of altogether. But the ignorant universal Nature does not want to let go and throws the old movements on the sadhak and tries to get them inside him again; owing to a habit the superficial nature gives the old responses. If one can get the firm ...
... reactions. There is very little that is personal about it all, says Eckhart; what we see in us is not our own personal nature but mostly collective human nature. The Gita calls it Prakriti or universal Nature-Force. This insight into the extraneous nature of the forces that operate in our surface being is a powerful tool in overcoming desire—the very first precondition laid down by the Gita... 144 Page 139 For him [the Yogi] the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these t... vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. 145 ... the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come into us or pass through us as waves from the universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. 146 The error comes from thinking that your thoughts ...
... happens to the human person after death or would happen normally. Thus man, the ordinary or "natural" man, has no personality, no real individuality. It is just like a wave-formation out of universal nature, moving in and being moved by the total swell and heave, being formed and being destroyed every moment—as the poet says: They take birth in you and they dissolve in you like the... a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the 'first formation but delays and obstructs the true and final formation. For the ego is a formation, an individual formation, but on the level of universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal cosmic movement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general expanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the constituting elements remaining... in and through these the shape of things to come is being built up. In the meanwhile, however, actually the vital is an executive agent of the lower consciousness: it is an anonymous force of universal nature canalised in to a temporary figure that is the normal individual man. The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal formulation of an immortal soul as energy consciousness with ...
... Nature or its liberation from Nature. All these positions of the Sankhya we find to be perfectly valid in experience when we come into direct inner contact with the realities of individual soul and universal Nature; but they are pragmatic truths and we are not bound to accept them as the whole or the fundamental truth either of self or of Nature. Prakriti presents itself as an inconscient Energy in the material... philosophy stresses this personal aspect, makes the Purusha many, plural, and assigns universality to Nature; in this view each soul is an independent existence although all souls experience a common universal Nature. × Gita. ...
... irrational habits. When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the subconscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone. When the physical consciousness... subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, — universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that, whether formed ...
... and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape some where in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these t... prevails in the end, the will of the Purusha and not the more blind and obstinate parts of Prakriti. Keep the conscious will all right and it will carry on to the goal,—just as the resistance in universal Nature will yield in the end before the Divine Descent. Page 238 August 18, 1932 (from Mother) I have felt and been moved by the sincerity of your letter. Do not be too sorry ...
... nt to itself, since never has it been known to come into existence or to exist or to culminate in its existence apart from the rest, without their aid and independently of universal being and universal nature. Secondly, there is that which he knows only indirectly by his mind and bodily senses and its effects upon them, yet must strive always to know more and more completely: for he sees also this... all these becomings; the Self is the eternal unity of all these existences,—I am He. Cosmic energy is not other than the conscious force of that Self-existent: by that energy It takes through universal nature innumerable forms of itself; through its divine nature It can, embracing the universal but transcendent of it, arrive in them at the individual possession of its complete existence, when its presence ...
... impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom. But still, in... Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living. The surest way towards this ...
... desire, it raises a mass of reactions against itself, reactions of hatred, antagonism, unease in men which may have their result now or hereafter, and still more formidable adverse reactions in universal Nature. It is as if the patience of Nature, her willingness to be used were exhausted; the very forces that the ego of the strong vital man seized and bent to its purpose rebel and turn against him,... personality too is indeed formed by an action from within, but of that action it is not conscious, it seems to itself to be self formed or ready-made or formed by some ill-understood action of universal Nature. And yet fragmentary recollections of past births do sometimes remain in spite of these almost insuperable obstacles; there are even a very few cases of astonishingly exact and full memory in ...
... of life and not the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of works and does not see that all the workings of existence including his own internal and external activities are the workings of one universal Nature and nothing else. He sees himself as the enjoyer of works and imagines that for him all exists and him Nature ought to satisfy and obey his personal will; he does not see that she is not at all... lives in vain. Only when the individual being begins to perceive and acknowledge in his acts the value of the self in others as well as the power and needs of his own ego, begins to perceive universal Nature behind his own workings and through the cosmic godheads gets some glimpse of the One and the Infinite, is he on his way to the transcendence of his limitation by the ego and the discovery of his ...
... power and works of these innumerable existences. Each soul is a partial being of this self-existent One, an eternal soul of this All-Soul, a partial manifestation of this supreme Lord and his universal Nature. All here is this Divine, this Godhead, Vasudeva; for by Nature and the soul in Nature he becomes all that is and everything proceeds from him and lives in or by him, though he himself is greater... high secret and mystery, uttamaṁ rahasyam , of the action of the liberated man. It is the result of a growing of the human soul into a divine Light and of the union of its nature with a highest universal nature. This change cannot come about except by knowledge. There is necessary a right knowledge of self and God and world and a Page 459 living and growing into the greater consciousness ...
... the forces by the government of the Divine. One can live in contact with the Divine even amidst the universal forces—but to live in the Divine one must be able to rise beyond the lower universal nature or to call down the Divine consciousness here. The beginnings are difficult for most—and at no time is it really easy. The Universal Energies and the Divine Force There is only one Force... subconscient—or, even if that is no longer the case, of which there is a memory still in the subconscient. The Universal Forces and the Individual Egoism is part of the machinery—a chief part—of universal Nature, first to develop individuality out of indiscriminate force and substance of Nature and, secondly, to make the individual (through the machinery of egoistic thought, feeling, will and desire) ...
... constant Page 663 recurrence; for the lower nature is not only persistent in its repetitions and returns, but even when it is on the point of changing, the general Powers of that plane in universal Nature try to keep up the resistance by bringing back the old movements at each step in order to prevent the progress from being confirmed for good and made final. It is true therefore that a constant... the lower nature in general—mechanical, not voluntary—to repeat the old movements to which it has been or was quite recently accustomed when any strong wave of them comes in from the surrounding universal Nature. This creates a kind of recurrence of relapse into the states which the spiritual progress is pushing out and it is not easy to get rid of this recurrence altogether. The one thing when they come ...
... to the Divine and the Shakti" [ p. 10 ]. Can I take this to mean surrender of the outward life to the Universal Nature through reason and will (i.e. a rational adaptation of the material life to the ways of Nature) and surrender of the inward life to the Divine through faith? No. Universal Nature is a mass of forces, mental, vital and physical. The Divine is above with its supreme Shakti—and within ...
... subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature,—universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that, whether formed... irrational habits. When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the subconscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone. When something is erased from the ...
... jiva can be fashioned when, in response to its aspiration, the Supramental descends to give it a consistent personality. The exterior being of man is a perishable formation out of the stuff of universal Nature—mental, vital, physical— and is due to the complex interplay of all kinds of forces. The psychic absorbs the essence, as it were, of the experiences of the various formations behind which it stands;... and one with the exterior being. For, as a rule, the physical mind and the physical vital dissolve Page 79 with the death of the organism: they disintegrate and return to the universal Nature and nothing remains of their experiences. Not until they have become united with the psychic so that there arc not two halves but a single consciousness, the whole nature unified round the central ...
... of this life? What about heredity then? Do we not say that usually sensual parents have sensual issues, etc., etc.,? Another point—even if this subconscient is managed, is there not also universal nature which acts and reacts on individual consciousness and brings back from somewhere what is thrown away from here? There are three sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the... can achieve poetry like that in English, what may you not do in Bengali? June 15, 1935 Can you stretch your hand, Sir, and help me out of this mud of the subconscient, inconscient, universal nature or God knows what? I am quite willing to stretch out any number of hands for the purpose. Hold on and you will get out. June 17, 1935 I send you a small poem, opinion? It ...
... helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence in the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the... of their own self-chosen lot, They waited for the adventure of new life. The Soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. Page 37 When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but ...
... another state there is an inclusion of beings in oneself and a reality of their life as part pf one's own being. Often there is no rule or governance of the immense movement, but a free play of universal Nature to which what was the personal being responds with a passive acceptance or a dynamic identity, while yet the spirit remains free and undisturbed by any bondage to the reactions of this passivity... sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties. The operations of this subliminal ...
... serious test he will have to go through. What is more, it is not his Page 2 own personal nature alone which will try to resist him with its recalcitrance at every step; even the universal Nature will seek to erect a wall of darkness across his path, for this Nature under the prompting of cosmic Ignorance is deadly opposed to the prospect of any sadhaka escaping from her prison and undergoing... physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical.... There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light." (Letters on Yoga, Part IV, p. 1616) In the same connection the Mother too has warned the sadhakas of the Integral ...
... desires and impulses? How and why do they come into men? This is a thing one feels: one cannot say more than what everybody knows. As for how these come, they come as movements of universal Nature, taking form in the person if they are admitted, just as other natural forces move about in waves or currents and take form or act for particular purposes in a suitable receptacle. ... sadhaka? A force returned goes back necessarily into the universal plane—at most its form gets abolished but the energy returns there. When everything comes really from universal Nature, why are impulses felt as if they arose in one's own self? Because people are shut up in their personal consciousness — they see the results, that is the sensations in themselves but ...
... tiresome, if we are not always vigilant and surrendered. A complete immunity from this recurrence can be assured only when the impurities Page 218 have been flung far back into the universal nature from which they came, and nothing in our individual nature ever responds to them again in any way. THE INITIAL BASIS OF PURIFICATION The initial basis of purification is a poise... the flux of nature. Identifying oneself with the soul, one must be able to say in regard to the forces of the lower nature: "They are not mine, I have nothing to do with them. They belong to the universal nature of ignorance." This detachment should be accompanied by a withdrawal of sanction from the obscure movements of nature, and an uncompromising rejection of them. One must accept only those movements ...
... divine nature, we can only do by an effort of Godward knowledge, will and adoration. For the soul sent forth by the Supreme as his eternal portion, his immortal representative into the workings of universal Nature is yet obliged by the character of those workings, avaśaṁ prakṛter vaśāt , to identify itself in its external consciousness with her limiting conditions, to identify itself with a life, mind... matter is rather substance or act of energy than energy a motive power of self-existent material substance or an inherent power acting in matter has led to some revival of an older reading of universal Nature. The analysis of the ancient Indian thinkers allowed for the quantitative action of Nature, mātrā ; but that it regarded as proper to its more objective and Page 425 formally executive ...
... jiva can be fashioned when, in response to its aspiration, the Supramental descends to give it a consistent personality. The exterior being of man is a perishable formation out of the stuff of universal Nature—mental, vital, physical—and is due to the complex interplay of all kinds of forces. The psychic absorbs the essence, as it were, of the experiences of the various formations behind which it stands;... it is constantly in front and one with the exterior being. For, as a rule, the physical mind and the physical vital dissolve with the death of the organism: they disintegrate and return to the universal Nature and nothing remains of their experiences. Not until they have become united with the psychic, so that there are not two halves but a single consciousness, the whole nature unified round the central ...
... identify yourself with this ( indicating the Page 359 body). You have only to stop identifying yourself with that." "Justice is the strict logical determinism of the movements of Universal Nature. "Illnesses are this determinism applied to the material body. The medical mind, basing itself upon this ineluctable Justice, strives to bring about the conditions which should lead logically... into divine realisations." Words of the Mother, CWM Vol. 14, pp. 83-84 Page 360 What is the meaning of "Justice is the strict logical determinism of the movements of Universal Nature"? You know the law of determinism, don't you? You have not studied philosophy at all? ( Turning to a professor ) Pavitra, explain what determinism is to them. Try to be brief and clear. ...
... of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and Page 105 with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love... enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere Of universality into a consciousness belonging to its spiritual ...
... impetus of Nature in the physical man and will drop away with the body so that one can depart into Nirvana. In fact all these ignorant vital movements originate from outside in the ignorant 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... progresses in his sadhana. As the consciousness of this inner being increases by sadhana, the surface nature and its responses are pushed out and can be got rid of altogether. But the ignorant universal Nature does not want to let go and throws the old movements on the sadhak and tries to get them inside him again; owing to a habit the superficial nature gives the old responses. If one can get the firm ...
... till they are entirely foreign to your nature and no longer get admittance. Keep your resolution firm in your mind. It is the vital that is invaded by something foreign from the outside (universal) Nature; it is not your own feeling. If you keep your resolution firm, the vital also will begin to throw out this foreign matter. After each crisis there is something gained, if there has been... immense advance. Return of Vital Movements after Rejection It was evidently not the action of something that is rooted still within, but an old movement returning from outside (from the universal Nature) to which something in the vital still responds by force of habit, force of accustomed recurrence. This is shown by the fact that you felt nothing at the time—only afterwards; also by the alternations ...
... converted into a pretext for indulging the ordinary human nature. Sex a Movement of General Nature All movements are in the mass movements of Nature's cosmic forces—they are movements of universal Nature. The individual receives something of them, a wave or pressure of some cosmic force, and is driven by it; he thinks it is his own, generated in himself separately, but it is not so, it is part... the assent of the higher parts—until the victory is complete and it is driven even out of the surrounding or environmental consciousness which is the extension of ourselves into the general or universal Nature. Is it that the body does not accept the sex-thoughts and desires? If so, you are entitled to reject it as something external to you or at most existing only in the subconscient. For it ...
... . One has to be very persistent in rejection to get rid of it. There are two aspects of physical Nature as of all Nature—the individual and the universal. All things come into one from the universal Nature—but the individual physical keeps some of them and rejects others, and to those it keeps it gives a personal form. So these things can be said to be both inside it and coming outside from within... because it gives a special form and also outside and coming in from outside. But when one wants to get rid of them, one first throws out all that is within into the surrounding Nature—from there the universal Nature tries to bring them back or bring in new and similar things of its own to replace them. One has then constantly to reject this invasion. By constant rejection, the force of recurrence finally ...
... universe; abandon therefore desire and enjoy and covet no man's possession. THE GURU The Upanishad sets forth by pronouncing as the indispensable basis of its revelations the universal nature of God. This universal nature of Brahman the Eternal is the beginning and end of the Vedanta and if it is not accepted, nothing the Vedanta says can have any value, as all its propositions either proceed from ...
... others, are clay for many potters: and, as for what is left, was it not determined, even that which is most ourselves, by our individual, our racial, our human heredity or in the last resort by universal Nature who has shaped man and each man to what he is for her blind or her conscient uses? But we insist and say that we have a will which is aware of a however heavily burdened freedom and can shape... to obey or, if it resists, to bear the reaction of the Law; its partial freedom of a clouded and stumbling knowledge must be constantly overruled both in its action and its result by the law of universal Nature and the will of the seeing universal Spirit who governs the dispositions and consequences of Karma. This constrained overruled action is in patent fact the character of our mental being and action ...
... highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the... 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 which ...
... but very often they return. Why are they repeated, and where do they come from? Do they belong to the universal nature which is not yet purified, and will they keep on returning until my entire human nature is transformed? Page 235 Yes, they belong to the unregenerate universal Nature. But to the extent that we ourselves are transformed, we can keep them at a distance and they no longer ...
... to be very persistent in rejection 3 to get rid of it. There are two aspects of physical Nature as of all Nature — the individual and the universal. All things come into one from the universal Nature — but the individual physical keeps some of them and rejects others, and to those it keeps it gives a personal form. So these things can be said to be both inside it and coming outside from... Page 70 form and also outside and coming in from outside. But when one wants to get rid of them, one first throws out all that is within into the surrounding Nature — from there the universal Nature tries to bring them back or bring in new and similar things of its own to replace them. One has then constantly to reject this invasion. By constant rejection, the force of recurrence finally ...
... impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 53 This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought-centralisation in... individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego, and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly ...
... and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the... 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 which ...
... surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, — and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power... The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness ...
... terms the answer is : 'Offer actions to the one to whom they properly belong.' "The question is : To whom do they properly belong? Page 44 "The first answer is : 'They belong to Universal Nature, Prakriti.' "But the higher answer is obtained when the Gita points out that Prakriti ever acts for the Soul, Purusha. And Prakriti itself offers the sacrifice of all its works to Purusha... is an evolute of a vast cosmic energy which needs to be studied, if we are to deal properly and scientifically with our works. Page 46 "This Cosmic energy is called "Prakriti", universal Nature. If we analyse this energy, and if we observe it properly, we shall find that it has three modes: it has the mode of inertia (called tamas); it has the mode of passion, drive and struggle (called ...
... to be very persistent in rejection to get rid of it. "There are two aspects of physical Nature as of all Nature — the individual and the universal. All things come into one from the universal nature — but the individual physical keeps some of them and rejects others, and to those it keeps it gives a personal form. So these things can be said to be both inside it and coming outside from within... it gives a special form and also outside and coming in from outside. But when one wants to get rid of them, one first throws out all that is within into the surrounding nature — from there the universal Nature tries to bring them back or bring in new and similar things of its own to replace them. One has then constantly to reject this invasion. By constant rejection, the force of recurrence finally ...
... dynamic vitality. They felt that he was their Lord, their King. Shyamakanta was able to invoke and retain in his body the physical strength of the Universal Nature by establishing a union: the identity between his own strength and that of the Universal Nature. Perhaps the realisation of this physical identity – 'I am That' – in the end raised him into the realisation of the Transcendental Identity. ...
... vital-ego of the collective egos culminating in two devastating World Wars. If the vital-ego leads the nation hardly any other result is to be expected. Yet, paradoxical though it may sound, universal Nature is pressing forward to the unity of mankind not withstanding the two World-Wars. The only unit of collective life that remains to be achieved is mankind. Once the unity of mankind is attained... progress of humanity. It would be something like the British Common wealth — a federation of diverse nations with common aims and conventions but without any rigid constitution, The drive of universal Nature is towards human unity and if man can move in harmony with the intention of Nature much waste of time, energy and material could be avoided. The first task of such an international organisation ...
... physical mind, and revert to the joy and peace, the love and light of the psychic. Look upon your mind and treat its thoughts and ideas and logic and suggestions as something belonging to the universal nature. You are not the mind. Its thoughts and ideas must not be suffered to disturb or distract you. Stand back from them, recover your identity with your soul, and you will regain your true relation... light and love of the psychic. Your mind is not your real self, it is but a temporary perishable construction of Nature, and its ideas and thoughts have no permanent value. They come from the universal Nature and lodge in us for a time. Sri Aurobindo wants us to be firm and uncompromising in our "rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge ...
... ourselves without reserve to the Divine so best shall we receive the Divine Grace.”4 Grace and Universal Justice "Justice is the strict logical determinism of the movements of universal Nature.” 5 An inexorable law of causality, an inflexible system of cause and consequence governs the operations of all ¹ Words of the Mother. ² Advent, February, 1957. ³... "the divine Force alone”, as the Mother assures us, "has the power to intervene and change the course of Universal Justice.”¹ Grace possesses this freedom to override the determinism of universal nature, because it is from beyond the circle of nature that it acts—its sovereignty lies in its all-comprehending transcendence. Its freedom is not the licence of an arbitrary caprice, but the sovereign ...
... ego from one's spiritual consciousness that it appears in its true colours—a petty tool and creation of the ignorant mind, arrogating to itself the powers and qualities it receives from the universal Nature and pluming itself upon its trite, ephemeral triumphs! Can the infinite Self exult over a finite and fugitive success? As well then might the sea plume itself upon the swell and shimmer of a... and effective response to the demands of Spirit. A greater and freer play of intuition in the mind, life and the physical being; a sensitive perception of and participation in the working of the universal Nature; an increasing impersonal serenity and flexibility; and a steadier drive of the spiritual force, are some of the developing results of the widening and ascent of consciousness. But the complete ...
... who must have been quite young, then, perhaps about my age: It is not a revolt against the British government, which anyone can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature . Just imagine! This really was becoming quite an interesting challenge. How would Spartacus have reacted? Or Lenin? We can accumulate revolutions endlessly, but they won't revolutionize... after her. Something completely unknown to us, unknown to every species, which is going to revolutionize and change the face of the earth. As Sri Aurobindo said: “A revolt against the whole universal Nature.” We are in a certain invisible earthly concentration camp, and within that concentration camp (very much alive for us), we witness a phenomenon we call “death,” which we blame on typhus ...
... a revolt against the British Government which anyone can easily do," Sri Aurobindo said candidly. "It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature." The Revolutionary of the Swadeshi days would become the Revolutionary of the universal Nature. Page 320 ...
... will become aware of the transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence, consciousness, bliss, be one with Sachchidananda. He will become one with cosmic being and universal Nature: he will contain the world in himself, in his own cosmic consciousness and feel himself one with all beings; he will see himself in all and all in himself, become united and identified with the ...
... change, all play of cause & effect, whether in the mind or the body, whether in animate or inanimate Nature, is therefore karma, action or work,—work is the essential characteristic of Jagati, universal Nature, infinite Force in its universal play. But where then in Nature shall man find rest? Lassitude is not the rest he seeks, sleep is not the rest he seeks; all lassitude, all inertia is still movement ...
... by the whole universe and all that it contains, possessed through a man's senses so far as God in him accepts their action and in a man's soul by sympathy and identity with all beings & with universal Nature. Still, these things will always remain the instrument of enjoyment; the object of the enjoyment, the true object of all bhoga, for the liberated soul, is God,—not Nature, although God in Nature ...
... consciousness, his spirit can become one with God, one self with the Spirit of the universe or rise into a Light and Vastness that transcends the universe; his nature can become one dynamic power with universal Nature or one Light with a transcendental Gnosis. To be shut up for ever in his ego is not his ultimate perfection; he can become a universal soul, one with the supreme Unity, one with others, one with ...
... ideal way of which your nature is capable. By directing your life and nature in its own law of being towards that perfection, you can not only grow towards the ideal and enter into harmony with universal nature but come also into nearness and contact with a greater nature of divinity and move towards transcendence. That is the real object before you. From the life-basis I give you you can rise to the ...
... that the result of your works and theirs is constantly other than you or they desired or intended, not theirs, not yours, but omnipotently fixed by a greater Power that wills and acts here in universal Nature. Observe too that even the will in your works is not yours but Nature's. It is the will of the ego sense in you and is determined by the predominant quality in your composition which she has developed ...
... status a transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation, Parabrahman; but he is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things. He is the supreme Lord, the Master of works and universal nature. He at once exceeds and inhabits as its self the soul and mind and body of the creature. He is Purushottama, Parameshwara and Page 397 Paramatman and in all these equal aspects the ...
... divine efficient cause of all their becoming, God of the gods from whom all godheads have sprung, master of the universe who manifests and governs it from above by the power of his supreme and his universal Nature, bhūta-bhāvana bhūteśa deva-deva jagat-pate . And lastly he accepts him as that Vasudeva in and around us who is all things here by virtue of the world-pervading, all-inhabiting, all-constituting ...
... which our flesh returns after the brief interval of living, the immense inanimate within which our few feverish years seem to make a small noise and cease to be. A profound awe, a solemn sense of universal Nature blindly and inexorably at work in its gigantic reaches of space and time, pervade his philosophical epic like a religion manque, even as the presence of ari "unweeting" power, absolute and endless ...
... such as sweet smell, stoppage of breath, stability, vastness, timelessness etc., but these are occasional. The highest experience has been that of possession of self having some control over universal nature, but the ordinary mind takes hold of these experiences and reduces them to its own level. Do the experiences touch the mind—Yes, except on some occasions when they live in their own greatness ...
... individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly ...
... it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter ...
... another state there is an inclusion of beings in oneself and a reality of their life as part of one's own being. Often there is no rule or governance of the immense movement, but a free play of universal Nature to which what was the personal being responds with a passive acceptance or a dynamic identity, while yet the spirit remains free and undisturbed by any bondage to the reactions of this passivity ...
... that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature; there is nothing that it cannot image or visualise or turn into sensory formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance ...
... and activity playing outside him. This is a state of knowledge, for the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come, into us or pass through us as waves from the Universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. It is a great step to be able to see and feel the truths ...
... subconscient and from there surges up when you least expect it or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal Nature works and attacks from there as a force from outside trying to recover its kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements. One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away ...
... appears to be there. Christ is not only a supernatural cosmic presence: he 16.Hymn of the Universe, "Pensees", p. 143. 17. Ibid., p. 133. Page 10 is also universal nature, natural evolution itself moving towards its world-fulfilling term. He is not only present in but also himself "the birth, the growth and the consummation of all things". He both stands distinct ...
... inspired me and comforted me with recognition that my spiritual quest may be personal but that I am not alone in my endeavours. For instance, I find his following poems are representative of the universal nature of his poetry: 2. Ibid ., p. 9. 3. Ibid ., p. 325. Page 82 "Pilgrim of Truth" Each moment now is fraught with an immense Allure and impulse of ...
... the soul, the psychic being and the mental, vital and physical beings. When the psychic being gets the liberation, it feels the ego and the physical consciousness, merely as movements of the universal Nature outside itself, quite foreign to itself; and these movements can no more affect the psychic being in any way. ...
... is capable of receiving and turning into these new life values, into motions and phenomena of a vibration of vitality, life-contacts and physical contacts from other forms than its own and from universal Nature. This is a thing which forms of mere matter cannot do; they cannot turn contacts into life-values or any kind of value, partly because their power of reception,—although it exists, if occult evidence ...
... Unable by the claim of the Infinite upon us to dwell for ever in the bonds of the finite or to find there satisfaction and largeness and peace, we have to break all the bonds of individual and universal Nature, destroy all values, symbols, images, self definitions, limitations of the illimitable and lose all littleness and division in the Self that is for ever satisfied with its own infinity. Disgusted ...
... our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of ...
... that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes ...
... of Nature To transcend the natural action of the lower Prakriti is indispensable to the soul, if it is to be free in its self and free in its works. Harmonious subjection to this actual universal Nature, a condition of good and perfect work for the natural instruments, is not an ideal for the soul, which should rather be subject to God and his Shakti, but master of its own nature. As agent or ...
... spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love ...
... status of an inner passivity and an outer action independent of each other is a state of entire spiritual freedom. The Yogin, as the Gita says, even in acting does no actions, for it is not he, but universal Nature directed by the Lord of Nature which is at work. He is not bound by his works, nor do they leave any after effects or consequences in his mind, nor cling to or leave any mark on his soul; 4 ...
... formation as Prakriti. We have to see Him as one Existence, Being gathered in itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity of its existence, extended in universal nature and many-centred in innumerable beings; one Force static in its repose of self-gathered consciousness and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its ...
... waste and rapidly tentative expenditure of energy in which only a little is selected for the workings of the self-mastering will,—waste, be it understood, from this point of view, not that of universal Nature in which what is to us waste, serves the purposes of her economy. The activity of our bodies is a similar restlessness. It is the sign of a constant inability of the body to hold even the limited ...
... change. Its second step is the revelation of a self and spirit which supports our individual soul manifestation and soul development, but knows itself to be one being with cosmic Godhead and universal Nature and can stand back from that even as a transcendent spirit. By this discovery the being in us exceeds its separate individuality, enters into a cosmic consciousness, is released into a supracosmic ...
... constantly spending their vital energy and need to renew it; one way to do it is by pulling from others in a vital interchange. This however is not necessary if one knows how to draw from the universal Nature or from the Divine, i.e. from above. Moreover when the psychic is active—there is always more lost than gained by the vital interchange. I suppose it depends upon the person [ whether contact ...
... or at any rate a quietude which makes it easy to reject the thoughts that come and fix oneself on the object of meditation. If one becomes aware of the thoughts as coming from outside, from the universal Nature, then one can throw Page 303 them away before they reach the mind; in that way the mind finally falls silent. If neither of these things happens, a persistent practice of rejection ...
... extremely intense and need a great stillness in the being to bear and support them. It is the right fundamental consciousness that you have now got. The tamas and other movements of the lower universal Nature are bound to try to come in, but if one has the calm of the inner being which makes them felt as something external to the being, and the light of the psychic which instantly exposes and rejects ...
... in the environmental consciousness—but there it has no longer any possession of the being and can be thrown away altogether. That is a known fact that everything comes from outside, from universal Nature. But the individual is not bound to accept everything that comes; he can accept and he can reject. The rejection may not succeed at once, if there is a strong habit of past acceptance; but if ...
... your condition either circumstances or the Mother,—for that will only make things worse and increase the tamas, dryness, dullness, inertia,—but to recognise that there is here an element of the universal Nature reflected in yours which you must eliminate. And this can only be done by more and more surrender and aspiration and by so bringing in from beyond the vital and the mind the divine peace, light ...
... can't change them, that shows I am unfit, so I had better go", is the counter-strategy it adopts. But even if one counters that, the impulse itself is sufficient, coming strongly as it does from universal Nature, to restore to the vital for a short time its old blind irrational instinct to obey the push that has come. The doubts of the sadhaks more often rise from the vital than from the true ...
... indicate a being or else simply a Force given form entering into the consciousness. All the parts of the consciousness are like fields into which forces from the same planes of consciousness in the universal Nature are constantly entering or passing. The best thing is to observe without getting affected in either way or without attaching too much importance—for these are minor experiences and one's concentration ...
... this "volcano" flared up in Yoga when you were noted for its rareness in pre-Yoga? Subconscient surge? I was speaking of a past phase. I don't know about subconscient, must have come from universal Nature. 14 November 1936 I heard an interesting thing, that you gave X a big shout! Ah, I wish I had heard it! But I thought you had lost your capacity to shout? The supramental (even its ...
... subconscient and from there surges up when you least expect it or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal Nature works, and attacks from there as a force from outside trying to recover its kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements. One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These ...
... an independent category or stand on the triplicity of God, Soul and Nature. * The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital ...
... Rebirth The Psychic Being The Process of Rebirth The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital ...
... habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence in the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the ...
... is the Divine Grace that must be prayed for―if justice were to manifest, very few would be those who could stand in front of it. Justice is the strict logical determinism of the movements of Universal Nature. Illnesses are this determinism applied to the material body. The medical mind, basing itself upon this ineluctable Justice, strives to bring about conditions that should lead logically to good ...
... all the difficulties we encounter in life arise from the fact that we do not rely exclusively on the Divine to find the help we need. The Divine alone can liberate us from the mechanism of universal Nature. And this liberation is indispensable for the birth and development of the new race. Only if we give ourselves entirely to the Divine with total trust and gratitude will the difficulties be ...
... India was still struggling against British domination, Sri Aurobindo asserted: "It is not a revolt against the British Government [that is needed].... It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature." 2 For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world or new ideas or illuminations, as they are called. The question is not of making the Prison ...
... infinite of the Self and it possesses the infinite of Nature .... The gnostic soul is the child, but the King-child; here is the royal and eternal childhood whose toys are the worlds and all universal Nature is the miraculous garden of the play that tires never.... This biune being of Purusha-Prakriti is as if a flaming Sun and body of divine Light self-carried in its orbit by its own inner co ...
... that this "volcano" flared up in Yoga when you were noted for its rareness in pre-Yoga? Subconscient surge? I was speaking of a past phase. I don't know about subconscient must have come from universal Nature. November 14, 1936 What do you mean by "feminine women"? as opposed to "masculine women"? Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelievedly ...
... energies due to heredity, your past lives (the sum of energies of the past) and what you have acquired in this life. These are ready to act under favourable conditions, under the pressure of Nature, universal Nature which gives the sense of "I", "I am doing everything." This "I" and "mine" have no truth in the ordinary sense. DR. SATYENDRA: The other day you spoke of the fundamental personality. I couldn't ...
... broke my leg and took the sins of all of you upon my thigh? SATYENDRA: That is the general belief. It seems that the Mother also said something to that effect. PURANI: If this was said of Universal Nature, it would be more correct, perhaps. Of course we also come in there. SATYENDRA ( to Sri Aurobindo ): What do you say, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: Even in the old Yogas there is such a belief. Some ...
... the heights with the depths, the superconscient with the subconscient. In it the image of the Mother filled with the light in her. You were then shown a symbol of the rupāntar, the change in the universal Nature. This change was only in seed and in symbol. Afterwards this part of the vision disappeared and you saw again the darkness of the lower Nature. But in you the light was there still and the assurance ...
... consciousness, articulated itself in name and form and act. But the person that stands out as part and parcel of Prakriti, the cosmic movement, is, as we have said, only an instrument, a mode of that universal Nature. The true person that informs that apparent formulation is something else. . To be a person, it is said, one must be apart from the crowd. A person is the "single one", one who has attained ...
... operation of cosmic Nature by the sole application of the rigid formula of rewards and punishments invented by the mind of man. She does not work in this way at all. All that happens in the kingdom of universal Nature is governed by her intrinsic principles and laws, and the evolving soul of an individual man has to learn through them necessary "lessons of experience" and follow a course of Page 119 ...
... heart, even the body-consciousness, all "see" in different ways. All these and other similar parts of the being are "like fields into which forces from the same planes of consciousness in the universal Nature are constantly entering or passing." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 947) Our mind and life and physical consciousness with all their complex sub-levels can each in its own way become ...
... Gunas, which are at the root of our senses, senses of knowledge and senses of action, and of the ego-sense, even of our intelligent will. To deal with our action we have to deal with Prakriti, the universal Nature, the universal machine of action, on which we are mounted and by which we are determined in our desires and our so-called free choice, prakrtim yanti bhutani, nigrahah kim karisyati. According ...
... there are others extending from below the spine which are not so well-known. It is true, however, that the centres in the individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs more to the universal nature. There is a centre above and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side, a centre below and away from under the feet. The yoga-centres are centres of consciousness and energy; they are ...
... embraces the subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly ...
... brain at the bottom, and over it the other two. There is a secret fire at the base of the human system. It is a fire as invoked by the Vedic Rishis: the tantriks view it as a coiled python—the universal nature-power, her massive ingathered creative energy. This energy is forceful and fierce because it is as much creative as it is destructive. That is the poison which the python carries, it is a poison ...
... sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers of potentialities in universal Nature ... It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties ..." "But more important is power ...
... the truth of Self is held with equal force; for even to the Indian dualists, God is the supreme Self and Reality in whom and by whom nature and man live, move and have their being. The Spirit, universal Nature, (whether called Maya, Prakriti or Shakti) and the soul in living beings, Page 39 Jiva, are the three truths which are universally admitted by all the religious sects and c ...
... sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties. The operations of this subliminal sense ...
... descent of Light, Power and Knowledge from above, or by an inward turn opening to the self, the universal consciousness, one knows the subliminal parts of one's own being and subliminal movement of universal nature. In the transition from mind to the Supermind one first comes to the movement of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Higher Mind. The next higher layer will be that of the Illumined Mind; the ...
... amorphous in our psychological being, repeating indefinitely, helplessly, mechanically, the desires and cravings, the impulses and instincts, the passions and propensities which enter into us from the universal nature of Ignorance. "To feel Thee and aspire for Thee, we must have emerged from the immense sea of the subconscient, we must have begun to crystallise, to define and so to know and then to give ...
... to find that all was He, His soul was a delegation of the All That turned from itself to join the one Supreme". After thus transcending the human formula, he widened out into a universal nature "Awaiting the ascent beyond the world, Awaiting the Descent the world to save". During this interval of waiting all his personal efforts ceased and he passed into an omnipotent ...
... "the unseen grew visible and audible" to Savitri. She knew that "...man evolving to divinest heights "Colloques still with the animal and the Djinn." In the arrangement of universal Nature there are no abrupt breaks, but "the high meets the low, all is a single plan". Ordinarily, Mind is only "a dynamic small machine producing ceaselessly till it wears out". Very often man is ...
... to the Mother, "This intellectual faculty which makes man vain and leads him into error., is the very faculty which can also, once enlightened and purified, lead him further, higher than the universal Nature, to the direct and conscious communion with the Lord of us all. He who is beyond all manifestation. This dividing intelligence which enables him to separate himself from me, enables him also to ...
... spiritual seeking. "This intellectual faculty which makes man vain and leads him into error, is the very faculty which can also, once enlightened and purified, lead him farther, higher than the universal Nature, to the direct and conscious communion with the Lord of us all. He who is beyond all manifestation. This dividing intelligence, which enables him to separate himself from me (the Divine), enables ...
... your nature seem to be obstinate, detach yourself from them, feel that they do not belong to your essential being, which is ever pure, but are an excrescence, a discharge from the surrounding universal nature, and reject them quietly and sincerely. A quiet, sincere, and uncompromising rejection is infinitely more powerful than a desperate wrestle and a perturbed preoccupation with them. The Mother ...
... cannot protect you. You must know that this is not a simple affair at all. It is not a revolt against the British Government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature and so one must think deeply before enrolling oneself with me. There will be tremendous forces that will attack you and you have constantly to go on making the right choice and giving consent ...
... nature, from all bondage. Disciple : Why does the Supreme take up the impersonal, status or attitude? Sri Aurobindo : Because it is -necessary for creation, as a support for the universal nature, to maintain all the; Page 282 play of the universal forces. He supports all equally as the aksara. Disciple : You spoke about the plane of the Gods. How can one ...
... will, of course, come afterwards. If you remain passive now, you will open yourself to all sorts of influences and accept all kinds of suggestions, ideas etc. coming from outside – from the universal nature. You will mistake them for those coming from the higher Power." 7-10-1925 (Two letters containing some questions about Sadhana-spiritual practice were received.) Sri Aurobindo ...
... though closely related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same deities were at once internal and external Powers of universal Nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for their worship in both aspects. But the psychological sense predominates.... The Veda is ...
... Doesn't the Lord immanent everywhere both give and receive Himself "being sovereignly active and receptive, at once in all things, in eve being"? 36 Like Truth, like Love, which are laws of universal Nature, Beauty is another universal law: In the world of forms a violation of Beauty is as great a fault as a violation of Truth in the world of ideas. For Beauty is the worship Nature offers ...
... do nothing. So long as I feel any power as mine, how puny it looks! SRI AUROBINDO: It is the right fundamental consciousness that you have now got. The tamas and other movements of the lower universal Nature are bound to try to come in, but if one has the calm of the inner being which makes them felt as something external to the being and the light of the psychic which instantly exposes and rejects ...
... changes nothing in Matter? If the seeker has taken care of unifying his being and instilling his consciousness into the elements that make up his body, his sleep will be a conscious sleep and of a universal nature. He will be able to know at will what is happening in one place or another, in this person or that one, in this part of the world or another; and, being universal, his consciousness will naturally ...
... politics. He had been set another task which none but he could do. With another's help. Sri Aurobindo and Mirra met in Pondicherry. Together they were going to wage a war against the universal Nature. And give man independence from the law of Death. Let us start on our adventurous journey. Of course, I do not want to alarm anyone, but I feel it is my duty to warn you that in the ...
... that all the difficulties we meet within life come from the fact that we do not rely exclusively on the Divine to find the help we need. The Divine alone can liberate us from the mechanism of universal Nature. And this liberation is indispensable for the birth and development of the new race. It is only by giving ourselves entirely to the Divine in perfect trust and gratitude that the difficulties ...
... Swabhava is our right law of self-shaping, function, working, our Swadharma. This principle obtains throughout cosmos; there is everywhere Page 519 the one Power at work, one common universal Nature, but in each grade, form, energy, genus, species, individual creature she follows out a major Idea and minor ideas and principles of constant and complex variation that found both the permanent ...
... Refuge, he is ever leading them from within them and from above through the mortal appearances of ignorance and suffering and sin and evil, ever leading each through his nature and all through universal Nature towards a supreme light and bliss and immortality and transcendence. This is the fullness of the liberating knowledge. It is a knowledge of the Divine within us and in the world as at the same ...
... and man live, move and have their being and, if you eliminate God from his view of things, Nature and man would lose for him all their meaning Page 183 and importance. The Spirit, universal Nature (whether called Maya, Prakriti or Shakti) and the soul in living beings, Jiva, are the three truths which are universally admitted by all the many religious sects and conflicting religious ph ...
... and activity playing outside him. This is a state of knowledge; for the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come into us or pass through us as waves from the universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. It is a great step to be able to see and feel the truth ...
... one cannot remain in it—one has to go farther. Those can remain in it who do not want to change the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it. Your action is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action in the Ignorance ...
... and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these tho ...
... impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature." 5 However, what emerges from the contents of this compilation is not a gospel of fatalism, for, in the light of the secret dynamics of existence revealed herein, 'the forces of life ...
... a light of Knowledge which is growing upwards towards an unforeseen culmination. The Forces which seek to move him, and among them the Forces of good and evil, present themselves as powers of universal Nature; but they seem to belong not only to the physical universe, but to planes of Life and Mind beyond it. The first thing that we have to note of importance to the problem preoccupying us is that ...
... unwearying benevolence: "This intellectual faculty which makes man proud and leads him into error is the very same which, once enlightened and purified, can also lead him farther, higher than universal nature, to a direct and conscious communion with our Lord, with That which is beyond all manifestation. This dividing intellect, which makes him stand apart from me, also enables him to scale rapidly ...
... that there is nothing in the individual being which is not the expression or the deformation or diminution, reduction and lessening of something which has its origin in the Supreme and is of a universal nature. So, you see, all these ideas of "pulling", "calling", are not quite right. Essentially, the only thing one should do is to prepare oneself, make oneself worthy of this contact and, when one has ...
... " On the side of consciousness the new manifestation, the human, could be accounted for by an upsurge of concealed Consciousness from the involution in universal Nature. But in that case it must have had some material form already existent for its vehicle of emergence, the vehicle being adapted by the force of the emergence itself to the needs of a new inner ...
... consciousness of the work of a modern poet as a representative voice of his age, this inspiring vital sentiment of the nation conceived as a myriad-souled pioneer of human progress, of mankind, of universal Nature, of the vast web of a universal thought and action. His creation, triumphing over all defect and shortcoming, draws from it a unique broadness of view, vitality of force and sky-wide atmosphere ...
... the ideal of the direct surrender he has to find the direct moving or Guidance—that is why he rejects all that he sees to be merely mental, vital or physical impulsions coming from his own or universal Nature. Of course the full significance of the surrender comes out only when he is ready. Any work can be done as a field for the practice of the spirit of the Gita. The ordinary life consists ...
... related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same deities were at once internal and external Powers of Page 32 universal Nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for their worship in both aspects. But the psychological sense predominates and is more pervading ...
... Throat It cannot be anything physical but only a subtle physical sensation. The ear is the passage of communion between the inner mind centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal Nature. It sounds like a sensation of opening and enlarging of this passage. The nose is connected with the vital dynamic part of the mental—a man with a strong nose is supposed to have a strong ...
... awakening and the opening above we become aware of this cosmic consciousness, cosmic Nature and cosmic Self and its movements; our consciousness can widen and become one with it. The forces of universal Nature are always working on us without our knowing how they act or being able to get any general control over their action on us. By becoming conscious of the universal we are able to detect this working ...
... about the avaricious man becoming a serpent. These are popular romantic superstitions. The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature, Page 534 according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after ...
... consciousness ] is stored up in the frontal consciousness and remains there. (2) Part of it goes behind and remains as a support to the active part of the being. (3) Part flows out into the universal Nature. (4) Part is absorbed by the Inconscient and lost to the individual conscious action. Page 448 × ...
... because either they are there in the conscious part of the being as habits of the nature or they are there lying concealed and able to rise at any moment or they are suggestions from the general or universal Nature outside to which the personal being makes a response. In any case they rise in order that they may be met and cast out and finally rejected so that they may trouble the nature no longer. The amount ...
... habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of Page 668 the old movements, waves ...
... heights with the depths, the superconscient with the subconscient. In it the image of the Mother filled with the light in her. You were then shown a symbol of the rūpāntar , the change in the universal Nature. This change was only in seed and in symbol. Afterwards this part of the vision disappeared and you saw again the darkness of the lower Nature. But in you the light was there still and the assurance ...
... prevails in the end, the will of the Purusha and not the more blind and obstinate parts of Prakriti. Keep the conscious will all right and it will carry on to the goal,—just as the resistance in universal Nature will yield Page 195 in the end before the Divine Descent. The depression of the vital you feel is a continuation of the old feeling in the struggle, but you must reject it and ...
... ignorant nature will contend repeatedly and obstinately with the transforming Influence, supported in its lagging unwillingness or its stark resistance by most of the established forces of environing universal Nature; the powers and principalities and the ruling beings of the Ignorance will not easily give up their empire. At first there may have to be a prolonged, often tedious and painful period of p ...
... Purusha; it is the Soul Person or the embodied being, the individual self, Jivatman; it is the Self that seems to limit its power and knowledge so as to support an individual play of transcendent and universal Nature. In deepest reality the infinitely One is also infinitely multiple; we are not only a reflection or portion of That but we are That; our spiritual individuality—unlike our ego—does not preclude ...
... hypothesis presents considerable difficulties. On the side of consciousness the new manifestation, the human, could be accounted for by an upsurge of concealed Consciousness from the involution in universal Nature. But in that case it must have had some material form already existent for its vehicle of emergence, the vehicle being adapted by the force of the emergence itself to the needs of a new inner ...
... harmony that has been constructed, and there is not the full power to overcome the discord and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature. What is lacking is a spiritual knowledge and spiritual power, a power over self, a power born of inner unification with others, a power over the surrounding or invading world-forces, a full-visioned ...
... has transformed them and made them elements of a divine order. The gnostic soul is the child, but the king-child; 2 here is the royal and eternal childhood whose toys are the worlds and all universal Nature is the miraculous garden of the play that tires never. The gnosis takes up the condition of divine inertia; but this is no longer the inertia of the subject soul driven by Nature like a fallen ...
... develops, Page 640 the element of sympathy born of the secret oneness grows in him and he arrives at the idea of a widening cooperation and oneness with other beings, a harmony with universal Nature and universal being. The witness Purusha in the mind observes that the inadequacy of his effort, all the inadequacy in fact of man's life and nature arises from the separation and the consequent ...
... the lower poise this is not possible because the soul acts through the mind and the mind can only act individually and fragmentarily in a contented obedience or a struggling subjection to that universal Nature through which the divine knowledge and the divine Will are worked out in the cosmos. But the Spirit is in possession of knowledge and will, of which it is the source and cause and not a subject; ...
... foundation by bringing into it the permanent sense, the complete realisation, the secure possession of the oneness of our mind and soul with the minds and souls of others and the mind and soul of universal Nature. For always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. As it makes us live, even in our individual vital movement and its relations with all around us ...
... metaphors proceed on the assumption of a horizon-tal harmony, for they seek to illuminate each object in terms of an apparently different one. That points to a single manifold of form-activity — a universal Nature-force identical behind all objects Page 208 and, while variously manifesting them, keeping a subtle or secret affinity amongst them, an affinity whose discovery enlarges or i ...
... plane. According to Sri Aurobindo, man lives on several planes, and Existence is a manifold chord of powers, each power constituting a plane on which there is a universal play and within this universal Nature a large number of individual natures. People do not always realise that there are other worlds than the physical: they consider all the powers of our being as merely different aspects of bodily ...
... the principle of harmony, regulates the variety, casts it into a certain mould of unity. All existence is one, but with a constantly active principle of variation and individuation. There is a universal nature of things, but man while abiding within the principles of that nature, has also a nature of his own which distinguishes him from the animal and from lower forms of life. There is therefore this ...
... none. The whole is a mechanism which automatically turns out what it must with a certain inevitability but has no comprehending Intelligence, no intuitive Power behind it to determine its use. Universal Nature is a Chance that works as if it were a Necessity or else perhaps a Necessity that works like a self-regulating Chance. What seems to be consciousness has come out of this machine just like everything ...
... abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves. In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable, unmoving, unchanging, eternal,— nityaḥ sarvagataḥ sthāṇur acalo'yaṁ sanātanaḥ . In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one,—there is One Spirit ...
... an abstract entity, but what it is to intuition and in deeper soul experience, a conscious spiritual Reality, and that Reality as real here as in any far off absolute Superconscience. For then universal Nature would be no longer a mechanism with no secret but its own inconscient mechanics and no intention but the mere recurrent working; it would be the conscient energy of the universal Spirit hidden ...
... earth-limits. It is in such passages that Shakespeare is most true to Victor Hugo's similitude of him — a sea of sound: an elemental power not only wide and manifold, giving us humanity's universal nature, but also like the sea profound. Profound, again, in a double connotation: not merely does the word come, as always, from some depth of revealing intuition with a force of actuality — it comes ...
... very much surprised and shocked. Surely I haven't written all the letters which appeared in White Roses . The Mother has written for the whole of humanity—making me only her instrument. For the Universal Nature is One. In the book, About Savitri Part I , there are the Mother's explanations of each passage she had recited. Human-made policy eventually fails. The Supreme Truth remains for ever. ...
... Gradually I was becoming more conscious, and beginning to scan my imperfections and their causes; but it is not an easy thing to convert the physical nature. To get release from the Wheel of Universal Nature was a herculean task, I thought. Human nature does not pause, it goes on and on: it consists of numberless elements both old and new. It draws on past lives as well as on present circumstances ...
... joy of abundance. Nature has an instinctive thirst for light. Nature knows that one day she will realise. It is man who has rendered Nature sorrowful. Intimacy with universal Nature: this intimacy is only possible for those whose consciousness is vast and who are without preference and without repulsion. Page 10 The so-called forces of Nature are nothing but ...
... that all the difficulties we meet with in life come from the fact that we do not rely exclusively on the Divine for the help we need. The Divine alone can liberate us from the mechanism of universal Nature. And this liberation is indispensable for the birth and development of the new race. It is only by giving ourselves entirely to the Divine in perfect trust and gratitude that the difficulties ...
... ( The following conversation was noted down from memory. It occurred apropos of a young disciple who did not understand how everything—impulsions, desires, etc.—could come from "outside," from universal Nature, as Sri Aurobindo moreover declares, "I become what I see in myself." ) I told him once that he would begin to be intelligent when he could set all opposites face to face and make a synthesis ...
... moonlight and feeling Are one - Wordsworth for his profound simplicities and his powerful visionary effects due to a philosophical mind attuning itself to a secret Spirit behind universal Nature, a Spirit which is also behind this very mind but mostly wakes to awareness of its own depths by touches of sound or silence or quivering colour from wood and stream, hill and sky. Well could ...
... last years left to me in 'Christifying' (as I say) Evolution (which implies both the scientific work of establishing the 'convergence' of the Universe, and the religious work of disengaging the Universal Nature of the Christ of history). This, - and then to end well - 1.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 67-68: "...je ne puis eviter de repandre, de toute la force de ma personnalite, (petite ou grande ...
... and activity playing outside him. This is a state of knowledge, for the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come into us or pass through us as waves from the Universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. It is a great step to be able to see and feel the truths ...
... its gold heavenly hue Or stand upon this brittle earthly base. Once in her early days, before she grew up, she fully shared the joy of the vaster Nature. She was in tune with the universal Nature and was full of felicities. But that joy could not maintain its bright heavenly tinge of excellence. Gold, in the ancient symbolism, denotes Truth. After all, the human body made of earth is ...
... the practice of a spiritual discipline such as yoga, one comes to battle with not only the forces Page 124 of one's own personal nature, but also with corresponding forces of a universal nature which obstruct or attack the practitioner to subvert the efforts towards rising above the ordinary nature. The importance of using the mind's intelligence and will in dealing with such attacks ...
... matter is rather substance or act of energy than energy a motive power of self-existent material substance or an inherent power acting in matter has led to some revival of an older reading of universal Nature. The analysis of the ancient Indian thinkers allowed for the quantitative action of Nature, mātrā ; but that it regarded as proper to its more objective and formally executive working, while ...
... powerful knowledge. Moreover, we find in this inner or subliminal being the means of directly distinguishing between what rises from within and what comes to us from outside, from others or from universal Nature, and it becomes possible to exercise a control, a choice, a power of willed reception, rejection and selection, a clear power of self- building and harmonisation which we do not possess or can ...
... and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these t ...
... such as sweet smell, stoppage of breath, stability, vastness, timelessness etc., but these are occasional. The highest experience has been that of possession of self having some control over universal nature, but the ordinary mind takes hold of these experiences and reduces them to its own level. Do the experiences touch the mind — Yes, except on some occasions " when they live in their own greatness ...
... the educational endeavour initiated by Swami Vivekananda. Rabindra Nath Tagore created Shanti Niketan as a cradle of the creative development of personality in its harmonious relationship with universal Nature. In basic education, too, the emphasis on human personality and the harmony between hand, head and heart is unmistakably underlined. Sri Aurobindo gave the concept of integral personality as a ...
... conclusion that the Rishis arranged the substance of their thoughts in a system of parallelism by which the same cosmic powers and beings were at once internal and external powers and beings of universal Nature, and that they managed their expressions through a system of double values by which the same language served for their systems of the practice of yoga in both aspects. According to this psychological ...
... things through one's body and its organs. In the subliminal being one can find the means of 'directly distinguishing between what rises from within and what comes to us from outside, from others or universal Nature. One can even arrive at the development of the powers to exercise control, choice, power of reception, rejection and selection, and even powers of self-building and harmonization. As one enters ...
... though closely related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged/the Substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same deities were at once internal and external Powers of universal Nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for their worship in both aspects. But the psychological sense predominates and is more ...
... that the result of your works and theirs is constantly other than you or they desired or intended, not theirs, not yours, but omni potently fixed by a greater Power that wills and acts here in universal Nature. Observe too that even the will in your works is not yours but Nature's. It is the will of the ego sense in you and is determined by the predominant quality in your composition which she has developed ...
... mind. These experiences include those of the Self, Page 50 of Ishwara and the Divine Shakti of cosmic consciousness and of direct touch with cosmic forces and with occult movements of universal Nature. As a result of a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, one receives illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy ...
... personality too is indeed formed by an action from within, but of that action it is not conscious, it seems to itself to be self formed or readymade or formed by some ill understood action of universal Nature. And yet fragmentary Page 97 recollections of past births do sometimes remain in spite of these almost insuperable obstacles; there are even a very few cases of astonishingly exact ...
... that has been constructed, and there is not the full power to overcome the discords and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature." (Ibid.) This has been the root-cause behind the ultimate decay and degeneration of most, nay all, of the collectivities men have erected in the past. And the same fate may overtake ...
... one with the exterior being." (Ibid., pp. 148-49) "For, as a rule, the physical mind and the physical vital dissolve with the death of the organism: they disintegrate and return to the universal Nature and nothing remains of their experiences." (Ibid., p. 149) "Not until they [the physical mind and the physical vital] have become united with the psychic, so that there are not two halves ...
... What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness), is another matter. MYSELF: Can you stretch your hand, Sir and help me out of this mud of the subconscient, Inconscient, universal nature or God knows what? SRI AUROBINDO: I am quite willing to stretch out any number of hands for the purpose. Hold on and you will get out. Page 7 1936 MYSELF: My nights ...
... It is now necessary to extend the power of this immobile part to remain the witness of the changes of the other. Thought will seem to occur in front of it, and it will become aware that it is universal Nature which raises the play of thoughts. One must go towards this universalisation. Thoughts will come from outside and you will see them taking shape in you. You will also experience that you have ...
... Chinese art there is the expression of the Spirit in Nature. SRI AUROBINDO: Europeans have no clear idea of the Spirit and the spiritual. What Binyon mentions is the expression of the Spirit of universal Nature and nothing truly spiritual. As I have said, Far Eastern art expresses the Spirit as Nature, as Prakrid, while Indian art expresses the Spirit as Self, the spiritual being, Purusha. That is too ...
... embraces the subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly ...
... body was frail, food and sleep were medically quite inadequate to copewith her super-abundant vitality. "Do you think I live on these frugal meals alone? One can draw any amount of energy from universal Nature," she once said. Here we are face to face with the Divine Energy, the Shakti incarnate. Like Sri Aurobindo with regard to his massive correspondence, she could say, "If for nothing else, at least ...
... there are others extending from below the spine which are not so well known. It is true, however, that the centres in the individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs more to the universal nature. There is a centre above and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side, a centre below and away from under the feet. The yoga-centres are centres of consciousness and energy; they are ...
... brain at the bottom, and over it the other two. There is a secret fire at the base of the human system. It is a fire as invoked by the Vedic Rishis: the tantriks view it as a coiled python – the universal nature-power, her massive ingathered creative energy. This energy is forceful and fierce because it is as much creative as it is destructive. That is the poison which the python carries, it is a poison ...
... subjects, of all arts and sciences. But he wanted not only to be a doctor of theories but of practice also, not only a learned man but a man of power in addition – not only to know but to control. Universal nature was his field and he sought not only to measure and survey the outside but to probe into her deeper secret mysteries. In those days there was a line of inquiry pursued by savants that was called ...
... became aware of the: transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the supreme existence, consciousness, bliss, be one with Sachchidananda. He will become one with cosmic being and universal Nature: he will contain the world in himself, in his own cosmic consciousness and feel himself one with all beings; he will see himself in all and all in himself, become united and identified with the ...
... What more radical sedition was brewing? It is not a revolt against the British Government which any one can easily do, Sri Aurobindo would soon say. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature. 22 And Mother was still marveling in 1972, just one year before leaving her body, as if this remarkable coincidence seemed to her ever more remarkable, or more revealing: Theon and Sri ...
... same. That is what makes the difficulty of spiritual persons. For instance, somebody says, "This man is bad". The spiritual man says, "There is a bad tendency in Nature; there is no bad man. Universal nature has some tendency which is low. That's all." And there are so many things like that. There is revaluation, the way of looking from the spiritual point of view is absolutely different because ...
... spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine śakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love ...
... formation as prakrti. We see Him as "one Existence, Being gathered in Itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity of its existence, extended in universal Nature and many-centred in innumerable beings, one Force static in its repose of self-gathered consciousness and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its ...
... our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient world-energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, — and even in this construction, these functions, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of ...
... can say, of various predispositions, energies of the past, and what you have acquired in this life. These are there ready to act under favourable conditions, under the pressure of nature. It is Universal Nature that gives the sense of "I" or "I am doing everything". This "I" and 'mine' have no meaning except in another sense. Disciple : The other day I could not understand what you said about ...
... in our psychological being, repeating indefinitely, helplessly, mechanically, the desires and cravings, the impulses and instincts, the passions and propensities which enter into us from the universal nature of Ignorance. "To feel Thee and aspire for Thee, we must have emerged from the immense sea of the subconscient; we must have begun to crystallise, to define and so to know and then to ...
... pleasure and neutral indifference, in the scale of evolution. Here, we get this triple reaction because of the limitations of the force of our consciousness in the form, and exposure to the shocks of universal nature, which are alien to this ego which has come into existence. Therefore the ego feels itself out of harmony with the total. That is why there is pleasure, pain and neutral indifference. We can say ...
... still struggling against British domination, Sri Aurobindo declared : "It is not a revolt against the British Government... (which is needed), it is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature." 1 For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world nor of so-called illuminations. It is not a question of rendering the Prison of our lives ...
... in my earlier time before Yoga for the rareness of anger. At a certain period of the Yoga it rose in me like a volcano and I had to take a long time eliminating it Must have come from universal Nature." He clarified that that anger was not rudra-bhava which, naturally, he had also experienced. Rudrabhava is a violent severity against something very wrong. It rises from the heart. In ...
... this evolutionary crisis of earth and humanity. The ordinary average man is part and parcel of Nature's movement and his life is almost wholly moulded by circumstances: he has not developed an independent inner being that can react against the universal Nature's current, that is to say, the Nature as it is, as it is actually and dynamically expressed. He is the creature, described graphically... not entirely submerged in Nature's current, but endeavour to have their own way even against that current. Their psycho-vital, aided often by their physical ¹ Bh ramayan sarvabhutani yantrarudhani mayaya–XVIII.61 Page 157 consciousness, has an independent formation, being a strong centre of self-driven force, and can impress upon the outer Nature and circumstances its own... on the outside also, upon the field and circumstances, obliging them to change or move in the direction and according to the demand of the will. Consciousness has this power: only all depends on the nature of the consciousness and the will it embodies. For consciousness-will has varying degrees and levels of its potential. A will belonging to the purely mental consciousness can have only a very limited ...
... evolutionary crisis of earth and humanity. The ordinary average man is part and parcel of Nature's movement and his life is almost wholly moulded by circumstances: he has not developed an independent inner being that can react against the universal Nature's current, that is to say, the Nature as it is, as it is actually and dynamically expressed. He is the creature, described graphically in... are many who are called men of will, they are not entirely submerged in Nature's current, but endeavour to have their own way even against that current. Their psycho-vital, aided often by their physical consciousness, has an independent formation, being a strong centre of self-driven force, and can impress upon the outer Nature and circumstances its own pattern and disposition. Naturally, all depends... on the outside also, upon the field and circumstances, obliging them to change or move in the direction and according to the demand of the will. Consciousness has this power: only all depends on the nature of the consciousness and the will it embodies. For consciousness-will has varying degrees and levels of its potential. A will belonging to the purely mental consciousness can have only a very limited ...
... The Illusion of Sex Why does the illusion of sex not disappear? Too many roots in the human vital. Sex has a terrible tenacity. Besides, universal physical nature has such a need of it that even when man pushes it away, she throws it upon him as long as possible. 17 January 1935 The Mother ...
... physical life depends on the degree of harmony between the individual and universal physical Nature. Some people have a will which is spontaneously in tune with the will of Nature, and they succeed in everything they undertake; others, on the contrary, have a will which is more or less totally out of tune with the will of cosmic Nature and they fail in everything they do or try to do. As for the question... of being sombre, morose, of despairing, does not truly depend on events, but on a lack of faith in the nature. One who has faith, even if only in himself, can face all difficulties, all circumstances, even the most adverse, without discouragement or despair. He fights like a man to the end. Natures that lack faith also lack endurance and courage. Sri Aurobindo tells us that for human beings the degree ...
... black something. I didn’t have visions before. Is there any truth in it? SRI AUROBINDO: It is so seen when the inner vision is opened. It is an influence from an adverse force or from the universal lower nature (an influence more often than a possession) that brings about this violent depression and disturbance and it is seen like a grey or black cloud or form throwing itself on the adhar. MYSELF: ...
... and love are man's and by love and devotion you can enter into divine power and knowledge. * * * Man is the net that the Divine Fowler has spread to capture the wide and fleet universal physical Nature, so that through him it may be brought under control, tamed and transfigured. * * * If you think for yourself or feel for yourself or act for yourself, you become a ...
... into divine power and knowledge. * Man is the net that Divine Fowler has spread to capture the wide and fleet universal physical Nature, so that through him it may be brought under control, tamed and transfigured. * If you think for yourself or feel for yourself or act for ...
... than for the Mother to keep free—because the Mother by the very nature of her work had to identify herself with the Sadhaks, to support all their difficulties, to receive into herself all the poison in their nature... Very kind of them! ( Mother laughs ) "...to take up besides all the difficulties of the universal earth-Nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight ...
... of the universal, like the forces of Nature. NIRODBARAN: Are they self-directed? Have they some idea or consciousness behind them? SRI AUROBINDO: They are directed by the universal or the Supreme Being. The consciousness comes from the universal which is ultimately directed by the Supreme. PURANI: Are they individualised? SRI AUROBINDO: What do you mean by that? They are universal forces... support from the universal or the Supreme. SATYENDRA: We want to know if the attacks of diseases on people are attacks of forces or of beings. SRI AUROBINDO: Forces of the universal vital nature or beings. NIRODBARAN: The force of electricity or the force of Nature which causes an earthquake or a cyclone—is it a universal force or the force of the being? SRI AUROBINDO: What kind of being... forces. For instance, the universal force of love seizes upon a man and he becomes a lover. When the force leaves him, he ceases to be a lover. NIRODBARAN: But the force that is manifested through a being is its own force. SRI AUROBINDO: The force that is manifested through the being is the universal force and the being is part of the universal support from the universal being. Both derive their support ...
... to get free from illness than for the Mother to keep free—because the Mother by the very nature of her work had to identify herself with the sadhaks, to support all their difficulties, to receive into herself all the poison in their nature, to take up besides all the difficulties of the universal earth-Nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight them out. If she had not... disturbances, revolts should come? Could they be eliminated to some extent from the very beginning of one's sadhana so that there would be less of these things for the Mother to take into herself? The nature of the terrestrial consciousness and of humanity being what it is, these things were to some extent inevitable. It is only a very few who escape with the slighter adverse movements only. But after... other always takes it up and from him it tries to spread to others. It is of course because there is behind it one of the principles of life according to the Ignorance—a deeply rooted tendency of vital Nature. But it is the very aim of sadhana to overcome that and substitute a truer and diviner vital Force. 1 April 1934 Page 587 You have written to me that standing is not good for Mother ...
... its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking experience, they are all confused together… There is the universal physical consciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct dealing with all these... subconscient processes. But the body consciousness itself is only part of the individualised physical consciousness in us which we gather and build out of the secretly conscious forces of universal physical Nature. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness … the body obeys the mind automatically in those things in which it is formed or trained to obey it, but the relation... is a connection between the two. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The vital physical on the other hand is the vehicle of the nervous responses of our physical nature; it is the field and instrument of the smaller sensations, desires, reactions of all kinds to the impacts of the outer physical and gross material life. This vital physical part (supported by the lowest ...
... Ashram. "The vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam' of his spiritual experiences were perhaps too ethereal to be grasped by the average western reader but, mystic experiences being universal by nature, they were readily identified here by people engaged in spiritual pursuit. Dilip Kumar Roy had corresponded with "A.E." and had sent him six of Amal Kiran's poems, requesting him to ...
... be no Page 214 equation, but only a temporary unstable equilibrium ending in the death of the body, the dissolution of the individual and the dispersal of its elements into the universality. The nature of physical Life forbids the idea of an individual form possessing the same inherent power of persistence and therefore of continued individual existence as the atoms of which it is composed... against the principle of fusion in Nature. But unity is as strong a principle in Nature as division; it is indeed the master principle of which division is only a subordinate term, and to the principle of unity every divided form must therefore subordinate itself in one fashion or another by mechanical necessity, by compulsion, by assent or inducement. Therefore, if Nature for her own ends, in order principally... realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below.( Rig Veda. III. 22. 3. ) The Lord of Delight conquers the third status; he maintains and governs according to the Soul of universality; like a hawk, a kite he settles on the vessel and uplifts it, a finder of the Light he manifests the fourth status and cleaves to the ocean that is the billowing of those waters.( Rig Veda. IX. ...
... but of Nature and his own personality, the secret at once of the individual and the universe. That was the Will universal in Nature, greater than the acts of Nature which proceed from him, to whom belong her actions and man's and the fruits of them. Therefore has he to do works as a sacrifice, because that is the truth of his works and of all works. Nature is the worker and not ego, but Nature is only... effort and labour to a result determined not by himself, but by the universal action and purpose. But he has to do yet more, he has to give up the idea of being the doer and to see, freed from all personality, that it is the universal intelligence, will, mind, life that is at work in him and in all others. Nature is the universal worker; his works are hers, even as the fruits of her works in him are... y one self and spirit with all, even as his outer nature will have become to his consciousness an inseparable part of the universal mind, life and will. His separative egoistic personality will have been taken up and extinguished in the impersonality of spiritual being; his separative egoistic nature will be unified with the action of cosmic Nature. But this liberation is dependent on two simultaneous ...
... becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self. Page 269 There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical nature, and it is out of a selection of their forces and movements that the... Everyone has a universal consciousness standing concealed behind the individualised personality. When one becomes aware of it one feels in contact with the universal self and forces or one with them. When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic self as one's own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself... say, "This is a cosmic weakness." Universal applies to everything in the universe—there are individual beings everywhere, but not physical in the terrestrial sense—the composition being different. The Nature of the Cosmic Consciousness Man is shut up at present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses ...
... persistently will prevent the serious disturbance; to keep quiet and steadily open yourself will prevent any long obscuration. These oscillations [ of consciousness ] always come. The universal lower Nature tries to come back and resume its hold—the lower vital or the physical consciousness responds, not always because Page 60 it wants or likes to do so but because the old habit of... which you complain is that the nature of the consciousness is like that; after a little spell of wakefulness it feels the need of a little sleep. Very often in the beginning the wakings are brief, the sleeps long; afterwards it becomes more equal and later on the sleep periods are shorter and shorter. Another cause of these alternations, when one is receiving, is the nature's need of closing up to assimilate... resent it. But the transformation of the whole nature is not an easy thing to accomplish and the Force that does it knows better than our mental ignorance or our vital impatience. There is nothing wrong in having intervals of passive peace without anything happening—they come naturally in the sadhana as a basis for fresh action when the nature is ready for it. It is only the vital attitude that ...
... the body consciousness itself is only part of the individualised physical consciousness in us which we gather and build out of the secretly conscious forces of universal physical Nature. There is the universal physical consciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct... the outer self and become aware of all this inner being and inner nature. For then alone can we break the limitations of the ignorant external self which receives consciously only the outer touches and knows things indirectly through the outer mind and senses, and become directly aware of the universal consciousness and the universal forces that play through us and around us. And Page 204 ... in two different senses. Sometimes it denotes the consciousness behind the veil of the outer being, the mental or vital or physical within, which is in direct touch with the universal mind, the universal life forces, the universal physical forces. Sometimes, on the other hand, we mean an inmost mental, vital, physical, more specifically called the true mind, the true vital, the true physical consciousness ...
... of our life and body may be described as a bundle of habits formed by the past evolution in Nature and held together by the persistent memory of this secret consciousness. For chitta, the primary stuff of consciousness, is like prana and body universal in Nature, but is subconscient and mechanical in nature of Matter. But in fact all action of the mind or inner instrument arises out of this chitta... mechanical continued workings of a necessarily imperfect nature. This, however possible as a stage towards a final cessation of all activity, is evidently not a counsel of active perfection. But it is meant that the Siddha of the active integral perfection will live dynamically in the working of the transcendent power of the divine Spirit as a universal will through the supermind individualised in him for... perfection will not be a sattwic purity, but a thing uplifted beyond the gunas of Nature, a perfection of spiritual knowledge, spiritual power, spiritual delight, unity and harmony of unity; the outward perfection of his works will be freely shaped as the self-expression of this inner spiritual transcendence and universality. For this change he must make conscient in him that power of spirit and supermind ...
... of the disciples, she had to identify herself with them, in other words sharing their difficulties, even receiving into herself "all the poison in their nature". But she had also to tackle "all the difficulties of the universal earth-Nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight them out". 12 It was this cumulative strain that had proved a little too much, and precipitated... of course, that the sadhaks had brought about the Mother's illness. Rather was it due, as Sri Aurobindo explained in the course of another letter written four days later, "to a struggle with universal forces which far overpassed the scope of any individual or group of individuals". All the same the illness was a warning against a seemingly too lavish expenditure of the Mother's energies: ... had to make allowances for human frailties. All that called for infinite patience and a generous understanding little short of the Divine. Aside from the difficulties caused by the polyglot nature of the Ashram community - an advantage, certainly, when the larger aim of the Yoga, world-transformation, was taken into consideration, but a disadvantage on a shorter view - there was the complicated ...
... and difficult for them. We find this confirmed by Sri Aurobindo: ‘The Mother by the very nature of her work had to identify herself with the Sadhaks, to support all their difficulties, to receive into herself all the poison in their nature, to take up besides all the difficulties of the universal Earth-Nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight them out. If she had not... terrestrial nature and its limitations and how much they have to bear of the difficulties of transformation …’ All the same, many months later he clarified some of this. ‘The Mother by the very nature of her work had to identify herself with the Sadhaks, to support all their difficulties, to receive into herself all the poison in their nature, to take up besides all the difficulties of the universal Earth-Nature... man’s turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it,’ we read in The Synthesis of Yoga. ‘It is the very 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 ...
... s. (2) "Concentration in witness-detachment" this exercise toe sadhaka will try to consider the racing thoughts and feelings as not his own at all but rather alien offsprings of universal human nature, passing through his mind's sky as so many wandering birds of passage. Let them wander at their whim: the sadhaka will refrain from taking any interest in them, either positive or negative... necessarily in brief, the nature, necessity and utility of meditation and concentration in the Integral Yoga. In the fulfilment of our sadhana we aspire to lead a divine life here upon earth itself in an embodied physical existence. But is it possible to lead a divine life without first achieving the divine consciousness? For, it is consciousness that determines the nature and quality of the life... look into ourselves and see and enter into ourselves and live within is the first necessity for transformation of nature and for the divine life." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 1027) So we see that if we would like to lead a truly spiritual-divine life with our nature divinely transformed, what becomes essential for us is not to remain floating on the surface level of our consciousness ...
... things which have to be taken into account in a true and living education: (i) the man, the individual in his commonness and uniqueness, (ii) the nature or people, and (iii) universal humanity. For, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "...within the universal mind and soul of humanity is the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness, and between them... great collective soul and life that has appeared in the whole and has manifested a nature of its own and a law of that nature, a svabhāva and a svadharma, and has embodied it in its intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, dynamic, social and political forms and culture. Sri Aurobindo sees in humanity the Universal Spirit manifesting in the human race, evolving through mind and life but with a high... For, is not education something universal in nature, transcending the borders of any particular country? Mankind and its needs, one may aver, are the same everywhere and truth and knowledge also are one and have no country. How can one then talk of offering any "national" education to a child? A deeper consideration will not fail to expose the fallacious nature of this line of reasoning. A nation ...
... enter at all it will be as foreign elements, no longer parts of your normal nature but suggestions from outside, brings their last state; even, once seen and rejected, they may automatically fall away and disappear; but for most the process takes time. These things are not peculiar to you; they are parts of universal human nature; but they can, do and will disappear. But I have already told you... is not something that lasts and is always there, but rather something that touches and withdraws and waits for the nature to get ready. But this is not so in every case, not even in many cases, I believe. One has to begin with the soul's inherent longing, then the struggle with the nature to get the temple ready, then the unveiling of the Image, the permanent Presence in the sanctuary. P.S. All this... the Supreme. For the writer of the Gita, Krishna was the source of Knowledge and Power as well as Love, the Destroyer, Preserver, Creator in one, so necessarily Vishnu was only an aspect of this universal Divine. In the Mahabharat indeed Krishna comes as an incarnation of Vishnu, but that can be turned by taking it that it was through the Vishnu aspect as his frontal appearance that he manifested, ...
... ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.’ 8 The Mother as Maheshwari is... difficulties of the universal earth-nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight them out. If she had not done that [and if he had not done that], not a single Sadhak would have been able to practise this Yoga. The Divine has to put on humanity in order that the human being may rise to the Divine. It is a simple truth, but nobody in the Ashram seems able to understand that... all happenings in the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the workings of the universal forces and use them for her works; for the rest she knows what she needs to know, sometimes with her inner self, sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self, but she brings forward only what is needed to be brought forward so that the working is done.’ ...
... roga which still survived as unreasoned recurrences. The fever seems to be a revolt of the old physical nature intended for breaking down of the results obtained & the recovery of the system by the forces of disorder. The disorder in the subjective being has once more disappeared & universal ananda, including the ananda of battle & defeat, has remanifested itself; the object of particular asiddhis... The secret of the continued struggle long understood is now fully revealed to the experience in knowledge & sensation. It is Page 469 a struggle between certain parts of the universal-personal Nature which are anandamaya of the mentality & attached to the slow, gradual & pleasant development of the siddhi through mental ananda & samata & others which are tapomaya of the sat in the mentality... disturbance of samata, sukham, prasáda, but it is nothing compared with former disturbances; its movements are dull, brief & external, tamasic, not rajasic, of the nature of depression & [?weak] uneasiness with very little, if anything, of the nature of revolt. In the manas & prana pranic suggestions, even though illumined at a great distance from the vijnana or not illumined or with a smoky & murky light ...
... have not yet found Bidayotsabi. January 17, 1935 Why does the illusion of sex not disappear? Too many roots in the human vital. Sex has a terrible tenacity. Besides, universal physical nature has such a need of it that even when man pushes it away, she throws it upon him as long as possible. January 18, 1935 (From Mother) Quelle belle couverture vous m´avez... One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical, which play upon our nature—and these arc conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own sole and independent personality. Page... came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent action of your own personality, though it is something in your nature of which they make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source for the reason I state. Those ...
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