... the physical or externalising mind is in the throat joining the spine at the back. It was an attack on the physical mind. Going Out in the Vital Body It looks as if it were an exteriorisation 1 in which she goes out in Page 206 her vital body. When one does so consciously and at will, it is all right, but this unconscious exteriorisation is not always safe. The important question... consciousness with an awareness of a subtle body, subtle thought, subtle sensation etc. and move about in the vital or even in the physical world till they come back to the body. But when one begins, the vital body is at first a little vague and the consciousness also with the result that all is at first dim and unorganised. The serpent must be the Kundalini force which had left its coiled sleeping position... aware of physical scenes and things, it is not with a physical vision. It is possible for one who has trained his faculties to enter into touch with physical things although he is moving about in the vital body, to see and sense them accurately, even to act on them and physically move them. But the ordinary sadhaka who has no knowledge or organised experience or training in these things cannot do it. He ...
... there any objection to that ? You can meditate in any position whatever. I meditate often whilst walking. You spoke about going out "in the vital body" and "in the mental body". What does the latter phrase mean? When the vital body leaves the physical, the latter remains in trance, but if it is only the mind, this does not happen. The mind leaves, for instance, in meditation, and goes... As a rule, it is better to acquire a certain experience of the mental going-out and a mental knowledge of the planes before attempting the exit in the vital body. So in this yoga the going-out in the mental body precedes that in the vital body? Yes, but both these are yet subordinate to the spiritual experience which is much more important. I understand that the spiritual experience... the two movements in you: the one of quieting the mind and the other of going out of your physical body. This is probable. When I meditate I am aware of certain movements which I locate in my vital body. They are not physical though I feel them physically, specially between the chest and the head and within the head. There are movements in the higher body and they are felt even physically ...
... about the composition of Matter. It is all a play of atoms and they can be resolved into electrons and the electrons are formations of certain forces in the physical world. Then you come to the vital body. That is a formation from the vital world and then you have the mental body which is again a formation from the mental world. Similarly, the psychic being is also formed. I leave ^side other minor... the Soul is the psychic and mental indi-vidualisation which persists even after the dissolution of the physical body and the vital sheath. Now, when a man dies his physical body dissolves, the vital body dissolves after some time and the psychic and the mental bodies also dissolve. Take the case of an insect. In the insect there is only the physical consciousness and nothing else. Other formations... and the vital being we can return with the memory of that experience and also with that ready formation in another manifestation. Page 177 One can preserve, if he so chooses, his vital body after death and produce effects on the vital plane. Now suppose we Supramentalise the body. In that case we can carry the full physical experience and return with the fullest physical, vital and ...
... equivalent to eight hours of ordinary sleep. Does the vital body also need rest? Yes. The vital body surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion ...
... the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings, from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or caitya Page 148 puruṣa. At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but, as it grows, it becomes... is already one with the Divine in reality, but it may want the rest of the consciousness to realise it. The aspiration of the psychic being is for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into ...
... sense of floating in the air in its own (vital) body. The waves of a sea having the colour of lightning must have been the atmosphere of some vital province. I have known of some sadhaks, when they go at first out of the body in a more conscious way, thinking they have actually levitated, the vividness of the movement is so intense, but it is simply the vital body going out. Page 461 Flying ...
... Matter. The mental element too is moulded and limited by the life-power, obeys it and helps only to enrich and fulfil the urge of its desires and the energy of its impulses. This vital soul lives in a vital body composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter; it is a substance surcharged with conscious energy, capable of much more powerful perceptions, capacities, sense-activities than any that... behind his physical being, subliminal to it, unseen and unknown, but very close to it and forming with it the most naturally active part of his existence, this vital soul, this vital nature and this vital body; a whole vital plane connected with the life-world or desire-world is hidden in us, a secret consciousness in which life and desire find their untrammelled play and their easy self-expression and ...
... what we call tangible matter, is only our most outward or ‘gross’ body. This material sheath is surrounded by or embedded in a vital sheath consisting of substance of the vital plane. It is in this vital body that we go in search of adventure in our vital dreams and that we leave our material or gross body for good at the time of death. Both bodies are in their turn surrounded by or embedded in a mental... worlds. If our mental body is sufficiently developed we can roam about in it through mental dream worlds, and after death we spend some time in it, after having left the vital worlds by discarding our vital body. Then there still is a more subtle sheath, sometimes called the ‘causal body’, in which we may enter the supramental worlds once that body has completely been formed. Seen in this way the human ...
... coming to you. Otherwise your palm might have got hurt by my bristles!" On one of his visits to me we talked of subtle bodies. He said: "The Mother has a huge vital body. Anything even distantly approaching it is the vital body of Purani." Purani was another sadhak with whom I was in close touch. Indeed, with the exception of Pujalal, he was the first Ashramite I met. Pujalal had taken us to ...
... before coming to you. Other- wise your palm might have got hurt by my bristles!" On one of his visits to me we talked of subtle bodies. He said: "The Mother has a huge vital body. Anything even distantly approaching it is the vital body of Purani." Purani was another sadhak with whom I was in close touch. Indeed, with the exception of Pujalal, he was the first Ashramite I met. Pujalal had taken us to ...
... of knowledge—one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually "I am not the mind", I am not the viral", I am not the body", seeing these things as separate from one's real self—and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalized, an outer action, while within and detached from them ...
... projection of ourselves, in a subtle form of the mental or vital body, actually enter into other planes and worlds or into distant places and scenes of this world, move among them with a sort of bodily presence and bring back the direct experience of their scenes and truths and occurrences. It may even project actually the mental or vital body for the same purpose and travel in it, leaving the physical ...
... knowledge ... one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually "I am not the mind", "I am not the vital", "I am not the body", seeing these things as separate from one's real self—and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from them ...
... force is explained in the following passage: Page 147 "The vital body surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion, fatigue, exhaustion ...
... still exist and move about in our vital and mental bodies. It is the sojourn after death in the vital body, which then has to pass through kindred vital worlds, that is the origin of the belief in “hell”, for the lower vital worlds and the beings dwelling in those worlds can truly be infernal. When the vital body too is discarded, the soul still has to pass through mental worlds before it can enter the ...
... knowledge—one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually " I am not the mind," " I am not the vital," ,"I am not the body," seeing these things as separate from s real self—and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from ...
... (even if dominated by a vital being or vampire force), there is a psychic veiled behind it all. The Vital Body The physical life cannot last without the body nor can the body live without the life force, but the life in itself has a separate existence and a separate body of its own, the vital body, just as the mind has a separate existence and can exist on its own plane. All the organisation is held ...
... is possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man. The "ghost" of a man is of course not his soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital structure that is seized on by some force or being of the vital world for its own purpose. For normally the vital being with its personality exists after the dissolution... present or at least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man. The ghost is of course not the soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital ...
... knowledge—one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually "I am not the mind", "I am not the vital", "I am not the Page 328 body", seeing these things as separate from one's real self—and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached ...
... Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness The vital body surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion, fatigue, exhaustion ...
... one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually "I am not the mind", "I am not the vital", "I am not the body", seeing Page 37 these things as separate from one's real self - and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached ...
... the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or chaitya puruṣa . At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but as it grows, it becomes capable of coming... with the Divine in reality, but what is needed is that the rest of the consciousness should realise it. The aspiration of the psychic being is for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into this ...
... you experienced the existence of the vital being separate from the mind ? V : Yes, Seven or eight times I had the experience of a separate vital body (sheath) of my own. And I felt its existence quite separate from the mind. Sometimes that vital body used to go out also. Sri Aurobindo : How far has the peace descended in you ? V : It has descended down to the navel. Sri Aurobindo ...
... Page 165 their power. And if you call upon us for help, then even the last quarter is gone and they either take to their heels or dissolve. A friend of mine who used to go out in his vital body once complained that he was always being confronted with a gigantic tiger which made the night very wretched for him. I told him to banish all fear and walk straight up to the beast and stare it ...
... aspect of the Brahman, just as the Ishwara is its objective aspect. That is the Vedantic "Knowledge". Its result is peace, silence, liberation. As for the active Prakriti, Page 165 (mind, vital, body), the Yoga of Knowledge does not make it its aim to transform them—that would be no use as the idea is that if the liberation has come, it will all drop off at death. The only change wanted is to ...
... lose three-quarters of their power. And if you call upon us for help, then even the last quarter is gone and they either take to their heels or dissolve. A friend of mine who used to go out in his vital body once complained that he was always being confronted with a gigantic tiger which made the night very wretched for him. I told him to banish all fear and walk straight up to the beast and stare it ...
... outer being is unified and governed by the psychic being that the transformation of mind, life and body becomes possible. As Sri Aurobindo states: "The psychic being ... supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life....At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but as it grows, it becomes capable of coming forward and dominating the mind, ...
... inner condition, created by their state of mind at death, in which they realise nothing of where they are etc., others are quite conscious of the passage. It is true that the departing being in the vital body lingers for some time near the body or the scene of life very often for as many as eight days and in the ancient religions mantras and other means were used for the severance. Even after the severance ...
... merely a subjective aspect of the Brahman, just as the Ishwara is its objective aspect. That is the Vedantic "Knowledge". Its result is peace, silence, liberation. As for the active Prakriti, (mind, vital, body), the Yoga of Knowledge does not make it its aim to transform them—that would be no use as the idea is that if the liberation has come, it will all drop off at death. The only change wanted is to ...
... demand may be for the rest of the consciousness also to realise it. The aspiration of the psychic being would then translate this demand entirely for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into ...
... they silence or block the suggestions of death and illness (expressed or unexpressed) that prevent the return of health. They help also to combat the same things (adverse suggestions) in the mind, vital, body consciousness. Where all this is completely done or with some completeness, the effects can be very remarkable. In much the same way as Coué's suggestion system cured most of his patients ...
... usefulness. No doubt the physical is an obstinate obstacle, but it must be enlightened, persuaded, pressed even to change, but not oppressed or violently driven. People use violence with the mind, vital, body because they are in a hurry, but my own observation has always been that it leads to more reactions and hindrances and not to a genuinely sound advance. Page 371 ...
... consciousness—veiled or obscure in most of us—which supports and forms there the vital sheath, the prāṇa koṣa . When this is awakened, we no longer live in the physical body alone, but also in a vital body which penetrates and envelops the physical and is sensitive to impacts of another kind, to the play of the vital forces around us and coming in on us from the universe or from particular persons ...
... that dies, while the vital and mental bodies survive for some time, still enveloping the soul. It is in this condition that everyone has to traverse the worlds that correspond to the state of his vital body and the development of his mental body. In most cultures and individual cases the mental body does not possess the necessary knowledge to protect the transiting person. The lower regions of the vital ...
... out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into.... They used different words, another classification (I don't remember it) ...
... is cut off and one cannot reenter one's body (which means one is medically dead). The first experience at Tlemcen is probably the one when Théon had a fit of anger while Mother had gone out in her vital body in search of the "mantra of life," and the link was cut off by Theon's anger. ...
... naturally feels the attraction of soul to soul, the nearness of soul to soul, the union of soul with soul are the things that are Page 211 to it most abiding and concrete- Mind, vital, body are means of expression and very precious means of expression, but the inner life is for it the first thing, the deepest reality and these have to be subordinated to it and conditioned by it its ...
... the single bowl which was framed by Twashtri, the Framer of things, with higher workings, and multiplied four-fold the original material body and perfected the four planes of the physical body, vital body, mental body and the causal or ideal body. These four bodies become the four-fold bowl for the pouring of the nectar, and thus these bodies partake of the nature of the nectar of Immortality. ...
... hrday a guhyam , or the being which is described in the Upanishads as "no bigger than the size of one's thumb") has a spontaneous aspiration for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into ...
... what has to happen to it in the future. The following statement of Sri Aurobindo gives a brief outline of what happens after the death of the body: 'It is true that the departing being in the vital body lingers for sometime near the body or the scene of life very often for as many as eight days.... Even after these verance from the body a very earth-bound nature or one full of strong physical desires ...
... good musicians, has a psychic source, the source, for example, of the Ragas. It does not come from the top heights, it has rather an inner and intimate origin. But it has very rarely a sufficient vital body. I have heard a good deal of Indian music, quite a good deal indeed. I came across very rarely any that has a great vital force, not more than four or five times. But I have heard quite often that ...
... clustered around us through habitual repetition and formed our mental ego, or mental body, disintegrates and returns to the universal Mind; similarly, the vital vibrations that made up our vital ego, or vital body, disintegrate in the universal Page 86 Vital, just as the physical body disintegrates into its natural constituents in universal Matter. Only the psychic remains; it is eternal, as we ...
... When in Algeria with the Théons, exteriorises herself once and goes to Paris where, making herself felt to her friends, she picks up a pen and writes with it. Also moves up and down a train in her vital body. But 'having satisfied herself that it was possible' does not develop this occult faculty any further. Meets Paul Antoine Richard (1874-1967), a theologian and socialist, then a member of Théon's ...
... of her body and become conscious in the vital world — there were many intermediary states too, if one cared to explore them. After the vital came the mental ; you consciously went out of the vital body, left it behind —you could see it —and entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into . . . And in like manner she successively left twelve different bodies, one after the ...
... long time." We are not sure whether Mother referred to the same person when she cited someone's out-of-body experience. "A friend of mine," she said, "who was in the habit of going out in his vital body, complained one day that he found himself face to face with a gigantic tiger every time, which made him pass dreadful nights. I told him to drive away all fear and walk straight towards the beast ...
... function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or caitya purusa. At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but as it grows, it becomes capable of coming ...
... Darkness, who was the original incarnation of Light, Lucifer, has been converted. In the years of her intense occult activity in the beginning of the century, he agreed that she would give him a vital body, and since then he has been cooperating for the general Transformation. The Asura of Suffering, on the contrary, has been dissolved into his Origin. (But one should not forget that the four Asuras ...
... base of the spine. When it awakes, it rises up like the intertwined serpents in the caduceus 92 through the chakras or energy centres of the body and awakens them. (This happens in the subtle, vital body.) When fully unfolded, the kundalini touches the ‘thousand petalled lotus’ on top of the head, with the effect of a sudden resplendent sun. This extremely important step in Mirra’s yoga is mentioned ...
... being,—so they are termed in the Upanishads,—other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex existence. These possess powers, senses, capacities which are always secretly acting ...
... and scenes of this world, move among them with a sort of bodily presence and bring back the direct experience of their scenes and truths and occurrences. It may even project actually the mental or vital body for the same purpose and travel in it, leaving the physical body in a profoundest trance without sign of life until its return. The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, ...
... soul, it naturally feels the attraction of soul to soul, the nearness of soul to soul the Page 284 union of soul with soul are the things that are to it most abiding and concrete. Mind, vital, body are means of expression and very precious means of expression, but the inner life is for the soul the first thing, the deepest reality, and these have to be subordinated to it and conditioned by ...
... of desire and life-movement. The work of the Power has been directed towards quieting the restless movements and making it wide in consciousness as with the Mind. The large body you felt was the vital body, not the physical, sthūla śatīra . (4) The basis of your Sadhana must be silence and quiet, śānti, nīravatā . You must remain and grow always more and more deeply quiet and still both in ...
... present or at least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man. The ghost is of course not the soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital ...
... the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings, from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or caitya puruṣa . At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but, as it grows, it becomes capable of coming ...
... Didn't you have something to ask? Yes, I would have a few things.... There are two things. First, on the mental or vital planes, there are means of correspondence: you have a mental or a vital body, and you can develop those bodies. But this subtle physical, how do you develop it, how do you consciously make contact with it? ( after a long silence ) As for me, I didn't do it on purpose ...
... psychic is the representative here.¹ According to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic being (also known as Chaitya Purusha) has a spontaneous aspiration for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into ...
... being, vital being, mental being and others. Also, he has not only his gross physical body, visible and sensible to us, but has other bodies too; such as, a subtle physical body, a vital body, a mental body and others. His total being is constituted of five "Koshas" or sheaths and envelopes, such as, "Annamaya Kosha" (material envelope), "Prạnamaya Kosha" (vital envelope), "Manomaya Kosha" ...
... good musicians, has a psychic source, the source, for example, of the Ragas. It does not come from the top heights, it has rather an inner and intimate origin. But it has very rarely a sufficient vital body. I have heard a good deal of Indian music, quite a good deal indeed. I came across very rarely any that has a great vital force, not more than four or five times. But I have heard oftener that with ...
... only thing he could do. As a result he did in fact protect her. True, he did not rush out in his body, for that matter, if he had done, it would have been of no use. What rushed out of him was his vital body, a formation of that life energy which is most close to the body and almost as concrete as physical energy but much more powerful and effective. This vital power concentrated and projected out of ...
... psychic is the representative here.10 According to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic being (also known as Chaitya Purusha) has a spontaneous aspiration for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into ...
... result he did in fact protect her. True, he did not rush out in his body, for that matter, if he had Page 44 done, it would have been of no use. What rushed out of him was his vital body, a formation of that life energy which is most close to the body and almost as concrete as physical energy but much more powerful and effective. This vital power concentrated and projected out ...
... least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man."11 " The ghost is of course not the soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital ...
... saw me at the Darshan, he at once recognized me as that pressure. Disciple : Why does one rise and fall physically in meditation? Sri Aurobindo : It is not the physical but the vital body separating itself from the body. At one time I thought physical Siddhi was impossible. But in Alipore jail, once I found that my body had occupied a position which it was physically impossible to ...
... not conscious then the action must be mediumistic. Disciple : How is he able to move an object while remaining at a distance ? And how is he able to leave his physical body and with his vital body make himself felt somewhere else? Sri Aurobindo : Tremendous vital force is necessary to move an object at a distance. The Mother had such an experience in Algeria when she was there ...
... There are genuine and duly recorded experiments in the annals of nearly all countries, and if they appear exceptional, the exceptional can be generalized, it is a matter of training: mastery over the vital body functions, over respiration and heartbeat, controlled channeling of the energies throughout the body, concentration of the energies on one point, suspension of the energies, perfect rest in trance ...
... diversity in unity. It is the one luminous point in man that proclaims the advent of the Eternal Sun. "The aspiration of the psychic being is for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for Its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness ...
... working is only possible after Supramentalization; but a relative good working is possible on the lower planes if one is in contact with the Divine and careful, vigilant and conscious in mind and vital and body. That is a condition, besides, which is preparatory and almost indispensable for the Supramentalization. Sri Aurobindo ...
... ago. SRI AUROBINDO: My touch is always there; but you must learn to feel it not only with the outward contact as a medium — a touch of pen — but in its direct action on the mind and heart and vital and body, there would then be very much less difficulty — or no difficulty at all. (27.3.33) ...
... mind, vital and body. The removal of this covering is the release of the spirit—and it is removed when there is a full and wide spiritual silence. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being When one becomes aware of the Self calm, silent, wide, universal, it is no longer covered over by the ignorance; when one identifies with the Self and not with the mind, life and body and their ...
... of all the organs of the body is the explanation of a good health. A human personality consists of mind, vital and body with a soul or psychic being behind. Generally, the mind is full of fanciful ideas and incoherent thoughts. The vital has its own impulses. The body is full of inertia and tamasic habits. Our work is to silence the activities of the mind and the vital and open to the Power above... above for its manifestation. The body must learn to follow the rhythm of the soul. We should create the conditions in our outer personality so that the psychic from the depth of our heart could come forward and influence and guide and govern the whole being. This is the spiritual health. The first condition is to have a sincere wish to be guided by the soul. Not to have pretensions, not to... one's meanness and small limits are no doubt the essential conditions. To repeat the Divine's Name outside and be full of crookedness inside will destroy the spiritual health. The mind, life and body must be organized around the psychic to be guided and governed by the Presence, this is the goal we have set before us. The more the soul is the master of the being, the more one is spiritually ...
... working is only possible after supramentalisation; but a relative good working is possible on the lower planes if one is in contact with the Divine and careful, vigilant and conscious in mind and vital and body. That is a condition, besides, which is preparatory and almost indispensable for the supramentalisation. 23 February 1932 How can I become master of myself and keep self-discipline? ... influence or lead you, to make no demands or conditions Page 254 in the vital, to keep a quiet mind ready to receive the Truth but not insisting on its own ideas and formations,—finally, to keep the psychic awake and in front, so that you may be in constant contact and know truly what her will is; for the mind and vital can mistake other impulsions and suggestions for the Divine Will, but the psychic ...
... which projects itself beyond the body. "It is through this [environmental consciousness] that the thoughts, feelings etc. of others pass to enter into one—it is through this also that waves of the universal force—desire, sex, etc. come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body." 21 "Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his... his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses. "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and... or frontal consciousness of the outer being there is an inner or subliminal consciousness upon all the three levels—physical, vital, mental. Thus there is an inner mind, an inner vital and an inner physical. The inner mind is in touch with the universal mind, the inner vital with the universal life-forces, and the inner physical with the universal physical forces around us. Thus whereas the outer being ...
... Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: Classification of the Parts of the Being As for the Purusha it is there on all planes; there is a mental Purusha, manomaya , leader of the life and body, as the Upanishad puts it, a vital, a physical Purusha; there is the psychic being or Chaitya Purusha which supports and carries all these as it were. One may say that these are projections of the Jivatman put there... the being and commands the rest, as the psychic being or chaitya purusha is there. It is only in that sense that all flows from it, for it is the psychic being who each time creates a new mind, vital and body for himself. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The System of the Chakras ...
... abiding and rejection also spontaneous is the psychic conversion. That is to say, man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument and the mind its counsellor and minister (except for the few mental men who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements). The spiritual conversion begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper... deeper life and is complete when the psychic being becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Emergence or Coming Forward of the Psychic Consecration is a process by which one trains the consciousness to give itself to the Divine. But conversion is a spontaneous movement of the consciousness... Sadhana The Psychic Being The Psychic Being and Conversion The psychic being is always there, but is not felt because it is covered up by the mind and vital; when it is no longer covered up, it is then said to be awake. When it is awake, it begins to take hold of the rest of the being, to influence it and change it so that all may become the true expression ...
... November 21, 1933 Q. (1) It is true that there is a surrender beyond mind, vital and physical surrender which Krishna asks Arjuna to attain by saying—nistraigunyo bhavarjuna? A. Naturally, the whole being must surrender, not the mind, vital and body alone. Q. (2) Is this surrender the same as the psychic surrender? A. No, it is the surrender of the self ...
... abiding and rejection also spontaneous is the psychic conversion. That is to say man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument and the mind its counsellor and minister (except for the few mental men who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements). The spiritual conversion begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper... however the constant recurrence of depression and despair or of doubt and revolt is due to a mental or vital formation which takes hold of the vital mind and makes it run round always in the same circle at the slightest provoking cause or even without cause. It is like an illness to which the body consents from habit and from belief in the illness even though it suffers from it, and once started the... deeper life and is complete when the psychic becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Of course if that once happens fully, doubt, depression and despair cannot come any longer, although there may be and are difficulties still. If it is not fully, but still fundamentally accomplished, even then these things either do not come or are brief ...
... mental movements and formations ..." 20 The vital being or life-nature is made up of desires, feelings, instincts and impulses. The life-energy which animates the body (Prana) is an aspect of the vital. The body too has its own distinct consciousness which operates in the involuntary functionings of the various bodily organs and physiological systems. Body-consciousness is only part of the physical... the physical vital; it is the part of the vital which is turned entirely upon physical things, and is full of desires and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. Closely connected with it is the vital physical, the part of the vital force which constitutes the nervous being; it is the vehicle of the nervous responses and is related to the reactions, desires and sensations of the body. ... Being There are three main parts in the outer or surface being: the mind (the mental), the life-nature (the vital) and the body (the physical). Each part has its own distinct type of consciousness, though in our ordinary awareness we are unable to distinguish among the mental, vital and physical constituents of our consciousness, and tend to regard all these diverse elements simply as our "mind" ...
... because they have no faith." People forgot that there are conditions to be fulfilled. It is a question of the divine consciousness working in and through inferior principles, like mind and vital and body and there are conditions to e fulfilled for the working. Disciple : They say that God being Omnipotence he should be able to do anything however impossible. Sri Aurobindo : No.... disciple asked Sri Aurobindo: "What Page 226 do you think of his saying that the resistance in the physical is gone?" Sri Aurobindo : I have heard people saying that the body of Maharshi is shaking. How could he have done what he did not do, or did not care to do, for himself, for someone else? Disciple : But he describes his experience in detail : for instance ...
... mind centres, vital centres, physical centre and fills the whole body with the higher existence and consciousness. The ascent is the liberation (mukti) and when once this ascends, one is liberated from the body consciousness, one no longer feels the body as a form, no longer feels contained in the body, but widens out into the formless Vastness of the Divine. Or sometimes the body is felt as something... that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body—and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either... only purification, enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and the entire replacement of the present consciousness by that. This we find unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body and not in mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend ...
... action of the Force taking place within and so affecting the body. The psychic relations I spoke of are those which men form Page 177 in life which help the power of the psychic to grow and prepare it for the time when it will be ready to come forward and govern the mind, vital and body instead of allowing the mind or the vital to lead the rest. There is a difference between the psychic... It is quite true that if the consciousness remains always centred in the Mother, then there would be no place for any kind of obscuration or disturbance; but that is not easy for the human mind and vital to get at once. One has to go on perseveringly till one has reached it. The quickness with which the consciousness changes is a feature of the ordinary action of the physical consciousness when it... the idea of the Mother's presence and her regard on you, the reference in what you think and do to her with the idea of her approval or disapproval, are signs that the psychic is acting in your lower vital and physical mind and increasing its rule over their movements. The forms that came before your eyes are sometimes glimpses of the things on other planes, sometimes symbols; e.g., the golden water ...
... human beings, generally the actual governor or leader who drives one is the vital, for "man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument and the mind its counsellor and minister (except for the few mental men who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements)." (p. 88) Because of the fact that... because it is the inmost part of our being, supporting all other parts—mental, vital, physical. Though in theory the psychic is the true master of the being who puts forth and uses the instruments of mind, life and body, in actuality in most human beings the psychic is entirely veiled and overshadowed by its mental, vital and physical instruments. The outer consciousness of the human being "lives amongst... However, though covered over and dominated by mind, vital and physical, the psychic fire is never extinguished by them, for the psychic being is the eternal self "that carries the consciousness from life to life" (p. 16). It is the true and persistent individual whereas our normal self made up of xviii mind, vital and body is only a passing shadow of the true individual. ...
... consciousness has many levels: it can be of mind, vital and matter; of Overmind too. So what does he mean by relation between them? Cosmic consciousness is a term used in contrast to individual consciousness. Through it you get to know about the universe. Overmind is a power of cosmic consciousness just as mind, vital and body are. Only, you can have body, vital and mind without any knowledge of cosmic c ...
... then the psychic being has no proper and sufficient instrumentation for its activities; it has then only the outer mind, outer vital and body for its means and these are too small and narrow and obscure. You as yet have been able only to enter the outskirts of the inner vital and are still insufficiently conscious there. By becoming more conscious there and going deeper one can reach the psychic—the... it big because the true mental or the true vital or even the true physical being is much wider in consciousness than the external consciousness which is limited by the body. If the external parts seem to occupy the whole consciousness, it is when one comes down into the physical and feels all the activities of Nature playing in it—even the mental and vital movements are then felt through the physical... what it expresses is a personality formed by the old ignorant Nature. If not identified, one can change it so as to express the true inner personality of the Light. They [ the outer mind, vital and body ] are small, but not unimportant in spite of their apparent insignificance—because they are a necessary passage of transmission between the soul and the outer world. You take the outer waking ...
... bhakti . From which part does it manifest? From the psychic. How can I unravel the confusion I feel between self, mind, vital and physical, and how to distinguish them? Page 476 One has to separate oneself in thought from mind and vital and body and look at these as not oneself but only outer instruments or movements of nature. In the end one begins to be aware of something... devotion. How can I develop psychic bhakti? By sincere aspiration. What is the character of psychic bhakti, mental bhakti and vital bhakti for the Mother? How to recognise them? The psychic is made up of love and self-giving without demand, the vital of the will to be possessed by the Mother and serve her, the mental of faith and unquestioning acceptance of all that the Mother is, says... be something wrong in my nature. It is the old vital with its ego which comes up again and again. It refuses to follow the higher being and be as the true bhaktas are who ask nothing and are content with all that the Mother does or does not do, because whatever she does must be good, since she is the Mother. You must impose the truth on this vital part. 6 May 1935 Do not allow mental anxiety ...
... brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. Truth-Consciousness The highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe; a principle of consciousness superior to mentality which exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things; its fundamental character is knowledge by identity. vital The vital is the life nature made up of... separative sense of individuality which makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality. Ego implies the identification of one's existence with the outer mental, vital and physical self. Not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above, a spiritual and supraphysical force acting on the physical world directly; a Force for illumination, transformation, purification. ... The word psychic, from the Greek psyche, is used in its original sense of soul, as distinguished from the mind and vital; as an adjective it refers to the experience and movements of the soul and not to all the inward psychological experiences, surface or occult, in which the mind and vital predominate. Page-253 in oneness with the Divine; self-existent being with an infinite power of ...
... is the true Force only." Does this mean that what my consciousness feels as the Force is not the real Force of the Mother? I have said that it gets mixed with the action of the present mind, vital and body. That is inevitable since it has to work upon them. It is only after the transformation that it can be fully the Mother's Force with no mixture of the separate personality. If the Divine Force ...
... behind. If he did not his taking a human body would have no meaning and would be of no use to anybody. He could just as well have stayed above and done things from there. The Avatar, unlike the Vibhuti, does not need to satisfy his vital. [Sri Aurobindo's marginal remark: "Why should he not?"] For his vital has no cravings and desires as our vital has. He is above them. And if he seems... When the Avatar comes down here how does he take on a mind, vital and body? It is, I think, the soul that is divine, but the Adhar has to be built up from the cosmos? Everybody has to do that when he is born. It is the soul that is permanent. Does an Avatar create a new mind, life and body from the cosmos for himself, or take hold of some liberated human being... Does your above answer mean that the Avatars too satisfy the vital desires, cravings, lust etc. as a layman? What do you mean by lust? Avatars can be married Page 280 and have children and that is not possible without sex; they can have friendships, enmities, family feelings etc. etc.—these are vital things. I think you are under the impression that an Avatar must ...
... the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then ... then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature. He also adds: The psychic being is quite different from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its... As he defines it: What is meant in the terminology of the yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psychic or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, tak- ing the experience of life through its outer instruments. ...
... psychic being mean its coming to the front? No. Awakening is a different thing, it means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front it invades the mind and vital and body and psychicises their movements. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the Adhar is ready.... after pranam there were some vital dissatisfactions. But they have a great effect on the heart which has now begun to open to the Mother. Get rid of these dissatisfactions, they prevent the permanent psychic opening. 29 September 1934 The heart is beginning to open to the Mother, but it is still easily touched by lower vital suggestions. That is probably why the vital is not always happy with... psychic being. The soul in direct touch with the divine Truth is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature ( manas, prāṇa, anna of the Taittiriya Upanishad); one may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason, power and all kinds of experiences in the vital, even physical siddhis, but if the true soul-power behind and the psychic nature do not come into ...
... चमू —the body सधस्थं. The place of sadhana (self-development & self-perfection); one of the three, mind, vital parts & body, perhaps the physical consciousness. Perhaps the three taken together as one. Cf the epithet. 3 पर्षि Carry over to its goal—cf पार्ये दिवि. The wealth of divine delight is to be brought into the body, the physical consciousness. 4 Having manifested in the body, the Ananda ...
... light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change the mind or part of it in one way or another, but it need not change the vital nature; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge the vital movements or else silence and immobilise the vital being, but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was, or even leave it inert or shake its balance. And the descent of Light is not enough... the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either... (cinmaya) body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material ...
... Mother's Force depends on a certain power of receptivity in the mind or vital or body—and openness is the first necessary condition for the receptivity. 29 May 1933 How to become one with the Divine? Open yourself to the Mother's Force and aspire—in time you will become one with the Divine. 15 June 1933 The vital defects and difficulties are the same in all and also the shortcomings ...
... contact. So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater Overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the Overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the Overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there- once the nature is supramentalised... is only one way, one path. First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going Within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises ...
... is done usually in different parts of the nature at different times. You had your former experiences because the mind and higher vital were sufficiently emptied and quiet to receive some experiences of a new consciousness. Now it is the physical mind, physical vital and body that have to be emptied—these always take longer than the others because the physical is more full of old habits, more slow to... to work out the difficulty. The other is effort, but this effort too must be a quiet effort,—if it is a struggling or over eager effort, it may increase the struggle and restlessness in the mind or body. The best way is to keep quiet, observe, will for the change in reliance on the working of the Force, but also to use a quiet effort whenever that is possible. If one does that, after a time one finds ...
... call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt—which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of... 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 mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires... of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability ...
... worlds. When one begins to feel this always above, it is a great step forward in the sadhana; then the consciousness can go up there and from there see, discern and control all that is in the mind, vital and body. It is the meeting-place of the ascending and descending forces, as you see. Breaking into the Spiritual Consciousness Of course, Krishnaprem's view about the canalisation of Niagara is my... the Supramental where there is no division between Knowledge and Will, each acting on each other or rather fixed together in oneness and therefore infallible. You say it has taken form in mind, vital and body; if that were so, it would mean the final and decisive transformation; so it cannot be the Supramental. It must be some overmind truth plane. There are certain things in these three letters... opening to the universal mental, vital, physical existence and, if the sadhak responds more to these than to the higher consciousness, then he does not get free. Sometimes even the ego gets aggrandised. But if the psychic is awake, then there is not this danger; one finds one's true being in place of the ego. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent ...
... being? Don't start having that idea. It is quite untrue and those who indulge it raise vital reactions and imaginations in themselves and provoke much unnecessary trouble. It is in yourself that there is the variation, not of the psychic being which is always all right, but of the rest, mind, vital or body. March 4, 1933 Should one write about everything? Or according to the need of... lead to such a result. Last night I went to hear music and sat beside Nolini. I felt an intense joy, not to be equalled by the jay of music. Is it merely an imagination? No—it means there is a vital sympathy March 26, 1933 Mother, I took your permission to walk about or meditate in the Pranam hall when you play on the organ in the morning. But some days I am late due to miscalculation ...
... psychic and the centres of the mind, vital and physical, the consent and receptive opening of the nature to the workings of the psychic and the higher consciousness, finally the opening to the supramental are the conditions of transformation. What do you mean by "attaining" the higher consciousness? The higher consciousness is something above the mind, vital and body of the human being. It is wholly spiritual... n there are three main elements: (1) the opening of the occult inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, so that one becomes aware of all that lies behind the surface mind, life and body; (2) the opening of the psychic being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine; (3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth—this last may be... including its higher planes, the vital, the physical. The upper hemisphere contains the Divine existence-consciousness-bliss, with the Supermind as its means of self-formulation. The Overmind is at the head of the lower hemisphere and is the intermediate or transitional plane between the two. The psychic being stands behind the heart supporting the mind, life and body. In the psychic transformation ...
... the experiences. Anilbaran has a fighting mind, so his statements are put in such a way as to evoke protest, contradictions, etc. If the soul or the psychic being took an entirely new mind, vital and body, then the law of Karma would not be binding in the next life. It is not a tabula rasa that it begins with. It collects and gathers from the past life's experiences whatever is necessary for the... glanced through it. He says that it is the soul that enjoys and suffers—a very astounding remark to make. And he seems also to have said that the soul is wholly responsible for a new mind, life and body in the next birth. What then becomes of the Karma theory? Surely the editor will contradict him. PURANI: I haven't read it. I will go through it. But how can he say that the Soul enjoys and suffers ...
... descending into the body. The force descends in order to establish quietude, peace, light or whatever else comes from the higher consciousness. When the force comes only to do some work it comes and goes after doing its work. But this is a question of establishing something in the mind, vital and body. It [ how the body receives the higher dynamism ] depends on the condition of the body or rather of... above. The body or external consciousness is probably not sharing in its outward-going parts, there is no effectuating energy for any work other than what the external consciousness is habituated to do. In the second the vital is receiving directly and transforming immediately into kinetic energy; for it is the direct reception by the vital or else the active participation of the vital in the Light... steadily brought down into the whole being (including the lower vital and body) that the basis and organisation [ of the being ] can be founded and settled. Descent into the Physical Consciousness and Body This is a very great progress—to be able to receive the higher consciousness while doing external things with the physical mind and body—it shows that the physical consciousness is fast opening. ...
... of the Divine Fire supporting the individual evolution on the earth and the psychic being is the soul-consciousness developing itself or rather its manifestation from life to life with the mind, vital and body as its instruments until all is ready for the union with the Divine. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being Let the earth, the entire world and the heavens be enlightened... : Symbol of a state of consciousness or a plane. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Water and Bodies of Water When the water is so symbolic it is a big expanse of water; a river or a pond are not enough to symbolise a plane. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Water and Bodies of Water Gold : Knowledge of the divine Truth; indicates at its most intense something from the... Poems: A God's Labour The earth is the place of evolution in which all these forces meet and try to manifest and out of their working something has to develop. On the other planes (the mental, vital etc;) there is not the evolution — there each acts separately according to its own law. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Descent and Transformation The psychic is the soul or spark ...
... out of the mere physico-vital existence; these are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents, referring mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in coming in contact... gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual ... to do this or you are to do that, in this lies your talent or genius etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that other, this is not ...
... emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; these are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents, referring mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in corning in contact... gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly Page 238 differences in the constitution or psycho-physical... to do this or you are to do that, in this lies your talent or genius etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that other, this is not ...
... state of my psychic being, of which I know nothing? It is in yourself that there is the variation—not of the psychic Page 537 being which is always all right, but of the rest, mind, vital or body. 4 March 1933 Your idea about Mother's mysterious smile is your own imagination—Mother says that she smiled with the utmost kindness and took the most helpful attitude possible towards you... suggestions must always be rejected. 12 February 1933 You should certainly throw away the vital demand and the disturbance which it creates in your sadhana. Mother gives her smile to all and she does not withhold it from some and give it to others. When people think otherwise, it is because some vital disturbance, depression or demand or some movement of jealousy, envy or competition distorts their... given away from you. These imaginations and their effect on you are suggested by the same vital forces that are disturbing you so that you may not get free from the disturbance. My help and the Mother's help are there—you have only to keep yourself open to it to recover. 27 March 1933 Today my lower vital rose up and disturbed me because the Mother did not smile at me. For years and years I ...
... emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; they are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents related mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in coming into contact... of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on the planes above and beyond them, there will be, accordingly, differences Page 334 in the constitution or psycho-physical... you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or Page 336 disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for ...
... our physical body, but those of our subtler vital being, our life-energy, our desire-energy, our powers, strivings, passions enter both during our life and after our death into the life-existence of others. An ancient occult knowledge tells us that we have a vital frame as well as a physical and this too is after death dissolved and lends itself to the constitution of other vital bodies; our life energies... divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers Page 218 of the vitality, nor in the groupings and the imperfect harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of all these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit. Page 219 × What is spoken of here is mind as it acts directly in life, in the vital being... principle, not its absolute—is a principle of life, not of mind, but it can possess itself and move towards permanence only when taken up by the mind into its own light. What is called love in the body and the vital parts is mostly a form of hunger without permanence. ...
... contact. So, proceeding from intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there, once the nature is supramentalised... being is not the same as the inner mental—true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance from above. Higher vital usually refers to the vital mind and emotive being as opposed to the middle vital which has its seat in the navel and is dynamic, sensational... doing all the actions, when one gets rid of the sense of the ego as doer. Then there is the realisation of these two entities. This is quite different from the psychic being. It is felt in the mind, vital, physical—most easily in the mind where the mental being (Purusha) is seated and controls the others ( manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā ). 3) Prajna, Taijasa etc. are a different classification ...
... was like phosphorescence, exactly the colour of phosphorescent light, like certain fish in the water at night. It would emanate from the body, spread out, move about. But that's the vital, it originates in the vital. It's a force from above, but what manifests is vital. "Whereas now it's absolutely and clearly the golden supramental light in ... an extraordinary pulsation, vibrant with intensity... Matter. In the meantime, as Mother said, magnetic force or electric or whatever Page 248 are all expressions of that same Power on different planes of the being- the mind, the vital, the body — the expressions differing with each part. "Personally, 1 think it's all one and the same thing, except that it's the scientists' material notation of the Fact." Then she came up with one... in the terrestrial manifestation?" Satprem queried. "They're so strange. ..." "Cats are vital forces," she explained. "They are incarnations of vital forces. The King of the Cats-that is, the spirit of the species- is a being of the vital world. "For example, cats can very easily embody the vital force of a dead person. I've had two absolutely astounding experiences of this." Let us ...
... abiding and rejection also spontaneous is the psychic conversion. That is to say, man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument and the mind its counsellor and minister (except for the few mental men who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements). The spiritual conversion begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper... however the constant recurrence of depression and despair or of doubt and revolt is due to a mental or vital formation which takes hold of the vital mind and makes it run round always in the same circle at the slightest provoking cause or even without cause. It is like an illness to which the body consents from habit and from belief in the illness even though it suffers from it, and once started the... being ] is a different thing [ from its coming to the front ], it means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front it invades the mind Page 354 and vital and body and psychicises their movements. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the Adhar is ready. ...
... behind. If he did not his taking a human body would have no meaning and would be of no use to anybody. He could just as well have stayed above and done things from there. The Avatar, unlike the Vibhuti, does not need to satisfy his vital. [Sri Aurobindo's marginal remark: "Why should he not?"] For his vital has no cravings and desires as our vital has. He is above them. And if he seems to... universes. When the Avatar comes down here how does he take on a mind, vital and body? It is, I think, the soul that is divine, but the Adhar has to be built up from the cosmos? Everybody has to do that when he is born. It is the soul that is permanent. Does an Avatar create a new mind, life and body from the cosmos for himself or take hold of some liberated human being and use... and work. Does your above answer mean that the Avatars too satisfy the vital desires, cravings, lust, etc. as a layman? What do you mean by lust? Avatars can be married and have children and that is not possible without sex; they can have friendships, enmities, family feelings etc., etc.,—these are vital things. I think you are under the impression that an Avatar must be a saint or a ...
... psychically when they live spiritually in close contact with each other? It depends on themselves. If they grow psychically and spiritually and live within and above, instead of in the mind and vital and body, then there can be a psychic and spiritual solidarity created useful for the divine work. At present that does not exist, except in future potentiality. 18 April 1935 For some time there... of thought and action into our centre. I give you some examples.... All these are simply self-created vital formations due to the atmosphere of suspicion and dislike which Y 's campaign has created around X . In such an atmosphere it is not truth that manifests but the feelings of the vital that take form in shapes and images. Page 816 You may recall that you refused to let Z stay... dislike, jealousy, rivalry, suspicion, fault-finding and all sorts of uncleanness. It is only through the psychic and in a psychic atmosphere that harmony can come; a sadhana based entirely on the vital ego cannot create it. X is right in drawing back and keeping to himself. When things have gone so far that the sadhaks of the Sadhanbari are forming visions of him as a dangerous devil, it is absurd ...
... In that case, does it not mean that what my consciousness feels as the Force is not the real Force of the Mother? I have said that it gets mixed with the action of the present mind, vital and body. That is inevitable since it has to work upon them. It is only after the trans-formation that it can be fully the Mother's Force with no mixture of the separate personality. If the Divine Force... of any personal endeavour, and the receptivity was spontaneous with open eyes. What is the explanation? It is the silence of the mind and vital — silence implying here not only cessation of thoughts but a stillness of the mental and vital substance. There are varying degrees of depth of this stillness. You asked, "What is the exact nature of this pressure?" ... There is no need to concentrate on it, if it comes as a natural result of the general withdrawal and concentration. I suppose, it is simply that the effort brings a concentration in the centres of the vital and physical to Page 136 share in the stillness which the will acting through the mind is trying to impose on the nature. All the time I feel in my being an energy ...
... exaggeration of the vital feelings. It gives the just touch to each emotion. 91 — Sri Aurobindo * The conversion which keeps the consciousness turned towards Page 88 the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and rejection also spontaneous is the psychic conversion. That is to say, man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument... who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements). The spiritual conversion begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper life and is complete when the psychic being becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Of course, if that once happens fully, doubt, depression... mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is often impotent before the inconscient and subconscient which obscure its clarity and carry it away on the tide of instinct or impulse; in spite of its clarity it is fooled by vital and emotional suggestions into giving ...
... free are the spatio-temporal conditions there. In the vital world, however, you have to use your will: there, too, distance is less rigid, but the movement is not immediate: the will has to be exercised. Inevitably, (in a dream) a wound received in the vital being is translated in the physical body.... If you receive a blow in the vital, the body suffers the consequence. More than half of our illnesses... this kind... men are not conscious of their vital.... If one knows how it reacts on the physical, one goes to its source and can cure oneself in a few hours. In dreams, you must remember that you are in the space and time of the vital world and not to try to act as if you were still in your physical body. One of the characteristics of activity in the vital space and time is that these beings are... staring fearlessly into the eyes of a vital being.... So, to sum up... never be afraid and in all circumstances call for the right help to make your strength a hundred fold stronger. What are nightmares? These are your sorties into the vital world. And what is the first thing you try to do when you are in the grip of a nightmare? You rush back into your body and shake yourself into your normal ...
... the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner... cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains... mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of ...
... cheek.... Inevitably, Page 26 a wound received in the vital being is translated in the physical body. But how does it happen? There must be some intermediary? It was in the vital that I was beaten. It is from within that this comes. Nothing, nobody touched anything from outside. If you receive a blow in the vital, the body suffers the consequence. More than half of our illnesses are... importance, are they? Yes, they are, and one must be conscious of what can happen. Suppose that you have gone for a stroll in the vital world; there you meet beings who attack you (that's what happens usually), if you know that it is a dream, you can very easily gather your vital forces and conquer. That's a true fact; you can with a certain attitude, a certain word, a certain way of being do things you... are the result of blows of this kind, and this happens much more often than one believes. Only, men are not conscious of their vital, and as they are not conscious they don't know that fifty per cent of their illnesses are the result of what happens in the vital: shocks, accidents, fighting, ill-will.... Externally this is translated by an illness. If one knows how it reacts on the physical, one goes ...
... the deeper heart and from there is lighted in the mind, the vital and the physical body. In the mind Agni creates a light of intuitive perception and discrimination which sees at once what is the true vision or idea and the wrong vision or idea, the true feeling and the wrong feeling, the true movement and the wrong movement. In the vital it is kindled as a fire of right emotion and a kind of intuitive... right action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body it initiates a similar but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, body experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary life also there is no doubt... support the natural evolution, and the first natural evolution must be the development of body, life and mind, successively, and these must act each in its own kind or together in their ill-assorted partnership in order to grow and have experience and evolve. The soul gathers the essence of all our mental, vital and bodily experience and assimilates it for the farther evolution of our existence in Nature; ...
... Yes, the Sadhana has undergone a great change, because it is now in the physical itself that you have to do it. Concentrate on the physical transformation; by physical I mean the mental, vital and body consciousness. You are trying to get the experience in your mind, but it is not the mind that can get it. Come out of your mind and you will understand what I mean. Man must understand... upon earth and change the condition of human life. 6 January 1957 Beyond all question it is the supramental light. Do not tense yourself, be open, passively allow it to penetrate your body. It has the power to restore you to strength and health. A new world is born—all those who want to have a place in it must sincerely prepare themselves for it. 15 August 1957 Heralding... in proportion to the growth of power, the resulting conflict would be even more acute and chaotic than all our material conflicts. 15 February 1958 To celebrate the birth of a transitory body can satisfy some faithful feelings. To celebrate the manifestation of the eternal Consciousness can be done at every moment of the universal history. But to celebrate the advent of a new world ...
... condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. Letters on Yoga, p. 353 The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of Page 33 the vital being and the physical... constantly maintaining or bringing back the inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afflict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is prone.... Page 35 When something is erased from the subconscient so completely that it leaves no seed... the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all Sanskaras of the mind, vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and ...
... consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses. Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings etc. that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and... through this that the thoughts, feelings etc. of others pass to enter into one—it is through this also that waves of the universal force—desire, sex, etc.—come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga It is quite normal for difficulties to come back… and it is not a proof that no progress has been made. The... partial expression of a larger mind behind of which we are not ordinarily aware and can only know by going inside ourselves. So too what we know of the vital in us is only the outer vital, a surface activity partially expressing a larger secret vital which we can only know by going within. Equally, what we call our physical being is only a visible projection of a greater and subtler invisible physical ...
... mind and vital and body—for it is this peace and quiet that make a firm basis for the sadhana. The starting of the body happens very often when it is in a kind of sleep of samadhi and something touches whether from within or without. The Trance of Mediums The medium trance is of a different kind—they get not into touch with Sachchidananda but with the beings of the lower vital plane. To... experience you had is of course the going inside of the consciousness which is usually called trance or samādhi . The most important part of it however is the silence of the mind and vital which is fully extended to the body also. To get the capacity of this silence and peace is a most important step in the sadhana. It comes at first in meditation and may throw the consciousness inward in trance, but it... experience; the numbness was the effect on it of the pressure. The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modification or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the 3rd or 4th rib would indicate a region which belongs to the vital nature, the domain of the life-force, some pressure for a change there. Page 251 ...
... mere accessories, are āsana , the habituating of the body to certain attitudes of immobility, and prāṇāyāma , the regulated direction and arrestation by exercises of breathing of the vital currents of energy in the body. The physical being is the instrument; but the physical being is made up of two elements, the physical and the vital, the body which is the apparent instrument and the basis, and the... with Asana,—particular Asanas have even an effect in destroying particular diseases,—and with Pranayama maintains perfectly the health of the body. But the principal gain is that by this purification the vital energy can be directed anywhere, to any part of the body and in any way or with any rhythm of its movement. The mere function of breathing into and out of the lungs is Page 534 only... subordinate element of ordered and well-economised activity. Moreover in the consequent interchange and balancing between the movement and interaction of the vital energies normally at work in the body and their interchange with those which act upon it from outside, whether the energies of others or of the general Pranic force variously active in the environment, there is a constant precarious balancing ...
... forward and occupy the surface as well as be within,—then the emotions themselves become no longer vital things, but psychic emotions and feelings. The psychic so standing in Page 340 front can also extend its influence everywhere, to the mind for instance so as to transform its ideas or to the body so as to transform its habits and its reactions. The psychic being is in the heart centre... centre in the middle of the chest (not in the physical heart, for all the centres are in the middle of the body), but it is deep behind. When one is going away from the vital into the psychic, it is felt as if one is going deep deep down till one reaches that central place of the psychic. The surface of the heart centre is the place of the emotional being; from there one goes deep to find the psychic... and also this Page 341 sense of the Mother being there not far away or very near. So it is a very good development of the sadhana. The Psychic and the Mental, Vital and Physical Nature The mind, life and body are the instruments for manifestation. Of course the psychic can manifest things by itself inwardly or in its own plane, but for manifestation in the physical plane the inst ...
... forms of obstruction even with a neutral vital. How do the small forces and beings of the vital plane come in just at the right time to interfere with one when he is about to achieve something in sadhana? They act at all times when they see anything in the mind, vital or body off its guard. I doubt if such a vital as mine can ever be changed. ... refused to budge. Is this long and laborious toil all in vain? Part of the vital was still open to the suggestions and demands of the vital Nature, but your mind and higher vital were not accepting them. The lower vital was divided. All that was not useless. But if your mind consents to the outer vital invading and coercing and dominating the rest, it will do so, until you throw off this... the vital opens itself to the Mother and at other times to the ordinary human nature. Like this it goes on for long. It is two parts of the vital. One becomes quiescent when the other is offering itself up. Looking back, I may say that the higher working began years ago. Its first pressure was on the vital for change, and Page 75 the vital always ...
... and the restlessness of the senses and endowed them with the glow of nobility. To a sadhu God may possibly be a disciplined, liberated Being, but to an artist He is also the slave of the mind, vital and body. A sadhu takes delight in renunciation, sanctity. It is the artist who can reveal that the delight of the physical enjoyment or even of the enjoyment which we call impure is no other than and in... judge from an artistic point of view then the pictures of the gods and the goddesses drawn by Ravi Varma are as ugly as the worthless novels of the street. Where there is only body and where we do not get the meaning of the body in some deeper truth behind it, the other-worldliness of the saint is an object of contempt equally to the moralist's sense of decency and the artist's aesthetic sense. The... conduct or religious ceremonies. If the aim of spirituality is to know the Self, then the aim of art too is the same. If the seer of the spiritual truth can see the Spirit everywhere without excluding the body or any part of it, then why should the artist not be able to manifest the glory of the Spirit through colour, sound, word and stone and thus play the role of a truly spiritual man? Page 75 ...
... is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all samskāras of the mind, vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains... and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason why it is so difficult to get rid of habitual vital movements or to change the character, for, supported or refreshed from this source, preserved in this matrix, your vital movements... few emerge from it. ” It is interesting to compare with these words what Sri Aurobindo says on the same point: "The Subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body. It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert strands of Matter and form by a constant development a slowly evolving ...
... dependent or dominated by its Page 34 instruments — mind, vital and body, but dominating them and moulding them into luminosity and teaching them their true action. 35 —Sri Aurobindo * It is the action of the psychic being, not the being itself, that gets mixed with the mental, vital and physical disabilities because it has to use them to express what little of... consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished... come forward and occupy the surface as well as be within, — then the emotions themselves become no longer vital things, but psychic emotions and feelings. The psychic so standing in front can also extend its influence everywhere, to the mind for instance so as to transform its ideas or to the body so as to transform its habits and its reactions. 37 — Sri Aurobindo * You have said ...
... and heart and vital or all. But there is nothing fixed and mechanically regular about these two processes. Usually such feelings of emptiness [ in the body ] come when the identification with the body is lessening and the consciousness is preparing to take its seat either above or in a cosmic wideness or in some beginning of that wideness. An emptiness in the mind or vital may be spiritual... is done usually in different parts of the nature at different times. You had your former experiences because the mind and higher vital were sufficiently emptied and quiet to receive some experiences of a new consciousness. Now it is the physical mind, physical vital and body that have to be emptied—these always take longer than the others because the physical is more full of old habits, more obstinate... usual result of voidness is to quiet down any vital tumult although it does not, unless it is complete, stop the mechanical Page 77 recurrent action of the mind. Yes, it becomes like that. 1 In the end you feel as if you had no body, but were spread out in the vastness of space as an infinite consciousness and existence—or as if the body were only a dot in that consciousness. ...
... the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all samskaras of the mind, vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and ... and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason why it is so difficult to get rid of habitual vital movements or to change the character; for, supported or refreshed from this source, preserved in this matrix, your vital movements... emerge from it." It is interesting to compare with these words what Sri Aurobindo says on the same point: "The Subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body. It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert strands of Matter and form by a constant development a slowly evolving ...
... real Self within. ...this little mind, vital and body which we call ourselves is only a surface movement and not our "self" at all. It is an external bit of personality put forward for one brief life, for the play of the Ignorance. 10 It is equipped with an ignorant mind stumbling about in search of fragments of truth, an ignorant vital rushing about in search of fragments of pleasure... by which one regards the body, the vital and the mind as the self. Before the real Self is discovered, the ego is a necessity, for the ego serves to centralise the diverse elements of the external personality so as to give it a sense of individuality. The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a Page 365 mental, vital and physical formation meant... or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital 4 needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, and partly ...
... least opportunity and lay siege to the waking consciousness so much so that it has given rise to the adage that character cannot be changed. 4 "All seeds are there and all Samskaras of the mind, vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and... consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulṣions and motives, in mental, vital, physical perturbations and upheavals, in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature." 3 This subconscient evolutionary basis of our being is the root cause why things and... state of drowsiness, not merely in its figurative aspect but in a very much real and tangible way (nityaṁ nidrāluriva lak ṣ yate). And has not, in our own time, Sri Ramakrishna declared that the vital-physical demeanour of a Paramahansa becomes like that of an immature child (vālavat) or of a madman (unmattavat) or of a demon (piśācavat) or, in the extreme case, he may even be totally inert ...
... through the mind, vital and body." Page 317 seems also to have no bottom." In the Veda it is symbolized by the cave of the Panis, Sri Aurobindo clarified. You do remember, don't you, how Mother could go from sheath 1 to sheath till she arrived at the threshold of the Formless? She had learned to do that from the Théons in Algeria. The sheath next to the body is called the... in the body. "This centre commands the physical consciousness and the subconscient t." It is the main and immobile support of all bodily operations, "of the material parts of nature." 2.SWĀDHISHTHĀNA: located below the navel. The lotus is deep purple-red and has six petals. This lower abdomen centre's element is Water-water-centre in the body. This centre commands "the small vital movements... movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements," in other words, the lower vital world. 3.MANIPURA (or NĀBHIPADMA): the navel lotus, violet and with ten petals. Its element is Fire. It governs what Sri Aurobindo terms as the larger vital , in other words, "the larger life forces and the passions and larger desire-movements." 4.ANAHATA (or HRITPADMA): located in the heart ...
... there because the being in the body is not yet developed enough to go on growing in the same body without the need of change and the body itself is not sufficiently conscious. If Page 313 the mind and vital and the body itself were more conscious and plastic, death would not be necessary. As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body,—for it is only by living in... disorder. Page 305 The Hathayogic method is to bring an immense vital force into the body and by this and by certain processes keep it strong and in good health and a capable instrument. The Transformation of the Body in Other Traditions It [ a body of light seen by the correspondent in a vision ] is the luminous body spoken of in the Veda as possessed by the beings of the higher planes... descent is necessary for a dynamic action of the Truth in mind, vital and body. This would imply as a final result the disappearance of the unconsciousness of the body; it would no longer be subject to decay and disease. That would mean that it would not be subject to the ordinary processes by which death comes. If a change of body had to be made, it would have to be by the will of the inhabitant ...
... is not mere vital excitement or heightened nerve sensation, it is an attempt of the psychic to emerge from behind the veil and what you feel is the psychic joy. (The psychic is seated behind the heart, behind the emotional centre.) But when this psychic joy comes, it communicates itself to the mind, the vital and the body. You have then to be careful that no mixture comes in from the vital and the p... the inner consciousness due to the pressure for the change. The wideness of light you saw was the wideness of the true consciousness liberated from the narrow limits of the human mind, human vital, human body consciousness. It is true that the mind is narrow, not only yours, but all human minds even the most developed,—compared with the wideness of the true consciousness which has no limits. It is... and depression or Chaitanya's viraha to do with the question in issue? These are difficulties Page 377 of the body and the vital. The question was of the intensity of psychic and pure spiritual experience—psychic devotion and love, peace, Ananda. You cannot base a general denial on your own particular experience, because you have only the initial experiences of calm etc. and have not ...
... inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afflict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is prone. If light, strength, the Mother's consciousness is brought down into the body it can penetrate the subconscient also and convert its obscurity and resistance... the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner... physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient ...
... psychic world) but of his vital sheath which falls away after death. These can join for birth the vital of some other Jiva who is being born or they can be used by a vital being to enter a body in process of birth and partly possess it for the satisfaction of its propensities. The junction can also take place after birth. Connections from Life to Life There is a vital connection generally—the... 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 a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is due. This is the... passes through various types of experiences, but it does not carry these on to the next life, as a rule. It takes on a new mind, vital and body. The mental capacities, occupations, interests, idiosyncrasies of the past mind and vital are not taken over by the new mind and vital, except to the extent that is useful for the new life. One may have the power of poetic expression in one life, but in the next ...
... call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt—which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of... 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 of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses... of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability ...
... not a change of conduct that has to be done in the Page 276 sadhak, but a change of soul and spirit governing the mind and vital and body instead of the mind and vital governing. Violence is the drastic contradiction of that; it makes mental egoism and vital passion and fury or else cruelty the rulers. Violence in ordinary Nature does not justify violence in a spiritual work. The Essays... hostiles have a habit of trying their strength when they hear anything like that; they want to show you that it is not so. But is it true that even anger which is of the lower vital and therefore close to the body, invariably produces these effects? 1 Of course the psychologist can't know that another man is angry Page 270 unless he shows physical signs of it, but also he can't... Sadhana on the Level of the Vital Sadhana on the Level of the Vital Vital Defects Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter III Anger and Violence The Nature of Anger Yes, anger is a harmful and wasteful force, harmful both to the person himself and to the one on whom it is thrown. You are right in saying that it must be got rid of. Anger immediately opens the ...
... being outer, see Outer being parts and planes, 336-337, 348-49 physical, see physical, the psychic, see Psychic being structure and organisation of, 336-60 true, 91 vital, see Vital, the Body-consciousness, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 164, 339-41 Brahman, 96, 170-71, 296, 374, 375,378, 379 and the Self, 121 cf. Divine, the Bucke, R.M., 371 Buddha, 225, 228... 393 meaning of Nirvana in, 226 Vidya, see Knowledge Vital (being), the, 17, 337 and the emotional being, 63 four parts of, 63-64 functions of, 64 higher vital, 63 lower vital, 63, 63-64 and mind distinguished, 339-40 outer (surface), 62-67 physical vital, 66 Vital mind, see under Physical (being), the Vivekananda, 38... being stages of development, 17-19 Philistine, the (the sensational man), 275-78 Physical mind, see under Mind Physical vital, see under Vital (being), the Physical (being, outer, surface), the, 67-71, 337 vital-physical, 64 Prajna, 23, 209, 215, 297 Prakriti, 86, 384 higher and lower, 106 See also Nature; Purusha and Prakriti ...
... * 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 sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally, the... and set on fire the vital being, is the way out. * Yoga means union with the Divine - a union either transcendental (above the universe) or cosmic (universal) or individual or, as in our Yoga, all three together. Or it means getting into a consciousness in which one is no longer limited by the small ego, personal mind, personal Page 9 vital and body but is in union with... mind-force. When it manifests and acts in the vital or the physical in the same way, it is there apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards and upwards, extending itself into wideness from below; or it can descend and become there a definite power for things; it can pour downwards into the body, working, establishing its reign, extending into ...
... Force descends rapidly to the heart centre, unless there is some obstacle or a resistance in the higher vital parts. From there it sends its stream into the whole body and begins to occupy the vital and physical centres—from the navel to the Muladhara. The coming of this experience, occupation of the body by the Force from above, is a great step forward in the sadhana. The fear of a syncope was due only... one's mind, vital and body. How it is done or by what stages or how long it will take varies with each person. But this new consciousness is very different from the ordinary one and many things happen in its coming which would not happen to the mind and might seem strange to it—e.g. the dissolution of the ego and the opening into a wider self or spirit not limited by the body, to which the body is only... happened with many. It is not a matter of any particular act or feeling, but a sort of excited vibration with which the vital and physical consciousness meets the vital disturbance—it is evident in the tone and language of what you write when there is the stress of vital suggestion—but it used also to rise when you got the experiences in an excited vibration and bubbling of joy which would easily ...
... so divine even in the body consciousness that I shall be able to satisfy everybody! But you can't hurry a transformation like that. I must ask for time. Why do you always insist on cherishing the idea that I refuse all human love? I have surely written to you to the contrary. I don't reject it, neither human nor vital love. But I want that Page 441 behind the vital there shall be the constant... 12 September 1932 My touch is always there; but you must learn to feel it not only with the outward contact as a medium—a touch of the pen—but in its direct action on the mind and heart and vital and body. There would then be very much less difficulty—or no difficulty at all. 27 March 1933 Letters and answering of letters are not indispensable for the sadhana; the sadhak's reception of silent... therefore not really a doubt arising from the reason but one that comes from the vital and physical mind that is troubling you. The physical mind doubts all that it has not itself experienced and even it doubts what it has itself experienced if that experience is no longer there or immediately palpable to it—the vital brings in the suggestions of despondency and despair to reinforce the doubt and prevent ...
... Kali form is a manifestation on the vital plane of Mahakali—but Mahakali herself in the Overmind is golden. What you saw was the Mother herself in her body of light with the Mahakali power in her, but not the actual form of Mahakali. 26 September 1933 Page 274 Last night I saw in a dream that Light from the Mother's body was coming down into my body and transforming it. Good—it is... 1933 In the afternoon I went to sleep remembering the Mother. After a while I saw that my subtle mind, vital and body had risen up high into a beautiful world, profound and peaceful. Then I saw many saints, sages and Gods tirelessly calling the Mother in their meditations. The joy of that world was truly deep. What a beautiful world! Then I saw the Mother slowly descend into their midst; she had ten... forehead for about a minute. Then I felt something in me being drawn up through my whole body as she slowly drew her hand back, and I felt something being taken away. But when I woke up, I did not know if it was a good or bad thing Mother took away. What was it? It was certainly a true dream of the lower vital or perhaps subtle physical plane, where the laziness, indifference, frivolity of the sadhaks ...
... find that suddenly some part of the vital or some part of the mind or of the body, something has not kept up, in this sense that mentally, instead of being immobile and attentive, something has begun to ask, “Wait a minute, what is this experience? What does it mean?”, begun to try to find an explanation (what it calls an “understanding”). Or maybe in the vital something has begun to enjoy the experience:... suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho analysis. Here... vanity which supports them, together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and despair. The Mother On Education: Vital Education … there are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realising what is the force that is moving the action—thus things that are done under ...
... Chapter I Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes Subtle Physical Experiences Is it [ a strong and rapid heartbeat that shakes the whole body ] the physical nerves and heart—or in the subtle body? Often one feels a shaking and vibration of the subtle body and can feel as if heartbeats there, but if not experienced, it impresses as if it... such suddennesses and vividnesses of experience are characteristic of the vital—but they are not lasting, they only prepare. It is when one has got into contact with what is beyond mind and vital and body and risen there that the great lasting fundamental realisations usually come. Influence or Possession by Beings of Other Planes The case of the girl in question seems to be of a fairly common... good or bad or what kind of force it was! It is evident from your description that it was a vital force trying to take violent possession of the body. Nothing can be more dangerous than to allow this kind of loss of control and intrusion of an alien influence. In your present condition of ignorance, the vital being not yet sufficiently open, the psychic not yet sufficiently awake, a hostile power can ...
... higher vital—or if they cannot do that, to cover them up so that the lower nature may act in its ordinary way without being pressed by the higher consciousness to change. The first thing necessary for the sadhak is not to give any consent of his mind or higher vital and to keep them from being covered. If that can be done, then it becomes possible to push the lower forces out of the lower vital and body... from them is the way towards liberation. Not to judge anyone but oneself until one can see things from a calm mind and a calm vital is an excellent rule. Also, do not allow your mind to form hasty impressions on the strength of some outward appearance, nor your vital to act upon them. There is a place in the inner being where one can always remain calm and from there look with poise and judgment... this emotional excitability must be quieted down; it is that that makes the vital open itself to these forces. If it were not so, all the defects of the nature could be quietly observed and quietly mended. If one part of you keeps its quietude—the inner being—then the rest can be dealt with. So not to allow the vital to be upset and the disturbance cover up the inner self, that is the most important ...
... (depending on the body or the physical nerves) it is possible for the physicians to do something by removing these causes. R besides recommends a free vital life to his patients, so that whatever vital despondency, depression, lassitude, inertia is due to the vital's dissatisfaction at not getting indulgence may disappear. The medical means have to be used when the mind, vital or body of the sadhaks... appetite then? Hunger is of the body and its appetite. You will never get rid of your weakness and fatigue if you cling to artificial notions of that kind. It is said that the feeling of hunger is vital - so hunger can be felt even when the belly is full. Hunger when the belly is full is abnormal, but it is still physical and vital. Greed is vital. Page 126 ... or made a conscious opening to the Force for my illness. And yet Mother's Force acted like a miracle! Something was open in the consciousness which acted on the body - probably from the mind or the vital. But since the body-resistance and inertia rose up that indirect method is no longer effective. Three hours are sufficient for digestion, though not for the full assimilation. That ...
... Abdominal Centres The navel is the chief vital centre below the emotional—there is another centre of small vital movements below it, between the navel and Muladhara. The navel is the vital centre in the physical body but the natural seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades; but for action through the gross body it is centred at the navel and below it... psychic is behind it. (5) Navel—higher vital (proper). (6) Below navel—lower vital. (7) Muladhara—physical. All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūkṣma deha , though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake. ... called the void centre, śūnya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being. There is one centre below the navel (lower vital), another at the navel (central vital), another in the chest (emotional vital, heart centre), another in the throat (physical mind), another above ...
... always there in the body is tamasic and obscure and the greater part of it is subconscient. If it opens then there will be an increasing union with the higher consciousness and it will be able to share the experiences and the developments in the mind and vital. It depends on whether it [ the body ] is in tune with the vital or not. The nature of the body is tamasic—it is the vital which makes it... The weakness of the body has to be cured, not disregarded. It can only be cured by bringing in strength from above, not by merely forcing the body. If your body is aching after the work, it may be that you are doing too much for your physical strength and straining the body. When you work, the Force comes down in you, takes the form of vital energy and supports your body so that it does not... the nature. Forgetfulness of the Body It [ living in the mind or the vital ] is more, I think, forgetting the body than non-identification with it. In an intense mentalisation or an intense vital activity the body takes a second place and becomes more outward and the same may happen to a certain extent more constantly to a man who lives in his mind or his vital and is identified more closely with ...
... when one has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the "nervous envelope." The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the body—except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to... in your body: everything else goes out just as it does at the time of death, doesn't it? Oh, no! Not at all. No. The cataleptic state of trance is like death, yes, except for the link that remains—only a link remains, but otherwise one has entirely gone out. Actually, the body becomes cataleptic only when one has entirely gone out; otherwise everything that is most material in the vital remains... to, attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. Thus it is the vital-physical which is first attacked and then the force takes the form of a disease in the system. I had myself the experience of fever all around the body.' A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo , Volume I, p. 232 × ...
... and suffering as part of the drama of life. Letters on Yoga, p. 323 The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital — it is the vital-physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest... entity and consciousness than the vital and ought, therefore, to rule and, if the mental will is strong, can rule. But this rule is precarious, incomplete and held only by much self-discipline. For if the mind is more enlightened, the vital is nearer to earth, more intense, vehement, more directly Page 64 able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination... movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that life and body, — even the most physical parts of life, — have a consciousness of their own, a consciousness proper to an obscurer vital and to a bodily being, even such an ...
... thoughts, and why should not one be master of one's own mind and thoughts and not only master of one's vital passions and bodily movements? If it is the right thing to control the body and not allow it to make a stupid, wrong or injurious movement, if it is the right thing to reject from the vital an ignorant passion or low desire, it must be equally the right thing to reject from the mind a thought... not divine, it is a confusion full of darkness and disturbance. When the knowledge from above comes, then there is light and you will then be able to see what is the true vital movement and the real harmony of the mind, vital and body. Do not allow these stormy conditions to take hold of you. Is getting knowledge from above and getting it by the mind in its own capacity the same thing? If the mind... Control of One's Thoughts To reject doubts means control of one's thoughts—very certainly so. But the control of one's thoughts is as necessary as the control of one's vital desires and passions or the control of the movements of one's body—for the Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, ...
... same, you have to open yourself to them constantly and they will then more and more either soak in steadily or come in successive waves or floods and go on till they have filled the mind, the vital, the body. You will then feel them always as not only normal but as part of your very self and the true substance of your nature. The flow of devotion and love is a thing which the more it repeats... hand, if there is vital bhakti governed by the psychic, these defects disappear and the vital gives an ardour and enthusiasm to the love and bhakti which gives it a greater push for effectuation in action and life. The vital should always be the instrument of the soul for self-expression in life and not act on its own account (ego, desire) or on its own separate impulse. The vital bhakti is egoistic... s and complete knowledge—the beginning of the real Jnana without this effect. The bhakti which you feel is psychic, but with a strong vital tinge; and it is the mind and the vital between them that bring in the opposition between the bhakti and the Jnana. The vital concerned only with emotion finds the mental knowledge dry and without rasa, the mind finds the bhakti to be a blind emotion fully interesting ...
... things is that they have to be extruded outside the individual consciousness. Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from the body, they retire into the environmental consciousness (sometimes the subconscient also, rising in dreams)—I mean by the ... not dependent on any particular object. It fastens on one or another only to give itself body and a field of enjoyment. When it is checked in the vital interchange, it tends to lose its vital character and attacks through its most physical and elemental movement. It is only when it is thrown out from the vital physical and most physical that it is conquered. The sexual sensations do not "become"... aspiration is quiescent or not strong enough and the other elements allow the sex-force to come in. The exercise has probably helped [ the body ] both by engaging the vital energies of the body and by giving it strength and tone. Sex always increases when the vital physical is indolent, unoccupied or without tone. It is the most dangerous moment for sex things when just after waking one remains ...
... appearances. It is the cause why, people say, character cannot be changed, also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of. All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains... all? Imagination + inference + joy of the perspicacious psychologist + joy of fault-finding + several other vital joys + joy of communicating to others, usually called gossip. Quite enough to explain. No other reason wanted. I could give you the whole working of Z's mind and vital in every detail of this matter and support it by a thousand equally detailed instances, including criticisms of... 1935 What a hell of a time you left me in, Sir! The same emptiness, dryness and a negative pressure and one of the longest periods, too! It is the confounded vital that does that when it is asked to change itself. The vital is a disciple of Gandhi as far as passive resistance goes—a master of non-cooperation. It came after I took a strong resolution to do some serious sadhana. I wonder ...
... Their answer was unequivocal: some great spiritual beings may have had partial supramental realizations (siddhis) in their mental or vital bodies that showed in their physical body; some may even have had this kind of temporary personal siddhi in their physical body. The generation of a new supramental species, nevertheless, cannot have taken place before because it presupposes a change in the substance... subconscious were over, the Mother recovered her strength and progressed towards a new height: the first time the supramental force penetrated directly into her material body , without passing through the intermediary mental or vital sheaths. It was an overwhelming experience in which the red and golden supramental light poured into her with such intensity that it caused a burning fever. This happened... supramental manifestation in 1956. But now something completely new happened: the Mother met Sri Aurobindo not in a psychic, mental or vital part of her personality, but physically, in the world of supramental Matter which, for the first time, had extended to her material body. As we know, the Supramental is a Unity-Consciousness, which means that the supramental world is a unity-world in which everything ...
... concrete and active. The psychic being covers itself with the supramentalized substance, in other words it forms a supramental body which exists in the supramental world of the true physical, just like it earlier formed a material-vital-mental body (adhara) in the material-vital-mental world. This is not something we can ‘understand’ 92 , but we can conceive that it fits into the line of evolution... ’ 28 February 1970: ‘My body is now bent materially, but during the night it was completely normal again! And I do not sleep! What may this be? I don’t know … And I do not leave my body … Or is this body replaced by another one? I do not know.’ On 9 May 1970 the Mother had an experience in which she saw her new body. ‘Well, I have seen it, my body — how it will be. It is quite good... Nature, and who accepted the formation of the new body with a symbolic gesture. ‘This means that material Nature has accepted the new creation.’ 24 March 1972. ‘For the first time, early in the morning, I have seen myself, my body. I do not know whether it is the supramental body or — how to say — a transitional body. But I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was asexual, it was neither ...
... the deeper heart and from there is lighted in the mind, the vital and the physical body. In the mind Agni creates a light of intuitive perception and discrimination which sees at once what is the true vision or idea and the wrong vision or idea, the true feeling and the wrong feeling, the true movement and the wrong movement. In the vital he is kindled as a fire of right emotion and a kind of intuitive... action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body he initiates a similar Page 85 but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, bodily experience. Usually it is the psychic light in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always—for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. In ordinary life also there... mixture. That is to say, its presence becomes directly felt, not only behind and supporting, but filling the frontal consciousness and no longer dependent on or dominated by its instruments—mind, vital and body, but dominating them and moulding them into luminosity and teaching them their own true action. It is not easy to say whether the poems are esoteric; for these words "esoteric" and "exoteric" ...
... influences the body because all in the body has developed out of the subconscient and all in itself still is only half conscious and much of its action can be called subconscious. It is therefore much more easily influenced by the subconscious than by the conscious mind and conscious will or even the vital mind and vital will except in those things in which a conscious mental or vital control has been... against them and call down the Power and Light into the cells, into the whole body and plunge them into the subphysical below the body so that the very roots of the subconscient may get illuminated and change. It is only by doing this that realisation in the body will become possible. It [ insincerity in the vital ] can only be dangerous if the waking mind accepts it. All the same, so long as... the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner ...
... not tied down to mental and vital values must be dismissed as a superfluous dream for which there is neither place nor necessity here. Yet these things have been not only dreamed of and hungered after but reached and tasted by beings born in a mortal and human body. Spirituality lies there; its essence consists in a bursting of the human mental, moral, aesthetic, vital moulds in order to reach beyond... suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho analysis. Here... mind, life and body. At each step of evolution we have this change, reversal, new base. Matter is bound in an involved consciousness which is in practice an inconscience; life in the plant in a still involved consciousness struggling for growth, expansion, persistence, seeking after movement and sensation and conscious living without yet reaching them; life in the animal in a vital consciousness ...
... reasoning. He distinguishes mind from the other two elements of the surface nature, namely, the vital and the body-consciousness, which are mixed up with mind on the surface. The vital is the Life-Nature made up of sensations, energies of action, instincts, impulses, desires, feelings and emotions. The body, says Sri Aurobindo, "is not mere unconscious Matter: it is a structure of a secretly conscious... confounding of the vital and the body-consciousness with mind, Sri Aurobindo explains: "Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that life and body,- even the most... ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness." 21 "When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason why it is so difficult to get rid of habitual vital movements or to change the character; for ...
... number of other ways. This one related in Brunton's book seems to me the Adwaita-jnani method of separating oneself from body, vital, mind, by viveka , discrimination, "I am not the body, I am not the life, I am not the mind" till he gets to the self, separate from mind, life and body. That also is one way of doing it. There is also the separation of Purusha from Prakriti till one becomes the witness... calling the presence in the heart or the Force to work in the mind and heart and body and liberate the consciousness and give the self-realisation. If you concentrate on the idea of the Self, it must be with the conception of the Self as something different from mind and its thoughts, the vital and its feelings, the body and its actions—something standing back from all these, something that you can come... even in the mental, vital, physical levels (not only above) a consciousness that is neither mind, life, nor body. For the buzz of the physical mind, reject it quietly, without getting disturbed, till it feels discouraged and retires shaking its head and saying, "This fellow is too calm and strong for me." There are always two things that can rise up and assail the silence,—vital suggestions, the ...
... ly mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self apart from these things. It is perfectly easy to separate mind, vital and physical from each other without the need of supermind. It is done by the ordinary Yogas. The... seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self Page 305 apart from these things." How do they manage to separate themselves from mind, life and body so easily? Will not these things interfere with their realisation? In allowing them to do this, will not the mind, vital and physical have to withdraw from their ordinary movements of tamas,... from mind, life and body. Naturally. You write, "It is perfectly easy to separate mind, vital and physical from each other without the need of supermind" [ p. 305 ]. But you should have seen that by "supramental planes" I did not mean supermind, but any of the spiritual planes above the mind. Is there no need of the higher spiritual planes for separating the mind, vital and physical from one ...
... Ego and Individuality ...this little mind, vital and body which we call ourselves is only a surface movement and not our "self" at all. It is an external bit of personality put forward for one brief life, for the play of the Ignorance. It is equipped with an ignorant mind stumbling about in search of fragments of truth, an ignorant vital rushing about in search of fragments of pleasure,... in its own inalienable power. He must cease to be the mental, vital, physical ego; for that is always the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature. This ego is not his real self, but an instrumentation of Nature by which it has developed a sense of limited and separate individual being in mind, life and body. By this instrumentation he acts as if he were a separate existence... being and power of others or get thereby a help or an impulse for its life-affirmation, its life-delight, its enrichment of its mental, vital or physical existence. The Life Divine, p. 624 The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense was the first great labour of the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution; for this was the means it found for creating out of matter ...
... Supramental?’ 4 The question was of vital importance. The answer would decide on the choice of one out of two totally opposite ways to go about their work, on the inner as well as on the outer level. In the one case they would personally work out the supramental transformation for themselves and take up the burden of the mass of humanity only after their own body had been transformed, in the other theirs... appearance. It is the cause why, people say, character cannot be changed, also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of. All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of Ignorance. All that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains in... masked Gnosis’, as such infinite. ‘We had tried to do it [the descent of the Supramental] from above through the mind and the higher vital,’ as we have seen in the previous chapter, ‘but it could not be because the Sadhaks were not ready to follow — their lower vital and physical refused to share in what was coming down or else misused it and became full of exaggerated and violent reactions. Since ...
... a mental being emmeshed and 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... feel him everywhere. The life has to be utterly his life in the Jiva. All the actions have to proceed from his sole power and sole initiation in the will, knowledge, organs of action, senses, vital parts, body. This way is deeply impersonal because the separateness of ego is abolished for the soul universalised and restored to transcendence. And yet it is intimately personal because it soars to a t... tamasic man inertly obeys in a customary mechanical action the suggestions and impulses, the round of will of his material and his half-intellectualised vital and sensational nature. In the middle intervenes the kinetic law or dharma; the rajasic man, vital, dynamic, active, attempts to impose himself on his world and environment, but only increases the wounding weight and tyrant yoke of his turbulent passions ...
... ready to receive it. Formerly her sadhana was mainly on the vital plane which is Page 236 often the first to open and the connection of that plane with the body consciousness is easy to establish because they are nearer to each other. Even then however her body was suffering because of attacks from the hostile elements in the vital plane. Now the sadhana seems to have gone inward into the... mechanical continuation of the 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... complete trance. Or it may result in empowering the consciousness, no longer limited by the body and the habits of the external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become aware of its inmost psychic self or its inner mental, vital and subtle physical being and, it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the ...
... thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. 145 ... the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities 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... the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasized, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis. Here... in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us—inner mental, inner vital, inner physical—silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent ...
... mind, vital and body. How it is done or by what stages or how long it will take varies with each person. But this new consciousness is very different from the ordinary one and many things happen in its coming which would not happen to the mind and might seem strange to it — e.g. the dissolution of the ego and the opening into a wider self or spirit not limited by the body, to which the body is only... forms of course but they are only forms, not separate beings. Mind is silent, thought has ceased, — desires, passions, vital movements there are none. There is consciousness but only a formless elemental consciousness without limits. The body moves and acts, but the sense of the body is not there. Sometimes there is only the consciousness of pure existence, sometimes only pure consciousness, sometimes... being is not ready. Very usually the first preparation is to work on the mind and vital and physical nature in such a way that the soul, the psychic being can have a chance Page 210 of manifesting itself and influencing the rest of the nature; for that purpose all the main darknesses in the mind and vital have to be combated and thrown out and the physical also prepared in a material ...
... the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces, good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire... is through this also that waves of the universal force — desire, sex, etc. come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body. 19 Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses. Page 343 Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring... and the body (the physical). Each of these parts has its own distinct type of consciousness, though in our ordinary awareness they are all mixed up. Each plane of our being — mental, vital, physical — has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking experience, they are all confused together. The body, for instance ...
... 1.3.1969 Page 76 In the Bulletin Mother has spoken of a body without mind and vital. That is to say, the body has its own means of living, something different from what is called the vital force or Prana? It is a rather special case. The body (in all well developed beings) has a mind and a vital more or less rudimentary which are its particularities and can be fully... resistance of the body to the Force of transformation which is at work this moment. 18.11.1969 I am less interested in the outer cure of my cough than in profiting inwardly by it. It is obvious that if you discover the psychological reason of the cough, that is to say what in your physical or vital being resists the penetration of the Divine Force in your body, not only will you... what the Supreme Lord expects of me? 19.3.1969 Yes, the psychic being has not only the capacity to know but also to realise. The psychic being, much better than the mind and vital, understands the body and knows how to gain its obedience. 21.3.1969 There is a joy in knowing the future, there is also a joy in proceeding on the virgin path, without care, in the Mother's arms! ...
... from Faith in the Divine, and in the Divine within ourselves; not mental faith alone, but faith reaching down to the most subconscious, the very cells of the body. While the unity and interdependence of the different elements in man (body, vital, mind, soul) and of man and Nature provide the basis of a universal harmony, this is often upset and Nature is 'ridden with calamities' and humanity has become... of the Spirit: In those who are slaves of vital beings, the desire for truth and light and spiritual achievement, even if it at all touches them, cannot balance the desire for money. 31 In our fight against the hostile forces of the vital world, - the creatures of falsehood, the agents of evil, the children of darkness, - the human body, with its layers of density and grooves of resistance... inner condition of the body, for any disharmony within - in the physical, vital or mental - can equally father ailments. This problem was to come up again for discussion on 22 July 1953, when the Mother went into considerable detail. Normally we are under Divine protection, but when we permit doubt to infiltrate into our consciousness and open the way to fear - mental, vital, physical- then we fall ...
... goodwill in the vital, clear understanding and broadness in the mental and a general feeling of security and satisfaction." 3 Two points may be noted in the above-quoted description of the state of psychological well-being. First, well-being is described in terms of states of the body, the vital and the mind: "...health and fitness in the physical, quietness and goodwill in the vital, clear understanding... concept is that of the physical being, which is considered not merely as the gross body, but as something that has a distinct consciousness of its own which is different from that of mind and vital, though interfused with mental and vital consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "Each plane of our being - mental, vital, physical - has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting;... "physical mind" and "physical vital" will become clearer when we describe the psychological disturbances pertaining to these parts of the being. The term "psychic" is used in Integral Yoga to refer to the inmost part of the being which supports the outer nature of body, vital and mind and which, in most human beings, is hidden and veiled by the activities of physical, vital and mental consciousness ...
... initiated—call "soul" is the vital activity. If someone has a strong, active, obstinate vital which rules the body's activities, which has a very living or intense contact with people and things and events, if he has a marked taste for art, for all expressions of beauty, we are generally tempted to say and believe, "Oh! he has a living soul"; but it is not his soul, it is his vital being which is alive and... creates a new mind, vital and body for himself. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The System of the Chakras The psychic being (which is the soul) does not make centres for itself in the Adhar. The centres are there. The psychic being can take control of the centres that are already there —the heart and the navel centre and the two below the navel. Also the mind and vital are not abolished—they... (1954): 3 November 1954 The psychic being is in the heart centre in the middle of the chest (not in the physical heart, for all the centres are in the middle of the body), but it is deep behind. When one is going away from the vital into the psychic, it is felt as if one is going deep deep down till one reaches that central place of the psychic. The surface of the heart centre is the place of the ...
... not driven—wherever sadhana is going on, they come to disturb it—a fact known to the Yogis and Rishis from early times. Forced opening by a vital or a hostile force means a forced opening and entering of the same force in our mental, vital, physical body. If you mean an invasion of the consciousness by a hostile force, that happens—but it cannot succeed unless something in the sadhaka either... Asuras called into the As ram and imposed on some human being there who was to bear the burden of his transformation. She was speaking of certain Page 654 Lords of the Vital who had taken birth in earthly bodies and tried to prepare the Divine Descent, but each imagining that he alone was the chosen instrument of the Force, spoiled the work they could have done. It was outside the Asram that... rejection of asceticism as if it were a sanction for the indulgence of the body in whatever comfort it can get. The right principle is that one should be free from attachment and be able to do without things but also able to have them and use them without being bound or affected. Very few have taken it in that way—the vital has chosen to turn a deaf ear to anything said in that direction and to take ...
... and therefore the body, are composed also have their consciousness, though as yet very little developed and individualized. The cells constitute the matter of which our body is made, but they contain evidently a vital element also, for they are alive, and, what is less known, a mental element. This consciousness of the body cells is the most elementary consciousness in the human being and therefore... care of it and persist in your effort. What is it? The body consciousness.’ 50 What is the body consciousness? ‘… The physical consciousness as a whole. But in this physical consciousness as a whole there is the physical mind – a mind that is occupied with all the ordinary things and responds to everything around you. There is also the vital consciousness, which is the awareness of sensations, impulses... education was her knowledge of the different aspects of the human being – the material, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual parts. This knowledge, gained from age-long yogic and mystical experience, is in itself new and revolutionary compared to the way the human being is chiefly seen in the West: as a material body mysteriously functioning in tandem with an intangible mind, and which has in addition ...
... The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my own failings a small one? Were the obstacles less in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something.... complete effectivity seeping into all the levels of existence down to the material. The whole adventure of transformation of consciousness - the mind's movements, the conflicting pulls of the vital, the body's cells with their molecular energies: the charging of all these with the Truth and effectivity of the Supramental * A roughly equivalent version appears in V. Chidanandam's 'Sri Aurobindo... Aurobindo himself who had first given the idea to Motilal Roy - it was evidently intended to be a sort of controlled experiment. But Motilal "took it up with all his vital being and in an egoistic way", with the result that the lower vital forces took possession of the work and gave it a direction that was far from satisfactory. The Chandernagore group made "Commune, Culture and Commerce" the watchwords ...
... it only in his consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed. Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been... concentration is achieved a conscious acceleration of the evolution of Nature. Thus, Hatha Yoga selects the body and vital functionings as its instrument of perfection and realisation. The method is a concentration and effort of energy released by Asana and Pranayama in the outer and inner body for an object of physical perfection. Raja Yoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its l... enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and _______________ ¹ Ibid, p. 42. Page 72 the entire replacement of the present consciousness by that. This we find unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that ...
... it was sleep, you must have got into the vital plane or some supraphysical plane and met the Mother there. During the samadhi states the Mother's Force was quite solid. During the waking state, however, the action induced a certain emptiness or voidness in my being, right down to the body. I am unable to say whether it was in the subtle body or the outer that the density was felt. ... why are some experiences received more easily in samadhi? I think one reason is that in samadhi our central consciousness gets separated from the mind no less than from the body. In samadhi it is the inner mental, vital, physical which are separated from the outer, no longer covered by it - therefore they can freely have inner experiences. The outer mind is either quiescent or in some way... one understand the Force before it descends? One may feel the Force above, for instance, and know what it is and even be governed by it before it has descended into the mind, heart, vital or body. Is there any force on the higher planes which is not dynamic in itself and may be distinguished as passive? Page 210 A passive Force has no meaning ...
... one has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the "nervous envelope". The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the body – except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending... wanted to say that to punish the body for the faults of the vital being or of the mind was to punish John for Jack. Page 220 Sri Aurobindo : One may differ on that point too. To consider as if the body, the vital and the mind were so cut off from each other as not to have any mutual reaction is not true. So the physical can react on the vital being. Disciple : But... intending to, attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. Thus it is the vital-physical which is first attacked and then the force takes the form of a disease in the system. I had myself the experience of fever all around the body. Disciple : Should one be sensitive to these disturbances Sri Aurobindo : All disturbance and agitation is a sign of ...
... a subtle body ( sūkṣma deha ) in which he goes out of the sthūla deha at his death. The navel is the vital center in the physical body—but the native seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades, but for action through the gross body its action is centred at the navel and below it. 16 September 1933 The Yoga and Its Objects, Yogic Sadhan and The Synthesis... nervous or vital element in man which is centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha" [ p. 1388 ]. What is that subtle body? Also, I don't understand Page 81 the phrase "connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha". How is it you do not know these elementary things? Man has not a gross ( sthūla ) visible body only, but a... that the separative ego is not a creation of birth in the physical body; the mental and the vital have it also. So long as the mental and vital are subject to ignorance, the ego will last also. When the psychic being goes into rest it naturally takes it with the essence of its past experience and in coming back it takes up a mental, vital and physical existence which has the mark of the ego and the ignorance ...
... 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 after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally... call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt—which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal Page 30 character is desire and the attachment... In rebirth it is not the external being, that which is formed by parents, environment and circumstances — the mental, the vital and the physical — that is born again: it is only the psychic being that passes from body to body. Logically then, neither the mental nor the vital being can remember past lives or recognise itself in the character or mode of life of this or that person. The psychic being ...
... depends on the condition of the consciousness at that time, the temperature, the activity of the vital. The yogi of course (even certain strong and calm minds) is not carried away by the Ananda he holds and watches it and there is no more excitement mixed with the flow of it through the mind, vital or body. Naturally the Ananda of samarpaṇ or spiritual realisation or divine love is something far greater... of vital desires; it must be the flood of the world forces.” (9 January 1932) The second dream: A few of us were walking along a sea-shore. The sea was not at all like the one normally known. The very sight of it was fearful and terrible; its water was jet-black and crammed with frightful sea-creatures — each one of them most hideous and all pullulating in the dark water. The body felt... She writes: It is very good to have recovered the calm. It is in the calm that the body can increase its receptivity and gain the power to continue. With my love and blessings. Sahana, I fully approve of your singing in your room and see no necessity to stop it. As for the change in the vital, it will come by itself when you will take the habit of remaining in your higher consciousness ...
... depends on the condition of the consciousness at the time, the temperament, the activity of the vital; the Yogi, of course, (or even certain strong and calm minds) is not carried away by the Ananda, he holds and watches it and there is no mere excitement mixed with the flow of it through the mind, vital or body. Naturally the Ananda of samarpan [surrender] or spiritual realisation or divine love is something... are not necessarily the same thing— the best expenditure of energy is that which flows easily without effort at all—when the Inspiration or Force (any Force) works of itself and the mind and vital and even body Page 68 rowing instruments and the Force flows out in an intense and happy working—an almost labourless labour. March 29,1936 I was glad to get your evening letter... consciousness or the state of consciousness. We feel ourselves spreading in wideness and the body only as a small thing in the wideness (this can be seen also)—we feel the heart-consciousness being wide instead of narrow, soft instead of hard, illumined instead of obscure, the head-consciousness also, the vital, even the physical also—we feel thousands of things of all kinds and why are we not to call ...
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