... experiences in the vital; but in reality this can hardly take place without some mental preparation, even if it is nothing more than a turning of the mind or some kind of opening which makes the vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties in there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable.... The access to the soul, the psychic being is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in a maze of vital experiences, not always reliable, the temptation of small siddhis, the appeal of the powers of darkness to the ego. One has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only ...
... vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being, is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in a maze of vital experiences, not ...
... teaching, knowledge, the result of this knowledge on your understanding—all these things which are purely mental. And in fact one should always begin with that. If one has vital experiences—for example, visions—certain vital experiences without having a sufficient mental preparation, this may result in destroying one's balance and, in any case, one understands nothing of what is happening and it is practically ...
... basis of calm, light and strength into the physical mind, nerves and body. Once this is thoroughly done all attacks can be met. There will be no disturbing vibrations and all kinds of psychic and vital experiences such as those now pressing upon [him] will be welcomed as an expansion and fulfilment of the integral nature and a cause not of apprehension but of knowledge and Ananda. As to his coming here ...
... comes from above the mind or one develops by psychic perception and experience which comes from within—these are the two main things. But it is also necessary to grow by inner mental and vital experiences and visions and dream experiences play a large part here. One thing may predominate in one sadhak, others in another; each develops according to his nature. Feelings as Experiences There ...
... near to the physical world, all seems very material and concrete and the association of physical habits and physical Page 193 mental movements with the subtle events is closer. Vital Experiences The place where you were [ in a dream ] is as much a world of fact and reality as is the material world and its happenings have sometimes a great effect on this world. What an ignorant lot ...
... basis of calm light and strength into the physical mind, nerves and body. Once this is thoroughly done all attacks can be met. There will be no disturbing vibrations and all kinds of psychic and vital experiences such as those now pressing upon will be welcomed as an expansion and fulfilment of the integral nature and a cause not of apprehension but of knowledge and Ananda. As to his coming here, I was ...
... AUROBINDO: That is the rising of the consciousness out of the body. In hypnotism the subjects can know all their experiences and under chloroform they can do the same. During fever one can have vital experiences. NIRODBARAN: How? There is no loss of outer consciousness then. SRI AUROBINDO: The non-physical centres get excited. We can use our favourite term, "physical crust", and say that it temporarily ...
... basis of calm light and strength into the physical mind, nerves and body. Once this is thoroughly done all attacks can be met. There will be no disturbing vibrations and all kinds of psychic and vital experiences such as those now pressing upon will be welcomed as an expansion and fulfillment of the integral nature and a cause not of apprehension but of knowledge and Ananda. As to his coming here, I was ...
... propose; I understand that it is not a retirement, but a cessation of social visits. My objection to retirement is that so many have “gone morbid “ by it or gone astray into zones of false vital experiences; secondly, that absolute retirement is not necessary for the spiritual life. It is different however for people like Radhananda who are to the manner born or at least perfectly trained. A ...
... according as it lends itself to one or the other. In the body it produces those reactions of hunger, thirst, fatigue, health, disease, physical Page 348 vigour, etc. which are the vital experiences of the physical frame. For the gross body of man is not like the stone or the earth; it is a combination of two sheaths, the vital and the "food" sheath and its life is a constant interaction ...
... you propose; I understand that it is not a retirement, but a cessation of social visits. My objection to retirement is that so many have "gone morbid" by it or gone astray into zones of false vital experiences; secondly, that absolute retirement is not necessary for the spiritual life. It is different however for people like X who are to the manner born or at least perfectly trained. A "restriction ...
... meditation tends to project the consciousness into the vital plane and its experiences. But from that one can get to the psychic by drawing more and more inwards, not getting absorbed into the vital experiences but separating oneself and looking at them with detachment as if one were deep inside and observing things outside oneself. Similarly one can get the mental experiences by concentrating in the ...
... on a fixed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence of the Contact and the confusion. You have surely had enough of this kind of experience already and should ...
... this siege will in the end be driven away from you and strength and peace take its place. It [ a troubled state of mind ] is because you entered on a wrong movement, taking the lower vital experiences for truth. You now Page 158 find it difficult to get rid of them because of the hold you gave them. The two lines of forces are the line of these lower vital forces and the line of ...
... is the pioneer poet in Sanskrit literature. In our Bengali literature it is Vidyapati, nay, to be more precise and accurate, it is Chandidas who is the father of poetry. He raised the natural vital experiences to the level of the psychic. He has transformed even colloquial expressions into a deeper rhythm and flow. But even theirs was only the initial stage that required a long time to develop fullness ...
... the thing in itself or by some living significant symbol or expressive body of it. This dynamic sight is not the vision that comes by an intense reconstruction of physical seeing or through vital experience (e.g. Shakespeare's), it is a kind of occult sight which sees the things behind the veil, the forms that are more intimate and expressive than any outward appearance. It is a very vivid sight... poetic poetry, comes always from some Page 56 subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry; there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force of creative beauty which contributes its own substance and impetus and often determines the... is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own ...
... between sleep and waking—and things so seen are not dreams, but experiences from other planes—either mental or vital or subtle physical or more rarely psychic or higher plane experiences. Page 15 In this case it is very possible that she got into some kind of connection with the actual world of Krishna and the Gopis—through the vital. This seems to be indicated first by the sense of extreme rapture... thing in itself or of some living significant symbol or expressive body of it. This dynamic sight is not the vision that comes by an intense reconstruction of physical seeing or through a strong vital experience; it is a kind of inner occult sight which sees the things behind the veil, the forms that are more intimate and expressive than any outward appearance. It is a very vivid sight and the expression... . But this does not mean that there should be no vital element in poetry—without the vital nothing living can be done. But for a deeper or greater appeal the vital element must be surcharged with something more forward or else something from above, an element of superior inspiration or influence. Poetry essentially psychic can have a strong vital element, but the psychic being is always behind it; ...
... if it had all been unreal or untrue. I suppose that is why you object to my phrase about your having gone so far. I meant that you had had openings in your thinking mind, heart and higher vital and experiences also and had seen very lucidly the condition of your own being and nature and had by that got so far that these parts were ready for the spiritual change — what remains is the physical and outer... sadhana. These are now covered in you by the upsurgence of this part which has to change. It is tamasic and does not want to change, does not want to believe unless it can be done by reassuring the vital ego. But there is nothing new in all that — it is part of human nature and has always been there, hampering and limiting the sadhana. Its existence is no reason for despair — everyone has it and the ...
... cannot fail to realise themselves, the future India will be formed in the crude mould of the Westernised social and political reformer whose mind, barren of original thought and unenlightened by vital experience, can do nothing but reproduce the forms and ideas of Europe and will turn us all into halting apes of the West. Or else, and that perhaps is the best thing that can happen, a new spiritual awakening... Page 136 accumulation of a great mass of accretions which were once valuable but have lost their virtue and to the heaping up of dead forms and shibboleths which no longer correspond to any vital truth nor have any understood and helpful significance. All this putrid waste of the past is held to be too sacred to be touched by any profane hand and yet it chokes up the streams of the national... most upon the answer that will be given to the modern riddle of the Sphinx by the East and especially by India, the hoary guardian of the Asiatic idea and its profound spiritual secrets. For the most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by ...
... is in direct touch with the divine Truth, but it 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; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind... permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts... his mastery, make the theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya to do it. The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or say, "Let there be Light"! They have a tremendous ...
... even the vital, nervous experience and practically the physical sense of the Self in all life and formation and in all workings of powers, forces, energies that operate through us or others or in the world; thus the life and the body are satisfied of God. All this knowledge and experience are primary means of arriving at and of possessing identity. It is our self that we see and experience and therefore... her in dream or in waking be called a realisation? That would be an experience rather than a realisation. A realisation would be of the Mother's presence within, her force doing the work—or of the Peace or Silence everywhere, of universal Love, universal Beauty or Ananda etc. etc. Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which... form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace. Our whole being ought to demand God and not only our illumined eye of knowledge. For since each principle in us is only a manifestation of the Self, each can get back to its reality and have the experience of it. We can have a mental experience of the Self and seize ...
... consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego, and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly as not himself and something... ns of individuality have started. But what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think... But a much more radical deliverance, not only from egoism but from ego-idea and ego-sense, is needed if our aim is to raise human into divine nature. Experience shows that, in proportion as we deliver ourselves from the limiting mental and vital ego, we command a wider life, a larger existence, a higher consciousness, a happier soul-state, even a greater knowledge, power and scope. Even the aim ...
... quieted and turned steadily towards spiritual experience. If you ask why the Divine has so disposed it on this highly inconvenient basis, it is a futile question,—for this is nothing else than a psychological necessity imposed by the very nature of things. It is so because these experiences of the Divine are not mental constructions, not vital movements; they are essential things, not things merely... difficulty lies in the normal human consciousness to which spiritual experience comes as something abnormal and is in fact supernormal. This weak limited normality finds it difficult at first even to get any touch of that greater and intenser supernormal or it gets it diluted into its own duller stuff of mental or vital experience, and, when the spiritual does come in its own overwhelming power, very... equal, then spiritual experience is quite superfluous. But if it is inferior, how can it challenge, judge, make the Divine stand as an accused or a witness before its tribunal, summon It to appear as a candidate for admission before a Board of Examiners or pin It like an insect under its examining microscope? Can the vital animal hold up as infallible the standard of its vital instincts, associations ...
... goes on in their sleeping as in their waking hours. This is different from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother, and recently you had one such contact on the mental... of light of the scientist—to prepare its possession of mind, vital and physical in the body. So is the stillness and rigidity of the body in your former experience a sign of the same descent of the higher consciousness in its form or tendency of stillness and silence. It is a perfectly sound conclusion that one who gets these experiences at the beginning has the capacity of Yoga in him and can open... The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Nature and Value of Experiences Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II The Value of Experiences Experience and Development of Consciousness It is only by persistent experience and development of consciousness that the veil of Ignorance can be entirely dispelled ...
... false—no such thing can happen" and throw it away as you would a wrong suggestion in the waking state. Unpleasant or Bad Vital Dreams The experience of the hill and the rose and the sudden cold is one of those dream experiences that one gets on the vital plane,—for there things good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant are very close to each other. Page 467 Everybody has unpleasant... lower vital, the physical consciousness or the sheer subconscience—have always or almost always a double character. For there are two parts of the consciousness concerned—one that remains attached to the body but in a passive unsupported subconscient condition not capable of coherent and ordered experience and another that goes out into various planes and worlds of consciousness, has experiences there... kinds of worlds and sees and does things there or has experience of what happens there. Some of these dreams have importance and a meaning for the sadhana—most have none or very little. These dreams are not all mere dreams, all have not a casual, incoherent or subconscious building. Many are records or transcripts of experiences on the vital plane into which one enters in sleep, some are scenes ...
... the heart is satisfied of God. We can have an aesthetic experience of the Self in beauty, a delight-perception and taste of the absolute reality all-beautiful in everything whether created by ourselves or Nature in its appeal to the aesthetic mind and the senses; thus the sense is satisfied of God. We can have even the vital, nervous experience and practically the physical sense of the Self in all life... irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity. This inner vision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only... aid of experience by the touch and other organs of sense before there is an embracing knowledge, so the vision of the self ought to be completed by an experience of it in all our members. Our whole being ought to demand God and not only our illumined eye of knowledge. For since each principle in us is only a manifestation of the Self, each can get back to its reality and have the experience of it. ...
... self & the joy of God's divine being in & beyond the world, Amritam. The last is the goal proposed for man by the Isha Upanishad. The waking ego, identifying the Jiva with its bodily, vital & mental experiences which are part of the stream of Nature's movement & subject to Nature & the process of the movement, falsely believes the soul to be the subject of Nature & not its lord, anish and not Ish... and not subject to its laws or limited by its experiences. The soul is not constituted by mind and its activities, for these also are parts of Nature and movements only. Mind and body are instruments of the secret all-knowing and omnipotent Self within us. The soul in the body is not limited in space by the body or Page 352 in experience by the mind; the whole universe is its habitation... even from my brother or my lover, but by exceeding body & mind I can become one with all things in being & in experience, even with the stone & the tree. My universal soul need no more be limited by my individual mind and body, than my individual consciousness is limited by the experiences of a single cell in my body. The walls which imprison us have been built up by Prakriti in her movement and exist ...
... limited relation and mutual experience in the cosmic oneness. And in this lower, outward and apparent order of things Nature as an expressive power of the Godhead is disfigured by the perversions of an obscure cosmic Ignorance and her divine significances lost in the materialised, Page 348 separative and egoistic mechanism of our mental and vital experience. But still here also all is from... knowledge and from the very nature of the Yoga which converts that knowledge into spiritual growth and spiritual experience. For all the perplexity of man's mind and action, all the stumbling, insecurity and affliction of his mind, his will, his ethical turn, his emotional, sensational and vital urgings can be traced back to the groping and bewildered cognition and volition natural to his sense-obscured... the same beyond and here. This spiritual experience of the transcendental Infinite breaks down the limitations of the pantheistic conception of existence. The infinite of a cosmic monism which makes God and the universe one, tries to imprison the Divine in his world manifestation and leaves us that as our sole possible means of knowing him; but this experience liberates us into the timeless and spaceless ...
... of the thing in itself or by some living significant symbol or expressive body of it. This dynamic sight is not the vision that comes by an intense reconstruction of physical seeing or through vital experience (e.g. Shakespeare's it is a kind of occult sight which sees the things behind the veil, the forms that are more intimate and expressive than any outward appearance, it is a very vivid sight and... the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. 1 When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff... may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative 1 The expression—"the vital"—in this sentence is a special term of Sri Aurobindo's and must not be taken as one lacking by oversight a noun after it. Thus elsewhere he writes: "The vital has to be carefully distinguished from mind, even though it has a mind element ...
... 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; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of... time one understands, necessarily, the reason of his present existence and the experience this psychic being wants to have; and instead of having it somewhat half consciously and more than half unconsciously, one can shorten this experience and so help his psychic being to cover in a limited number of years the experiences it would perhaps take several lifetimes to go through. That is to say, the help... theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya to do it. The psychic has always been veiled, Page 5 consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or say, "Let there be Light"? They have a tremendous ...
... ; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, that is to say, with his mind-created ego, and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences. Less intimately, because of these he can say "my mind, life, body," he can regard them as himself, yet partly... down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual—this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice"—to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive... response or set the true value upon any part of cosmic experience. We experience limitation, weakness, incapacity, grief, pain, struggle and its contradictory emotions and we accept these things and their opposites as opposites in an eternal duality and cannot reconcile them in the eternity of an absolute good and happiness. We live by fragments of experience and judge by our fragmentary values each thing ...
... determinations of individuality have started. But what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical construction of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of... order to construct this synthesis, is his total experience of the world-being. Therefore our individualisation exists by virtue of the world-being, but also by virtue of a consciousness which uses the world-being for experience of its possibilities of individuality. These two powers, Person and his world-material, are both necessary for our present experience of individuality. If the Purusha with his i... merge, disappear, then also our individualisation would cease, for the material of experience by which it effectuates itself would be wanting. We have then to recognise these two terms of our existence, a world-being and an individualising consciousness which is the cause of all our self-experience and world-experience. But we see farther that in the end this Purusha, this cause and self of our i ...
... psychic in the plant, much that is psychic in the animal. The plant has only the vital-physical evolved in its form, so cannot express itself; the animal has a vital mind and can, but its consciousness is limited and its experiences are limited so the psychic essence has a less developed consciousness and experience than is present or at least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul ... * * * " I do not know about subtle vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical, because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthula. But the vital is in its nature non-material, so that the adjective is superfluous."10 * * * " This question has no practical meaning for the vital physical forces can be received from anywhere... psychic being is in direct touch yyj, the divine Truth, but it is hidden in man by the mind H vital being and the physical nature. "² "The psychic being has always been valid, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way." ³ " Atma is not the same as psychic-Atma is the self which is one in all ...
... don't say "lower" in a pejorative sense, but I mean in a more material consciousness. It's in the vital. In the vital. Ramakrishna's experiences were in the vital. But at least it gives a meaning to life; life becomes full! Page 213 Yes, of course.... But in the vital.... For that, your vital needs a lot of preparation—it will happen, but... I don't think you'll get the satisfaction you're... you want you will have to work a lot—you will have to bring into your vital and emotional being a great calm and peace. Things like that [with X] mustn't be able to disturb you, make you sick and so forth. Only on that condition can you get what you want. A flash, yes... (you had it once at Brindaban, 6 you had an experience there); a flash is possible. But you want something permanent. All... work of transformation. At any moment, if the Lord decides it's hopeless , it will be hopeless , finished; and no matter what happens, if the Lord has decided that I'll go right to the end of the experience, then I'll go right to the end. That whole way of seeing, feeling and reacting belongs really to another world. Really to another world... to such a degree that if I had no regard for people's ...
... the instruments because he has within him the true Self. This Self is independent of nature. Man can detach himself in the mind or in the vital and experience a "witness" Self that can watch, without participation, all the movements of nature. The experience of the witness is really the beginning of expansion of consciousness and of true freedom. The witness watches not merely the Page 31... detention, while under trial as a political revolutionary in 1908, that he got the second crucial experience of Yoga which became the turning point of his life. In a certain sense it was an epoch-making experience and he gave expression to it at a meeting in Uttarpara, in 1909. This spiritual experience in jail turned his mind to a problem of far greater magnitude than the winning of the freedom of... consciousness is real or not. Normally man has no experience of the cosmic mind. He has no experience of the supermind, and so how is he to decide whether cosmic conciousness is real or not ? The remedy to solve this problem, Sri Aurobindo suggests here, is that we must try to extend the field of our own consciousness and get into the experience of cosmic consciousness. And this can be done not ...
... beautiful French at that. I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods. This was incomplete, one-sided.’ The Mother would also say that Richard had ‘a rather remarkable metaphysical brain.’ Looking back, she discerned several distinct periods in her life. There had, for instance, been the period of vital experience and development, including her first marriage... atmosphere we live in is full of a great number of small vital entities which are born of unsatisfied desires, of vital movements of a very low type, and also of the decomposition of larger beings of the vital world. Indeed, it is swarming with them. It is no doubt thanks to a special protection that most people do not see what is going on in this vital atmosphere, for it is not exactly pleasant. But if... bangs to the furniture, making tables walk, and all such things.’ 8 She especially made it clear that most of the occult phenomena were caused by little vital beings, the ‘elementals,’ of which we have already heard as denizens of the lower vital world and who find their amusement in making fools of the by-and-large ignorant and defenceless human beings. ‘Those who indulge in this kind of practice ...
... it for further experiences of life? That is only another way of putting the revolt of the lower nature. For it is not the soul, the psychic being, but the vital and the physical consciousness that refuse to go farther. For those who are running after petty pleasures, doesn't the same answer hold true? When their soul is fully rich and satisfied with its chequered experiences, it will turn towards... soul wants more fun in the mud of Ignorance, people follow their "round of pleasure and pain". That is contrary to experience. The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper... essential elements of its experiences in life and takes up with the sheaths as much of its Karma as is useful for further experience in a new life. This time it is all right—but what the deuce has that got to do with the original sin? Now if I say that the soul has failed this time because it took "so much of its Karma" and requires farther evolution through farther experience before it can turn ...
... psychic being — supports from within the evolution of the individual, standing behind and guiding the parts of the outer instrumental being — mental, vital and physical, receiving the essence of all their experiences and growing by these experiences, carrying the consciousness from life to life. When the psychic being realises its oneness with the Jivatman in the state of liberation, it does not... consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly as not himself and something... certain schools of Buddhists felt it in their experience as a limitless Shunya, the Vedantists, on the contrary, see it as a positive Self-Existence featureless and absolute. No doubt, the various experiences were erected into various philosophies, each putting its conception as definitive; but behind each conception there was such an experience. 14 Buddha, it must be remembered, refused ...
... as yet only in its infancy, but has at any rate stood the test of thousands of years of practical experiment by men passionately in search not merely of speculative truth, but of actual, vital, verifiable experiences, to them of a more than life-and-death importance. Wherever it has been tested, this ancient system has always been justified by its results. In any field of scientific research such constant... of its perennial vitality; there has been a disposition to formalise into one school or another and repeat from generation to generation its methods & experiences. But the Indian mental atmosphere tends always, by a return upon that which is most vital in it, to bring out great souls who, like Buddha, like Chaitanya, like Nanak, like Ramdas, like Ramakrishna, belong to no school, owe their knowledge... for us that which is dark in these Upanishads or, conquering the rapid and deafening surge of modern thought, plunge deep into the remoter, silent depths of our human experience and recover for us the divinations, perceptions, experiences of the early Rishis? Not certainly our European guides, on whom we rely so implicitly for the sense of the Vedas. For they have a very summary method of dealing ...
... of faith etc. is due to their soul still wanting Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo: ... The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change * "Did Sri Aurobindo mean to write Al intending 'first-rate'?" - NB's note. Page... out that when the soul has looked towards the Truth and is moving towards it, a pull-back by the vital and the ego towards the Ignorance is a glorious action of the soul and not a revolt of the lower nature? I suppose you are floundering about in the confusion of the idea that "desire-soul" in the vital is the true psyche of man. If you like - but that is no part of my explanation of things; I make... am getting more and more disappointed, still more in Yoga since I hear that you are now trying more for the transformation of nature than for experience. Page 339 Sri Aurobindo: Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig's head - won't do. Picturesque perhaps, but - NB: What to do? How to bring down the Force? Sri ...
... the Prakriti. You feel it mechanical because you are in the physical consciousness where all is mechanism. On the mental and vital plane one can have the same experience, but of the actions as a play of forces. What is lacking at present to you is the other side of the experience, viz. that of the silent Atman or else of the witness Purusha calm, tranquil, free, pure and undisturbed by the play of the... nervous impression which you should throw away. It is not vital weakness that leads to such upsettings—it is an obscurity and weakness in the physical mind accompanied by movements of an exaggerated vital nature (e.g. exaggerated spiritual ambition) which are too strong for the mind to bear. That is not your case. You have had long experience of inner peace, wideness, Ananda, an inner life turned towards... least larger or smaller spaces of blank non-understanding in the face of unaccustomed ideas or a new line of possible experience or anything else either alien to the mind's habits or unwelcome to Page 410 something in the vital parts. I suppose we have all had experience of this incapable element in our nature, and if one fixes oneself in it, it can make even things that would ordinarily ...
... the head) in this experience. For the rest it is a resumption of the piercing of the veil, the beginning of the power of inner experience as opposed to the lesser experiences of the surface, the opening of the inner being, which is necessary for the Yogic consciousness. A certain amount of vital purification has taken place which made the resumption of this kind of experience possible. You certainly... always in the front of the mind, yet at the back and by that they hope to prevent the experience from coming. It is these mental formations that you must reject, for they are a much greater obstacle than the vital feelings to which you give such an exaggerated importance. It is not a fact that you have not had experiences—you had them but you did not give them their full value, because you were expecting... Divine. It made a strong and intense effort and had many rich and beautiful experiences; but its weakness was just there, that it remained valid only as an inner experience turned towards the inner Divine, but it stopped at that point. Chaitanya's prema was nothing but a psychic divine love with a strong sublimated vital manifestation. But the moment Vaishnavism before or after him made an attempt ...
... with the question issue? These are difficulties 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 Page 85 cannot base a general denial on your own particular experience; because you have only the initial experiences of cairn etc. and have not got to the intensities as I have done and... goes on in their sleeping as in their waking hours. This is different from the dream experiences that one has on the vital or mental plane which are themselves not ordinary dreams but actual experiences on the mental, vital, psychic or subtle physical planes. You have had several dreams which were vital dream experiences, those in which you met the Mother and recently you had one such contact on the mental... of light of the scientist—to prepare its possession of mind, vital and physical in the body. So is the stillness and rigidity of the body in your former experience a sign of the same descent of the higher consciousness in its form or tendency of stillness and silence. It is a perfectly sound contusion that one who gets these experiences at the beginning has the capacity of Yoga in him and can open ...
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