... developed and has besides a narrow range of interests. Afterwards it becomes an undercurrent in the mental activities. Letters on Yoga, p. 329 The Vital Mind There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper... and ordinary things, this vital mind is there. It acts in them on a small scale, or if it needs some sense of largeness, what it does very often is to plan in the void, knowing that it cannot realise its plans or else to imagine big things, stories, adventures, great doings in which oneself is the hero or the creator. Letters on Yoga, pp. 334-35 The vital mind is that part of the vital... the mental adventurer, the opener of the way to new mind-formations or the fighter for an idea, the sensitive type of artist, the dynamic poet of life or the prophet or champion of a cause. The vital mind is kinetic and therefore a great force in the working of evolutionary Nature. Above this level of vital mentality and yet more inly extended, is a mind-plane of pure thought and intelligence ...
... had to be silenced: a thinking mind , which makes up our regular reasoning process; a vital mind , which justifies our desires, feelings and impulses; there is also a far more troublesome physical mind , whose conquest is as important for physical mastery as the conquest of the thinking mind and the vital mind are for mental and vital mastery. It would indeed seem that the mind is the scapegoat in... will detect in his vital exploration is a part of the mind whose only role seems to be to give form, and justification, to his impulses, feelings or desires; this is what Sri Aurobindo terms the vital mind . Since we already know the necessity for mental silence, we will now strive to extend our discipline of silence to this lower mental layer, too. Once this has been achieved, we will see things far... unyielding it is. And it is too stupid to be open to reason. Yet, ultimately, it will have to yield, because just as the thinking mind is an obstacle to the widening of our mental consciousness and the vital mind is an obstacle to the universalization of our vital consciousness, the physical mind puts up a massive wall against the expansion of our physical consciousness, an expansion that is the basis of ...
... which the thoughts that cross are not believed, accepted or allowed to govern the conduct, it must be understood that the vital mind is no longer dominant—for the nature of the vital mind is always to cloud the true mind's perception and drive it towards action. Neither the vital mind nor the physical mind are things that have to be got rid of, but they must be quietened, purified, controlled and transformed... peace are always sure signs that the psychic is becoming active. It has been developing in you for some time past, only it was covered over by rushes of the old vital mind which did not want to lose its hold or its place. Now that the vital mind is quiet, it is again the psychic that is pressing to come forward and establish its influence. Page 358 The thoughts that came afterwards about the... partially covered cannot disappear altogether. Mostly 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 ...
... from outside and has its causes, only his vital mind does not record or understand the causes, but there is a response to them all the same. Because the vital mind has in the past always associated depression with these causes and that impression remains in the vital stuff, so it responds to the touch with the usual reaction taught to it by the vital mind. An ignorant and untrained mind like X 's... 's cannot be expected to realise the secret machinery of the movements of his own consciousness. The vital mind is part of the mind. If mind (mental mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) does not respond to Page 185 outer things, depression is impossible. The self at one end, the stone at the other never get into depression. In between them, the true mind, true vital... there, is the thing that must always be preserved; for with that everything else can be done in time and with the least trouble. Anutāp —remorse, repentance, is the natural movement of the vital mind when it sees it has done a mistake. It is certainly better than indifference. Its disadvantage is that it disturbs the vital stuff and sometimes leads to depression or discouragement. For that reason ...
... do not speak to the cow ! ( Laughter ) + + + 4-8-1924 Morning talk on Sadhana. Page 179 Disciple : What is the distinction between the vital mind and mental will ? Sri Aurobindo : The vital mind is an impulse first and thought afterwards. It is, you can say, force first and thought afterwards. For instance, desire – if deprived of the element of "desire" – is... stealing he went to the master and brought him there ! The animals seem to act upon 1. Memory, 2. Association, 3. Invention and 4. Adaptation of means to an end. I believe the animals think with the vital mind while man thinks with the reason. 19-10-1925 The talk turned on cats : Sri Aurobindo : They have .great vitality. They disturb the whole atmosphere while they are excited and... Animals also have the same vital feelings, emotions and even thoughts. But in man they work in a different way, because he is a mental being. Man raises up all these things, and forms what I call the "vital mind" or what you call "emotions". Emotions according to my classification are the vital part of the mind. Man simply has raised up the animal's vital impulses and tried to mentalise them. The result ...
... indulge are one peculiar form of the vital mind activity). There is a still lower stage of the mental in the vital which merely expresses the vital stuff without subjecting it to any play of intelligence. It is through this mental vital that the vital passions, impulses, desires rise up and get into the Buddhi and either cloud or distort it. As the vital Mind is limited by the vital view and feeling... ve part to control it. It is a question of getting a kind of balance and harmony between them. The Thinking Mind and the Vital Mind The thinking mind does not lead men, does not influence them Page 178 the most—it is the vital propensities and the vital mind that predominate. The thinking mind with most men is, in matters of life, only an instrument of the vital. Vital thought... physical mind can deal only with outward things. One has to think and decide in other things with the mind itself (buddhi), not with the physical part of it. The Vital Mind There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, ...
... intermixed with the vital, called the vital mind. There is also a part of the mind which is interfused with the physical, called the physical mind. Similar subdivisions exist within the vital and the physical. Two of these subdivisions which generally play a prominent role in most human beings are the vital mind and the physical mind. The vital mind is the part of the mind which is intermixed... various levels or gradations of consciousness below and above mental consciousness — the level with which we are most familiar as human beings. The Inconscient, the Subconscient, the Physical, the Vital, Mind, Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, Supermind and Sachchidananda constitute the chief levels of consciousness in the vertical system (Fig.2). Page 337 Evolution... intermixed and dominated by impulses, desires and feelings of the vital nature. The reasoning of the vital mind is a pseudo-reasoning as is well illustrated by the common act of rationalisation by which the mind, usurped by the vital, provides plausible "rational" explanations and justifications for impulses and desires of the vital. The physical mind is the part of the mind which is intermingled ...
... which it came. It is again the vital mind. It has no sense of proportion or measure and is eager to be or achieve something big at once. All that [ pleasurable imaginations ] is the vital mind—it has in everybody the habit of such imaginations. It is not very important, but of course it has to be got rid of, as the basis is ego. The vital mind in the ordinary nature cannot get on... habits of nature. The greater the plasticity in any part of the nature, the less the resistance there. By the higher vital parts of the nature I mean the vital mind, the emotional nature, the life-force dynamis in the being. The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines, arranges things and thoughts according to the life-pushes, desires, will to power or possession... nature. It [ the vital mind ] is a mind of dynamic (not rationalising) will, action, desire—occupied with force and achievement and satisfaction and possession, enjoyment and suffering, giving and taking, growth, expansion, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune etc. etc. That [ repetitive imaginative thinking ] is the ordinary activity of the vital mind which is always imagining ...
... traditional knowledge that when we go beyond the material plane, these things are found to exist there also in worlds beyond us. There are in these planes of supraphysical experience powers and forms of vital mind and life that seem to be the prephysical foundation of the discordant, defective or perverse forms and powers of life-mind and life-force which we find in the terrestrial existence. There are forces... good and evil is not native to the material principle, it is absent from the world of Matter. The duality begins with conscious life and emerges fully with the development of mind in life; the vital mind, the mind of desire and sensation, is the creator of the sense of evil and of the fact of evil. Moreover, in animal life, the fact of evil is there, the evil of suffering and the sense of suffering... does this awakening proceed? what is it in the human being that originates and gives its power and place to the sense of good and evil? If we regard only the process, we may agree that it is the vital mind that makes the distinction. Its first valuation is sensational and individual,—all that is pleasant, helpful, beneficial to the life-ego is good, all that is unpleasant, malefic, injurious or destructive ...
... away from the outer world and it is the same dissatisfaction a hundred times increased and accompanied with an intense psychic sorrow that would come on you if you went away from the Yoga. Your vital mind (which is the one which revolts and doubts) has strange misconceptions about the spiritual state. There is no grimness in being an instrument of the divine Will—it is the happiest and most joyous... have written, I cannot write much today for obvious reasons and in any case writing is not the remedy, though it may help and encourage— for these doubts rise not from the intellect but from the vital mind which sees things according to its condition and mood and needs something else than what the mind asks for to satisfy it. It is perfectly true that these reasonings have no force when the vital is... precipitate way because of a hard and difficult moment. April 1933 [?] In your letter today there are some things that I would find a little astonishing if I did not know that when the vital mind which indulges in these depressions is predominant anything however contrary to the facts may be put forward as true. But I should like to put one or two of them right, all the same. For you say ...
... has its causes, only his vital mind does not record or understand the Page 87 causes, but there is a response to them all the same. Because the vital mind has in the past always associated depression with these causes and that impression remains in the vital stuff, so it responds to their touch with the usual reaction taught to it by the vital mind. An ignorant and untrained... unless the mind (vital mind usually) represents them to itself in a particular way and makes its own response. If the mind does not respond to any suggested reasons for despondency, that is indeed a great liberation. Does the vital by itself never get depressed? It is only when the mind creates outer reasons that vital depression is possible? The vital mind is part of the... the vital. If the mind (mental mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) does not respond to outer things, depression is impossible. The self at one end, the stone at the other never get into depression. In between, the true mind, true vital, true physical consciousness never get depression because they do not give the responses to things that create depression. I have raised ...
... the refusal of all feelings of desire, claim and ego and all justifications of these feelings by the vital mind which is full of a false view of things and therefore cannot be trusted even when its reasonings seem to be plausible. Others before you have entered into this whirl of the vital mind and ego and have gone on justifying it and indulging it. The only result was a constant repetition of... always discouraged—but people go on because that appeals to the vital ego. I have already told you the nature of the difficulty that has arisen in you, that it is nothing but the revolt of your vital mind and vital ego and I have pointed out to you the only way in which it can be overcome. You had by an effort supported by a special concentration from us arrived at a first psychic opening in your... sadhana; others by a repeated reaction of their psychic being finally succeeded in emerging out of the chaos. But we have found that to comply with the claims, demands, clamours, ultimatums of the vital mind in this condition is the worst way to meet the difficulty. It only increases the demands, revolts, outbursts of ego and makes the recurrence or continuance of the vital crises endless. You must get ...
... and the rest should be impossible, on the other a violent rejection of the only condition under which these things can become impossible. I know that this is the natural inconsistency of the human vital mind wanting two inconsistent and incompatible things together; but that is one reason why it is necessary to transform the human and put something a little more luminous in its place. But is the Divine... but what you object to is the supramental—grand, aloof, incomprehensible, unapproachable, a sort of austere Nirakara Brahman. The supramental so described is a bogey created by this part of your vital mind in order to frighten itself and justify its attitude. Behind this strange description there seems to be an idea that the supramental is a new version of the Vedantic featureless and incommunicable... why should a change to fuller life-power, fuller body-power be considered something aloof, cold and undesirable? The utmost Ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes; with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousandfold ...
... at rest. If the desires were thrown out and the ego less active and the physical mind at rest knowledge would come from above; in place of the physical mind's stupidities, Page 73 the vital mind could be calm and quiet and the Mother's Force take up the action and the higher consciousness begin to come down. That is the proper sequel of emptiness. But nothing of this has happened because... obstacle. All in the Asram are not suffering from the sense of dullness and want of interest, but many are because the Force that is descending is discouraging the old movements of the physical and vital mind which they call life and they are not accustomed to accept the renunciation of these things, or to admit the peace or joy of silence. There is a certain truth in what you say about the empty... not necessary. Emptiness, Blankness and Silence Silence of the being is the first natural aim of the Yoga. You and some others do not find satisfaction in it because you have not overcome the vital mind which wants always some kind of activity, change, doing something, making something happen. The eternal immobility of the silent Brahman is a thing it does not relish. So when emptiness comes, it ...
... you put these questions ? There are two things : first is the constructive mind that wants to have some sort of image before it – of course, it wants mental lines and forms; secondly, it is the vital mind which wants to have a play. It would be easy for me to reply to your questions if you want to know whether it is our aim to have the Higher Power working in all the fields of life. I answer... it. Not that I have no idea about the work that would be done when the Truth comes down. But immediately at present we have to bring down a change in the physical mind, the nervous being, and the vital mind, so that they may become fit instruments of the Truth. That is a big enough work, I should think. Not that the final goal is not known. But I always keep my mind open for any change that the higher... and believes that it is the highest instrument, the master or even king of the Page 128 universe. It has the error of false knowledge, it is limited to partial light. The Vital mind is rampagious ; it wants to do things, it is violent. It says : "Yes, I surrender, but I want God to do this." It does not say it does not want to surrender. The physical mind is obscure and dull ...
... as and greater than the change which we suppose evolutionary Nature to have made in its transition from the vital animal to the fully mentalised human consciousness. The animal has the conscious vital mind, but whatever beginnings there are in it of anything higher are only a primary glimpse, a crude hint of the intelligence which in man becomes the splendour of the mental understanding, will, emotion... manifestation is not mental but supramental and even in its formulation nearest to mind as much above the mental consciousness in its light and power as the mental consciousness of man above the vital mind of the lower creation. The question is how far the perfected human being can raise himself above mind, enter into some kind of fusing union with the supramental and build up in himself a level of... all-conscient spirit in its own absorbed self-oblivious force of action; and it appears therefore as part of an evolutionary process, first a vital feeling towards overt sensation, then an emergence of a vital mind capable of sensation and, evolving out of it, a mind of emotion and desire, a conscious will, a growing intelligence. And each stage is an emergence of a greater suppressed power of the secret supermind ...
... ordinary things, this vital mind is there. It acts in them on a small scale, or if it needs some sense of largeness, what it does very often is to plan in the void knowing that it cannot realise its plans or else to imagine big things, stories, adventures, great doings in which oneself is the hero or the creator. What you describe as happening in you is the rush of this vital mind or imagination making... without any expectation of profit—when you do it because you cannot do otherwise. The Mother On Thoughts and Aphorisms: Aphorism - 6 There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, buddhi ,—but to plan or dream or... through it that they had a great spiritual, political or social work to do in the world and led them away to disappointment and failure. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Mind The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines, arranges things and thoughts according to the life-pushes, desires, will to power or possession, will to action, emotions, vital ego ...
... and the physical, are interrelated in the complexity of our being. As a result, there is in us what Sri Aurobindo calls the mental-vital (vital mind), mental-physical (physical mind), vital-mental, vital-physical and physical-vital. The mental-vital or the vital mind is the mind which is at the service of vital desires and vital emotions. It is a sort of mediator between vital emotion, desire, impulsion... arguments in support of vital movements such as rationalisations of all kinds is also an activity of the mental-vital or of the vital mind Other activities include pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc. in which men indulge very often. The mental-vital or vital mind plans or dreams or imagines what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if o... high measure. At a lower stage of the mental-vital, the vital passions, impulses and desires rise up and get into the pure Thought and either cloud it or distort it. The mental-vital (the vital Mind) should be distinguished from the dynamic Mind. While the mental-vital is limited by the vital view and feelings of things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by the idea and reason. The emotional ...
... the physical, are interrelated in the complexity of our being. As a result, there is in us what Sri Aurobindo calls the mental-vital (vital mind), mentalphysical (physical mind), vital-mental, vital-physical and physical-vital. The mental-vital or the vital mind is the mind which is at the service of vital desires and vital emotions. It is a so-t of mediator between vital emotion, desire, impulsion... arguments in support of vital movements such as rationalisations of all kinds is also an activity of the mental-vital or of the vital mind. Other activities include pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc., in which men indulge very often. The mental-vital or vital mind plans or dreams or imagines what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if ... a very high measure. At a lower stage of the mental-vital, the vital passions, impulses and desires rise up and get into the pure Thought and either cloud it or distort it. The mental-vital (the vital Mind) should be distinguished from the dynamic Mind. While the mental-vital is limited by the vital view and feelings Page 56 of things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by idea and ...
... proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life. The vital mind or desire... an energy of spirit subordinated to action of mind and body, which fulfils itself through mentality and physicality and acts as a link between them." — Sri Aurobindo Life-mind — see vital mind under mind. Manas — mind, the mind proper [as distinct from the intellect (buddhi)], sense-mind. manomaya puru ṣ a — mental Person; the mental being. manvantara... occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. Vital mind — see mind. Page 418 Vivekananda, Swami —monastic name of Narendranath Dutta (1863-1902), the most famous disciple of Sri Ramakrishna and one of the great spiritual teachers ...
... objectivisation belongs to the mind proper, the fearful imaginations and anticipations, resulting in anxiety, come from the part of the mind intermixed with the vital, called the vital mind. Another manifestation of the vital mind in relation to psychological disturbances is to be seen in the so-called "defence mechanisms" associated with all psychiatric disorders. A defence mechanism is defined as an... tactics by which it can compass its desires. It does not like the voice of knowledge and wisdom - but curiously enough by the necessity which has grown up in man of justifying action by reason, the vital mind has developed a strategy of its own which is to get the reason to find out reasons for justifying its own feelings and impulses." 7 Another example of a defence mechanism is that of projection... an absolutely sure functioning of the senses." 8 What is called a projection in psychopathology is simply an exaggeration of the everyday distortion of our perceptions and judgments by the vital mind alluded to in the above-quoted passage. Less obvious forms of disturbances attributable to the mind are related to the part of the mind that is intermixed with the physical consciousness, called ...
... and the rest should be impossible, on the other a violent rejection of the only condition under which these things can become impossible. I know that this is the natural inconsistency of the human vital mind wanting two inconsistent and incompatible things together; but that is one reason why it is necessary to transform the human and put something a little more luminous in its place. But is the... Page 156 grand, aloof, incomprehensible, unapproachable, a sort of austere Nir ā k ā ra [formless] Brahman. The supramental so described is a bogey created by this part of your vital mind in order to frighten itself and justify its attitude. Behind this strange description there seems to be an idea that the supramental is a new version of the Vedantic featureless and incommunicable... why should a change to fuller life-power, fuller body-power be considered some thing aloof, cold and undesirable? The utmost Ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes: with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousandfold ...
... form of life, not of mere matter, nor is it, so far as we know, at all a mind-conscious Page 738 being. Man and the animal are both mentally conscious beings: but the animal is fixed in vital mind and mind-sense and cannot exceed its limitations, while man has received into his sense mind the light of another principle, the intellect, which is really at once a reflection and a degradation... activities, receives a wider range of contacts, mental, vital, physical, from forms other than its own, takes up the physical and vital existence and turns all it can get from them into sense values and vital-mind values. It senses body, it senses life, but it senses also mind; for it has not only blind nervous reactions, but conscious sensations, memories, impulses, volitions, emotions, mental associations... his inner and integral being. As in the two lower ascents, there is a heightening of the force of conscious existence to a new power and a new range of subtle activities; there is a transition from vital mind to reflecting and thinking mind, there is developed a higher power of observation and invention, taking up and connecting data, conscious of process and result, a force of imagination and aesthetic ...
... of vital movements (such as rationalization of all kinds) is also an activity of the mental- vital or the vital mind. Other activities include pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc, in which human beings indulge very often. The mental-vital (which is the same as the vital mind), plans or dreams or imagines what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try... even inconscient. These three, the mental, the vital and the physical, are interrelated in the complexity of our being. As a result, there is in us what Sri Aurobindo calls the mental-vital (vital mind), mental-physical (physical mind), vital-mental, vital-physical and physical-vital; all these distinctions are necessary because the aim of total transformation implies detailed working in every... and integral transformation so that ultimately the mental, the vital and the physical can all be transformed by the supra- mental consciousness. The mental-vital, which is also called the vital mind, is the mind which is at the service of vital desires and vital emotions. It is a sort of mediator between vital emotion, desire, impulsion, etc, and the mental proper. It expresses the desires ...
... 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 able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination, thoughts of desire, will to act and enjoy from its own impulse and this is able to seize on the reason itself and make it its auxiliary and its justifying counsel and... belonging in front to the emotional and vital and behind to the psychic), (3 ) from the heart to the navel, ( 4 ) below the navel.'¹ "There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, buddhi, -but to plan or dream... always have it in a very high measure. But even if one is not a man of action or practical realisation or if circumstances are not favourable or one can do only small and ordinary things, this vital mind is there. It acts in them on a small scale, or if it needs some sense of largeness, what it does very often is to plan in the void, knowing that it cannot realise its plans or else to imagine ...
... leave out in our yoga the common and even the petty things". 4–8–1924 Morning talk on Sādhanā : Disciple : What is the distinction between the vital mind and the mental will ? Sri Aurobindo : The vital mind is an impulse first and thought afterwards. It is, you can say, force first and thought afterwards. For instance, desire – if deprived of the personal element – is an... say "Yes, Swaraj is a cow" ! (Laughter) 3–8–1924 An interview concerning instructions for Sādhanā to a disciple : Disciple : What is the distinction between pure mind and vital mind ? Sri Aurobindo : Pure mind simply judges or watches, arranges and accepts the Truth, while vital or dynamic mind acts. Pure mind does not act in that way. Disciple : Why is the presence... work it out once, it again covers up the vital being and, for the time being, tries to appear as the whole movement in the vital. Disciple : How to know whether a movement takes place in the vital mind or in the physical mind ? Sri Aurobindo : You can always know it by this test : if it goes on repeating almost mechanically one and the the same thing without creating any new movement ...
... trick of the vital mind when it wants to rid itself of the blame for difficulties or want of progress in the sadhana: "I am doing all I can, but the Force is not supporting me." It is no use your quoting other sentences, because you write now one thing, now another, shifting your ground for the sake of your argument. If logic could help you to get rid of this trickery of the vital mind, it would be... tactics by which it can compass its desires. It does not like the voice of knowledge and wisdom—but curiously enough by the necessity which has grown up in man of justifying action by reason, the vital mind has developed a strategy of its own which is to get the reason to find out reasons for justifying its own feelings and impulses. When the reason is too clear to lend itself to this game, the vital ...
... participation of the vital in the Light, Power or Ananda that makes externalisation, effectuation, all kinds of work and action possible and easy. The opening of the vital mind (or any part) does not mean that the vital mind is absolutely open or wholly converted so that there shall never again be any darkness or ignorance or error or resistance or anything else but the higher consciousness there... consciousness anywhere. If the nervous being and other physical parts are not open, even the thinking mind cannot be finally open, for it can be affected by resistance, darkness etc. from below. If the vital mind is open, that does not mean that it is open so wholly that it is already divine and is not feeling pride or other wrong movements. As for the nervous being, it is part of the physical consciousness ...
... parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life. The vital mind or desire mind is... is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dis likings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. vital mind —a sort of mediator between the vital and the mental proper; a part of the nature of the mind whose function is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, but to ...
... never did. They may be interesting, but they are not true Are all these really true? And does he understand them? Not at all. These are constructions and imaginations of a very active vital mind. I wish I had known some of this business, but— Alas, cult or occult Nothing do I know; Blindly, blindly like an ass Braying incessantly I go. What a beautiful poem! You wrote it... different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g. thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought... ng to some reality there, but not necessarily to any exact reality in the physical, though it does sometimes touch on physical realities. The connection with Hukumchand was either a touch of the vital mind or else only an indication of the class of men this belonged to, if it touches the physical. October 31, 1935 × ...
... parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind. The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life. The vital mind or desire mind is ...
... interact on one another, giving rise to distinguishable subdivisions in the main parts of the being. Thus besides the thinking mind (the mind proper), there is a vital mind, which is the part of the mind that is intermixed with the vital. The vital mind, unlike the thinking mind, is not governed by reason but is dominated by impulses and desires of the vital, and seeks to justify and rationalise actions which ...
... to do any work in this spirit of vital demand and unrest and impatience. I may add that the frown in Mother's eyes and her serious face existed only in the imagination of your restless and excited vital mind; the Mother's eyes and face could not have expressed something quite absent from her feelings or intention. It is because you showed an intention of doing the sadhana in full earnest that we ... to choose. You yourself suggested the kitchen work and afterwards asked for an increase of it. It is not possible to get peace of mind if you indulge in vital ego and the turbulent play of the vital mind, revolt, demand and impatience. Abhiman, revolt, violent insistence on the satisfaction of claims and wishes are foreign to the spirit of the Yoga, they can only bring disturbance and trouble. If ...
... life and are governed by a very external view of things and by habitual small reactions and do not respond at once to the inner consciousness not because they are in active opposition to it, as the vital mind and vital proper can be, but because they find it difficult to change their habitual movements. It is this now that you feel and that makes you think you have a poor responsiveness to the inner ... forces. This physical consciousness plane receives from the other planes their powers and influences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper; we have a vital physical part in us—the nervous being—as well as the vital proper; and both are largely conditioned by the gross material bodily part which is almost entirely ...
... clear associations, an intelligence that plans, a very accurate sense of place and memory of place, an initial power of reasoning (not reflectively as the human mind does, but practically as any vital mind can do). I have seen a young Page 403 kitten observing, arriving at a correct conclusion, proceeding to do what was necessary for her purpose, a necessity imposed by that conclusion,... Animals The satisfaction of their emotions and desires and their bodily needs [ is what animals desire ]—mostly. Animals are predominantly the vital creation on earth—the mind in them also is a vital mind—they act according to the push of the forces and have a vital but not a mental will. Even the animal is more in touch with a certain harmony in things than man. Man's only superiority is a ...
... Discourage these imaginations and memories when they come. That [ support of the sex-sensation by the imagination ] is the difficulty. The imagination means a consent of the physical or else the vital mind. Otherwise the [ sex- ]sensation is often only due to physical causes and, if not supported by this automatic assent of a part of the mind, would before long diminish in its habit of recurrence.... to the habit of response in Page 535 him to feminine attractions. These things are almost mechanical in their starting. As I wrote before it is the automatic answer of the physical or vital mind (imagination etc.) that prolongs it and makes it effective. Otherwise the vibrations would die away after a time. Dress has always been used by woman as an aid to her "sexappeal" as it is ...
... enough to make the picture of the bank and shoal, upon which the act of "jumping" the next life is to be done, a telling one. The passage as a whole is intense Logopoeia of what we may term the vital mind at work: the nerves are at play, the sensations are astir all through the thinking process. In contrast see the working of the mind proper, the true reflective being drawing up the living energy... experience in terms of thought, is really writing what he has called "Overhead Poetry" — poetry breaking from secret planes of consciousness above the mind. It is Thought with a capital T. Not the vital mind, nor the mind proper, but the spiritual mind is vibrant throughout, with its touch on spiritual realities that are known by subtle inner senses or by direct identity through an extension of one's ...
... Aurobindo speaks of inspiration touching the mind at different levels, we should more correctly say that man's poetry usually comes from the subtle-physical mind or the vital mind or the intellectual mind. The last is the mind proper, the first two are the mind functioning as what we may broadly term "sense" and "heart" in distinction... plane of the Life-force - or, rather, since man is characteristically a mental being, we should say that Homer's is the subtle-physical mind and not the vital mind or the mind proper. But, as Sri Aurobindo observes, poetry "can reach great heights in this kind of mental mould, can see the physical forms of the gods, lift to a ...
... 380 Liberation, 367, 383-84, 394 and transformation, 167-69, 394 See also Moksha; Mukti Life, 62, 377 See also Vital, the Life-mind, 44, 45, 55 See also vital mind under Mind Matter, 6, 121, 196, 325, 377, 400 Maya, 96 and the Self, 98 Mayavada (Illusionism), 373, 374, 375, 377 See also Shankara Mind, 61, 193, 337 cannot... 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 Waking-State (jāgrat), 206-09 Washburn, Ken, 371, 392, 398 Yoga, 123 based on experience, 184, 198 experiences ...
... origin and keeps hoping to regain it. He begins with the little mind. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind 47a Here he sees mind in its three aspects, the physical mind, the vital mind and the rational mind. Each of these has its own truths and also its limitations. The physical mind is very limited in scope but it has been of particular value in the evolution of man. It has... of all "intruders from the Invisible", "as at a foe who would break up its home", and forever wants to be found in "its kennel of objective certitude". (Savitri, pp. 246-47) Next the vital mind. It is a rash intelligence and has a passion for all that is new. It throws caution to the wind. It constantly urges man 41a Ibid, Canto 10. 48 Ibid, p. 245. Page 289 ...
... means most who have the tendency or will to Yoga, for silence of the being is the first natural aim of the Yoga. You and some others do not find satisfaction in it because you have not overcome the vital mind which wants always some kind of activity, change, doing something or something happening. The eternal immobility of the silent Brahman is a thing it does not relish. So when emptiness comes, it finds... mind is by no means at rest. If the desires were thrown out and the ego less active and the physical mind at rest knowledge would come from above in place of the physical mind's stupidities, the vital mind would be calm and quiet and the Mother's Force take up the action and the higher consciousness begin to come down. That is the proper sequel of emptiness. But nothing of this has happened because ...
... may be a lot of vital questioning and resistance. You will agree then that women are more intuitive than men? Yes, that of course—but it is the spontaneous intuition of the heart or of the vital mind, not the Intuition with a capital I . As they live in the vital, their difficulties in the sadhana will be less, I suppose. Not at all. How can living in the vital make things easier? The... difficulty with men is not purely mental. There too it is vital—only men call in their intellect to defend their vital against the coming or the touch or the pressure of the Divine. Women call in their vital mind to do the same thing. Nolini writes in his book, "Woman's whole being is concentrated on the thing she clings to, but man's vision is not so exclusive. "Nishtha" 37 is the very nature and ...
... beating back the hordes of false vibrations and opening the cells to the alchemic influence of the Vibration of Harmony, the Vibration of Peace and the Vibration of Bliss. Then the whole man - body, vital, mind - would become a perfectly stringed instrument, capable of the music of truest thought, love and action completely tuned to the śruti of the Will of God. The whole adventure may perhaps be summed... Shakespeare's "We are such stuff as dreams are made on...." Sri Aurobindo's comment was: "One can read anything into anything... Shakespeare's idea here as everywhere is the expression of a mood of the vital mind, it is not a reasoned philosophical conclusion." 83 * Psycho-analysis figures in the talks as well as in the correspondence. Once in 1925 Sri Aurobindo seems to have referred to the theory ...
... partially covered cannot disappear altogether. Mostly 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... course unless it is cut short by some strong counteracting force. If once the body can withdraw its consent, the illness immediately or quickly ceases — that is the secret of the system. So too if the vital mind withdraws its consent, refuses to be dominated by the habitual suggestions and the habitual movement, these recurrences of depression and despair can be made soon to cease. But it is not easy for ...
... which he calls the vital mind, he writes: The vital started in its evolution with obedience to impulse and no reason—as for strategy, the only strategy it understands is some tactics by which it can compass its desires. It does not like the voice of knowledge and wisdom—but curiously enough by the necessity which has grown up in man of justifying action by reason, the vital mind has developed ...
... summary review of the past Yogas which would be too long to quote, he pointed out the foolish inconsistencies of the human vital and wrote: "I know that this is the natural inconsistency of the human vital mind wanting two incompatible things together; but that is why it is necessary to transform the human and put something a little more luminous in its place."* I must pause here and point out that... change to a fuller life-power, a fuller body-power be considered something aloof, cold and undesirable? The utmost ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes; with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousand-fold ...
... 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 able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination, thoughts of desire, will to act and enjoy from its own impulse and this is able to seize on the reason itself and make it its auxiliary and its justifying counsel and... blame or look with distrust and suspicion on the means they find best or daub it with disparaging adjectives to discredit it—grim, inhuman and the rest? It is your vital that shrinks from it and your vital mind that supplies these epithets which express only your shrinking and not what the retirement really is. For it Page 168 is the vital or the social part of it that shrinks from solitude; ...
... vital-physical elements evolved in its form; the consciousness behind the form of the plant has no developed or organised mentality capable of expressing itself,—the animal takes a step farther; it has a vital mind and some extent of self-expression, but its consciousness is limited, its mentality limited, its experiences are limited; the psychic essence too puts forward to represent it a less developed co... human being. There is much that is psychic in the plant, much that is psychic in the animal. The plant has only the vital physical evolved in its form, so it 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 ...
... quite different from Wordsworth's line on Newton which also has altogether an above-head vision and utterance—and the difference comes because the vision of the "dreaming soul" is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression; in the lines of Wordsworth the vision of the lone voyager through strange seas of thought has not that peculiar thrill but rather remains in an exaltation of... pageant or of the spirits or of ourselves—there is no stress anywhere, no mention or hint of an eternal spiritual existence. Shakespeare's idea here as everywhere is the expression of a mood of the vital mind, it is not a reasoned philosophical conclusion. However if you like to argue that, logically, this or that is the true philosophical consequence of what Shakespeare says and that therefore the Daemon ...
... would live like the animal, accepting his first actual physical life and its limits as his whole possibility, moving in material Nature's established order and asking for nothing beyond it. But this vital mind, this unquiet life-will comes in with its demands and disturbs this inert or routine satisfaction which lives penned within the bounds of actuality; it enlarges always desire and craving, creates... objective certitude and enters into an agnosticism which questions all its own standards of life and knowledge, doubts whether all this is real or else whether all, even if real, is not futile; the vital mind, baffled by life and frustrated or else dissatisfied with all its satisfactions, overtaken by a deep disgust and disappointment, finds that all is vanity and vexation of spirit and is ready to reject ...
... the part of the plane formerly occupied by it. Crocodile The crocodile signifies greed, lobha , of some kind. Frog Frog = modest usefulness. Fish The fish is the always moving vital mind making all sorts of formations. Fish might be formations in the vital consciousness—for water most often indicates the vital consciousness. Bird The bird is often a symbol of the being... part cleared of obscurities. Seeing the higher part of the bodies [ of the peacocks ] would mean a victory in the higher parts of the consciousness, in the mental (head and neck) and perhaps also in vital mind and in emotional. Page 175 Dove or Pigeon The dove signifies peace. The colours indicate the vital—green would be self-giving in the vital; blue the higher consciousness in the vital ...
... things. It is of immense importance in sadhana to be able to reach this state. It helps the mental quietude and silence as well as the vital to come. It means indeed that the vital itself and the vital mind are already falling silent and becoming quiet. The thinking mind is sure to follow. The Drawing of Vital Forces by Others When people mix together there is generally some interchange of vital... blame or look with distrust and suspicion on the means they find best or daub it with disparaging adjectives to discredit it—grim, inhuman and the rest? It is your vital that shrinks from it and your vital mind that supplies these epithets which express only your shrinking and not what the retirement really is. For it is the vital or the social part of it that shrinks from solitude; the thinking mind does ...
... forces. This physical consciousness plane receives from the other planes their powers and influences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper; we have a vital physical part in us—the nervous being—as well as the vital proper; and both are largely conditioned by the gross material bodily part which is almost entirely... envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body, sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper—prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 per cent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the ...
... results are. Mother, what does "vital mind" mean? Well, you see, naturally these words are used for classification in order to make oneself understood; but truly, each part of the being is itself divided into four. There is a physical mind, a physical vital and a physical physical, and there is even a physical psychic which is behind. Well, there is a vital mind, a vital vital, a vital physical ...
... him alone and to no other, etc., etc., also the wickedness of other sadhaks against him (P.S., S etc.); announcement of his coming departure etc. Announcements also that he will stop eating. Also a vital mind taking up partial and misrepresented facts stated by others and without any knowledge of the real situation making false inferences (e.g. that the Mother had not spoken in truth) etc., etc. All that... plainly before him in the most quiet and temperate way because it was his first outbreak; I have already pointed out to him that there is one remedy and only one, for him to reject and fight out his vital mind and ego. But he listens only for a moment and the next day " cela continue ". I have no time now to go on answering this kind of letter. If he wants to do what I say, there is a chance for him; but ...
... you cannot get free. The mind can be easily conscious of a wrong movement. But I don't know how the vital and the physical can be conscious of it and reject it. There is a vital mind and a physical mind and there is too a power of feeling and a consciousness. If there is a consciousness, why should it be impossible for it to be conscious? Sometimes the mind feels... Page 26 above the vital movements, watch and observe and judge them freely as it would observe and judge outside things. In most men however the thinking mind (reason) is invaded by the vital mind and not free. Does the thinking mind need some guidance in order to stand above the vital and watch and judge? No. It can do it in its own right. It is its function to think ...
... happen when the whole thing comes down? I would like very much to know how a mere wave coloured my ideas so much — so that next time I may not make myself so absurd. It is again the vital mind. It has no sense of proportion or measure and is eager to be or achieve something big at once. There is an idea that one should allow an impulse to have some play instead of suppressing... Emotion, the larger desires, creative or executive life forces. The mind has its divine equivalent above: the Supermind. What is the equivalent of the vital? Mind - Supermind Emotional being (heart) - Ananda Vital - Tapas Matter - Sat These are correspondences — but the Supermind is Page 48 ...
... spiritually. They were only busy with "movement and speed and strength" and these "were joy enough". All their knowledge was only sensational. The mind that was developed in this state was only a vital mind incapable of pure mental working. Aswapathy then saw a third creation which contained the capacity for pure thinking. There arose gradually a seeing power within Page 178 ... and dark unknown but powerful forces from the subconscient that govern man's life. "Our lives translate these subtle intimacies; All is the commerce of a secret Power." The vital mind of man, though it may seem its own master, is yet in a very great measure the plaything of vital forces that govern it from behind. "For none can see the masked ironic troupe To ...
... philosophy of communism carries the day, it will be the end of all higher hopes and ideals of mankind, and its relapse into the Shudra-type, the ¹ The typical modem mind is a combination of the vital mind and the physical, exploiting the intellect for its own ends. Page 266 merely physical, economic being, the human animal. It will be a reversion to the dead uniformity of a mechanised... wings and chains him to the material- life is, by the very logic of evolution, an obscurantism,, a reactionary movement doomed to a disastrous defeat. The physical mind, the sense-mind, the vital mind and the mind proper with its triple order of the understanding, reason and higher intelligence are the different planes of the human mental consciousness. Man, in his evolution,, Page 267 ...
... multiform way of the progression of the individual and the cosmic soul in Nature. Its complexities cannot be unravelled by our physical mind ever bound up in the superficial appearance, nor by our vital mind of desire stumbling Page 428 forward in the cloud of its own instincts and longings and rash determinations through the maze of these myriad favouring and opposing forces that surround ...
... put into them. 8 June 1933 Before reading your answers to my letters I feel as if I would never be able to read or understand them. What is this activity in me? A useless activity of the vital mind. You should keep it quiet and receive with a silent mind waiting for light. In the silent mind one can receive an answer even if I write nothing. 9 June 1933 I have the idea that since we ...
... Asram are not suffering from the sense of dullness Page 360 and want of interest, but many are because the Force that is descending is discouraging the old movements of the physical and vital mind which they call life and they are not accustomed to accept the renunciation of these things, or to admit the peace or joy of silence. 9 September 1936 We hear your Supermind is very near—not ...
... they come from the heights of vital error and not from the truth. If they present themselves as inspirations and intuitions or commands, they are still false; they are only arrogant creations of the vital mind. If they claim to be from me, they are still false; they are not from me at all. If they seem imperative, loud, grand, full of authority, they are all the more false. If they excite and elate you ...
... getting attached to them or absorbed by them in any way. 28 October 1933 I wanted to ask you whether what I have said about my inner contact with the Mother is true or not. It may be that my vital mind is deluding me about this. At any rate if you want the Mother's contact always, you must get rid of depression and the mental imaginations that bring it. Nothing comes more in the way than that ...
... remembering I feel as if the process goes on somewhere in the chest, not in the head, and yet the strain is felt in the head. Why is this so? The chest action is rather curious, because it is the vital mind that is there and the Romans always spoke of the mind as if it were in the heart. But memory and reading would rather be in the physical mind. But anyhow the brain is a conveying instrument for all ...
... envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body, sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper—prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 per cent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the ...
... established 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 able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination, thoughts of desire, will to act and enjoy from its own impulse and this is able to seize on the reason itself and make it its auxiliary and its justifying counsel and ...
... centre of living to a higher consciousness and in a change of our main power of living. This will be a leap or an ascent even more momentous than that which Nature must at one time have made from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking mind still imperfect in our human intelligence. The central will implicit in life must be no longer the vital will in the life and the body, but the spiritual will of ...
... knowledge. Page 113 × The ordinary mind in man is not truly the thinking mind proper, it is a life-mind, a vital mind as we may call it, which has learned to think and even to reason but for its own ends and on its own lines, not on those of a true mind of knowledge. ...
... 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 and passionate and the lower which is made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire ...
... you have written, I cannot write much today for obvious reasons and in any case writing is not the remedy, though it may help and encourage—for these doubts rise not from the intellect but from the vital mind which sees things Page 342 according to its condition and mood and needs something else than what the mind asks for to satisfy it. It is perfectly true that these reasonings have no force ...
... speak of was evidently under a vital Influence. A vital Influence always acts by disorganising the system and by disturbing the mental, vital or physical balance. But such cases of phenomena in the vital mind due to a possession or influence have no relation to the true mastery of psychic or occult powers (clairvoyance, clair-audience etc.). Visions and experiences need not at all depend upon physical ...
... It is the movements of the lower nature that get purified. The Asuras themselves are not so easily transformed. The Asuras are really the dark side of the mental, or more strictly, of the vital mind plane. This mind is the very field of the Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas and intelligence, but ...
... world and it is the same dissatisfaction a hundred times increased and accompanied with Page 141 an intense psychic sorrow that would come on you if you went away from the Yoga. Your vital mind (which is the one which revolts and doubts) has strange misconceptions about the spiritual state. There is no grimness in being an instrument of the divine Will—it is the happiest and most joyous ...
... fact, to hold takes long with everybody. Once you have got it well established, your nature is likely to hold it firmly. As for the lack of discrimination, that is only in the physical and lower vital mind—within you there is something that can discriminate, the psychic. The only thing is to get it out and keep it in front. When you had the psychic state or rather a touch of it from time to time, you ...
... as people say, from inspiration. The pure inspiration and conception is something quite different [ from ordinary thought ]—it comes from deep within or from high above. This is the lower vital mind at work making formations. When the calmness is there all sorts of things may rise on the surface—they have not to be accepted, but simply looked at. In time the calmness will be so developed as ...
... navel downwards. The sadhak becomes restless under the Force only if he resists it—otherwise it brings peace and calm and happiness and strength. It is probably some other part of the mind—the vital mind or physical mind—it is these usually that resist. Usually the descent in the head helps to quiet the mind. If you mean the descent of the higher consciousness, that is felt in the heart ...
... plane of consciousness you are living in; it is by an observation of your condition. Sometimes a part of the consciousness is seen in the image of a pond, lake or sea. The fish must be the vital mind. The lake is the being in its individual consciousness, the sea is the same being with a universalised consciousness which can hold the universe and its cosmic forces in itself—the one (i ...
... element in him and to have by some ill-chance entered into contact with powers of the vital plane which were able to put their suggestions in him—in that part of the consciousness which we call the vital mind—so that he is unable to ascertain things in their proper light and is tormented by the suggestions that have driven their furrows there in the form of habitual ideas that tyrannise over him and which ...
... unintelligible, might draw back from them as possibly not founded on truth or else distrust them in their form, if not in their foundation, as affected by an error, even an aberration of the imaginative vital mind, the emotions, the nerves or the senses; for these might be misled, in their passage or transference from the physical and sensible to the invisible, into a pursuit of deceiving lights or at least ...
... Page 762 aware of something in the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface,—a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality. This and much more lives concealed in the subconscience. A descent ...
... the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it, otherwise we may fall on the path or abandon it from weakness and inability to bear temporary defeat, disappointment ...
... There are four members of this second part of the sadhana or discipline of self-perfection and the first of them is right shakti, the right condition of the powers of the intelligence, heart, vital mind and body. It will only be possible at present to suggest a preliminary perfection of the last of these four, for the full siddhi will have to be dealt with after I have spoken of the supermind and ...
... into a wide or even immense or infinite emptiness is part of the inner spiritual experience; of this silence and void the physical mind has a certain fear, the small superficially active thinking or vital mind a shrinking from it or dislike,—for it confuses the silence with mental and vital incapacity and the void with cessation or non-existence: but this silence is the silence of the spirit which is the ...
... the marvellous truth of this instinct which seems so much surer than the reason, is limited in the bird, beast or insect to some particular and restricted utility it is admitted to serve. When the vital mind of the animal tries to act beyond that restricted limit, it blunders in a much blinder way than the reason of man and has to learn with difficulty by a succession of sense-experiences. The higher ...
... line on Newton— Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone— which is an above-head vision—and the difference comes because the vision of the 'dreaming soul' is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression. It is this constant vitality, vital surge in Shakespeare's language, which makes it a sovereign expression not of mind or knowledge but of life." * ...
... ess which, according to Sri Aurobindo, may be classified: subtle-physical mind (as in Homer and Chaucer, where the inner imaginative response is mostly to external gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate or vehement, of sensation, passion, emotion is directly expressed); intellectual mind (as in Vyasa, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and ...
... indefinite depth as of "strange seas" - In the dark backward and abysm of time. Page 176 Here, as everywhere else in the old Romanticism, "the vision is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression": the later Romantics, whether in their simplicities or in their richnesses, make their revelations through the intellec-tualised consciousness which, "observing ...
... plasmic matter useful for the expression of life; the evolution of life was now her one intent purpose. And slowly too mind manifested in life, an intensely feeling, a crude thinking and planning vital mind in the animal, but in man the full organisation and apparatus, the developing if yet imperfect mental being, the Manu, the thinking, devising, aspiring, already self-conscient creature. And from ...
... blind, dumb, deaf, chained to the soil from which it was born, involved in its own nerve and tissue. It could not get out of this primitive formula, could not get behind its nerve-self as does the vital mind of the animal, still less could turn down from above it to know and realise its own motions as does the thinking and observing mind of man and to Page 253 control them. This was a decisive ...
... 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 initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic ...
... foundation of the senses between which and the sun of knowledge there is a thick cloud, an emotional and a sensational mist and vapour with here and there lightnings and illuminations. There is a vital mind which is shut away even from the light of Page 103 intellectual truth, and lower still in submental life and matter the spirit involves itself entirely as if in a sleep and a night ...
... Yours ... Vishnu Sri Aurobindo's reply : The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and. violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of flight in the wings indicates a defect, probably that they are unable to transcend the vital plane (however brilliant ...
... Ibid.,p.269. 24 Ibid., pp. 61-64. Page 235 A fifth variety of reflective style is seen in the allegorical presentation of the three serfs of Mind: Physical Mind, Vital Mind and Reason. Then there is the expository or analytical style which communicates facts or states of the higher or lower consciousness: superconscience or inconscience. This is a piece of work ...
... Page 45 What does "the triple cord of mind" mean? The Mother: The cords stand for the limitations of the mind, and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind. The days were travellers on a destined road, the nights companions of his musing spirit. 8 I see the need of continuous sadhana day and night. The Mother ...
... see these things and write to you whatever I see? The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of flight in the wings indicates a defect, probably that they are unable to transcend the vital plane (however brilliant ...
... alien human infant were substituted for the real one in the cradle without the mother knowing it the result would not be different. Therefore what counts is an idea, feeling, imagination in the vital mind that this is "mine" and an instinctive vital attachment created by it along with the love and affection that grows up in the very act of nursing and bringing up a clinging and dependent creature ...
... change to a fuller life-power, a fuller body-power be considered something aloof, cold and undesirable? "The utmost ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes; with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousandfold ...
... be emptied completely of its old habits and its old coatings. This meant a direct contact of the Supermind with the cells without the need to pass through the layers of the intellectual mind, the vital mind, the sensory mind and the Physical mind. All the protective walls of the species had to disappear so that the new species can emerge. Indeed, as we have seen above, the first radical turning ...
... all entered his room, where he began to pour some tea in his cup. As for my business, he said, "See, there are no flowers, my basin is empty." It is of the mental vital expressing X's vital mind in these matters —so busy with vital things like his desire about Z that he has neglected to foster the psychic. During sleep does the inner being stop the sadhana because of the ...
... to be an authority on these things? You go to him for English, not for Yoga knowledge. He censures my use of expressions like "mental stuff", Page 233 "vital mind", etc. At least here, are they used wrongly? No, they are quite in place. The difference I made here about the inner vital and the outer vital does not coincide with his ...
... leave out of consideration the fourth or the spiritual (including the psychic). Not only so, in each level or plane all the others are also involved i.e. lie secreted. Thus, in the mind there is a vital mind and a physical mind, in the vital there is a mental vital and a physical vital. So, in the physical too there are these three grades: (1) physical physical, (2) vital physical and (3) mental physical ...
... distinctive or sovereign power, our various activities or preoccupations at the mental or the below-mental—the vital and the material planes. If the resistance from the lower powers—matter, life (or the vital), mind is formidable, as it often is, the influence of the higher powers, the result of a chance or temporary descent of one of them to the lower planes, will be negligible or evanescent. But where the ...
... life. That only can evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of ...
... current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth ? Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance ...
... Disciple describing vividly his being persecuted was read. Disciple : Is it a case of possession? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, It is the possession of the nervous system and vital system and vital mind. It is not like insanity. It is very difficult to convince these people that their ideas of persecution are false. There are two types : one imagines all sorts of things, – 80 per cent cases ...
... of persecution by people. PURANI: These people get possessed by the idea of persecution. DR. BECHARLAL: Is it a possession? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, a possession of the nervous system and the vital mind, though it is not like insanity. It is, however, very difficult to convince these people that their ideas of persecution are false. There are two types: one imagines all sorts of things—eighty per ...
... current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth? Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static ...
... sadhaks, but when the children came, and the Ashram School duly became the Centre of Education, she embarked upon a bolder experiment. She advocated the four austerities (tapasyas) of the body, vital, mind and psyche leading to the four liberations (siddhis) of Beauty, Power, Knowledge and Love. At a still higher or supramental level, the siddhis could mean, on the physical plane a transcendence of ...
... 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 a byword for disharmony. While a higher ...
... of Karmayoga in the Ashram: accepting any assignment whatever from the Mother, and doing one's best and offering it as the expression of one's love and devotion. The instruments of body, vital, mind are not denied; they are not diminished or maimed; only, they are invaded and purified and transfigured by the descending light of the Spirit so as to become fit vehicles for rendering ...
... easily touched. The topic was changed at this point. Disciple : What is meant by self-offering? How to do it? Page 51 Sri Aurobindo : How to do it! One offers one's vital, mind and heart, attachment, passions, and grows into the Divine consciousness. Disciple : What time is more propitious for meditation, day-time or night-time? I get more concentrated at night ...
... 13 March 1937 It is the right resolution and all our help will be with you to carry it out and bring it to fruition. The mechanical activity of the vital mind of which you speak ought not to be too difficult to dispel — we shall send you force for that and for recovering the sleep. I am glad to hear that the energy is coming back — with the restoration ...
... consciousness into the external work. ... So far as I am concerned, I have got my work... immediately at present we have to bring down a change in the physical mind, the nervous being, and the vital mind, so that they may become fit instruments of the Truth. That is a big enough work.... 52 On 13 July, he said that, for bringing down any higher spiritual force (especially the Supermind) ...
... things which work upon the mind consciently and subconsciently and prepare it for an entry into the significance of the greater permanent things that lie behind them. And for this type too, for its vital mind and will, is intended all in the religion that calls on man to turn to a divine Power or powers for the just satisfaction of his desires and his interests, just because subject to the right and the ...
... on Newton— Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone— which is an above-head vision—and the difference comes because the vision of the 'dreaming soul' is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression. It is this constant vitality, vital surge in Shakespeare's language, which makes it a sovereign expression not of mind or knowledge but of life." * ...
... accepted and helped to realise itself. Dreams or visions on the vital plane are usually either: 1) symbolic vital visions; 2) actual occurrences on the vital plane; 3) formations of the vital mind, either of the dreamer or of someone else with whom he has contacts in sleep or of powers or beings of that plane. No great reliance can be put on this kind of experience, even the first having only ...
... planes—the Higher Mind to begin with, and this creates a new action of thought and perception which replaces the ordinary mental. It does that first in the thinking mind, but afterwards also in the vital mind and physical mind, so that all these begin to go through a transformation. This kind of thought is not random and restless, but precise and purposeful—it comes only when needed or called for and ...
... Sri Aurobindo - Some Comparisons Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Parts of the Ordinary Mind The different parts of the ordinary mind (the thinking mind, the vital mind, and the physical mind) have been previously alluded to (Chapter 1, p. 12, fn. 17; and Chapter 5, p. 85, fn 21). Eckhart regards any and all activity of the mind as mental noise. One gets the impression ...
... the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, ...
... can become directly aware of something in the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface, — a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality. This and much more lives concealed in the subconscience. The ...
... the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it, otherwise we may fall on the path or abandon it Page 204 from weakness and inability to bear temporary ...
... self-awareness 59 the subconscient 9-10,34, 35-37, 38, 39,105,106 the subliminal 38, 39-40,41 Tamas 130,142 tendency to keep grief 102 the two beings 138 the vital mind 90-91 weakness of will 103 witness attitude 126 Stress 100-01,145 Subconscient (subconscious), the 9-10,30,34-37,38-39, 105-08 and the inconscient 34 and ...
... universal and seems to have become a sort of second nature? You might just as well try to stop the Mississipi from flowing. It will stop only when the sadhaks get out of the imperfections of their vital [mind]. Or it can stop having any effect on you if you meet it with refusal to take these things at second hand and reply, “Well, I will ask Sri Aurobindo himself and then find out if my opinion is ...
... different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g. thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought ...
... the overmental-spiritual planes above our mind from where it sometimes receives inspirations, intuitions and truthful insights. The life forces (the vital) in us too have a consciousness, the ‘vital mind’, which they use to realize their desires and intentions. (We know for instance how some persons who are not very bright, mentally speaking, are endowed with an instinctive cleverness which renders ...
... strangely suggest that the best way to progress in sadhana might be to cease loving the Mother because you love her in the human way, proceeds from wrong notions generated by a confusion in your vital mind misinterpreting things we may have said or written to you. I will try to set them right as clearly as possible. And first about human love in the sadhana. The soul's lurning through love to the ...
... and emotion in the entirety of Claudio's excited confrontation of death: this excited confrontation is also a spontaneous contemplation. No doubt, the contemplation is not philosophical, it is the vital mind and not the intellectual at poetic activity here. Shakespeare contemplating is different from Milton or Wordsworth or Shelley or even the mature Keats: still a beat of thought, along with a beat ...
... ly on the whole, in its own right, with an explicitness of spiritual substance and style,an immediate self-expression of the supra-intellectual, rather than in terms proper to the physical mind, vital mind, intellectual mind: that is the reason for considering the significance of Romantic poetry paramount. In this poetry both the content and the form, such as the bardic urge throughout its history ...
... 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, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic ...
... unpleasant experiences. Things that happen in the vital world are, if it may be so expressed, often half-truths of possibility on that plane; sometimes actual events there, sometimes constructions of the vital mind, sometimes vital formations that want to realize themselves here and may or may not realize themselves, not in the terms in which they are seen but with a difference, unless they are vital records ...
... existence! And yet Page 592 when I completed it, I was so happy thinking it was something great! Fool! Every poet is such a fool. His work is done in an exalting excitement of the vital mind—judgment and criticism can only come when he has cooled down. 6 April 1937 Using Criticism from Others I do not like to show my poems to others; I'm afraid their criticism will take away ...
... centres are not a region isolated from the rest of the being; the mind action is penetrated by the action of the vital and physical parts, and in those parts themselves are lower formations of mind, a vital mind, a physical mind, and these have to be changed before there can be an entire transformation of the mental being. The higher transforming power has, therefore, to descend, as soon as may be and without ...
... greatness, the self-fulfilment of a magnified individual personality. This is a false and disastrous conception,—disastrous because it is likely to raise the pride, vanity and ambition of the rajasic vital mind in us and that, if not overpassed and overcome, must lead to spiritual downfall, false because it is an egoistic conception and the first condition of the supramental change is to get rid of ego ...
... the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, mind ...
... and grow into immortality, it must be by a larger law of growth and not by some divine code of primitive and barbaric justice. This idea of Karma is a construction of the smaller part of the human vital mind concerned with its petty rules of life and its desires and joys and sorrows and erecting their puny standards into the law and aim of the cosmos. These notions cannot be acceptable to the thinking ...
... আমি অগ্রসর হতে পারব না এই অপবিত্র দেহ ও প্রকৃতি নিয়ে ৷ উ: Physical চেতনার মধ্যে নেমেছ, সে জন্য এই রকম বােধ হচ্ছে, কিন্তু এ সত্য নয় – সেখানে নেমেছ physicalএর রূপান্তরের জন্য ৷ 24.5.34 Vital mind হৃদয়ের উপরে, গলার নীচে ৷ উচ্চ প্রাণ হৃদয়ে; নাভিতে central বা ordinary বা middle প্রাণ ৷ নাভির নীচে নিম্ন প্রাণ ৷ মূলাধার physical চেতনার কেন্দ্র ৷ 24.5.34 স: মা, আজকে ধ্যান করতে গেলেই ...
... 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 initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic ...
... but also some alloy too of our mortality. And the character, value and force of the word of the poet vary according to the action of those parts of our mentality which dominate in the change,—the vital mind, the emotional temperament, the imaginative or reflective intellect or the higher intuitive intelligence. The Tantric theory of Speech, the inspired seeing and creative goddess enthroned in our various ...
... which seizes hold of them for self-expression. But the personal feeling also may form a basis for the creation. 26 September 1934 These designations, a magnified ego, an exalted outlook of the vital mind, apply in sadhana, but hardly to poetic expression which lifts or ought to lift to a field of pure personal-impersonal bhāva . An utterance of this kind can express a state of consciousness or an ...
... thoughts run down while one detaches oneself from them. There are a 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 ...
... 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 established and the subconscious itself has accepted it. If it were not so, man's control of his actions ...
... peace from above and in that wide tranquillity the realisation of the silent Self above the mind spread out in its vastnesses everywhere. Only, when there is the peace and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual thoughts. What the sadhaka has to do is to be careful to reject ...
... different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g., thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought ...
... activity of the physical mind which is full of ordinary habitual and constantly recurrent thoughts and is always busy with external objects and activities. What used to trouble you before was the vital mind which is different,—for that is always occupied with emotions, passions, desires, reactions of all kinds to the contacts of life and the behaviour of others. The physical mind also can be responsive ...
... This state of mind, described in your letter, must be due to a tension created by an urge in the psychic to make a complete Page 253 surrender to the Mother and some obstruction in the vital mind and surface intellect. This mind supports the obstruction by an excessive self-depreciation (not well-founded as a sound and just self-examination would be) and a questioning of all you do so that ...
... human being. There is much that is psychic in the plant, much that is psychic in the animal. The plant has only the vital-physical evolved in its form, so it 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 ...
... Visions The dream was on the vital plane. Dreams or visions on the vital plane are usually either (1) symbolic vital visions (2) actual occurrences on the vital plane (3) formations of the vital mind, either of the dreamer or of someone else with whom he contacts in sleep or of powers or beings of that plane. No great reliance can be put on this kind of experience. These are visions of ...
... should a change to fuller life-power, fuller body-power be considered something aloof, cold and undesirable? The utmost Ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes: with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousandfold ...
... wideness of a Godhead's gaze." 14 What does "the triple cord of mind" mean? The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind. 9 November 1968 Page 386 "The days were travellers on a destined road, The nights companions of his musing spirit." 15 Yes, there comes a time when ...
... Page 130 × In a personal context such as this dream, fish, according to Sri Aurobindo, symbolize the "vital mind" in constant movement, making all sorts of formations. × This was in France with Richard, at the ...
... as well as obtained a glimpse of Dryden's exercise of the same poetic agency in dealing with Chaucer's lines on life. While Milton, compared with Shakespeare in two of his splendid bursts of the vital mind, fared very well in his own domain, Dryden came a bit of a cropper, rhetorically artificialising what was spontaneous and moving in the Mediaeval singer. It may be tempting to aver that Dryden failed ...
... but also some alloy too of our mortality. And the character, value and force of the word of the poet vary according to the action of those parts of our mentality which dominate in the change, - the vital mind, the emotional temperament, the imaginative or reflective intellect or the higher intuitive intelligence.... But also there is in us a direct medium between that divine and this human mentality ...
... Decoration 3.Orderliness 4.Wall writings Page 513 B)1. Enrichment of Text Portions 2.Integrated approach 3.Direct method 4.Co-curricular activities (Body, Vital, Mind, Intellect, Spirit) C)Prayer, Silence, Songs, Story Telling, Books Reading, Yoga, Games D)1. Congruent Behaviour with Students, Teachers Parents, Department, Head ...
... inner things—calm, silent, steady progress? What have you done then, Sir? You are speaking as if it was his thinking mind that refused. His thinking mind was changing its attitude. It was the vital mind that refused inwardness, silence etc. Unfortunately he seemed to think that Mother is harder than you: she is grim and doesn't love etc., etc. That is because Mother's pressure for a change ...
... creation of the mode of rajas. Hamlet is the third stage; it is a vision of sattva-guna and a creation attempted by that vision. The human consciousness that was imprisoned in the vital mind, is released here into the higher or pure mind. The soul escapes from its sheath of sheer hunger and desire and egoism and self-aggrandisement – yearns for light, more light. Lear is a dark mass ...
... 93, 94, 95, 99, 100; modifications of 24 matter planes, subtle 54 M ā y ā v ā da 9 meditation, intensive 9 mental-physical (physical mind) 56,57, 58 mental-vital (vital mind) 56 mind 11,98,99,100; dynamic 55, 56,57; externalising 55; higher 23, 33, 66, 67; illumined 23, 33, 66, 67, 68; intuitive 23-4, 33, 66, 67, 68; thinking 55; universal 7 mind-consciousness ...
... by the dream. It is such things that happen on the vital plane, very rarely (though that too does happen) on the physical plane. But also they may be merely possibilities conjectured by one's own vital mind about people. So one must know which it is of these various possibilities before getting sad about dreams! For instance in H's case it is evidently an impression of something in his nature and habits ...
... kind of thing often happens at a certain stage of sadhana. (2) Drop into the physical—first complete acquaintance with the principle of Inertia proper to the physical when it is moved neither by vital, mind, nor spirit. Lies flat waiting for the breath of God or any breath to stir it, but making no move of its own. Hold on and call upon the Spirit to breathe. I think you are exerting a damn lot ...
... envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper—prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the ...
... the whole poem out of existence! And yet when I completed it, I was so happy thinking it was something great! Fool! Every poet is such a fool. His work is done in an exalting excitement of the vital mind—judgment and criticism can only come when he has cooled down. Well, Sir, any good this poem, or goes to the same basket? This one is very fine. No W.P.B., please. I can't get the current ...
... as your own at all. They would present themselves as things passing through or rising and falling away. There must certainly be something in the physical mind that accepts and probably affects the vital mind also. From my personal experience I make a general statement on how to face a period of adverse suggestions and attacks. (1) Carry on with faith and surrender. This guards us from ...
... not think that the stopping of knowledge is more due to the vital and its ego than to the inertia alone? The inertia by itself is only a passive obstruction which turns into a dynamic one when the vital-mind endorses it. Yes, that is correct. Is not the knowledge again trying to penetrate in spite of the dark impediments? It is trying to do so. ...
... mind is silent there is peace and in the peace all things that are divine can come. When there is not the mind, there is the Self which is greater than the mind. You should keep it (the vital mind) quiet and receive with a silent mind waiting for the light. In the silent mind one can receive an answer even if I write nothing. Page 127 How is the mind to remain quiet ...
... with life. That only can evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of ...
... leave out of consideration the fourth or the spiritual (including the psychic). Not only so, in each level or plane all the others are also involved i.e. lie secreted. Thus, in the mind there is a vital mind and a physical mind, in the vital there is a mental vital and a physical vital. So, in the physical too there are these three grades: (l) physical physical, (2) vital physical and (3) mental physical ...
... mire of crude physical existence. So we have to start the work of purification from that level, from the consciousness identified with the body; we must try to do the cleansing of the body and the vital. Mind? Oh, mind too, the higher levels of mind, the mental proper, that is too high for us. We may think of it much later. As for the way of purification, we should start from the very beginning ...
... conscious and in the animals it is vitally conscious; in the animal the beginning of mind is already taking place. I mean mind has begun to come out into expression in the animal already, only it is a vital-mind and not an intellectual or reasoning mind as man has. It cannot put two and two together and come to a conclusion. The animal has a vital rationality which is different from intellectual rationality ...
... the vital plane. Disciple : Does not poetry – like, that of Tagore – come from the mental plane? Sri Aurobindo : No. It does not come from the mental plane; at best it is from the vital mind – or vital mental – that it comes. Page 218 22-6-1924 (An article on Modern Indian Painting by 0. C. Gangooly) Sri Aurobindo : It is very well written and is illuminating ...
... its own fulfilment. Its two great impulses are possession and delight or enjoyment: power and enjoyment; well, it will have them fully only when it reaches the Divine. Mind will always curb the vital, mind will always try to control the vital and the vital will always submit only temporarily, provisionally to the mind, but it will ultimately break away because it finds no fulfilment in it. Aswapathy ...
... can't call this instinct. It is intelligence. What we Page 133 can say is that the animals have not got developed mind. We can call this intelligence vital intelligence or vital mind. It works very correctly within limits. But if you take the animal out of the field, in which its instinct is unerring, you will find that it stumbles even more than the rational mind. The ...
... with its dogmas, the latter with its passions and aberrations - tend to pull the body in wrong directions damaging or exhausting it or dissipating its energies. The cure lies in everything — body, vital, mind - submitting readily and wholly to the soul's plenary governance. And so the Mother concludes with a peroration matching the great opening: When we reach this degree of perfection which is our ...
... of a Godhead's gaze." 2 What does "the triple cord of mind " mean? The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, it vital mind and a mental mind. 9.11.1968 "The days were travelers on a destined road, The nights companions of his musing spirit.' 3 Yes, there comes a time when nothing, absolutely nothing ...
... be quite useless and harmful to lay stress on things said by anyone in these fits of the whirl of dark forces or to resent or remember them at all for they are exaggerations and perversions of the vital mind, that boil up whenever the vital is in effervescence and they cannot be taken as something deliberately thought and spoken. It is better to let them disappear and be forgotten as if they had not ...
... strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything Page 160 to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper — prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East ninety percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away ...
... come from her impulsion, be done with quietude, with measure, in the way she wants it to be done. It is from the inner being that it should be done in union with the Mother's will, not from the Vital mind's eager impulse. To concentrate most on one's own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the Sadhak - to be eager to help others draws away from the inner work. To grow in the spirit... like someone to tell me what he understands by "be absolutely free", for it is a very important question. I shall tell you why. Most people confuse liberty with licence. For the ordinary mind, to be free is to have the chance of committing every stupidity that one likes, without anybody intervening. I say one must be "absolutely free", but it is a very dangerous advice unless one understands ...
... come from her impulsion, be done with quietude, with measure, in the way she wants it to be done. It is from the inner being that it should be done in union with the Mother's will, not from the vital mind's eager impulse. To concentrate most on one's own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak—to be eager to help others draws away from the inner work. To grow in the spirit... waste it by a negative attitude. For yourself what you must have with other sadhaks (including your sisters) is a harmonious relation free from any vital attachment (indifference is not asked from you) and free from any indulgence in wrong vital movements of the opposite kind (such as dislike, jealousy or ill-will). It is through the psychic consciousness that you have found it possible to be in... think that it is he who is helping. 6 May 1935 I have observed that someone with a sensitive disposition becomes very prone to the easy admission of forces from the vital world or from persons who are full of lower vital desires, especially when the sensitive person has a highly sympathetic attitude which manifests in nursing others or trying to save others, in lavishing emotional pity, in ...
... say, because, well, there, it's really supramental) as the vital, the mind and the inner beings had previously. It's going through the same experiences—the body itself. That happened the last few nights: it suddenly remembered the time (some twenty years ago, for instance) when those experiences were experiences of the vital, the mind, the psychic being and above. It was the way of being there ...
... splendour of Your light, it aspires to the magnificence of Your power—above all, it aspires to the glory of Your all-powerful and eternal love. July, 1965 The other states of being, the vital, the mind, may enjoy the intermediary contacts. The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me. Page 381 November 22, 1967 The prayer of the cells in the body ( The prayer of the body's cells ...
... 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 con ...
... all else playing subsidiary, if not contributory, roles. It is understood that the central aspiration is gradually communicated to all the parts of the being, and the whole complex of the body, vital and mind is made to participate in the effort. The effort must be intense, indeed, but not exhausting. There should be no impatience of any kind. Intensity in application and spirit relates to the... vision of the Divine, a seeking for the illumination of knowledge or the descent of Power or whatever. When there is this impatience in the being for the experience, there is a subtle pressure of the vital on the mental faculties (for example, the faculty of imagination) to anticipate what is wanted. This urge of anticipation, semi-conscious or subconscious, tends to reproduce in ourselves a simulacrum ...
... other pioneering educationists of Gujarat, India and the other parts of the world. 2.Ideal of nationalism which is in harmony with the ideal of internationalism; 3.Education of the body, vital consciousness, mind as also psychic consciousness and spirituality should be placed in the focus of the research and educational activities of the university; 4.Education should not only impart knowledge but... Education of the child should aim at the development of sterling character filled with patriotism and dedicated to self - reliance and dignity of labour and harmonious development of the body, life, mind and spirit, capable of meeting successfully the challenges of contemporary times and capable of commitment to our country and the highest values of culture, as also to Fundamental Duties enumerated... all levels of education concerns for the development of the child, in particular reference to: 38 a)Harmonious growth of health, strength, agility and health of the body, mind and spirit; b)Qualities of quest of truth and knowledge, courage, heroism, adventure, enterprise, initiative, enthusiasm and dynamism of active life; c)Qualities of sympathy, friendliness, fairness ...
... because the opposing forces find it more difficult than before to upset the mind and vital directly so they fall on the physical in the hope that that will do the trick, the physical being more vulnerable. But the sensibility of the body to attacks is no proof of incapacity just as a finer sensibility of the mind or vital to attacks was no proof — it can in due time be overcome. As for the feelings... feelings about the Mother and that her love is only given for a return in work to those who can do sadhana well, that is the usual senseless idea of the vital-physical mind and has no value.... I hope you will be all right soon. If the body does not right itself, you must keep me informed from time to time. (17.1.37) (1b) Try to keep yourself open to our Force in the body, that is the main thing... packed, except the bedding. The preparation was complete. Still, strange to say, I felt that I couldn’t go; all this was just a drama, but outwardly I was determined. As I was ready and waiting, the mind enveloped in darkness, Nolini came quietly and said, “What? Are you going?” “Yes, Nolinida, I am going,” I replied with tearful eyes. The atmosphere of the house was tense, sombre. He kept quiet for ...
... The two indispensable conditions to live as a disciple in the Ashram 1) To be resolved to make the needs of the soul come before all others, and to satisfy the other needs, those of the body, vital and mind, only so far as they do not interfere with the fulfilment of the needs of the soul. 2) To be convinced that I am in a position to know the needs of the soul of each and every one and that therefore ...
... develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a preSSure from the supramental plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers... al planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it pre-existent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes pre-existent movements and forms in the occult mental planes. That is an aspect of things Page 7 which becomes more and more... an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g., a vital being moved to extend his action towards the earth and establish there a kingdom for himself or the play of the forces for which he stands in his own domain. Or it may be a pressure from above; let us say, some supramental or mental power precipitating its formation from above and developing forms and movements on the vital level as a means ...
... sadhana well, that is the usual senseless idea of the vital-physical mind and has no value. 17 January 1937 It is not Mother who makes you cry. It is forces from the vital Nature that make you sorrowful and think of dying and of the past. What comes from Mother is love and light and peace and joy and the spiritual life of the future. Never mind about the purity of the body. The love of the Mother... concentration for progress brings difficulties and resistance and disappointment because the mind is not looking at things from the right angle. The Mother has a special kindness for X and every day at Pranam she is trying to put a sustaining force upon him. He must learn to be very quiet in mind and vital and consecrate himself so that he may become conscious as well as receive. The Divine Love,... nature do not count against that love. The only thing is that you must become aware of it always there. For that it is necessary for the psychic to come in front—for the psychic knows, while the mind, vital and physical look only at surface appearances and misinterpret them. It is that for which the Mother's force is working, and whenever the psychic comes near the surface, you have felt love and nearness ...
... much can be done. Let us say the origin is vital. The vital absolutely refuses to change, it clings terrifically to the condition in which it is; then that is hopeless. You put the force, and usually it provokes an increase in the illness, produced by the resistance of the vital which did not want to accept anything. I speak of the vital but it can be the mind or something else. When the action is... that in the different parts of your being, when something comes and you do not receive it, this produces a shrinking—there is something which hardens in the vital, the mind or the body. There is a stiffening and this hurts, one feels a mental, vital or physical pain. So, the first thing is to put one's will and relax this shrinking, as one does a twitching nerve or a cramped muscle; you must learn how... particular part of the body. Once, I complained to you about some pain and you asked me which part of the body was affected. When I told you which, I did not know about its correspondence with the vital, the mind, etc., yet the pain disappeared. I don't see any contradiction!... There are two ways of curing an illness spiritually. One consists in putting a force of consciousness and truth on the physical ...
... the teacher. ) The subject is: What is death? How should you begin? You must look into yourself, look inside; do not try to know by reading books or to find out what is happening in the vital and the mind: what you feel, what you think about death. The research should be carried out exclusively on a material plane: what is death, from the physical point of view? You must concentrate and... How does one become conscious of the physical being? Mankind, nearly all of mankind, is conscious only of the physical being. With education, the number of men who are conscious of their vital and mind is increasing. As for the human beings who are conscious of their psychic being, they are relatively few. If you mean, "How does one awaken the consciousness of the physical being?", that is... the sense of "self" has identified itself more with the mind in life, is this the same sense of "self" that has all the experiences after death, that is, that retains at the same time the memories of life? I am asking this about the mind, for it remains formed a little longer than the other parts after death. It is not true that the mind is more durable. The psychic consciousness which has identified ...
... that, the physical being! It's senseless! You answer: "The near totality of humanity is conscious ONLY of the physical being. Through education, the number of people conscious of their vital and mind goes on increasing. As for the human beings conscious of their psychic being, their number is relatively minimal." They're a bit... they're very ignorant, these children. If at least they... all things, without separating them. But that's something being prepared. It comes in a flash, for a minute, then things fall back into their old way. We could say the same thing for the vital: the vital gives an intensity which nothing else seems capable of giving; well, that same intensity exists in the Supramental, but without division. It's an intensity that doesn't separate things. I've... she spoke of the "opacity" of Matter which prevents it from manifesting the Consciousness, and of the "transparent" but somewhat imprecise fluidity. ) Do you have any question? Yes. An ordinary mind reading this may wonder, "But what's the advantage of this imprecision?" There's no advantage! It's quite certain that when the Supramental manifests, it will replace the... (what can we call ...
... is a physical mind, a vital force and action which we call the vital physical, and the physical proper or material. Mind has its own realms and life has its own realms just as matter has. In the mental realms life and substance are entirely subordinated to Mind and obey its dictates. Here on earth there is the evolution with matter as the starting point, life as the medium, mind emerging from... intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same... our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subconscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphysical Page 127 planes. When we do sadhana, this kind of dream becomes very common; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate. The forces and beings of the vital world have a ...
... with the mind. It is something lived—not just felt: lived. And then, in the afternoon, it was no longer a prayer, but the observation of a fact ( Mother looks for a third note ).... I found it was becoming interesting. It said: "The other states of being... If you knew with what sort of disdain it spoke, such a superior air! "The other states of being, the vital, the mind, may enjoy... this material mind, the mind of the cells, will be transformed. This is good news! Page 184 Isn't it! I am quite astonished. I noticed it yesterday or the day before. I wasn't well, anyway things weren't pleasant, and all of a sudden, here was all this mind saying a prayer. A prayer... you know how I used to say prayers before, in Prayers and Meditations : it was the Mind saying prayers;... Conversations with Pavitra of 20 November 1926. Pavitra complained that "this mechanical part of the mind is carrying me along." And Sri Aurobindo replied, "It is simply an outer functioning and it will be rejected in the course of the procedure." That was in 1926. Sri Aurobindo changed his mind later, perhaps in fact when he discovered his "mathematical formula." ...
... rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, piśācavat , the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac. Here too there is no mastery or supreme sublimation of nature. There is only a joyful static possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us. The mind soul and mind consciousness in man, manomaya puruṣa , can... successively or at once. Or he may transform the lower forms into manifestations of the higher state; he may draw upward the childlikeness or the inert irresponsibility of the free physical mind or the free vital mind's divine madness and carelessness of all rules, proprieties, harmonies and colour or disguise with them the ecstasy of the saint or the solitary liberty of the wandering eremite. Here again... into Sachchidananda by a reflection of the Soul as it mirrors itself in the nature of pure universal mind luminous, unwalled, happy, plastic, illimitable, or by absorption in the vast free unconditioned uncentred Self within it and without it. The result is either the immobile cessation of all mind and action or a desire-free unbound action watched by the unparticipating inner Witness. The mental being ...
... this kingdom of safety, certainty and mental ultimacy. But Savitri could not have stayed in this world of ordered and cold knowledge and fixed beliefs anymore than in those of the physical and vital minds; for, she had set herself forth in search of her soul. It was her psychic being that held the key to the unfoldment of earth's destiny. She replied: Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul... religion — the country of Life-mind. Savitri advances beyond this too, and comes to the domain of the measured mind, where spirit itself is seen as a form of mind. Here was a quiet country of fixed mind, Here life no more was all nor passion's voice; A cry of sense had sunk into a hush. Soul was not there nor spirit, but mind alone; Mind claimed to be the spirit and... the Holy Ghost of Mind; But none has touched its limits or seen its face. 19 And to yet others, Each soul is the great Father's crucified Son, Mind is that soul's one parent, its conscious cause, The ground on which trembles a brief passing light, Mind, sole creator of the apparent world. All that is here is part of our own self; Our minds have made the world ...
... is something interesting in this cellular consciousness: they have a sense of sincerity which is MUCH sharper, and what they call in English exacting , than in the vital and the mind (even the material Page 107 vital and mind). There is a sort of absoluteness in the sincerity which is very remarkable, and they have a rigorousness between them which is quite wonderful. It's extremely interesting... interesting. If anything, any part, any movement, tries to cheat, they catch it like this ( gesture of nipping it and wringing its neck ), and in such a sharp and precise way.... In all the vital or mental movements, there is always a kind of ( sinuous gesture ) suppleness, something that tries to adapt—while here, oh... it's like this ( inflexible gesture ). So when there is invocation, prayer, self-giving... should be done scientifically, in a spirit of discipline and almost consecration, as a means of study. Of course, just the contact with a small amount of the Force from above disturbs many people's minds; so here, I think the effect would be very general. It's a risk to be run. If someone—someone conscious, who already knows much, who is very much master of himself and has control over his re ...
... supra-mental planes, the planes above the human mind? There are many planes above man's mind — the supra-mental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised, — for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only on the surface consciousness — the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other... past, is it not evidently absurd on the face of it? Is it not a fact that the mind, vital and physical are integrally woven into each other and that to separate them and put each one in its proper place is no easy task. When the mind alone is realising the self, the vital and physical will constantly try to disturb it. (One cannot do this realisation in all these beings... wrote, "Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self 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, rajas ...
... can we make the mind and vital a "clear field"? Make what?... Yes, it is difficult. ( Laughter ) It is a great task. Well, it is always the same thing; first of all you must understand what is meant by being clear. And then you must aspire, and with persistence; and each time something comes to obstruct you, you must brush it aside, push it back, not accept it. The mind and vital have a very bad... then the mind turns it into all kinds of speculations and affirmations and constructions and takes great pride in it, and the vital uses the power to fulfil its own desires. So, in order to avoid this it is said that they must be clear, quiet, peaceful, and must not rush at the force which is trying Page 396 to manifest and make of it a tool for their personal use. For the mind to be clear... misfortune is that usually either the vital being or the mental being or even the physical being is very anxious to play a part, very anxious. So it swells up, takes up a lot of place, covers the rest; and it covers it so well that one can't even become aware of the presence of the divine Force because the personal movement of the physical, the body, the vital, the mind, covers everything with its own ...
... consciousness which comes either from the mind's or vital's inclination to indulge in accustomed occupations or by sleep or by losing oneself in some outer action such as talking—because these things are associated with the ordinary mental consciousness and still need it to be done. At a later stage it will be possible to do these things with the surface mind only while the new consciousness remains... centres or parts of the consciousness—one is a witness, sākṣī , and observes, the other consciousness is active and it is this active consciousness that you felt going down deep into the vital being. If your mind had not become active, you would have known where it went and what it went there to experience or do. When there is an experience, you should not begin to think about it, for that is of no... them or similar things without being any the worse. It is something in you, probably in your lower vital and physical, that does not want the Higher Consciousness because it will have to change and it has no intention of changing. When this pressure acts, it gets at once a fear and shakes the physical mind and system by its fear. You will have then to get rid of this—till then it will not be safe for ...
... power that you feel on a plane above the ordinary mind or vital or physical—what plane is not as yet clear—for what you describe is common to this Self on whatever plane it manifests; it is felt like that as soon as the being or any part of the being detaches itself from the surface Ignorance. The Self is met first on the level of the Higher Mind, but it is not limited to one station—it is usually... described in your letter is a glimpse of the realisation of the true Self which is independent of the body. When this settles itself there is the liberation ( mukti ). Not only the body, but the vital and mind are felt to be only instruments and one's self is felt to be calm, self-existent and free and wide or infinite. It is then possible for the psychic being to effect in that freedom the full tra... will fall away from one at death and all will disappear into the One. But for a change of the nature it is necessary that the experience and seeing of the Purusha should spread to all the parts, mind, vital, physical, subconscient. Then the ego movements of Prakriti can also disappear gradually from one field after another till none is left. For this a perfect samata even in the cells of the body and ...
... the same aspiration and the same ardour of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no fluctuations as there are Page 247 in the vital and mind, it's very steady), once that was established (through kinds of pulsations, not distant from one another, first on one detail, then spreading out and becoming generalized), since then the Power ...
... And all of a sudden this becomes worse, for I must tell you that the mind is very friendly with the vital—not the reasoning mind but the physical mind is very, very friendly with the vital; so, as soon as the vital begins to say, "I have nothing to do with that, I have been badly treated, I won't have anything to do with it", the mind naturally comes in to encourage it, to explain, give good reasons,... the vital, blindly, without any discrimination. The mind comes along with its theories: "You must not eat that, it will harm you; you must not do that, it is bad", and if the mind is not wise and clear-sighted, the poor body suffers the consequences of the orders it receives. I do not speak of the orders it receives from the vital. The mind with its rigid principles and the vital with its excesses and... than the vital, for instance. But the mind and the vital, with the character and temperament they have, what do they not do with this poor slave of a body! After having ill-treated it, perhaps ruined it (it protests a little, falls ill a little), this is what the two accomplices say: "What a beast is this body, it cannot follow us in our movement!" Unhappily, the body obeys its masters, the mind and the ...
... act. It is like that, this is tamas. Tamas is a purely material thing; it is very rare to have a vital or mental tamas (it may occur but through contagion), I believe it is more a tamas of the nerves or the brain than vital or mental tamas. But laziness is everywhere, in the physical, the vital, the mind. Generally lazy people are not always lazy, not in all things. If you propose something that pleases... any longer what to do, it says, "Excuse me, excuse me! but that's not how one goes about living." Those whose vital being is very active and dominating may succeed in awakening the body, and if they have the spirit of Page 366 adventure (which happens very often, for the vital is an adventurous being), the physical obeys, it obeys the impulse, the inner order; then it consents to the change... the problem of the universe absolutely incomprehensible. And all these explanations are inadmissible for a mind which is ever so slightly awakened. That is why you are told, "Don't try to understand, you will never understand." Page 370 But that is mental laziness, it is the mind's bad will. You see, one feels within oneself that, because one has this kind of power of thought-activity, this ...
... intensely one feels these things, depends on the condition of the consciousness at the time, the temperament, the activity of the vital, the mind's receptivity and response. The Yogi (or even certain strong and calm minds) is not carried away, as the mind and the vital often are, by the Ananda,—he holds and watches it and there is no mere excitement mixed with the divine flow of it through the conscious... call of the vital for the Force, so that they felt the flood of energy as soon as they began the work Page 267 and it continued so long as the work had to be done. The vital is the means of effectuation on the physical plane, so its action and energy are necessary for all work—without it, if the mind only drives without the cooperation and instrumentation of the vital, there is hard... of energy 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 are glowing instruments and the Force flows out in an intense and happy working—an almost labourless labour. The Working of the Force When you have opened yourself to a higher ...
... as a result, to the surface consciousness he seemed a bit deranged—he wasn't deranged but diminished. And he lived, as I said, out of habit. The physical consciousness still held a minimum of vital and mind and he lived out of habit. But the remarkable thing is that sometimes, for a few seconds, he would live admirably, in full light, while at other times he couldn't even control his gestures. Then... fascinating things there would be! Page 25 For instance, two or three nights ago (I don't remember), I was with Sri Aurobindo, we were doing a certain work (it was in a mental zone with certain vital reactions mixed in), well, a general work. I was with Sri Aurobindo and we were doing the work together. He wanted to explain to me how a particular movement is turned into a distorted movement; he ...
... concentrating on the work? It means — to identify oneself with what one is doing, instead of seeing oneself doing. April 27, 1951 * Mother, What is that will which can govern the vital, the mind and also the physical? Does it belong to the Divine? All individual will is a limitation and a deformation of the Divine Will; just as the individual consciousness is a limitation and a deformation... can’t we distinguish whether we have seen something or thought about it? It is because of a lack of consciousness. One must learn to distinguish the different planes of the being: psychic, mental, vital and physical; when this is done, then one can understand on which of these planes one is active in sleep as well as in the waking state. February 3, 1951 * Mother, Can palmistry always... is harmful is habitually not to blink enough. April 4, 1951 * April 1950 Mother, Explain to me what you wanted to tell me about getting hurt. The aura of the most material vital and of the subtle physical acts as a protection for the body — that which changes it the most is an excessive fatigue, physical or mental overwork, worries, tension and depression. An altered ...
... continue in communion while doing work, must all be due to some part of the physical consciousness that is still not open to the Light—probably something in the vital physical and the material subconscient which stands in the way of the physical mind being in its mass free and responsive. There is no harm in raising the aspiration from below to meet the power from above. All that you have to be careful... vital—if there were not, there would be no use in doing sadhana. The true will belongs to that consciousness. When the mind is pure and the psychic prominent, then one feels what is according to the Divine Will and what is against it. For the actions to be psychic, the psychic must be in front. The observing Purusha can separate himself, but cannot change the Prakriti. But to be the observing... Freedom in Work Do? why should he [ a certain Yogi ] want to do anything if he was in the eternal peace or Ananda or union with the Divine? If a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to be always "doing" something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything—but not because it is bound to action and ...
... especially of the vital nature, are so subtle and powerful that the mind is usurped and enslaved by the physical and vital nature, and is even used to defend irrational tendencies by rationalizing them. In order to free itself from domination of the vital nature, mind needs to invoke a force greater than itself. Furthermore, the mind itself has its own inherent disturbances and limitations. To overcome the... time being. For if the mind remains alert and clings to the truth, then the attack can only upheave the vital and, though this may be painful enough, yet the right attitude of the mind acts as a corrective and makes it easier to recover the balance and the true condition of the vital comes back more quickly." 36 From the evolutionary point of view, the importance of mind lies in the fact that... the force of instincts, impulses, desires and feelings of the vital nature, it is necessary to have recourse to mind and its force of mental will. It is the mind that enables one initially to discriminate between what is beneficial and what is harmful, what is proper and what is improper, what is right and what is wrong. Secondly, the mind, with its force of mental will, can curb, at least to some extent ...
... along with the web of the physical Mind], and every time an illusion disappeared, it produced one of those little promises that came in succession, announcing something that would come about later. 3 It was only four years later, in 1968, that this great “direct Will” would take possession of the cells without passing through the filters of the Mind, of the Vital or even the most “spiritual” filters... something repeating itself in the spiral of evolution: the same brute Power, the same vital force (there's no comparison, of course, man has lost all that completely), the fantastic force of life that's found in those animals was coming back into the human consciousness, but with all that has been brought by the evolution of Mind (a painful enough detour), and TRANSFORMED into the light of a higher certitude... “This is how it will be,” it wasn't that—it was HERE. It wasn't a permeation into the Mind: it was a permeation into Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in the experience: it wasn't something that was the privilege of the mental being, it was the whole vital, material substance of the earth that received this joy of the power of progress—it was ...
... happiness ... has come to dwell in the house of this body. 22 The next day (8 December), Mirra has a serious dialogue vital being, and next the mind, respond to the call. But the mind observes that while there seems to be no limit to the range of movement of man's vital or his mind, his field of physical action alone is so constricted and petty. We may wonder why great ambitions, great ideas, the... "the three inanimate images" are meant the body, vital and mind that have to fuse electrically into a habitation for the soul. The Voice tells her that it is not enough to be surrendered to the Lord and adhere to His gifts alone, she should awaken all that is latent in her. Illumination too is necessary for "in the limpid mirror of the mind will be reflected what thou shouldst know". This done... small, quiet, uniform and peaceful life will be over. There will be effort, danger, the unforeseen, insecurity, but also intensity. Thou wert made for this role. 23 The vital being is all alert for the fray, but the mind has its doubts still regarding its own competence for the great and supreme task that is to come. But once again the soothing answer comes from Above: It is to prepare ...
... consciousness which was there, deep down, in the very depths. The mind has withdrawn, the vital has Page 371 withdrawn, everything has withdrawn; when I was supposedly ill, the mind had gone away, the vital had gone away, and the body was left to itself—purposely. And that's why, it's precisely because the vital and mind had gone that it looked like a very serious illness. And then, in... consciousness which had been infused into the body THROUGH the vital (from the mind to the vital and from the vital to the body) started slowly, slowly emerging. It began with that burst of Love right at the top, from the extreme, supreme altitude; then, little by little, little by little, it came down to the body. Then that sort of physical mind, that is, something totally and completely idiotic going round... which was the vital's and the mind's Page 370 monopoly has become corporeal: the consciousness acts in the body's cells. The body's cells become something conscious, entirely conscious. A consciousness which is independent, absolutely independent of the vital consciousness or the mental consciousness: it's a corporeal consciousness. ( silence ) And this physical mind, which Sri ...
... and receiving the thing, the ordinary habit, what people call an illness: "I am ill." That's very amusing. And ALWAYS, if you stay truly still (it's difficult to be really and truly still—in the vital and mind, it's very easy, but in the body's cells, to be perfectly still WITHOUT BEING TAMASIC is a little difficult, it has to be learned), but when you are able to be truly still, there is ALWAYS a little... True Thing?" It's as if the body were being dealt with like a child who has to be educated. Because that mind I am talking about is the physical mind, the material mind (not the speculative mind: the vibration isn't the same at all), it's the mind OF THE EARTH, the mind of everyday life, the mind you carry along in your every movement and which tires the body so much!... Such a tension, an anguish—living... But they don't like it! There's also the story of that poor T. He gathered up from Sri Aurobindo's books all the passages in which he says that mind is indispensable to man ( Mother laughs ), that mind is the means of progress, that without mind life would be incomplete, etc.—there are many such passages, of course!... And he forgot all the others. So as I am full of mischief , I gathered up ...
... unimaginable things. But where is that? I don't know. (Satprem to Sujata:) Tell your dream. ( Mother continues ) It must be a region intermediary between the most material physical, vital and mind. There's everything imaginable, you can see the most extraordinary things. And that's how it is. Strangely, even, you have a power there: one drop of truth has a tre-men-dous power in those worlds ...
... in the vital, the mind or the body. There is a stiffening and this hurts, one feels a mental, vital or physical pain. So, the first thing is to put one's will and relax this shrinking, as one does a twitching nerve or a cramped muscle; you must learn how to relax, be able to relieve this tension in whatever part of the being it may be. Page 156 different in the mind, the vital or the... healing 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... by such vibrations of disorder. She describes the external source of an illness as "a kind of vibration made up of a mental suggestion, a vital force of disorder and certain physical elements which are the materialisation of the mental suggestion and the vital vibration. And these physical elements can be what we have agreed to call germs, microbes, this and that and many other things." 28 "If ...
... 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 forward and dominating the mind, life and body; in the ordinary man it depends on them for expression and is... certain actions; that is some part of the inner being, sometimes the inner mental, sometimes the inner vital, sometimes, it may be, the inner or subtle physical Purusha. The inner being—inner mind, inner vital, inner or subtle physical—knows much that is unknown to the outer mind, the outer vital, the outer physical, for it is in a more direct contact with the secret forces of Nature. The psychic is... the same way as the mind or vital—but the body is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul’s vehicle till these too dissolve. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being Sweet Mother, can the psychic express itself without the mind, the vital and the physical? ...
... France, Mirra receives the clear direction yet once more: "Turn thy look towards the earth," and on 15 February she has the experience of a total spring-cleaning of her instruments of body, vital and mind, and she can hear the Lord's benediction: "e of all that is dust." 25 Mirra has gone through the ordeal of the primordial Agni, or the Fire of Truth, and she has emerged pure and "resplendent... futurist intimations. "The realisation has appeared in all its amplitude," and Mirra can see that the Divine inhabits us from the depths to the surfaces in the divers aspects of Agni (Life, works), Indra (Mind, knowledge) and Soma(Soul, love). But the call is for an integral union of all these powers for effecting the desired change: And in all these domains Agni assures us of the help of his purifying... unmistakable: In all work, constantly, there is the perception of Thy invariable presence in Thy dual form of Non-Being and Being ... the physical body is glorified, supple, vigorous. energetic; the mind is superbly active in its calm lucidity, guiding and transmitting the forces of Thy divine Will; and all the being exults in an endless beatitude, a boundless love, a sovereign power, a perfect knowledge ...
... through the vital (from the mind to the vital and from the vital to the body) started slowly, slowly emerging.... The same consciousness which was the vital's and the mind's monopoly has become corporeal: the consciousness acts in the body's cells. The body's cells grow into something conscious, entirely conscious. A consciousness which is INDEPENDENT, absolutely independent of the vital consciousness... awakening of that consciousness which was there, deep down, in the very depths. The mind has withdrawn, the vital has withdrawn, everything has withdrawn; when I was supposedly ill, the mind had gone away, the vital had gone away, and the body was left to itself—purposely. And that's why, it's precisely because the vital and mind had gone that it looked like a very serious illness. And then, in the body left... an appearance of complete imbecility: all the vital and mental strength was gone. There remained only a body... which could not remain standing alone. The body was a wreck, you know 9 she said after, laughing. You must accept to be a total imbecile 10 —are you ready? she asked me later, *for I had enough * of the meanderings of the Mind and yearned for more radical ways. And I was ready ...
... down in this part of the consciousness the mind feels like the material Nature that action of will is impossible. Mind and vital nature are Page 20 on the contrary all for will and initiative and so when one is in mind or vital or acting under their influence will feels itself always ready to be active. The mind and vital have hardly any experience during this inert... activity of mind or vital. The other day you wrote that some people have less of this tamas because of the good activity of their mind or vital. In which way good? I do not remember to have written 'good' — but maybe I meant people who have either a clear and strong activity Page 14 of the mind (the intellectuals) or an energetic vital being which... now the lower vital is able to surge up after it has once stopped troubling? Now it is the physical mind that is active in you and the Page 26 physical mind gives a value and therefore a power to the lower vital which it did not have before. It is the physical consciousness that has to change, so that the physical mind and physical vital may also change ...
... help also. Also it opens a passage between the exterior consciousness and the inner mind or vital. But if one stops at that, then nothing much is gained. Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things... obstacle. 10 August 1937 There is nothing definite that I can tell you. Mother finds no conscious opposition in your mind or will to surrender and transformation. But probably the difficulty lies in the vital (not mind) of the artist (the poet, painter etc. in you), because the vital of the artist is always accustomed to its independence, to follow its own way, to make and live in its own world and... should stop reading so long as the reading itself does not, as a passion, fall away from the mind; that happens when a higher order of consciousness and experiences begins within the being. Nor is it good to force yourself too much to do only the one work of painting. Such compulsion of the mind and vital tends usually either to be unsuccessful and make them more restless or else to create some kind ...
... planes. Page 304 Mind, vital and physical are inextricably 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... himself 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... suppose what you mean is that in such cases it is the mind that realises the self; it is not an integral realisation. But when the mind alone realises the self, the vital and physical will constantly disturb it. A separation will become necessary. But can they be separated without the help of the supramental planes? There are many planes above man's mind—the supramental is not the only one, and on all ...
... term to put them in harmony. And then, at times, if you add to the physical the vital and mental (I do not speak of the speculative mind or the independent vital, I am speaking of the mental and vital parts of the body , because there is a physical vital and a physical mind; there is a physical mind and this physical mind is the worst of all, it is that which goes on all the time and you have the utmost... person who got a wound through the kind of fear that he felt seeing someone else's wound. He really got it. What is the difference between mental, vital and physical fear? If you are conscious of the movement of your mind, the movement of your vital and the movement of your physical, you know it. The mental, it is very simple: thoughts come. You begin thinking, for example, there is this illness... whenever there is an inner imbalance. But then, to the equilibrium of the body, you must add the equilibrium of the vital and the mind. For you to be able to do all kinds of things with immunity, without any accident happening to you, you must have a triple equilibrium—mental, vital, physical—and not only in each of the parts, but also in the three parts in their mutual relations.... If you have done ...
... and feelings of a departed human being... 3.A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality...; 4.... formations of one's own mind... [taking] to the senses an objective appearance. 5.Temporary possession of people by vital beings.... 6.Thought-images of themselves projected often by people... psychic being comes back again upon earth for continuing its journey forward, it assumes not only a new physical body but a new vital and a new mind also, all in conformity with its basic needs of progress in the new incarnation. How much of the contribution of the mind and the vital of the previous life will be integrated and assimilated in the new ones, will be determined by the psychic being alone. The... who attend a planchette seance. Besides, as we have had occasion to point out before, many small vital entities of dubious intentions are swarming in the lower vital world of the supraphysical regions. These entities may grab at times the fragments and residues of the discarded mind and vital of the dead person, and covering themselves up with these instrumental residues, pose as the soul of the ...
... power within, shall be henceforward his great preoccupation. Then will his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, vital pursuits be no longer an exercise of mind and life for themselves, in a circle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and the bringing of its power into our human existence. 9 * This "Talk to the Women of Japan", although cast in... existing ailments, but Dr. Okhata and the Kobayashis used their still-sitting meditation more widely for prophylactic purposes also - in fact, for promoting the all-round well-being of the body, vital and mind. During their two years' stay at Kyoto, Mirra struck a deep friendship with Madame Kobayashi, and took interest in the still-sitting movement. Finding the Indian Yoga system too complicated... stillness of the mind can one hope to receive occasional glimpses of the power and the glory of this Future Man: When the mind is perfectly silent, pure like a well-polished mirror, immobile as a pond on a breezeless day, then, from above, as the light of the stars drops in the motionless waters, so the light of the supermind, of the Truth within, shines in the quieted mind and gives birth ...
... So the mind must be a little wide, a little supple and quiet, and instead of feeling immediately that everything you were thinking of is now escaping you, you wait very quietly for something in your head to begin to understand the content of the experience.9 One may be overtaken as it were by a tremendous experience, but the ādhāra - the human tenement with its body, vital and mind - must... must be ready too, ready to assimilate it and let it do the work of change and integral transformation: One must have a solid well-balanced body, a well-controlled vital and a mind organised, supple, logical; then, if you are in a state of aspiration and you receive an answer, all your being will feel enriched, enlarged, splendid, and you will be perfectly happy and you will not spill your cup... in Mirra's residence in Paris, it was to register a widening circumference of beneficent influence. There were discussions, talks, plans. Experience mingled with logic, the heart wrestled with the mind; and so the spiritual seekers groped towards an integral aim in life and integral means to achieve it. In the discussion with the young Russian revolutionary leader, the emerging ideas were the need ...
... come down along with us into the physical consciousness. Many have followed – some immediately without sufficient preparation in the mind and vital, some holding on to the vital and mind and living still between the three, some totally but with a prepared mind and vital. The total descent into the physical is a very troublesome affair – it means a long and trying pressure of difficulties, for the physical... always without seeing you, I do the needful. But this [during the Balcony Darshan] is a moment when I can do it by touching the physical directly, you see; otherwise it is through the mind that it acts, the mind or the vital. But here I touch the physical directly through the sight, through the eye contact. That’s what I do, each time.’ 70 Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo continued his yoga in his apartment... had written to him: ‘All this about the Mother’s smile and her gravity is simply a trick of the vital. Very often I notice people talk of the Mother’s being grave, stern, displeased, angry at Pranam when there has been nothing of the kind – they may have attributed to her something created by their own vital imagination. Apart from that the Mother’s smiling or not smiling has nothing to do with the sadhak’s ...
... 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 is not responsive. Page 127 We allow the vital to indulge its desires because... only a first step. But something in the vital wants it, therefore your will is lazy about throwing it out. When I am near women my vital or physical mind takes careful note of their gait, hair or dress. I do not know what the mind means by that. But these perceptions are supported only by the mechanical and restless parts of the surface mind, while the other parts feel much disturbed... 135 When the consciousness is separated from the vital and physical, it is not easy to separate it from the mind. Even to make it realise that it is not the mind but something deeper and higher takes years of sadhana. It is because man is a mental being and therefore closely identified with his mind. When we try to separate ourselves from the mental activities ...
... weapon— a duel of vital passion. I find it a most improper thing to do. No date Your mind and higher vital are convinced of that, but something in the physical consciousness and the sub-terranean vital is not, it still goes back by habit to the old movements and that is why the mechanical physical mind goes on dwelling on these ideas or rather these accustomed mind-movements. You must—since... indulgence in vital abhiman and resume your way in the sweetness of the psychic union and with the strength of the psychic surrender. 23.5.32 It is not anything physical but a vital depression (in some part of the vital, not the whole) that prevents the body from recovering its elasticity. There was some part of the vital that was resisting a radical change and even, unknown to your mind, trying... body because the opposing forces find it more difficult than before to upset the mind or vital so they fall on the physical in the hope that that will do the trick, the physical being more vulnerable. But the sensibility of the body to attacks is no proof of incapacity, just as the former sensibility of the mind or vital to attacks was no proof —it can be in due time overcome. As for the feelings ...
... from the vital, both advents helped, of course, by pressure from the planes where life and mind are each a separate uninvolved force and from where originally the precipitation of something of life and mind into matter-form took place and also the reverse push bringing about life's and mind's emergence was originally planted. Page 280 One mistake must be avoided. To give mind the basic... differentiates as "mind" from what he defines as "life". Mind, according to him, does not yield to explanation in terms of "energy". But if we understand by "life" broadly whatever carries on and holds together processes like growth, metabolism, adaptation, tissue-regeneration and propagation, then, in Sherrington's view, science, though still far from the goal of explaining every vital process, is entitled... only as between two categories, matter and life. More fundamental than life would be mind and even beyond mind there could be spirit. But these are not our concern here. Page 241 some form is the goal, there should be scientifically no less than philosophically as little a priori objection to vitalism as to materialism. To insist either that the reduction should be only in one direction ...
... more generally so. But the vital can be prepared before the mind opens. The mind may get partially opened and the vital is then able to receive the higher light. But the total opening of mind may come only later. In your case the fact that the force works now on the vital level shows that it can pass through the mind without being hampered. You have to open to the higher light and power. Has... may be only an awakening of the intuitive mind. Sometimes my aspiration is very intense, but when the mind resumes again its working, it covers it to some exent. Mind must remain, but mind must be transformed. And so also with the vital and the physical. They must completely yield themselves and not only accept the pressure which is put by the mind. This I understand now. From my experience... "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 on a visit to certain places or certain planes. It can observe things there and even make itself felt. It is not even the whole mind which goes ...
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