... got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego. On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśächa and these ; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane. Distiple : What is the corresponding being on the higher plane ? Sri... mental and psychic parts. Do the beings Page 265 of the vital plane possess also mental and psychic parts? Sri Aurobindo : The vital and physical planes are different On the physical plane there is evolution through different grades of beings : ours is a plane of evolution On the vital plane there is no evolution. It is a plane of typal beings ; there the consciousness... wrong that a great and powerful vital being came for manifestation Page 277 X Gods and it was necessary for the organisation of the vital plane of X. What is meant by organisation of the vital plane ? Sri Aurobindo : To bring about a harmony on that plan for effectuation. The vital being is for effective realisation. Disciple : What would have been ...
... leaves the physical being and goes into the vital world he must know how to protect himself or someone must protect him. Disciple : Do not space and time exist on the vital plane ? Sri Aurobindo : The vital plane has its own time and space. There is a relation between the physical and the vital planes. There is an Infinite with extension and an Infinite without extension. One creates... tried to read the book. But then I found that it was not necessary to read the whole because I have been able to form an idea about it from the illustrations. The illustrations are of the lowest vital plane as is evident from the forms which they have thrown out and also from the faces of the mediums. They are most diabolical, what the Christians call "devilish". Disciple : But the book is... endeavour – Sadhana. Besides, as the writer himself admits, the evidence does not prove anything beyond the fact that supraphysical planes exist. These vital beings can take the substance from the vital plane and also gather stuff from the minds of those present and create a form. It does not prove that they are the persons they claim to be. Not that disembodied spirits don't exist, but this way it can't ...
... explain the vision of the form of the Mother and mine—for that is clear. Page 106 Vital 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... are invented by the mind and are partly true, partly a play of possibilities. Or a mental vision like the vital may be only a suggestion,—that is a formation of some possibility on the mental or vital plane which presents itself to the sadhak in the hope of being accepted and helped to realise itself. The visions and experiences you have described are all of the mental plane and show a great... gathering Page 107 to carry on the sadhana as if by an automatic action. But the consent of the sadhak, his rejection of all that comes against is always necessary. It is the vital plane—probably the vital physical. It is mostly there that the beings of the vital world appear with animal heads or features. A human figure with a dog's face means a very coarse and material sexual energy ...
... You very often say "it is a meeting in the vital plane". Yesterday you said "an activity of the vital plane"—what does it mean? Are all happenings there as true as on the physical plane? Yes, except that sometimes the record is imperfect—but the happening is true. Are they intimations of what would happen on the physical plane? No—the vital plane has an independent life of its own; the physical... of the fruition of the dream? Anyhow what has it to do with coming out? Any number of people meet me in dreams and get instructions or intimations about this or that. It is an activity of the vital plane where I am not in strict retirement—it has nothing to do with any future physical happening. What's this threat, Sir? You are cryptic because you are becoming more and more supramental! [21.8... necessarily. Or does it mean that even there outside, he will be guided by the Mother? He may be, if he develops the supraphysical contact. I am apt to think somewhat slightingly of these vital plane meetings... You are too physically matter of fact. Besides you are quite ignorant of occult things. The vital is part of what European psychologists sometimes call the subliminal, and the subliminal ...
... have no such inclination towards these things as many have. The whole was only a formation or suggestion of outer forces on the vital plane to see what kind of response, if any, your consciousness would make. These are dreams of the vital plane in which the vital plane takes up the spiritual experience and tries to turn it into forms of ego with a suggestion afterwards of loss of power and of... him or her speak or act in any way convenient to it. These are experiences of the vital plane; they have a meaning if one knows how to interpret them. This one indicates the possibility of strong attacks on the vital plane, but at the same time promises protection. These are formations of the vital plane, sometimes things that try to happen but not necessarily effective. One can observe and ... among the sadhaks see many dreams of the vital plane when they sleep. In sleep the being goes out into other worlds and planes and it has to pass through the vital on the way—and as the vital is nearest to the waking consciousness, it is there it most vividly remembers. Probably you see better dreams but do not remember them. In dreams on the vital plane there is always a deviation from the norm ...
... ordinary life, but must quiet down and be replaced by a higher action in Yoga. In sleep it is also the vital plane into which you enter. If properly seen and coordinated, what is experienced in the vital plane has its value and gives knowledge which is useful and control over the vital self and vital plane. But all that is coming to you through the subconscient in an incoherent way—this is the cause of... in you. There can be no life and no manifestation here on earth without the vital. It has not to be destroyed, but purified and changed into the true Vital. The Vital Plane and the Physical Plane Things do happen on the vital plane—but they are not more important than what happens here because it is here we have to realise and what happens in the vital is only a help. Most things happen... have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power. The Lower Vital, the Physical Vital and the Material Vital Below the navel is the lower vital plane, which is ignorant and obscure, the seat of small desires, greeds, passions and enjoyments. As there is a physical mind, so there is a physical vital—a vital turned entirely upon physical ...
... on the vital plane—and one sign of the reality was the way in which they acted, each with an exact fidelity to the vital state, Sachin ignorant and unable to understand and upset, Sahana who is awake within at once understanding what had happened and doing the right thing by leaving you to your experience. So too what happened in your dream about the Mother was real, but real on the vital plane, an ... your lower vital from outside; your mistake has been to admit them and identify them as your own—from want of knowledge and experience in these matters. There are certain vital forces of this lower vital plane that are constantly wandering about the Ashram and trying to push their movements now on one, now on another, now on several at a time. Theprocessus is always the same. First, suggestions, —the Mother... and vital part of the being. It was just when you crossed the border that you came into touch with the vital presence of Sahana and Sachin, two who had been most nearly connected with you on the vital plane. It was there in your inner vital self and on its plane that all happened of which you speak, the peace and the ecstasy, the vy ā kulat ā [passionate eagerness] and the tears, the talk of Sahana ...
... to her and Mother gave us flowers, which we carried happily with us. Mother, does it have any meaning? No, it has no symbolic meaning - it is simply something that you saw on the vital plane. 26.8.33 Sri Aurobindo Mother, Tonight I saw in my dream that you wrote something in English on a small piece of paper. I tried to read it but I could not,... went to the Mother and she happily gave me the soup and patted me. This made me very happy. The Mother had worn a blue sari. Does this mean anything? No — it simply happened in the vital plane. S RI A UROBINDO Page 52 (The narrations of the following dreams are lost. Only Sri Aurobindo's interpretations are given below.) It must have been your psychic... the vital, kept chained so as to allow the psychic to have play. They get free from time to time and the vital may do mischief - which you felt. S RI A UROBINDO It is a dream of the vital plane in which Mother was giving the things indicated by the garlands, new birth, transformation etc. S RI A UROBINDO Mother, I saw you in my dream last night. I offered my pranam ...
... aesthetic creation belong? Sri Aurobindo : It depends upon different people. Generally it belongs to the vital plane. But there are differences. For instance, style for its own sake, I mean, – the beauty of style, beauty of language, rhythm, etc., all that belongs to the vital plane. But aesthetic creation can be on every plane. Originally, all that comes from the Ananda plane. Disceple... already there. The Soul (suksma dehi) living on the physical plane returns to the Jiva which is all along supporting the insect in the physical consciousness. When it is ripe, it is taken up on the vital plane and there it gathers experience till the mental plane is reached in man. There is the Supramental plane also. What we do in our yoga is to bring down the Supramental plane so that the Soul may... that experience and also with that ready formation in another manifestation. Page 177 One can preserve, if he so chooses, his vital body after death and produce effects on the vital plane. Now suppose we Supramentalise the body. In that case we can carry the full physical experience and return with the fullest physical, vital and mental force and manifest the Divine. That is what ...
... nature, also ideas, impulses etc., the formations of our outer personality, or mind, vital etc. These dreams on the vital plane are often very mixed owing to the intrusion of figures and details from the subconscient. These are dreams on the vital plane or excursions into the vital world of which the happenings are rendered in terms familiar to the physical mind — e.g. shopkeeper... dream is a seeing of things that have their truth on the vital plane. You do not know that you live on other planes as well as on the physical and that what happens there need not be the same as what happens on the physical. If you meet the Mother on the vital and certain things happen they can have their truth on the vital plane but it does not mean that they happened here in the physical... beings themselves or formations created by them? They are rather formations created from the subconscient. It is a hotchpotch of subconscient impressions thrown out on the vital plane. I am told by S that the people we see in our dreams are sometimes parts of our own being, and that the mind gives them the forms of men or women, with whom we are acquainted on ...
... nature of the psychical experiences of these people. Everything in their works, and particularly the little true spirituality one meets with, makes me think that they have never gone beyond the vital plane—which corresponds to what they call the astral plane. I set aside the case of deception. First, there is to be considered wilful self-deceit, the fact that on this plane we see what we mentally want... psychical facts. She did not want it, besides. What mattered to her was to launch a movement. And this impulse, this desire to organise, to exercise an influence, is the characteristic of the vital plane. There are influences of all sorts there, whose one desire is to take possession of those who are rising high in order to use them for their own ends. Not only the weak are their prey, but the strong... who influenced her. She recognised him, however, at a certain moment of her life (the glamour he has put on me...), but as she had nothing of her own, she returned. And what is special about the vital plane is that anyone who has a certain realisation there, can make another person get the same realisation. One must not apply the criteria of ordinary life to this plane ; this is the mistake that many ...
... be only a suggestion,—that is a formation of some possibility on the mental or vital plane which presents itself to the sadhak in the hope of being 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... hallucinations be compared to visions? A vision is a perception by the visual organs, of phenomena that really exist in a world corresponding to the organ which sees. For example, to the individual vital plane there corresponds a cosmic vital world.... In this way, one can have visions that are vital, mental, overmental, supramental etc. Sri Aurobindo tells us that what is termed a hallucination is ...
... siddhi. Snakes and scorpions always indicate attacks or threats of attack of one kind or another, more often threats from the vital plane or hostile influences on the physical. The serpent is a symbol of force, very often a hostile or evil force of the vital plane. The sea is a symbol of a plane of consciousness. The white light is a manifestation of pure divine force descending from one of... catch it and kill it. That it took long to kill shows that it was not representing a particular process of magic which can be annulled quickly and decisively, but a Force of evil magic from the vital plane. Snake or Serpent The serpent is the symbol of energy, it may be a bad or hostile energy—but it may also be a good, even a divine energy. The snake indicates some kind of energy alw... the physical upwards. The other details are not clear. About the snake you saw in your meditation—serpents indicate always energies of Nature and very often bad energies of the vital Page 170 plane; but they can also indicate luminous or divine energies like the snake of Vishnu. The one you saw was evidently of this latter type—a luminous divine energy and therefore there was no ...
... Too much modernisation and Europeanisation by half! These things are meetings in the vital plane, but very often in the transcription of what happened some details get in that are contributed by the subconscient mind ... The writing on the forehead means of course something that is fixed in you in the vital plane and has to come out hereafter in the physical consciousness. By milk-tea and butter... since that memorable "never" of yours. Great Muggins, man! What a mess you have made of my explanation! I meant that by writing on your forehead the Mother had fixed something in you on the vital plane. That something, which she has fixed, will in time come out, manifest, be produced, born, fulfilled in this (slightly obtuse) physical consciousness of yours on this material plane. Produce itself... a blazing ray of blue light was focussed on her from somewhere. Her appearance became marvellous. This gave me immense joy. Well, you are beginning to have very good dream-experiences on the vital plane—very beautiful and true. That is something. But I wonder what Christ was doing there? Perhaps he came to be converted from his "gospel of sorrow"—but that would be the Christian Christ, not the real ...
... fasted in Shankar Chetty's house. Experiences on the vital plane are most exalting and exhilarating at the same time that they are most dangerous and terrible. There are many pitfalls and no reality. Yogis living in the vital plane can't bring down those experiences into the physical. One can have some power, of course. But the forces of the vital plane take up a man like Hitler and make him do things... lasted only ten days I lost ten pounds, whereas here the fast lasted twenty-three days but the loss of weight was less. At Alipore I was having tremendous visions which were all experiences on the vital plane. But as a part of my mind was critical I took them all with reservations. At Pondicherry I was walking eight hours a day while fasting. DR. BECHARLAL: We have seen in the Guest House the floor ...
... at all. And when I broke the fast I did not begin slowly but with the usual normal amount of food." Disciple: "How is such fasting possible?" Sri Aurobindo: "One draws the energy from the vital plane instead of depending upon physical substance. Once in Calcutta I lived for a long time on rice and banana. These make a very good food." ² During the first three months of the stay at Pondicherry... but not the process and details. "First the magician tried to save the girl. He failed. Then the scientist tried. He found himself baffled by the opponents as they (the Dasyus – powers of the vital plane) were not struck down by the blows of the sword or anything else. They were all going to some King's capital. Then they fled and the girl disappeared. The scientist was a geologist who had made the... as big as the room! – and he found the girl just behind the cover and the pages! "Thus the secret of earth, the physical nature, was symbolically given.” ² 1 June. Talk about being on the vital plane and about the visit of the Prince of Wales to India. Sri Aurobindo's remarks on Britain's offer to the Congress. 5 June. Visit of C. R. Das. Das had an interview with Sri Aurobindo at 3.30; the ...
... right sense of things instead of groping and getting things by the wrong end due to passion, desire etc. The Psychic and the Vital Your former sadhana was mostly on the vital plane. The experiences of the vital plane are very interesting to the sadhak but they are mixed, i.e. not all linked with the higher Truth. A greater, purer and firmer basis for the sadhana has to be established—the psychic... feelings that come from the deeper heart within which are not vital. What he is having now are the true spiritual and psychic experiences—not those of the vital plane which most have at the beginning. The experiences of the vital plane (in which there is much imagination and fantasy) are useful for opening up the consciousness; but it is when they are replaced by the spiritual and psychic con... sadhana seems to be descending into the vital to clear and change it. The first result is that the difficulty of the vital has shown itself—the ugly images and alarming dreams come from a hostile vital plane which is opposed to the sadhana. From there also comes the renewal of the agitation, the disinclination and resistance to the sadhana. This is not a going back to the old condition, but the result ...
... by half! These things are meetings on the vital plane, but very often in the transcription of what happened some details get in that are contributed by the subconscient mind. I rather suspect all that about X was such a contribution. The rest seems all right. The writing on the forehead means of course something that is fixed in you in the vital plane and has to come out hereafter in the physical... solve a problem in a few minutes over which the physical has spent days in vain etc. etc. What is the use of the same things happening on both planes; it would be superfluous and otiose. The vital plane is a field where things can be done which for some reason or other can't be done now on the physical. There are of course hundreds of varieties of things in the vital as it is a much richer and... and more plastic field of consciousness than the physical, and all are not of equal validity and value. I am speaking above of the things that are valid. By the way, without this vital plane there would be no art, poetry or literature—these things come through the vital before they can manifest here. Page 194 At this stage you have only to watch the experiences and observe their significance ...
... ]dreams, one kind which are things happening on the vital plane, another kind which is made up of impressions and impulses coming up from the subconscient, not actual happenings. Dreams in which emission takes place are usually of the second kind—but not always; for sometimes they come through the touch of vital beings or forces in the vital plane or through a meeting of one's own sexual thought-forms... of a supraphysical temptation such as the appearance of the Apsaras to the Tapaswis in the stories of the epics and Puranas. The other dreams were dreams of success and fame and were also of the vital plane. You need not be depressed by these ordeals in the subtle worlds; they come to all in one form or another; only you have to learn vigilance and find your way through these lesser planes to the highest... of the supramental to be which will have not only to transmute retas into ojas but ojas into something still more sublimated.) The sex-impulse is certainly the greatest force in the vital plane; if it can be sublimated and turned upwards ojas is created which is a great help to the attainment of higher consciousness. But mere restraint is not sufficient. Doctors advise marriage ...
... this vital nature and this vital body; a whole vital plane connected with the life-world or desire-world is hidden in us, a secret consciousness in which life and desire find their untrammelled play and their easy self-expression and from there throw their influences and formations on our outer life. In proportion as the power of this vital plane manifests itself in man and takes hold of his physical... ordinary more inert earth-nature. Even if he develops mind greatly on the vital plane and uses its dynamic energy for self-control as well as for self-satisfaction, it will still be with an Asuric energism ( tapasyā ) although of a higher type and directed to a more governed satisfaction of the rajasic ego. But for the vital plane also it is possible, even as on the physical, to rise to a certain spiritual... forceful in his desires, vehement in his passions and emotions, intensely dynamic in his action, more and more the rajasic man. It is possible now for him to awaken in his consciousness to the vital plane and to become the vital soul, prāṇamaya puruṣa , put on the vital nature and live in the secret vital as well as the visible physical body. If he achieves this change with some fullness or one- ...
... mostly. There are also the dreams that are renderings of vital movements and tendencies habitual to the nature, personal formations of the vital plane. But when one begins to live within then the dreams are often transcriptions of one's experiences on the vital plane and beyond that there is a large field of symbolic and other dreams which have nothing to do with memory. Letters on Yoga, p. 1496... perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams — the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols. The Future Poetry, pp. 447-48 Most ...
... where he wanted to flute. These visions are not rare or unusual; they are of the usual kind seen commonly by those who have developed the gift of vision. Mostly they take place on the vital plane, though sometimes on the mental and psychic – the vital is freest in its play and it does not at all follow the preconceptions of the physical mind. As for meanings, they vary infinitely; much... and different values. Some are of very great value and importance, others are a play of the mind or vital and are good only for their own special purpose, others are formations of the mind and vital plane some of which may have truth, while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. They can have considerable importance in the development of the first Yogic... spiritual force was at work. Page 147 I am told there is no record or evidence of V. having any spiritual realisation. If so his powers, if any, would be occult alone, probably on the vital plane. Such powers do not presuppose any spirituality, some who had them were very clearly unspiritual. Such men are often proud and egoistic and many boast extravagantly of their power and need not ...
... the ego. One has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only can the sadhana on the vital plane be safe. However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less... and upheavals have to be dealt with and if not at once expelled, at least dominated and prepared for a gradual if not a rapid modification, change, illumination. This can only be done on the vital plane itself by descending to that level. The vital ego itself must become conscious of its own defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and ...
... darkness to the ego. One has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only can the sadhana on the vital plane be safe. However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less an integral... es and upheavals have to be dealt with and if not at once expelled, at least dominated and prepared for a gradual if not a rapid modification, change, illumination. This can only be done on the vital plane itself by descending to that level. The vital ego itself must become conscious of its own defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and longings ...
... is the kind of experience you are getting ? V : At first the Power was working on the mental plane. Now it is working on the vital and even below the vital plane. Sri Aurobindo : How do you know that it is working on the vital plane ? V : When the mind becomes peaceful I am able to see desires and impulses etc. in the vital. Sri Aurobindo : When you have got the peace what... of tidiness and order. This was, no doubt, the effect of Mother's presence. But yet the atmosphere was tense because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were engaged in fighting with forces of the vital plane. Only a few days before my arrival a dismissed cook had managed to get stones hurled into Sri Aurobindo’s house through the agency of a Mohammedan occultist. This was the topic of excited ...
... to the subject at all. It is due to the peculiar layer of the vital plane to which the pictures belong. For instance, take his "Bride of Shiva". It is an Indian – a Hindu subject. But it is not the bride of Shiva at all in his painting. If at all it is Shiva's bride, it is "the bride of Pashupati” : Shiva's bride from the vital plane. Disciple : Abanindranath very early began his work in... in the Kangra style. I mean his Krishna Lila paintings. Sri Aurobindo : All arts in general and poetry and painting in particular belong to 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 ...
... forces that are pulling her out into the vital world to the detriment of her vital sheath and it should not continue. It is clear that when you go out of your body like that you pass into a vital plane and as you are constantly attacked there and have fear, it is not desirable. It seems to me I have explained all that to you before. Everybody goes out into the vital world in that way, but it... recent letter—and can build up a strong consciousness which can enter any plane without fear or danger. As to your experience about the inkstand. When the vital being goes out, it moves on the vital plane and in the vital consciousness, and, even if it is aware of physical scenes and things, it is not with a physical vision. It is possible for one who has trained his faculties to enter into touch... accurately, even to act on them and physically move them. But the ordinary sadhaka who has no knowledge or organised experience or training in these things cannot do it. He must understand that the vital plane is different from the physical and that things that happen there are not physical happenings, though, if they are of the right kind and properly understood and used, they may have a meaning and value ...
... Our Light and Delight 18 The Mother and the Beings of the Vital Plane The Mother and Sri Aurobindo did not work only on the physical plane. Behind the physical are subtle realms with influences good, bad and indifferent. The Victory Day of 24 November 1926 brought the Overmind Gods into direct alliance with our Gurus' purpose of e... earth-transformation and rendered more effective their fight with the occult Evil that acts upon earth from its headquarters on the vital plane either directly or through human beings open to it. The Overmind dynamism, preliminary to the Supermind power which was the ultimate aim, came into repeated use during the Second World War. This war brought into play two figures whom Sri Aurobindo... ugliness personified. The Pisacha Page 167 always puts himself slavishly at the service of the Rakshasa and Asura. The characteristic mark of all these denizens of the vital plane is that the force they express is "typal" and not, like the earth's, "evolutionary". The sign of a typal force is a drive towards mechanical uniformity, rigid regimentation, strict conformity ...
... Arya at the time of such sadhana. When I came to the vital plane, I had to stop all that."² We may ¹. Evening Talks, Second Series, p. 295. ². Mother India, July 1970, p. 333. Page 33 be tempted to attribute the stopping of the Arya to one sole cause: the coming down of the sadhana to the vital plane. This would give us January 1921 as approximately our... physical consciousness under most oppressive conditions. If we could find out - to match our information about the time the sadhana was precipitated into the physical - the time it began on the vital plane, we should have some basis for ascertaining when exactly the Overmind as a separate entity from the Supermind sprang into Sri Aurobindo's perception. Was the beginning marked by the event of 24... the work is much harder. It was because there were many more things to change..." If we took the Mother's chronology literally, we should have 1918 as the date for the shift of Yoga to the vital plane, for in that year the Mother, who was born in 1878, would have been forty. But in 1918 she was still in Japan. Only on 24 April 1920 she returned to Pondicherry after a little more than five years' ...
... 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 in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought... perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from some one, who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in certain psychic conditions such as these into which he has recently entered, he needs absolutely... attracted and try to break in. There ought to be some one in the group who during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra's experience is that protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and try to find a gap ...
... material plane, there can intervene the vital plane, and it already does intervene in the vegetable kingdom. The vital plane has an altogether different determinism, its own particular determinism. But when you introduce the vital determinism into the determinism of the physical, that produces a kind of combination that changes everything. And above the vital plane there is the mental plane. The mental... it later on. All that follows is the explanation. I have already spoken to you of the different planes of consciousness. Well, on the material plane, purely material (when separated from the vital plane), it is an absolute mechanism where consequently all things are linked together; and as I was saying the other day, if you want to find the cause of one thing or what is the result of a thing, you ...
... erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of conscious ness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself... planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which Page 574 may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only... character. Also, they have to be used on purely spiritual lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane. To seek their aid for such powers is a great error. Prolonged fasting may lead to an excitation of the nervous being which often brings vivid imaginations and hallucinations that are taken for ...
... the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego. On the lower vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshasas which represent violent passions and influences. There are also other kinds of beings on the vital plane which are called the Pisachas and Pramathas. They manifest more or less in the physico-vital. On the physical plane... make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source for the reason I state. Those in the Asram who have developed the inner view of things on the vital plane 1 have plenty of experience of the hostile forces. Page 461 However, you need not personally concern yourself with them so long as they remain incognito. It is true that all... the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense—"the Divine in its strength". The mental and vital Asuras are only a deviation of that power. The Gandharvas are of the vital plane but they are vital Gods, not Asuras. Many Asuras are beautiful in appearance and can carry even a splendour or light with them. It is the Rakshasas, Pisachas, etc. who are ugly or evil in appearance ...
... to receive it. Formerly her sadhana was mainly on the vital plane which is Page 236 often the first to open and the connection of that plane with the body consciousness is easy to establish because they are nearer to each other. Even then however her body was suffering because of attacks from the hostile elements in the vital plane. Now the sadhana seems to have gone inward into the psychic... try to understand and, not shrinking or afraid, to go to it with the same confidence and faith in the Mother as he has in the waking meditation. His dreams are of course experiences on the inner (vital) plane. P.S. The dream about the Mahadeva image may mean that someone (not of this world, of course) wanted to mislead him and make him confuse some narrower traditional form of the past with the greater... things inside begin to be seen vividly and clearly, but the inner mind not being active, either their coherence is not seen or the consciousness lingers in the confused experiences of the lower vital plane and does not get through to the deeper, more coherent and significant experiences. A development of the inner consciousness is needed—when that development takes place, then all will become more ...
... upset of this kind, the wisest course is discontinuance. All these experiences of yours belong to what I have called the intermediate zone; a large proportion of them are of the vital plane. In the vital plane there are all kinds of things, good and bad, helpful and dangerous, true, half true and false, genuine and deceptive. One has therefore to be very careful and be always vigilant and turned... connection. Or they feel themselves to be in an entirely illumined consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above through a partial illumination of some mental or vital plane; for what comes is diminished and often deformed in the course of transmission through these planes; the receiving mind and vital of the sadhak also often understands or transcribes ill what has... all stages open yourself to the protection of the Mother and her grace and call on that for your safeguard and your guidance. There is no utility in such experiences; they may happen on the vital plane so long as one has still to pass through the vital range of experiences, but the aim should be to get beyond them and live in a pure psychic and spiritual experience. To admit or call the invasion ...
... Highest. There are any number of Siddhis on the vital plane and if you have proper knowledge you can get them by using these things. And even if one gets into the Brahmic con sciousness it is not that one has got the highest Truth, because the Brahmic consciousness can be had on any plane. You can have that consciousness on the mental or the vital plane. These stimulants merely help you to get away... experiences can also masquerade as true. For instance, such a man gets tremendous power and generally has an ego-centric nature. Even Ravana was a great yogi. One having a great control over the vital plane only is generally known as a Rakshasa, The Asura controls his mind and his vital being. There is a great possibility of committing a blunder in the Dattatraya path. Disciple : In the Avadhuta... spiritual life. Disciple : There is a fear of Siddhis among spiritual aspirants and generally they are banned. Sri Aurobindo : It must be due to the fact that once you get into the vital plane you find it very difficult to get tc the Truth. The general idea is that for the experiena of the Brahmic consciousness one must be always in drawn. But that is not quite true. I first had the silent ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study CANTO VI THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER LIFE From the region of the lower vital plane where Aswapathy found the denial of the highest possibilities of man he came up to the kingdoms of the higher vital where he found at least "a dubious hope". There was in this plane of consciousness... beloved. She was Page 192 "An exiled goddess building mimic heavens, A Sphinx whose eyes look up to a hidden Sun." Thus, trying to probe the depth and the secret of this vital plane, he was nearing a Spirit whose "passive presence was her nature's strength". But he could not see this spirit outwardly. It was only occasionally that there was a vague feeling of such a Presence... and as a result "A sense of limit haunts her masteries" and "nowhere is assured content or peace". Aswapathy, as the observer, tried to see if there was a way of escape out of the movement of this vital plane and he saw that there was no gate of escape so long as the being was imprisoned in it. "Our being must move eternally through Time; Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease; ...
... sober." However, ninety per cent of those who take external Page 188 stimulants never go beyond the vital plane. Because "once you get into the vital plane you find it extremely difficult to get to the Truth." What happens is that "experiences on the vital plane are most exalting and exhilarating at the same time that they are most dangerous and terrible. There are many pitfalls... lasted only ten days I lost ten pounds, whereas here the fast lasted twenty-three days but the loss of weight was less. At Alipore I was having tremendous visions which were all experiences on the vital plane. But as a part of my mind was critical I took them all with reservations." In 1926 while conversing with his disciples Sri Aurobindo said that he had not tried to do without sleep. "Once I tried ...
... who do not know her come, but they are not aware of it. The vital plane is a supraphysical plane—the vital moves about in its own plane and is not limited by the physical mind or its consciousness or experience. 13 July 1937 Kindly enlighten me as to what is the object and what the result of my coming to the Mother on the vital plane during sleep or dream. It may be for any object or without... Mother in all is a necessary experience in the Yoga. There is no reason why it should not happen. 29 April 1937 Kindly let me know the significance of my frequently coming to the Mother on the vital plane. I suppose the meeting was sometimes on the supraphysical plane. Did my vital come to the Mother for refreshing its energy, for purification, etc.? This kind of vital coming to the Mother all ...
... d and let the higher Force work to change this obscure physical nature. Page 359 There is nothing to be discouraged about. The fact is that after being so long in the mental and vital plane you have become aware of the physical consciousness, and the physical consciousness in everybody is like that. It is inert, conservative, does not want to move, to change—it clings to its habits... be. The prevalence of the physical difficulties when one comes Page 361 down into the physical is the same phenomenon as the prevalence of the vital difficulties when one is on the vital plane. Transformation implies facing the difficulties and changing or overcoming what arises in each part of the being so that that part may respond to what is higher, but the full change of the whole... because the sadhana is now taking place directly on the physical plane, where the force of a habit or habitual movement once formed is very great. When the sadhana is taking place on the mental or vital plane, it is more easy to control or change, because the mind and vital are more plastic than the physical. But on the other hand if something is definitely gained on the physical plane, there is a more ...
... She came ... But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time—I didn't seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month... and had stayed with me in Japan 5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, 'But my god, is it you?' I said, 'Of course!' Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went away—because on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change. But if a force like Hers could manifest and ...
... 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 in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought... house, people etc., in vital counterpart and not in their exact physical circumstances, the arrangement of rooms, furniture, etc., may be different, the people may be acting, as people act on the vital plane and not as they do here etc. You have evidently, had always a faculty of vision, but experience and the growth of an inner knowledge is necessary to understand and make use of the faculty. ...
... make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source for the reason I state. Those in the Ashram who have developed the inner view of things on the vital plane have plenty of experience of the hostile forces. However, you need not personally concern yourself with them so long as they remain incognito. Yes, I gave force to Nishikanta, but as I wrote... the song, yet the mere contact with the world of Krishna and the Gopis would have brought her or could at least a joy and an uplifting of the touch of Goloka or of some reproduction of it on the vital plane. These things have not the effect of a mere imagination (as a poet's or artist's, though that can be strong enough), but if fully followed out bring a constant growth of the being and the conscious-... Sufficient [unlit?] the night is the cynicism thereof ! Your dreams are of a very familiar kind, both coming often Page 347 to sadhaks. The first is a sort of formation on the vital plane or a possibility for the future—whether or how it will come about in the physical is a different matter. The other is an excursion into the vital world where there are all the types and forms of ...
... mostly. There are also the dreams that are renderings of vital movements and tendencies habitual to the nature, personal formations of the vital plane. But when one begins to live within then the dreams are often transcriptions of one's experiences on the vital plane and beyond that there is a large field of symbolic and other dreams which have nothing to do with memory.... there are also prophetic dreams... 424) A few words may be said here about 'dream-formations' and actual 'dream happenings'. Some dreams are very obviously mere formations, devoid of any reality, which one meets mostly on the vital plane, at times on the mental plane. Sri Aurobindo has this to say about these 'dream formations': Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations ...
... purely material plane there can intervene and does intervene the vital plane, as for example in the vegetable kingdom. The vital plane has a totally different determinism, which is its own. And when you bring the vital determinism into physical determinism, that makes a combination which changes everything. Above the vital plane lies the mental plane. The mental plane too has its own determinism ...
... some part of your body was raised in a peculiar fashion. Is that not true ? Sri Aurobindo : That was once in jail, I was then having a Page 163 very intense Sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. I had a questioning mood, whether such things as the Siddhi of utthapana – levitation – were possible. Then suddenly I found myself raised up in such a way I could not have... that without any exertion on my part. That is the only thing that happened. In jail there were many such extraordinary and, one may say, abnormal, experiences. As I was doing the Sadhana on the vital plane I think the power might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves. Disciple : Moti Babu has related that when you were five years old you got a... same can be used to work directly on an object. Disciple : You once said that it is easy to stop the tapping of the table. Sri Aurobindo : I was not speaking of these powers on the vital plane, I was speaking of the Supermind. It is a force like electricity, only, it acts in a different way and under different conditions. In these spirit-communications certain conditions are generally ...
... gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life [i .e., the vital plane] and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible." Sri Aurobindo's Yogic insights and realisations... in a special manner. Using Sri Aurobindo's terminology, we may suppose that God's will made Jesus create a replica of his third-heaven body in the substance which Sri Aurobindo puts between the vital plane and the gross-physical: that is, in the subtle-physical matter. A precipitation of Jesus' divine form into this substance could be thought of as producing just the right degree of materialisation ...
... perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from some one, who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in certain psychic conditions such as these into which he has recently entered, he needs absolutely... attracted and try to break in. There ought to be some one in the group who during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra's experience is that protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and try to find a gap ...
... Many nowadays in Europe seem even to think that poetry should be written only from the vital (I mean from poetic sensations, not from ideas) and that that is the only pure poetry. The poets of the vital plane seize with a great vivid- ness and extraordinary force of rhythm and phrase the life-power and the very sensation of the things they describe and express them to the poetic sense. What is often lacking... because I could see that an answer would be at all helpful. I have more and more ceased to discuss things like this, for discussion only prolongs them and makes them worse: they belong to the vital plane and the vital does not follow reason in its movements but obliges reason to follow them and support them. The only way to get rid of them is to refuse always to indulge them in their play or to ...
... of the vital world for its own purpose. For normally the vital being with its personality exists after the dissolution of the physical body for some time only; afterwards it passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Next one passes in the mental sheath, to some mental world; but finally the soul leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If... body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also ...
... can put us into connection with the vital worlds and their forces and beings. It is again a world of things dark, dangerous and horrible. Nightmares like X 's are contacts with this side of the vital plane. Its influences are also the source of much in men that is demoniac, dirty, cruel and base. It is good that you were able to overcome the difficulty and have a good meditation. Your observation... 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 ...
... Vital Living in the Vital Man is a mental being and cannot come from the vital, although part of him may live on the vital plane or rather in connection with it. Most men in fact live much in the vital and therefore when they practise sadhana it is first on the vital plane that they find themselves, in dreams, experiences etc. When the supramental opens then something will descend from the supramental ...
... Sri Aurobindo in Vision I looked at your photograph in the Reception Room after meditation and clearly saw the portrait move its shoulders and as if breathing. There was a movement in the vital plane and you opened to an inner vision of it. 22 March 1933 As I was sitting in prayer, I saw Sri Aurobindo in a vision coming down the staircase till he came just near to the floor. What does... had to come to do it in this case. Anyhow what has it to do with coming out? Any number of people meet me in dreams and get instructions or intimations about this or that. It is an activity of the vital plane where I am not in strict retirement—it has nothing to do with any future physical happening. 25 August 1936 Do you mean to say that people getting instructions from you in dreams is as real ...
... consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. * There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together, - mental, vital, physical, - are called the triple... mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally, the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there ...
... residues of beings—all kinds of things ... And it was a frightful assault, absolutely disgusting. In this swarming mass, I noticed the presence of some slightly more conscious wills—wills of the vital plane—and I saw how they try to awaken a reaction in the consciousness of human beings to make them think or want, or if possible, do certain things. For example, I saw one of them trying to incite... my own way when I say 1 that thoughts come and go, flow in and out.' But thoughts concerning material things are formations originating in that world, they are kinds of wills coming from the vital plane which try to express themselves, and most often they are truly deadly. If you are annoyed, for example, if someone says something unpleasant to you and you react ... It always happens in the same ...
... itself from Matter and enjoying all this, while giving an impersonal account of material suffering? Z is a humbug and I don't believe in her atoms. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of the higher consciousness from above that can give a peaceful and beautiful merging of the atoms (?) into the wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the very... house in boots, leaving your slippers or sandals behind, that would be a fact, but with no significance except that you had boots. You went out in your subtle body and listened to the kirtan of the vital plane in Ardhendu's room, leaving your body to snore (or not) in yours. Quite a common affair, only shows that you have become aware of the boots, i.e. of your subtle body and its exits. November 28 ...
... prophesying so many things that don't come true. SRI AUROBINDO: That means he is living and acting from the Cosmic Consciousness. I don't know what realisation he has reached. Perhaps it is on the vital plane. That is a plane of possibility or idea or suggestion comes to him with some force, he accepts it. The nature of these vital formations is to present themselves with a force. And when another possibility... cinemas and says that one can act there more easily where people are concentrated on one purpose. SRI AUROBINDO: That means he works through the mass, which again is a sign of working from the vital plane. NIRODBARAN: He seems to be an interesting fellow anyhow. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he is interesting. SATYENDRA: He lays great stress on love. SRI AUROBINDO: That means the heart. And that ...
... unless you believe that they point to something real in the physical life. Why should one be sad for a mere dream? Am I seeing my own condition in others' forms? No. These are dreams on the vital plane. Such dreams may be mere formations in the vital without any actual value, they may point to something in the persons seen which was there in the past, in some cases they indicate possibilities of... of the future, in others things going on in the present (the last is rare, but does happen), but not always in the forms suggested 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 po ...
... but that does not stand in the way of a keen and understanding appreciation...." 164 About levitation, he says, "That was once in jail. I was then having a very intense sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mind: 'Are such Siddhis as Utthānapāda (levitation) possible?' I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done... remained suspended like that without any exertion on my part.... In the jail there were many such extraordinary, and one may say, abnormal experiences. As I was doing sadhana intensely on the vital plane I think these might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves." 165 It was during his jail life that Sri Aurobindo resorted to fasting ...
... arts that can help us in realising this harmony, as it is capable of bringing down the vibrations of the deeper Soul, or the Higher Self,—though, most often, the music that we hear comes from the vital plane. Outwardly, music is the harmony of sound vibrations, which corresponds to some vibration of consciousness. "Music too," says Sri Aurobindo, "is an essentially spiritual art and has always been ... human voice. These concerts are impressive by the powerful vibration they create, vibration pulsating with beauty and harmony. Sometimes they bring down sound patterns of cosmic harmony from the vital plane. The audience helps the artists by its semi-religious attitude towards music. The average Page 87 European, who is generally not open to direct spiritual experience, is able ...
... Sardar Majumdar's house in the room on the top-floor. After that I had to rely on inner guidance for my Sadhana. In Alipore the Sadhana was very fast – it was extravagant and exhilarating. On the vital plane it can be dangerous and disastrous. I took to fasting at Alipore for ten or eleven days and lost ten pounds in weight. At Pondicherry the loss of weight was not so much, thought the physical substance... substance began to be reduced. It was in Shanker Chetty's house. I was walking eight hours a day during twenty-three day's fast. The miraculous or extraordinary powers acquired by Yogis on the vital plane are not all true in the physical. There are many pit-falls in the vital. These vital powers take up even a man like Hitler and make him do things by suggesting to him – "It shall happen". There are quite ...
... all over India people used to believe that Sri Aurobindo usually remained above the ground!) When asked about this he said: "That was once in jail. I was then having a very intense Sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mind: 'Are such siddhis as utthapana [levitation] possible?' I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done it myself... without any exertion on my part. That is the only thing that happened. In the jail there were many such extraordinary and, one may say, abnormal experiences. As I was doing Sadhana intensely on the vital plane I think these might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves."¹ It was during his jail life that Sri Aurobindo resorted to fasting to see how far ...
... shall write about the books afterwards. 22.5.32 I think it is not necessary for me to answer the most partof what you have written in your letter — for it is written entirely from the vital plane, and your relations with us cannot be taken back to that basis. To do so would be to annul all the progress you have made and that you surely do not want. The one thing that you have to do is to... should try to understand and, not shrinking or afraid, go to it with the same confidence and faith in the Mother as he has in the waking meditation. His dreams are of course experiences on the inner (vital) plane. I need not repeat the explanation I have already given to D. P.S. The dream about the Mahadeva image may mean Page 42 that someone (not of this world of course) wanted to mislead ...
... because the sadhana is now taking place directly on the physical plane, where the force of a habit or habitual movement once formed is very great. When the sadhana is taking place on the mental or vital plane, it is more easy to control or change, because the mind and vital are more plastic than the physical. But on the other hand if something is definitely gained on the physical plane, there is a more... was writing. 6 November 1935 Yesterday you said that the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted. If that is so, has the Supermind already conquered the mental plane, the vital plane and the subtle physical plane? There can be no conquest of the other planes by the supermind, but only an influence, so long as the physical is not ready. Besides the Supermind did not attempt—it ...
... perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from someone who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in certain psychic conditions such as those into which he has recently entered, he needs absolutely... break in. There ought to Page 339 be someone in the group who during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra's experience is that the protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and try to find a ...
... when occult power is used, without asking Mother, to satisfy one's like or dislike, a clash may occur on the vital plane and some disembodied being there may give a dangerous hit. He said it is not really like this—rather it happens naturally as the result of a play of forces on the vital plane. It is obviously a wholly Asuric thing to do when it is turned to egoistic purposes or against fellow sadhaks ...
... only be determined when one has sufficient experience in these inward things. You have a strong power of (subjective) creative formation, mostly, I think, on the mental but partly too on the vital plane. This kind of formative faculty can be used for objective results if accompanied by a sound knowledge of the occult forces and their workings; but by itself it results more often in one's building... tempt the mind to construct mere images of the reality and mistake them for the reality itself. It is one of the many dangers of a too active mind. You make a formation in your mind or on the vital plane in yourself—it is a kind of creation, but subjective only; it affects only your own mental or vital being. You can create by ideas, thought-forms, images a whole world in yourself or for yourself; ...
... are formed out of the materials of universal Nature, Page 534 according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there... dropping its outer, its vital and mental sheaths on its way to the psychic plane, is its normal movement after death. But there can be any number of variations; one can return directly from the vital plane without passing on to farther and higher states, and there are cases of an almost immediate rebirth, sometimes even attended with a detailed memory of the events of the past life. Hell and heaven ...
... is what the Gita means by the realisation that all action is done by the Prakriti. You feel it mechanical because you are in the physical consciousness where all is mechanism. On the mental and vital plane one can have the same experience, but of the actions as a play of forces. What is lacking at present to you is the other side of the experience, viz. that of the silent Atman or else of the witness... Ashram ] is one of the suggestions of the external physical consciousness that are filling the atmosphere just now. I explain that to you in the answers below. You used to have dreams on the vital plane also long ago in which you passed through dangerous forests and wildernesses amid perils of land and water and wild beasts etc., but you reached safely under the Mother's protection where you were ...
... performs when by the power of Agni it attains to vision on its own vital plane, when it becomes, in the figure of the hymn, the illumined seer Ashwamedha. × The complete hundred powers of the Life by whom all the abundance of the vital plane is showered upon the growing man. The vital forces being the instrument ...
... human group living thus and the poetry appealing to its imagination through the sense-mind and the emotions have their being and consciousness deployed from the vital plane. In still other periods man is not content to let thought be involved in the Page 17 desire-soul but detaches... really were to the normal vision of men, but much rather as they were or might have been to the vision of the gods." 31 This vision is not of the intense vital plane, turning everything into moved thought and emotion and sensation of the life-soul, carried forward in its own passionate surge, nor is here the mind-soul's ...
... figure may have belonged to the subtle physical plane. The many-headed or many-armed figures belong usually to the vital plane.... The world you see is in some subtle physical plane where men see the gods according to their own idea and images of them. It is the vital plane—probably the vital physical. It is mostly there that the beings of the vital world appear with animal heads or features ...
... A Fighter on the Vital Plane 1932-07-02 The dream about Chandulal and the bandits was a happening in the vital world or else a symbolic scene witnessed there. In the first case, the bandits are vital beings attacking the work,—in the second, hostile forces, suggestions etc. The one thing clear in it is that Champaklal is a prompt and effective fighter on the vital plane. Sri Aurobindo ...
... Visions of Champaklal (With Sri Aurobindo’s Interpretations) Visions of Champaklal An Attack on the Vital Plane 1932-11-22 These things are not usually prophesies of the future; it was an attack on the vital plane which you were strong enough to repulse. Sri Aurobindo ...
... Experiences in Sleep My Pilgrimage to the Spirit May 6, 1932 Experience: A possibility of R's coming back is transcribed in the vital plane, which I saw last night. It was unexpectedly announced to D that R had come. D informed the Mother and D was asked to take him to T's house. He was given the vacant room in that house.... Though the room was... Do you think that I can have any positive gain from all this? What should be the true attitude towards all these things? A. All these dreams are very obviously formations you meet on the vital plane, more rarely on the mental. Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital, sometimes the formations of other minds with an exact or modified transcription in yours; sometimes formations ...
... same Mother who had appeared in my dream. Will you please explain my dream?" The river-floods and the sea-floods seem to symbolise difficulties from the "vital" plane, the unspiritual "desires" sweeping over it. But the vital plane has also features that can be of help to spirituality. Such is the "sturdy white horse" that meets you while you are running away from the floods. Here is a repr ...
... journey...' Volume 22, Letters on Yoga I, pp. 436-37 We may also study the following statement of Sri Aurobindo: Page 78 'When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there... 435 'The movement of the psychic being dropping the outer sheaths on its way to the psychic plane is the normal movement. But there can be any number of variations; one can return from the vital plane and there are many cases of an almost immediate birth,some times even attended with a complete memory of the events of the past life. There is no rule of complete forgetfulness in there turn ...
... got stuck. How to understand that dream about helping Shanti? In reality we do not even discuss each other's sadhana. It may have only represented a will on the vital plane to help him. In yesterday's dream-experience, I plucked five flowers, three in a bunch and two loose of 'The Supramental Light in the subconscient' (Copossandra). In the dream all... every day. So may I take this dream as prophetic? One sees many things like that which are not necessarily prophetic (rarely they are), but only suggestions, formations etc. on the vital plane. The Mother came into a large room, where her children were assembled for the Pranam. On this day she decided to do something different from what she was doing daily; she first ...
... are forced to change their ideas. Disciple : But the details about the last civilisation and the Mahatmas – are they all true ? Sri Aurobindo : What do you mean by "true”? On the vital plane there is nothing that you cannot see : you can recast Page 180 the whole history of the world. It is not the mental plane – really speaking it is the mental-vital. I was in... mind completely passive. But, evidently, that is impossible. The mind enters so much and also the vital being – they are both great and active creators. Disciple : But what you see on the vital plane – in that state – is it true ? , Sri Aurobindo : Again, what do you mean by "true”? Something that you see is true somewhere – on some other plane, – some of those things are probabilities ...
... Mind. But in the Mind you seek and find truth partially. Mind is an effort at knowing, but not knowledge. Mind only represents, it cannot attain. It cannot fully express the truth. On the vital plane also the Supermind works. There its working is Instinct, a precise but covert working which is nearest to the Supermind. But the Supermind is something quite different. You may say it is something... grandeur of the vital being. When Napoleon said, "Nothing is impossible, erase the word 'impossible' from the dictionary", it was the vital being that was speaking through him. And it is true that the vital plane does not admit anything as impossible. It does not reject the higher possibilities as the material plane does. Page 332 Then comes the material (world) proper. It is what the ...
... poet's interpretation. Your dream is an interesting mixture of several consciousness-levels and symbol-layers. The emerald-green of the umbrella in a shop seems at the same time to represent the vital plane characteristic of the life in the West, amidst which you outwardly are, and the Universal Consciousness of the Divine that is a Super-Life all about your inner being and that can extend anywhere ...
... the Mandukyan grand finale , the indescribable Supracosmic, but stands in that numerical position both from below and from above: it is above the lower triplicity of Prithivi (earth), antariksha (vital plane) and dyau (mind-level) as well as below the higher triplicity (tridhatu) constituted by Vasu (substance), urj (abounding force of being) and priyam or mayas (delight or love), the Rigvedic ...
... kinds and different values. Some are of very great value and importance, others are a play of the mind or vital and are good only for their own special purpose, others are formations of the mind and vital plane some of which may have truth, while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. Visions do not come from the spiritual plane—they come from the subtle physical ...
... stubborn. I pleaded with him to leave me. When I woke up, I actually felt that I was saved from death. Does this have any meaning? The first part of the dream is an experience of the mental -vital plane and indicates the saving power of an absolute faith. The other shows the ascent to the highest levels of the earth-consciousness, but there is still something of the old self and nature clinging ...
... most of his paintings. Art (in this case painting) can be one of the many means of expressing the Self and the various forms of Reality. The search for Reality is unending. In the universalised vital plane, one can meet a fellow co-seeker of the Reality, as happened in this vision. The search for Truth has to be very silent as repeatedly instructed in this case. The sleep becomes a perfect slumber ...
... The Gandharva Kingdoms appear to the sage-king thus: Below him lay like gleaming jewelled thoughts Rapt dreaming cities of Gandharva kings. 30 The perfect harmony of the higher vital plane is vividly rendered by compounding jewel with rhythm in the lines describing the Paradise of the Life-Gods: It lived in a jewel-rhythm of the laughter of God And lay on the breast of ...
... first case, the bandits are vital beings attacking the work,—in the second, hostile forces, suggestions etc. The one thing clear in it is that Champaklal is a prompt and effective fighter on the vital plane. 2.7.1932 Sri Aurobindo ...
... the soul over the Ignorance and the darkness. The opportunity for these contrary forces is given when the sadhak descends in the inevitable course of the sadhana from the mental or the higher vital plane to the physical consciousness. Always this is accompanied by a fading of the first deep experiences and a descent to the neutral obscure inertia which is the bed-rock of the unredeemed physical nature ...
... there are in descending order the asuras , the great hostiles of the vital-mental plane, sometimes compared to the Titans of Greek mythology; then there are the rakshasas, the ugly ogres of the vital plane, which are nevertheless perfectly capable of taking on the most seductive appearance; and on the lowest level there are the pishachas , the little beings which revel in causing the greatest possible ...
... nationalist leader. They mostly lived in Barrackpur, near Kolkata. 39. Vibhutis: incarnations of a particular power of a deity. 40. Vanara: monkey. Raksasa: hostile being of the middle vital plane; a being of vital hunger; the violent kinetic Ego; the fierce giant Powers of darkness; the Veilers in Night. 41. Ksatriya: ruler, warrior class. 42. Harishchandra: a King of the solar ...
... splendid translation rendering the full poetic force and colour and substance of the original which you have followed with a remarkable exactitude.' But Nishikanta, I understand, writes from the subtle vital plane. If a poem is from overhead, would not its spiritual value be lost in a translation from a different plane?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "If you mean the spiritual substance, I suppose it ...
... the better and approve of it, I follow the worse." an actual contact - but the stomach-ache etc. seem to be a foreign intrusion. What happens often in these dreams of the vital plane is that the subconscient (which is mainly responsible for ordinary dreams) throws its figures across the transcription of the expe- rience and one gets a very mixed record. As I have no stomach- ...
... of tidiness and order. This was, no doubt, the effect of the Mother’s presence. But yet the atmosphere was tense because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were engaged in fighting with forces of the vital plane.’ ‘I was living in the inner rooms and seeing no one. He [Sri Aurobindo] was going out onto the veranda, seeing everyone, receiving people, speaking, discussing. I saw him only when he came back ...
... you must prepare for it. When one dies, one leaves or loses only one's body and at the same time the possibilities of relation with and of action on the material world. All that belongs to the vital plane does not disappear with the material substance, frustration and disappointment, and all that keeps you restless and prevents you from getting the expected peace. To enjoy a peaceful and eventless ...
... happy ending, but as soon as the garland was raised to put around my neck, I withdrew from that happy scene.... A. It looks like a vital dream (I mean something "created" on the stuff of the vital plane). It does not seem to be symbolic. Sri Aurobindo ...
... enthusiasm for the śrāddha it is better definitely to stop it. Once on this path there is no meaning in it any longer,—for the reason you yourself give. 2 The śrāddha is, besides, entirely on the vital plane and if help has to be given to those who have passed into other worlds of consciousness, there are better ways of doing it. Replace the śrāddha by a long meditation with X on the father ...
... creation or manifestation cannot be complete. But the supraphysical planes are not bound to the forms like the physical. The forms there are expressive, not determinative. What is important on the vital plane is the force or feeling and the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the mental plane is the perception ...
... in the world and led them away to disappointment and failure. It is rising in you in order that you may understand what it is and reject it. For there are several things you had to get out of the vital plane before the deeper or greater spiritual experiences could safely begin or safely continue. The descent of the peace is often one of the first major positive experiences of the sadhana. In this ...
... perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols. (3) It depends on the nature of the dreams. If ...
... adequate picture, one may say, but the expression and verse are admirable within their limits. The difference is that the French has vision and the inspired movement that comes with vision—all on the vital plane, of course,—but the English version has only physical sight, sometimes with a little glow in it, and the precision that comes with that sight. I do not know why your critical sense objects to "girl" ...
... with the sources of inspiration, vision and experience. Your relation with Nature has been much more psychic than your relation with human beings. You must have met the latter mainly on the vital plane and not come in close contact with the eternal Beauty behind. In Nature you have felt the touch of the eternal and infinite and entered therefore into a truer relation with her. The influence ...
... once or repeatedly and returning from earthly living to mental worlds beyond; the persistence of this mental being mentally enjoying or suffering sometimes in the body, sometimes on the mental or vital plane of Nature it calls its immortal existence. Or else, because the mind is a principle of light and knowledge, however imperfect, and can have some notion of what is beyond it, it sees the possibility ...
... other beings whether on the physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities of the mental being,—occult powers or siddhis, but of a much rarer or subtler kind than those proper to the vital plane,—naturally awake in our consciousness. All these however are circumstances of the lower triple world of our being, the trailokya of the ancient sages. Living on these we are, whatever the e ...
... Divine Will is invoked to complete the manifestation of the divine powers after the second state of the soul when it has passed beyond the mere physical being and is full of the perfect energy of the vital plane, for the gods have given all the life's fifty steeds of swiftness; Agni is there as the light and flame of its far-extended existence which has broken the limitations of the material being and he ...
... and measures it out, that is, shapes and plans out our earth-existence in the measures of the Truth by means of the mind enlightened by the sun of gnosis: he takes his stand as the Asura in our vital plane, the link between mental and physical, there to receive the light and pass it on to the earth as a creative and determining force. ...
... expansion as the Sun embraces the Dawn, then he who dispels with his violent light-force the darkness drives vast the dust of battle as he cries aloud in his warring. (5) Thus he crosses the vital plane that now unmovingly supports the mental heavens and he stands widely exceeding it; rejoicing in the rapture, in the raining down on us of the world of Light, O God-Mind, thou slayest the Coverer ...
... nowadays in Europe seem even to think that poetry should be written only from the vital (I mean from poetic sensations, not from ideas) and that that is the only pure poetry . The poets of the vital plane seize with a great vividness and extraordinary force of rhythm and phrase the life-power and the very sensation of the Page 16 things they describe and express them to the poetic sense ...
... similar opening and emptiness or wideness here is the sign of the mind being freed into the Universal. From the throat to the stomach is the higher vital or emotional region. Below is the lower vital plane. It is of course the inner wideness in which you were absorbed so that outward things went on of themselves without engaging the interest. In the meditation it was the same descent into the ...
... Divine. A companion, not of the same sex, is a different matter. It [ mixing with women ] is not so harmful for a woman as mixing freely with men under the vital impulse—but all mixing on the vital plane has its dangers. What you should do in mixing with women is not to give yourself vitally, to remain within yourself, Page 309 but to mix with them outwardly in a quiet way—forming no ...
... emotional or the vital; that depends on the nature—for whatever is easiest to open in it, is likely to open first. If it is in the vital, then the meditation tends to project the consciousness into the vital plane and its experiences. But from that one can get to the psychic by drawing more and more inwards, not getting absorbed into the vital experiences but separating oneself and looking at them with detachment ...
... action, which is veiled by the emotional, into free play. In many there is first some opening of the vital centre and for a long time there is an abundant but unpurified play of experiences on the vital plane. In the Tantric discipline there is a process of opening all the centres from the Muladhara upward. In our Yoga very often the Power descends from above and opens the Ajnachakra first, then the others ...
... over the Ignorance and the darkness. The opportunity for these forces is given when the sadhaka descends in the inevitable course of the sadhana from the mental Page 785 or higher vital plane to the physical consciousness. Always this is accompanied by a fading of the first deep experiences and a descent to the neutral obscure inertia which is the bedrock of the unredeemed physical nature ...
... and conscious too of the Divine—the nearness, presence, power, peace, light, knowledge, love, Ananda of the Divine. Mental Knowledge and Knowledge from Above The knowledge of the mind and vital plane is no knowledge. Only from above can the true knowledge come. No, these contacts with the violent vital forces do not bring knowledge—they rather stand in the way of true knowledge growing ...
... your lower vital from outside; your mistake has been to admit them and identify them as your own—from want of knowledge and experience in these matters. There are certain vital forces of this lower vital plane that are constantly wandering about the Asram and trying to push their movements now on one, now on another, now on several at a time. The processus is always the same. First, suggestions: the Mother ...
... madman, I ran away for I have always been afraid of madmen, especially violent ones. My movement was slow, but along the way I found a stick and got rid of the attacker. It was a dream of the vital plane where all kinds of dangers occur until you get courage to face them. If there is no fear or if there is the protection of the Mother (which becomes manifest by remembering or calling her) then these ...
... body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also ...
... symbolic in character; in the end he became a great artist. Why are artists generally irregular in their conduct and loose in character? When they are so, it is because they live usually in the vital plane, and the vital part in them is extremely sensitive to the forces of that world and receives from it all kinds of impressions and impulsions over which they have no controlling power. And often too ...
... character; in the end he became a great artist. Why are artists generally irregular in their conduct and loose in character? When they are so, it is because they live usually in the vital plane, and the vital part in them is extremely sensitive to the forces of that world and receives from it all kinds of impressions and impulsions over which they have no controlling power. And often too ...
... are trees—trees especially—which have lived long and can be the home of a conscious being, a vital being. Generally it is vital entities which take shelter in trees, or else certain beings of the vital plane which live in forests—as certain beings of the vital live in water. There were old legends like that, but they were based on facts. The plant serves as home and shelter, but the being is not created ...
... was killed on the spot. He could not escape. I could narrate any number of such examples to you. But this belongs to a single plane, the material plane—the purely material physical, mental and vital plane. It is only a higher knowledge and a contact with the higher planes and the descent of these higher planes into the physical plane, which can change circumstances. So too, if one succeeded in bringing ...
... and perverted to their purpose." How does money manifest on other planes? What other planes? He speaks of the vital and physical, doesn't he?... that it is a force which manifests on the vital plane and the physical plane. The vital forces have a very great influence over money. ( After a silence ) You see, when one thinks of money, one thinks of bank-notes or coins or some kind of wealth ...
... world, as for example, the mental plane—there are so many beings on the mental plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens. For example, there is a tradition which says that the whole world of insects is the outcome of the form-makers of the vital world, and that this is why they take such ...
... 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 ...
... mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there ...
... connection. Or they feel themselves to be in an entirely illumine consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above through a partial illumination of some mental or vital plane; for what comes is diminished and often deformed in the course of transmission through these planes; the receiving mind and vital of the sadhak also often understands or transcribes ill what has ...
... presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being, therefore is, so long as the Ignorance lasts, centred round his mental, vital ...
... Lord in all sincerity, "Let Thy will be done." 13 July 1960 × Of the Asuras, hostile beings of the mentalised vital plane. ...
... ns be compared to visions? A vision is a perception, by the visual organs, of phenomena that really exist in a world corresponding to the organ which sees. For example, to the individual vital plane there corresponds a cosmic vital world. When a human being is sufficiently developed he possesses an individualised vital being with organs of sight, hearing, smell, etc. So a person who has a w ...
... politics; women would succeed better. Man is able to put more mental power, while the woman acts more psychically. Man is more intellectual and woman more intuitive. She is also very active on the vital plane. (A disciple:) But while woman has often been the source of inspiration to man, she has not produced any great creative work. Because she was not given any opportunity by social ...
... the creation, whereas Brahma is the creator and Shiva the destroyer. × Rakshasa : demon of the vital plane, as opposed to an asura, a demon of the mental world. × Math : monastery. ...
... work of genius as against the work of artificial labour, illustrate also a plane different from the creative intelligence as well as from Chaucer's subtle physical: Page 370 the Vital plane, the plane of the Life Force. A vibrant vigour is here which is missing in Chaucer no less than in Dryden. Poetically Chaucer has in his passage something equally good, but the quiver of the nerves ...
... these crucial questions we propose to put forward two related problems and venture some tentative solutions thereof. How to Reduce the Hours of Sleep? On the purely physico-vital plane, sleep has for its essential function the restoration of the nervous physical energies of our fatigued bodily system. But for an effective fulfilment of this function, it is absolutely necessary ...
... creation or manifestation cannot be complete. But the supra-physical planes are not bound to the forms like the physical. The forms there are expressive, not determinative. What is important on the vital plane is the force or feeling and the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the mental plane is the perception ...
... child had a counterpart in Delhi whom if she secured, she'd cure this child. This man seemed to have some connection with the millionaire Hukumchand. What are these things now? Dreams of the vital plane corresponding 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 ...
... avatar... The whole thing so influenced me that even after my sleep broke, I remained quiet, thinking of that very pleasant vision. It was 3.15 a.m. What's this now? A very queer dream in the vital plane—rather mixed with contributions from the subconscient. Possibly it was the element of Majumdar that D had absorbed which you saw in that figure, then it disappeared into D himself, the inner progress ...
... tired in the least. When I broke my fast, I did it straightaway with normal food. NIRODBARAN: How is it possible to be active like this without food? SRI AUROBINDO: One draws energy from the vital plane instead of depending on physical sustenance. Once in Calcutta I lived for a long time on rice and bananas only. It was a very good food. DR. SATYENDRA: The trouble is that one can't draw conclusions ...
... formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. Page 37 When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there ...
... of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality-the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite. However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which c ...
... world other worlds like the vital, mental, etc. And what is of great relevance and significance is the fact that there is close connection, communication, and co-operation between the functioning "vital plane" in an earthly human body and the corresponding vital world of the supraphysical cosmos. And the same principle holds good for the other parts of the being and other planes of the world. It ...
... absolutely unambiguous: (1) "A vision is a perception, by the visual organs, of Phenomena that really exist in a world corresponding to the organ which sees. For example, to the individual vital plane there corresponds a cosmic vital world. When a human being is sufficiently developed he possesses an individualised vital being with organs of sight, hearing, smell, etc. So a Person who has a ...
... feet were just the colour of lotus—so soft, tender, beautiful. Unfortunately I couldn't make much of your face. So this was the dream, though not accurate, perhaps. Dreams of this kind in the vital plane are very common. They correspond to something that has happened there, but the forms are often partly supplied by the subconscient mind and partly true. The "supplied forms" have then to be taken ...
... of curing him by calling down the Mother's Force. Then I actually felt the Force coming down; when I put my hand on him, lo, he was cured! Miracle and concrete Force in dream? A feat on the vital plane. If you begin to be conscious of the force there, it ought to travel down before long into the physical also! Can Jatin and his wife attend the stores 180 on the 1st? Yes. Arjava says ...
... psy-chicisation of the nature. But it is possible to get rid from above of the more active forms of obstruction even with a neutral vital. How do the small forces and beings of the vital plane come in just at the right time to interfere with one when he is about to achieve something in sadhana? They act at all times when they see anything in the mind, vital or body off its ...
... It is a different kind of rest. When does it return to the earth again? Whenever it is due. After death, when the vital retires to its vital plane, what does it do there till the psychic calls it back for the next life on the earth? For most people the vital dissolves after a time as it is not sufficiently formed to be immortal ...
... it and deal with what passes through it. A man without it would be without contact with the rest of the world. Can the hostile forces attack us on the mental plane as they do on the vital plane? Yes — the physical mind especially can be made easily their prey — they can also invade the thinking mind. Our sense mind is active all the time and leaping out. How is one ...
... speaking of the higher planes of mind which are always more luminous than the ordinary mental. How is it that the vital beings allow Gods to remain on their plane? The vital plane is not one world but many. In which of the worlds do the divine vital beings stay? There are worlds of the vital Gods, they stay there. How has the vital world ...
... I saw a new poem of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. Both these predictions have become facts today. One can see beforehand things that happen in the physical. One can see them on the vital plane or on the subtle physical, — but the subtle physical foreseeing is usually more exact and sure. The Mother's Force has started working in my ears! Often it closes them as if with ...
... of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the materiel plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and Page 65 ...
... exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source ...
... as accomplishments on the mental plane, – keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane, – mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual Page 70 realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity ...
... of the intellect impoverishes the capacities of the heart. So the psychic being, in order to have this new kind of experience, abandons his intellectual heights, so to say, and comes down to the vital plane. He is no longer a creative genius, but an ordinary man, but with a heart enriched or enriching itself with its intense or generous movements. (One can remember in this connection the story of S ...
... art of the Bengali race. As the vital world is the basis of the women-folk, as the vital tune and colour resound and tinge their entire world, likewise the Bengali race has taken its stand on the vital plane, in the current of the life-force. Bengalis do not know how to resort to bare spirituality. This is why they do not want to be spiritual ascetics in order to understand the meaning of the Illusion; ...
... way, television has found its utility in this grand spiritual vision of the Master. While speaking of "the Glory and Fall of Life" (Book II, Canto 3) he introduces us to the beings of the higher vital plane, living in an independent vital world constituted entirely differently from our gross material earth. Says he: "As through a magic television's glass Outlined to some magnifying inner ...
... Reality that is ultimate has its highest peak—but it is not of one order. There are several orders of that Reality,—there is one expression of beauty on the physical plane, there is another on the vital plane,— and so on. From these various orders beauty can be expressed in art-forms. Beauty is, in fact, an attribute of that self-existent Perfection which grips both the Soul and the sense or rather the ...
... it by His dynamic presence. Rig Veda speaks of " Dyawa Prithivi" Heaven and Earth symbolising the Mental and the Physical planes of consciousness. It mentions ' Antariksha '—-the intermediate vital plane between Earth and Heaven—the physical and. mental. Veda mentions three shining summits of the Mind " Trini Rochana". Surya, the sun, is the symbol of the Truth-Consciousness of illumination of ...
... This realm of pure Vital Being rose to breathless summit regions where "Only a miracle's high transfiguring line Divided life from the formless Infinite". It is this highest vital plane of being that really gives to man and his life all the brilliant pursuits and victories even of his mental and idealistic life. This drive of life it is in which "Our human ignorance moves ...
... point of view, that may also be necessary. As they say "it takes all sorts to make the world." But again that does not mean that one should not recognize other planes. For instance, there is the vital plane whose law is force and success. If you have the force you win. If you have speed you outrun others. The law of the mind comes in to act as a balance together to make a mental-vital standard. If you ...
... that the dark figure She had met was in fact the deity of this temple. One day someone asked the Mother: “What plane does this Kali belong to?” The Mother answered: “The most material vital plane.” Then someone else asked: “Why is she called Kali?” The Mother continued: I don’t know. It is one of the Kalis—I have a vague impression that the head was cut off or that she was buried up ...
... of tidiness and order. This was, no doubt, the effect of Mother's presence. But yet the atmosphere was tense because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were engaged in fighting with forces of the vital plane. Only a few days before my arrival a dismissed cook had managed to get stones hurled into Sri Aurobindo’s house through the agency of a Mohammedan occultist. This was the topic of excited talk ...
... could walk as usual, and engage in his customary work and continue his sadhana as intensely as ever. Later, Sri Aurobindo explained that, during such periods of fasting, he drew "energy from the vital plane instead of depending on physical sustenance". 8 In October 1910, Sri Aurobindo moved from Shankar Chettiar's to a small rented house belonging to one Sundar Chetti in Rue Suffren, and ...
... element whose strength is predominantly in illumined knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to transform the physical and the vital plane. Mina acts directly on the psychic being and on the emotional vital and physical being through the illumined psychic consciousness, while the illumined intuitions of the supramental being give ...
... say, a mental body cornposed of those mental elements which it attracts towards itself by the characteristic force of its personality for the work of its next incarnation. Then it descends to the vital plane and, assuming an appropriate vital sheath, comes down through the subtle-physical into human birth. This is the general process, but it admits of many variations, some of which we may glance at in ...
... giving you my word and resting contented there. What then is the remedy? SRI AUROBINDO: There is nothing to be discouraged about. The fact is that after having lived so long on the mental and vital plane you have become aware of the physical consciousness, and the physical consciousness in everybody is like that. It is inert, conservative, does not want to move, to change — it clings to its habits ...
... all. And when I broke the fast I did not begin slowly but with the usual normal amount of food." When some one asked him, "How is such fasting possible", he said, "One draws energy from the vital plane instead of depending upon physical substance... " 7 K.V. Rangaswami, a zamindar of Kodailam, met Sri Aurobindo at Shankar Chetty's house. He represented the landlords in the Legislative Assembly ...
... godheads of truth and light and unity and the powers of darkness and division and falsehood is brought out from the spiritual and religious and internal into the outer intellectual, ethical and vital plane. It takes there in the figure of the story a double form of a personal and a political struggle, the personal a conflict between typical and representative personalities embodying the greater ethical ...
... colour of Kali is black and she has four hands. But I saw her with only two hands and her colour was bright white. Why did I see her like this? The black Kali form is a manifestation on the vital plane of Mahakali—but Mahakali herself in the Overmind is golden. What you saw was the Mother herself in her body of light with the Mahakali power in her, but not the actual form of Mahakali. 26 September ...
... aspiration and as much working of the Power as he can bear and assimilate. 18 May 1931 As to the girl, X , it hardly seems possible to say anything definite from her experiences—they are in the vital plane; it is only if the experience is in the psychic that it has a decisive value as indicating the call to Yoga. The vision of the boy purports to be a call from Srikrishna, but these vital visions ...
... service of the Divine. 11 August 1932 Recover yourself now and proceed on your way with a deeper and truer aim in you. Your efforts at sadhana up till now have been too exclusively on the vital plane; aspire for a full opening of the psychic, clear your movements of all ego and strive to make yourself open and aspire only to be a receptacle of the true consciousness and an instrument of the Divine ...
... Questions and Answers (1929-1931) Different Kinds of Space and Time - Fearlessness on the Vital Plane Space and time do not begin and end with the mental consciousness: even the Overmind has them. They are the forms of all cosmic existence: only, they vary on each level. Each world has its own space and time. Thus the mental space and time do not tally ...
... progress. ( Mother laughs ) But if you know how to take it, it does help you to progress. You say, "Good, another time I won't boast." And as these forces are very conscious on the mental and vital plane, one doesn't even need to pronounce the words. If the thought... for example, if you have worked well to correct something, either a bad habit or a material weakness, anything, you have worked hard ...
... crossed his mind that he might be converted. It would no longer be he, don't you see, he would no longer be himself. There is a great difference between a human being and these beings of the vital plane. I have told you this many times, I am going to repeat it: In a human being, there is the divine Presence and the psychic being—at the beginning embryonic, but in the end a being wholly formed ...
... predominantly in illumined (intuitive, supramental or spiritual) knowledge and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to transform the physical and vital plane. Mirra acts directly on the psychic being and on the emotional, vital and physical nature through the illumined psychic consciousness, while the illumined intuitions from the supramental being give ...
... delicacy of your vital nature, I hesitate to do so, because I do not know whether you would be able vitally and physically to be at ease amidst this fierce struggle of forces on the physical and lower vital plane. On the other hand I am not fixed as to what climate or surroundings would suit you elsewhere or of any place where you could have what is necessary for me. If you could let me have some information ...
... Page 199 seek to keep this attitude of reliance and let the Mother's Force work,—slowly or rapidly does not matter. The dream was again one of these experiences of test or ordeal on the vital plane which you have been having—here it was the test of temptation by power, comfort, riches, attractive things, as it was formerly the test by fear, difficulty, trouble. The evidence of all these tests ...
... Love is. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 24 March 1951 On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single consciousness, full of love, luminous, powerful ...
... presides over the individual birth and evolution—puts forward a representative of himself on each plane of the consciousness. On the mental plane it is the true mental being, manomaya puruṣa , on the vital plane the true vital being, prāṇamaya puruṣa , on the physical plane the true physical being, annamaya puruṣa . Each being therefore is, so long as the Ignorance lasts, centred round his mental, vital ...
... ambitions can put us into connection with the vital worlds and their forces and beings. It is again a world of things dark, dangerous and horrible. Nightmares like X‘s are contacts with this side of the vital plane. Its influences are also the source of much in men that is demoniac, dirty, cruel and base. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness … all our spiritual ...
... persons whom one is going to meet and recognise later on in ordinary life? There are many possibilities. But most often, it is that a communication has been established either on the mental or the vital plane or even on the subtle physical plane and it is this communication which brings about the meeting later—your dream is not only a premonition but also a condition; there is an inner relation close ...
... Aurobindo has explained this in many places. "Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will...." 1 Is there a plane of will, as there is a mental plane, a vital plane, etc.? I have explained that to you in connection with Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda exists at the very origin of the worlds, but there is a Sachchidananda behind all the other states of being ...
... no longer perceived from a psychological point of view at all; there are only vibrations. If we consider it from the psychological point of view... on the mental plane, it is very easy; on the vital plane it is not very difficult; on the physical plane it is a little heavier, for it takes the form of "needs"; but here too there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical ...
... kinds and different values. Some are of very great value and importance, others are a play of the mind or vital and are good only for their own special purpose, others are formations of the mind and vital plane, some of which may have truth, while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. They can have considerable importance in the development of the first Yogic ...
... brought forward from the inner being or brought down from above constantly and persistently till the lower is changed. The Three Planes of the Lower Hemisphere and Their Energies There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together,—mental, vital, physical,—are called the triple ...
... of the lower consciousness. In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and vital plane even before those planes are directly touched or influenced by the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and not permanent or they are limited in their field and do not ...
... sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality and appears and acts in the form and perhaps with the surface thoughts and memories of that person. (4) A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means or agency is able to materialise itself sufficiently so as to appear and act in a visible form or speak with an audible voice or, ...
... Sometimes even the ego gets aggrandised. But if the psychic is awake, then there is not this danger; one finds one's true being in place of the ego. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of the higher consciousness from above that can give a peaceful and beautiful merging of the atoms (?) 2 into the wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the ...
... cosmic Life ] becomes aware of all the life-forces and of how they act upon oneself and others, upon mind, upon body—also the force movements behind events. One becomes too directly aware of the vital plane, its worlds, its beings, and the direct action of their formations on the earthlife. One has to become aware also at the same time of one's own true vital being and act from it and not from the surface ...
... on his ego, its ideas, claims, desires, intentions and his aggressiveness in expressing them so that he quarrels with everybody. This quarrelsomeness opens him to all all sorts of forces of the vital plane and their attacks. It is also the cause of the damage done to the liver and organs of digestion—for anger and quarrelsomeness always tend to spoil the liver and through it the stomach and intestines ...
... this pull. It is usually the vital part of the inner being that first wakes in sleep and the first dream experiences (as opposed to ordinary dreams) are usually in the great mass experiences of the vital plane, a world of supraphysical life, full of variety and interest, with many provinces, luminous or obscure, beautiful or perilous, often extremely attractive, where we can get much knowledge too both ...
... something touches whether from within or without. The Trance of Mediums The medium trance is of a different kind—they get not into touch with Sachchidananda but with the beings of the lower vital plane. To develop the power of going into this higher kind of trance, one must have done some sadhana. As to purification, entire purification is not necessary, but some part of the being must have turned ...
... is the formation of the Mother's consciousness in you in which you are preparing to sail on this sea. The river represents some movement of the consciousness. All these are images of the vital plane. Page 151 ...
... Chapter IV Fear Fear and Yoga If you want to do Yoga, you must get rid of fear. Yoga and fear do not go together. There is no fear in the higher Nature. Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention ...
... an acute and perfectly well-ordered intelligence. X from his photograph appears to have had a mediumistic 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 ...
... feel that the personality to whom I made pranam was not the Mother, but someone disguised as her. It must obviously have been some force taking the form of the Mother—that often happens on the vital plane. Suggestions are given by these disguised forces which have to be rejected as you rejected this one. 7 September 1938 Page 75 ...
... is working, the Presence is there." 27 September 1936 It is quite normal in dream to see the Mother or myself with another appearance than the present. These dreams are experiences on the vital plane where forms are not so rigid as in the physical world. 1 June 1937 Page 131 ...
... imaginative sensation and emotion. The later Romantics have often a clear, strong, large and luminous manner, but by functioning from the more deliberative mental rather than the more spontaneous vital plane they too.lack comparatively in "the searching audacities of the intuition". Still, now and then, there emerges, as Sri Aurobindo 15 puts it, "a certain effort to recapture the Shakespearian potency ...
... philosophy of a rather obvious kind, sedate, or vigorous, prompt and direct, or robustly power-ful". 19 Examples can be drawn from the work of Dryden and Pope, Cowper and Scott and Browning. On the vital plane the Teutonic element would be far more at home poetically than the Latin, for nervous vehemence and energy of character and rush of incident are natural to its objective and dynamic bent; but the ...
... progress seems still to continue. 22 January 1927 Sarvam Anantam Anandam Brahma seems to be well established in its fundamental universality (except for some duhkhabhoga of result on the vital plane and some movements of physical semi-discomfort) and is growing in intensity. Gnanam Brahma consciousness grows, but needs development of T³ & T² for full play. Increase in Ananda (Sahaituka ...
... short. The problem isn't seen from a psychological standpoint at all: it's nothing but vibrations. If we look at it from a psychological standpoint... On the mental plane, it's very easy; on the vital plane, it's not too difficult; on the physical plane, it's a little heavier, because desires are passed off as "needs." But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study ...
... translation rendering the full poetic force and colour and substance of the original which you have followed with a remarkable exactitude.' But Nishikanta, I understand, writes from the subtle vital plane. If a poem is from overhead, would not its spiritual value be lost in a translation from a different plane?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "If you mean the spiritual substance, I suppose ...
... that apart from Light, Love and Sweetness, there is immense strength in the psychic when it comes forward. * Mother had once told me that one can realise the Divine in the vital plane and remain there only and think 'this is it' and not move, progress any more. And then one becomes a Guru! Page 206 Sri Aurobindo once told me, 'Keep on calling on ...
... Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows bent: none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven. Antony and Cleopatra (1.3. 35-37) He would limit the passage to the vital plane 'the vital in its excited thrill' and cite as counter-example of poetry with the Overhead touch the lines of Hamlet: Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy ...
... way by the Mother's Grace and also feel Her Protection. Earlier, I did not get such dreams at all. I used to fly straight. Why am I getting such dreams nowadays? You used to have dreams on the vital plane also long ago in which you passed through dangerous forests and wilderness amid parts of land and water and wild beasts, etc., but you reached safely under the Mother's protection where you were ...
... the meanest worm. Plato, drawing his inspiration from Pythagoras, divided the human consciousness into three levels. The lowest was the desire soul, corresponding to the material and vegetative vital plane centered around the navel and below; higher up, purely vital and partially psychic, was the sensitive soul, centered in the heart; and the highest was the rational or actually immortal soul, centered ...
... visible sheath, made out of what we call tangible matter, is only our most outward or ‘gross’ body. This material sheath is surrounded by or embedded in a vital sheath consisting of substance of the vital plane. It is in this vital body that we go in search of adventure in our vital dreams and that we leave our material or gross body for good at the time of death. Both bodies are in their turn surrounded ...
... and the development of his mental body. In most cultures and individual cases the mental body does not possess the necessary knowledge to protect the transiting person. The lower regions of the vital plane can be, as the Mother said, “infernal” or hellish, inhabited by hellish beings. (The concept of hell originated from the remembrance of this kind of post mortem experiences.) The Mother constructed ...
... connection. Or they feel themselves to be an entirely illumined consciousness, while in reality they are receiving imperfectly things from above through a partial illumination of some mental or vital plane; for what comes is diminished and often deformed in the course of transmission through these planes; the receiving mind and vital of the sadhaka also often understands or transcribes ill what has ...
... ge turned into overmind or intuitive Truth). Orange often indicates occult power. You have a strong power of (subjective) creative formation, mostly, I think in the mental but partly too in the vital plane. This kind of formative faculty can be used for objective results if accompanied by a sound knowledge of the occult forces and their workings; but by itself it results more often in one's building ...
... to the Spirit February 29, 1932 Q. Is the faculty of formation different from creative power? A. You make a formation in your mind or on the vital plane in yourself—it is a kind of creation, but subjective only; it effects only your mental or vital being. You can create by ideas, thought-forces, images—a whole world in yourself or for yourself; but ...
... make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source, for the reason I state. Those in the Ashram who have developed the inner view of things on the vital plane have plenty of experience of the hostile forces. However, you need not personally concern yourself with them so long as they remain incognito... One may have the experiences on the mental plane ...
... just this diversity. It is the One that unfolds itself in the Many—endlessly. On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single consciousness, full of love, luminous, powerful ...
... ritual worship in honor of Durga, the universal Mother. × The rakshas are demons of the lower vital plane. × The attack of black magic in December 1958 . ...
... never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we 'meditated' together, when we worked)—all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactions—was absolutely tantric, as if I ...
... prepare for it, When one dies, one leaves or loses only one's body and, at the same time, the possibilities of relation with and of action on the material world. All that belongs to the vital plane does not disappear with the material substance, and all the desires, attachments, cravings, persist with the sense of frustration and disappointment, and all that keeps you restless and Page ...
... "up"-ness, becomes A ray returning to its parent Sun, The parallel case you cite to the suggestion of my 1998 -the Mother telling you, apropos of your "difficulties of dreams on the vital plane", "You are not alone. There are hundreds like you. Try, try for one hundred years if necessary" - this parallel case makes me very happy, especially as after your prayer "Please bless me, Mother" ...
... give you that perfect equanimity in all circumstances, and at the same time give a maximum of force and power and will to the Perfection that must be realized? As soon as we deal with even the vital plane, even the lower vital, the problem doesn't arise, it's very easy; but here, in the cells of the body, in this life? In this life of every minute, which is so constricted, so shriveled, so microscopic ...
... at which you were looking while walking along it, seems to me to represent your none-too- Page 183 easy life-movement. The green meadow-lining which you mark may be a sign of the vital plane. What next happens is really an enchanting discovery: "Suddenly there shot up between the stones and out of the lawn small lovely blue flowers." What I have called "discovery" is in fact "revelation" ...
... When you are on the mind-plane, you are so submerged in the Overmind's illuminations that you think here is a continuation of the highest "radiant world". But when Sri Aurobindo came down to the vital plane and still more when he descended to the physical consciousness for the Page 78 transformative sadhana there, then it became sharply evident that the Overmind was not merely ...
... the lower consciousness. In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and vital plane even before those planes are directly touched or influenced by the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and not permanent or they are limited in their field and do ...
... Where the universe is concerned, there is no meaning in the term 'descent'. There is only manifestation." I understood that we individuals have various levels connected with our bodies. The vital plane is connected with our abdominal region. The heart region has to do with the emotional being, the head with the mind plane. And above the head there are the spiritual ranges and on top of them the ...
... way by the Mother's Grace and also feel Her Protection. Earlier, I did not get such dreams at all. I used to fly straight. Why am I getting such dreams nowadays? You used to have dreams on the vital plane also long ago in which you passed through dangerous forests and wildernesses amid parts of land and water and wild beasts etc., but you reached safely under the Mother's protection where you were ...
... huge and ferocious being who could frighten anyone. Does it indicate a future difficulty I have to pass through? These things are not usually prophesies of the future; it was an attack on the vital plane which you were strong enough to repulse. 22.11.1932 Sri Aurobindo ...
... of us would fall. He remained stubborn. I pleaded with him to leave me. When I woke up, I actually felt that I was saved from death. The first part of the dream is an experience of the mental-vital plane and indicates the saving power of an absolute faith. The other shows the ascent to the highest levels of the earth consciousness, but there is still something of the old self and nature clinging ...
... not stand in the way of a keen and understanding appreciation."13 His other experience, that of Levitation, he has described as follows: 'I was ... having a very intense sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mind: "Are such siddhis as utthapana (levitation) possible?" I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done it ...
... could live merely by bread, there could, of course, be a simple and straightforward solution. But the essential point is that man is a complex being. He lives simultaneously on the physical plane, vital plane, mental plane and spiritual plane, even though he might not experience all the planes with equal force of vividity. The main point is that man's satisfaction cannot arrive unless he constantly progresses ...
... spiritual discipline and self-realization. In the larger sense of the term, occultism is a science of secrets, and in that larger sense, the secret knowledge of physical sciences, of the sciences of the vital plane and the mental plane, and the sciences of those domains which are beyond mind and which are domains of the spiritual powers and realities, can all be considered to be the domains of occultism. A ...
... does not stand in the way of a keen and understanding appreciation.¹ His other experience, that of levitation, he has described as follows: I was... having a very intense sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mind: Are such Siddhis as Utthapana (levitation) possible? I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done it myself ...
... have divine powers in them. You said that "the Supermind descent into Matter is what is being attempted". In that case, has the Supermind already conquered the mental plane, the vital plane and the physical now that it is attempting to conquer Matter? There can be no conquest of the other planes by the Supermind but only an influence, so long as the physical is not ready ...
... from me towards the Mother while she was giving me an interview. The Mother was holding me close to her. What was it - sleep or samadhi? If it was sleep, you must have got into the vital plane or some supraphysical plane and met the Mother there. During the samadhi states the Mother's Force was quite solid. During the waking state, however, the action induced a certain ...
... beginning with a little food and so on. I began with the same quantity as I used to take before.' On another occasion he explained that such fasting was possible 'because one draws the energy from the vital plane instead of depending on physical substance'. Perhaps you have noted that even during the fast Sri Aurobindo 'could walk eight hours a day'. Indeed this habit of walking, which started at Baroda, ...
... visions of engineering, with the Super-engineer at his side? What significance, if any, of the dream? To be fulfilled here or there? He wants to be a yogi; don't you see? He was moving in the vital plane which is not bound by the mental will or by the physical realities. There a certain capacity in him was being turned to the Divine Work and the building was symbolic of that, also the power of u ...
... perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols. 3) It depends on the nature of the dream. If they ...
... strangely exact parallel to the sequence of states in which man's spiritual consciousness unfolds itself and which form the consummation of mystic life." I don't agree—unless it is a sadhana of the vital plane which then naturally expresses the vital being = love-excitement, love-quarrels, viraha , 75 revolt, despair, rupture etc., etc., frequent surrenders, unions, partings. Dutt has said that ...
... upon Matter and gave the world the form it could 'or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the overmental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Page 39 Thus, there is ...
... decides to arraign Destiny itself. In this turbulent condition of mind, she loses all balance; her mind that had hitherto won for itself a place on the higher planes of living now descends into the vital plane where ordinary human passions rage and rule. To her now earthly mind, the workings of destiny come as an unnatural shock. In her throat rises the desperate cry of all humanity that groans under the ...
... the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go by the name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., are a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source ...
... the intellect impoverishes the capacities of the heart. So the psychic being, in order to have this new kind of experience, abandons his intellectual heights, so to say, and comes down to the vital plane. He is no longer a creative genius, but an ordinary man, but with a heart enriched or enriching itself with its intense or generous movements. (One can remember in this connection the story of ...
... as accomplishments on the mental plane, —keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,—mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard ...
... about Z? SATYENDRA: I am not personally attracted to him. SRI AUROBINDO: When I saw his photo I had the impression that he is a man with a strong vital power. His sadhana seems to be on the vital plane and it is in such sadhana that one brings about a great influx of Power and unfortunately people are attracted to it. In the spiritual, psychic and even mental sadhana, Power can come but it comes ...
... turning into an elephant may have no meaning, but it is not so in the vital. These fantasies don't have the coherence that is found in the physical, but they have their own coherence - that of the vital plane. It is this world from which X's paintings come—what the Europeans call the goblin world. Anybody who has the least experience of the subtle planes can at once say where his paintings originate. ...
... SRI AUROBINDO: True, if he had it. (Laughter. Dr. Manilal thought that he had it, so Sri Aurobindo added:) The question is whether he had it. (Laughter) It is very easy to get into some vital plane and think oneself to have had all sorts of things. DR. MANILAL: I remember now. Sir, that Sila in jainism is not virtue but ekapatni vrata, being faithful to one's wife. SRI AUROBINDO: We ...
... necessary. Even the Asuras have a place. Ravana had one. As they say, it takes all sorts to make a world. But again, all this does not mean that one should not recognise other planes. There is the vital plane whose law is force and success. If you have force you win; if you have speed you outrun others. The laws of the mind come in to act as a means of balance. They balance diverse things to make a m ...
... upon Matter and gave the world the form it could or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the over-mental and the vital plane. There is also the mental plane between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth. Thus, there is a tradition which says that ...
... ons of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the material plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and long-standing habits ...
... intensities according to the plane. The farther one descends the ladder of consciousness, the more fragmented become the sound-vibrations, as well as the light, the beings, and the forces. On the vital plane, for example, one can hear the discordant and jarring vibrations of life, like certain types of music issuing from this plane or certain types of vital painting or poetry, which all express that ...
... and perfect; Flecker's is good only in substance, an adequate picture, one may say.... The difference is that the French has vision and the inspired movement that comes with vision - all on the vital plane, of course, - but the English version has only physical sight, sometimes with a little glow in it, and the precision that comes with that sight.... But both these poems have the distinction of being ...
... 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 the law of causation, on the vital plane a cracking of the ego-shell, on the mental plane a rise into the overhead gnostic consciousness, and on the psychic plane to the realisation of Poise and Power and Peace and Ananda. Page 841 ...
... normal food as before without any problems. Although such austerities didn't really appeal to him, these experiments nevertheless demonstrated that one could, if one wished, draw energy from the vital plane, instead of depending daily on the physical food but of course, this could not go on for ever. Page 13 Sri Aurobindo lived in Pondicherry for nearly forty-one years ...
... more and more and the divine manifestation become increasingly a matter of daily experience. There are other talks too: "Chance"; "Different Kinds of Space and 'Time - Fearlessness on the Vital Plane"; "Knowledge by Unity with the Divine - The Divine Will in the World"; "True Humility - Supramental Plasticity - Spiritual Rebirth"; and "The Supramental Realisation". "Chance", says the Mother ...
... scale during the last war. It is not European culture that is to blame, but the powers that took hold of the reign of life and tried to utilise it for possessing the world. These powers of the vital plane were defeated by the awakened conscience of mankind helped by the Divine. Now the atmosphere is slowly settling down, though elements of another crisis are not lacking in the situation ...
... incoherent. In the physical a mouse turning into an elephant may have no meaning but it is not so in the vital. They have no coherence of the physical plane but they have their own coherence of the vital plane. But when one gets the clue one finds that everything is a linked whole. That I have seen many times in my own case. It is this world from which Tagore's painting came, – what Europeans call the ...
... begin slowly but with the usual normal food. Page 88 Disciple : How is it possible to have such energy without food? Sri Aurobindo : One draws the energy from the vital plane instead of depending upon physical substance. Once in Calcutta I lived for a long time on rice and banana. It is a very good food. Disciple : The trouble is that one can't draw conclusion ...
... by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 99 passion'....So the psychic being, in order to have this new kind of experience, abandons his intellectual heights, so to say, and comes down to the vital plane. He is no longer a creative genius, but an ordinary man but with a heart enriched or enriching itself with its intense or generous movements. ...It is not rare to see psychic beings that have reached ...
... mystic of Russia was the subject of the talk for some time. This Rasputin had suddenly Page 27 become a spiritual man. He was a villager and suddenly got some power of the vital plane. He influenced people with his eyes. He had used his power for lower ends. Disciple . There is a pronouncement to-day about the elegibility to the A.I.C.G. – All India Congress Committee. ...
... matter operates. Now we will try to see how life operates. When the life-substance acts in its freedom, then desire is its dominating law. And on the plane of life it determines all the facts of vital plane on the basis of desire and impulse. There matter is not allowed to intervene. Independent of material life, if you can conceive of life plane—where matter is not indespensable to life,—there life ...
... the fast, he started taking the usual food again. Sri Aurobindo had also on one occasion the experience of the phenomenon known as "levitation". It was for him a time of intense Sadhana on the vital plane, and at the very moment he asked himself, "Are such things possible?", he found his body raised against the wall without any muscular exertion on his part - only a part of the body being in slight ...
... Dilip had heard that when he was in jail some part of Sri Aurobindo's body was raised in a peculiar fashion. "That was once in jail," he confirmed. "I was then having a very intense sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mood: 'Whether such things as the siddhi of utthāpana [power of levitation] were Page 481 possible?' Then suddenly I found myself ...
... describe it. And so on twelve times." The Indian term for these bodies is kosha or 'sheath.' You leave your 'food sheath,' or the material body, on the material plane; then you enter the vital plane in your vital sheath; there you unsheath again to enter the mental plane. And so forth. "I did the same thing," said Mother. "With great dexterity even. I could halt on any plane, do what I ...
... clouded. Sometimes people mistake the inner mental opening for the psychic. Of course it doesn't matter very much from the practical point of view. The psychic is behind all these inner mental and vital planes. ... Guidance from whom? From me? I am not a doctor. NIRODBARAN: No, inner guidance. SRI AUROBINDO: One can get guidance by the opening of the inner being, the psychic, the inner mental or even the inner vital. Only, the psychic is more sure. DR. MANILAL: How to open the psychic? SRI AUROBINDO: There are many ways. DR. MANILAL: Please tell us one or two. SRI AUROBINDO: One can get the opening ...
... path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender 1 ). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into ...
... experience of the mental and the vital planes? Sri Aurobindo : They can have, if they hold aloof. Only, they can't help the pressure on the physical nature as it is in the atmosphere. There are cases that differ : there is some one X who made very good progress in the mind. In another case the Sadhak became aloof and progressed; but the moment he came to the vital, the whole thing seemed to... human nature? Sri Aurobindo : In order to change human nature you have to work from level to level; you reject a thing from Page 103 the mind, it comes to the vital. When you reject it from the vital, then it comes to the physical and then you find it in the subconscient. There is a central point in the subconscient that has to be changed. If that is done, then everything is... difficult. Disciple : How can one replenish the exhausted nervous being? Can it be done by drawing energy from the Universal Vital or by the help of the Higher Power? Sri Aurobindo : Both ways can be combined : One can draw from the Universal Vital and the Higher Power can also work. But there should be no Tamas, inertia, and other excuses. Disciple : Was there a time when ...
... difficulty speaking.... Page 188 Didn't you have something to ask? Yes, I would have a few things.... There are two things. First, on the mental or vital planes, there are means of correspondence: you have a mental or a vital body, and you can develop those bodies. But this subtle physical, how do you develop it, how do you consciously make contact with it? ( after a long silence )... ( long silence a peacock lands on Mother's terrace ) I'm not much use! ( Mother laughs ) You understand, I myself have everything to learn there. It clearly can't depend on the mind or the vital.... ( Mother shakes her head ) But does it depend on the psychic or on an aspiration in the body? My own impression (it's an impression more than a certainty) is that there is a more subtle ...
... world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of... the creation or manifestation is very vast and contains many planes and worlds that existed before the evolution, all different in character and with different kinds of beings. The fact of being prior to the evolution does not make them undifferentiated. The world of the Asuras is prior to the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital or subtle physical Devas—but these beings are all different... different from each other. The great Gods belong to the Overmind plane; in the Supermind they are unified as aspects of the Divine, in the Overmind they appear as separate personalities. Any godhead can descend by emanation to the physical plane and associate himself with the evolution of a human being with whose line of manifestation he is in affinity. But these are things which cannot be very easily understood ...
... sometimes the lesser Gods of the mental and vital planes. In either case they try to occupy and use the instrument, but for their own purpose, for the play of the Ideas and Forces they represent, not the highest Truth. There are only three safeguards for the disciple. One is to call down first the eternal peace, calm and silence of the Divine into the mind and the vital and physical being. In that peace and... brought in by his mind and his vital failings, if they are denied, then nothing can be done. Or, rather, nothing will be done; for the attempt in such circumstances might lead to a breaking rather than a divine building of the nature, or even there might be a reception of hostile forces instead of the true light and power. This is the law of the relation on the spiritual plane: the consent of the disciple... unhappily you seem to have departed from the guidance of the Mother in the crucial point. You seem to have deliberately rejected the peace and silence of the vital being in the fear that it would bring stagnation. As a result the strong habit [of] vital formation came into play and you began to call down lights and powers and build things in [yourself] 4 in your own way. In this condition, when the disciple ...
... Cent. Ed., XXV. 26 ff . × Asura, Rakshasa : demons of the mental and vital planes; Pisacha : depraved beings. ...
... by Dante's labels: "Inferno", "Purgatorio", "Paradiso". The subtle-physical and vital planes have their own hells and heavens: neither these hells nor these heavens can be lumped together to make a Dantesque picture. It is not possible also to ignore these heavens and restrict that label to the idealities of the mind-plane and the rapturous intensities of the psychic. Both below them and above we have... mystical. And that means it is the imaginative projection of certain strong mental beliefs and vital attitudes touched by an intuition of God and of a supernatural Beyond. There is no direct occult experience, no immediate spiritual realisation at the back of it. Something from the occult domain and the spiritual plane was sure to come on the breath of the intense and authentic inspiration that was Dante's... all the insets of human drama they carry! The system itself of other worlds unfolding in the Divine Comedy has little counterpart in Savitri . Where in it is the hierarchy of planes — subtle-physical, vital, mental, psychic, "overhead", and lastly "the radiant world of the Everlasting Truth"? Except for the common factor of exploring the ultra-terrestrial and for some correspondences here ...
... Creation Poetry, or at any rate a truly poetic poetry, comes always from some subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry; there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force of creative beauty which contributes its own substance and impetus and often determines... as the mouthpiece of the Gods. Page 5 The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the... from each other. On the lower planes beginning from the mental downwards there can also be such variations or combinations, but the working is not the same, for the different powers here stand more on a footing of equality whether they stand apart from each other, each working in its own right, or cooperate. 29 April 1937 Human creation comes from the vital planes into the physical—but there is ...
... THE HIGHER PLANES Some sadhaks say that as one enters into higher planes one meets with a greater ego, ignorance and falsehood. How can this be? It is because they go higher and higher in the same plane of consciousness as before and do not rise beyond — e.g. higher and higher in the realm of vital-mental formations — not higher beyond mind into the planes that lead... experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also one may by entering into the larger mental and vital planes aggrandise the ego. These things are always possible so long as the higher consciousness and the lower are not harmonised in the being and the lower transformed into the nature of the higher. In effect, a... People speak of the "spiritual ego". The question is: "Is there really an ego on the higher spiritual planes?" Certainly not. There is absolutely no element of ego there. For they are all (from the Higher mind to Overmind) divine planes of consciousness. On the higher spiritual planes there is no ego, because the oneness of the Divine is felt, but there may be the sense of one's true person ...
... but spontaneously seeing the truth. Could one cross the higher planes without establishing peace and silence? If so, would one feel the vibrations? I do not see how it can be done without peace and silence, if it is the higher planes which are spoken of. Of course large mental and vital planes can be reached without it and in that passage there may be vibrations. ... or preparing — the manifestation of the true vital is part of this dynamic realisation. There is no hurry — all will come in its time. There is started today an easy soaring from plane to still higher plane of consciousness. It was a sweet and joyous flight. That is good. It means the way open to higher and higher planes of consciousness. Page 256 ... of intensity and supported by the vital, otherwise it would not have been experienced so clearly and at the same time. It would have been rather engulfed in the powerful descent. It is the descent and responding ascent in the higher part of the being. During the past seven days the Mother opened me to the first of the higher planes. Now a suggestion says that a preparation ...
... Dante's labels: "Inferno", "Purgatorio", "Paradiso". The subtle-physical and vital planes have their own hells and heavens: neither these hells nor these heavens can be lumped together to make a Dantesque picture. It is not possible also to ignore these heavens and restrict that label to the idealities of the mind-plane and the rapturous intensities of the psychic. Both below them and above we have... And that means it is the imaginative projection of certain strong mental beliefs and vital attitudes touched by an intuition of God and of a supernatural Beyond. There is no direct occult experience, no immediate spiritual realisation at the back of it. Something from the occult domain and the spiritual plane was sure to come on the breath of the intense and authentic inspiration that was Dante's... the insets of human drama they carry! The system itself of other worlds unfolding in the Divine Comedy has little counterpart in Savitri. Where in it is the hierarchy of planes - subtle-physical, vital, mental, psychic, "overhead", and lastly "the radiant world of the Everlasting Truth"? Except for the common factor of exploring the ultra-terrestrial and for some correspondences here ...
... without any real solidity in it? Otherwise why should such a fall have come during these two years? There was certainly a real sadhana then and a very persistent preparation on the mental and vital planes. If there had not been, the descents of peace would not have begun. The fall came because when you descended into the physical consciousness to complete the preparation there, you became too passive... get back into the sun. 9 April 1930 Exacerbation of Vital Movements The exacerbation of certain vital movements is a perfectly well-known phenomenon in Yoga and does not mean that one has degenerated, but only that one has come to close grips instead of to a pleasant nodding acquaintance with the basic instincts of the earthly vital nature. I have had myself the experience of this rising to... yoga that they take care to impress on the brain when they are at their work. If you can get rid of that, the violence of the vital attacks is only the phenomenon of a stage and does not in the end matter. 24 June 1932 God knows when I shall be above all this vital desire, sex, etc. I heave a sigh thinking of such retrogression. There is nothing peculiar about retrogression. I was also ...
... the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the... attainment of fulfilment and perfection and immortality which has been desert-bed as the state of the physical being which, when visited by the greatness of the infinite planes above and by the power of the great godheads who reign on those planes, breaks its limits, opens out to the Light and is upheld in its new wideness by the infinite Consciousness, Mother Aditi, and her sons, the divine powers of the Supreme... of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory; these flights and rangings were synthesized with the cosmic existence of the Gods, pursued behind the symbols of material universe in those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The discovery of the supermind by the Vedic Rishis was of capital importance, and the victories which the Vedic Rishis attained ...
... his career as a vital-physical being, becomes a mental being at a later stage. But the trouble is that when he goes beyond his vital being into the mental, he tends to pass beyond mind into the gnosis and forgets his life and body; this is what is known as Nihilism or the Vedantic Illusionism. But as a social being, man has remained what he was, a being of the physical and vital planes, and these cannot... not sought to reject and deny the existence of the vital and physical movements. Its aim has been to establish on a sound basis these so-called lower but stronger movements, by controlling them and purifying them into their true elements. The ordinary man, every man in fact, has to live with his body and vital being, with the physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist... the awakened and enlightened intellect. Tantra, especially the Tantra of the Left-hand Path, has sought to guide and train man through another kind of discipline, along the lines of the vital, even the physical-vital movements that are common to all menthe natural lines of the natural man. Buddha had proclaimed his message to the common man, in the Prakrit dialects understood by all; he did not address ...
... were perfectly genuine. But when the pressure of the Force works upon the consciousness, then in the plane on which it happens to be working, a great activity of different forces is set in play, e.g. if it is the mind, various mental forces, if it is the vital, Page 309 various vital forces. It is not safe to take all these for true things, to be accepted without question and followed... voices; each Force, each movement of the mental, vital, physical plane may equip itself with a voice. Your voices were not even at one with each other; one said one thing, when it did not work out another said something inconsistent with it; but you were attached to your mental formation and still tried to follow. All this happens because the mind and vital in these exaltations of the stress of the sadhana... upon and it is better to wait until one is able to enter a higher consciousness and a greater truth than any that these communications represent. Sometimes they come from beings of an intermediate plane who want to use the sadhak for some work or purpose. Many sadhaks accept and some, though by no means all, succeed in doing something, but it is often at the cost of the greater aims of Yoga. In other ...
... the life of the Ignorance.” 21 “A gnostic being will possess not only a truth-conscious control of the realised Spirit’s power over its physical world, but also the full power of the mental and vital planes and the use of their greater forces for the perfection of the physical existence. This greater knowledge and wider hold of all existence will enormously increase the power of instrumentation of... revolutionary and astonishing, but only the capacity in the human mentality, when it has reached a certain level or a certain point of stress of the evolutionary impetus, to press forward towards a higher plane of consciousness and its embodiment in the being.” 6 “Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality, – he may imagine he has, he may appear to be normal in his own kind, but that normality... intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic [i.e. supramentalised] mental being, the directly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part communion with the higher-thought plane would emerge; these would become more and more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type, and might even exist as a formed race of higher humanity leading upwards the less evolved in ...
... Manus, chatváro manavah. Not in the physical world at first, but in the mental world which stands behind the earth-life; for earth has seven planes of being, the material of which the scenes and events are alone normally visible to the material senses, the vital of which man's pranakosha is built and to which it is responsive, the mental to which his manahkosha is attached, the ideal governing his v... animal form is always a partial incarnation, as will be seen hereafter. The animal proper is a lower type. Certain devas of the manasic plane in the Bhuvarloka descend in the higher type of animal. They are not mental beings proper, but only half-mental vital beings. They live in packs, tribes etc with a communal existence. They are individual souls, but the individuality is less vigorous than the... ever in the being of the Para Purushas. They are not true Manomaya Purushas. But Manu Prajapati is a true manomaya Purusha. He by mental generation begets on his female Energies men in the mental & vital planes above earth, whence they descend into the material or rather the terrestrial body. On earth Manu incarnates fourteen times in each Kalpa & each of these fourteen incarnations is called a Manu. These ...
... his Asura”, said Sri Aurobindo on another occasion. “Sometimes the Asuras have an extraordinary foresight that comes true with perfect precision both on the vital and subtle-vital planes, just like that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies would not intervene. Napoleon... soldiers, who had to wade through the water from the beach toward the vessels, would never have been able to embark. There was however another weather factor in play, this one preventing the German bomber planes from taking off because the airfields were covered with fog. “Fog came to the rescue of the British. Not only was Dunkirk itself enshrouded but all the Luftwaffe fields were blanketed by low clouds... The Luftwaffe might be carrying out, if the weather held, its most murderous attack yet against Britain. As it turned out, August 15 saw the biggest engagement of the Battle of Britain, with more planes in action than had ever been seen before. The Luftwaffe flew 1950 sorties, the RAF [Royal Air Force] nearly a thousand, as they joined battle over a front of five hundred miles. It was one of the decisive ...
... nervous or vital energies the action of the thought in the attempt of the mortal consciousness to grow or expand itself into the immortality of the Truth and Bliss. In any case, they also are described in VI.49.11 as acting with the qualities of the Angiras ( aṅgirasvat ), "O young and seers and powers of the sacrifice, Maruts, come uttering the word to the high place (or desirable plane of earth or... immortal lustres of the Dawn which give birth in man to the heavenly workings and fill with them the workings of the mid-regions between earth and heaven, that is to say, the functioning of those vital planes governed by Vayu which link our physical and pure mental being, may well be the Angiras powers. For they too gain and maintain the truth by maintaining unhurt the divine workings ( amardhanto devānāṁ ...
... feels itself instrumental and not the primary actor. Although there is no ego in the spiritual planes, yet by the spiritual experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also by entering into the larger mental and vital planes one may aggrandise the ego. These things are always possible so long as the higher consciousness and the... always get, having once broken the barrier between the physical mind and the subtle planes. What you have to aspire for most is the improved quality of the recipient consciousness in you—discrimination in the mind, the unattached impersonal Witness look on all that goes on in you and around you, purity in the vital, calm equanimity, enduring patience, absence of pride and the sense of greatness—and... visions etc. before the basis is well laid by a sort of mental or vital aptitude for these things, but such experiences do not of themselves lead to transformation or realisation—it is by the quietude of the mind and the psychic opening that these greater things can come. Experience in the sadhana is bound to begin with the mental plane,—all that is necessary is that the experience should be sound ...
... into the physical plane. A. G. acts directly on the mental and on the vital being through the illumined mind; he represents the Purusha element whose strength is predominantly in illumined knowledge (intuition, supramental or spiritual) and the power that acts in this knowledge, while the psychic being supports this action and helps to transform the physical and vital planes. Mirra acts directly... directly on the psychic and on the emotional vital and physical being through the illumined psychic consciousness while the illumined intuitions of the supramental being give her the necessary knowledge to act on the right lines and at the right moment. Her force representing the Shakti element is directly psychic, vital, physical and her spiritual knowledge is predominantly practical in its nature... been the "certain period of the Ashram" to which Huta's article refers, a period of shining surprise not only to the Grace- inundated disciple to whom Savitri was sent but also on a far deeper plane to the Mother for the wonderful language in which the Master unveiled his high visions and to the Master himself because the Mother had anticipated them in mystic silence some thirty years in advance ...
... prāṇamaya puruṣa —soul in life; the (true) vital being. the physical (being) —not the body alone, but the whole physical mind, vital, material nature. physical mind —See under mind . physical vital —the part of the vital that is turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. psyche —the soul; spark of the Divine... we know or can conceive of it while in this universe. This Nothing is merely a something beyond positive conception. Asura —the strong or mighty one, Titan; a hostile being or force of the vital mental plane, known in traditional Indian legends as the dark Titan or demon; see also Adversary. Asuric —of the nature of the Asura. Atman —Self; Spirit; the original and essential nature of Existence... indivisible Being. The One Being manifests itself on different planes or levels of consciousness, and in the individual being is constituted by different distinguishable parts of the indivisible Being. The part of our nature of which we are normally conscious is our surface or outer being consisting of the body, the (surface) vital (related to life-energy and emotions, desires, passions, etc.), ...
... Vaughan 232 Veda 3,61 Vedantic influence in poetry 197 Vidya 302 Vijnana 247 Virat 99 Virgil 57,186,205,258 Vishnu's Garuda 307 Vision, power of poet 162 vital 189 plane 209 vyakta 302 Vyasa 60,66,182,205,213 W Wordsworth 52,197,266,367 World Religion 272 Y Yeats, W.B. 30,33,34,125,197,367 yoga aesthetic 200 ... dimensions of 182 Night and Dawn 94,302 Nirodbaran 204,266,279,287,321, 330,352,357 Nirvana 51,265 Nolini 277,298,331,351,352 O Oneness 3 One Self 235 overhead planes 51,58,317,338 rhythm in mystical poets 33 writing 103,215 Overmind 51 inspiration 200 Intuition 323 P pain 75,82 parame vyoman 271 Phillips, Stephen... pain 75 fourfold scheme of experience from Mandukya Upanishad 99 fullness of the spiritual state 227 glimpses of Supernature 128 Goddess of Inspiration 345 hierarchy of planes 110,209 higher harmonies of consciousness 67 human aspirant's progress 312 in-drawn consciousness 28 inmost soul of man 115 inner strength 66 insufficiency of reason 67 ...
... mind, vital and physical from each other without the need of supermind" [ p. 305 ]. But you should have seen that by "supramental planes" I did not mean supermind, but any of the spiritual planes above the mind. Is there no need of the higher spiritual planes for separating the mind, vital and physical from one another? Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from... the supramental planes for that" [ p. 303 ], I 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... are all spiritual 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 ...
... various means with the denizens of another plane of existence. For there is a continuous scale of the planes of consciousness, beginning with the psychical and other belts attached to and dependent on the earth plane and proceeding through the true independent vital and psychical worlds to the worlds of the gods and the highest supramental and spiritual planes of existence. And these are in fact always... and envelops the physical and is sensitive to impacts of another kind, to the play of the vital forces around us and coming in on us from the universe or from particular persons or group lives or from things or else from the vital planes and worlds which are behind the material universe. These impacts we feel even now in their result and in certain touches and affectations, but not at all or very little... n of the vital energy working in us with the same energy working in others. We are aware of their life as of our own or, at the least, of the touch and pressure and communicated movements of our life being on them and theirs upon us. The vital sense in us becomes powerful, intense, capable of bearing all the small or large, minute or immense vibrations of this life world on all its planes physical ...
... may be said to mediate between the gross physical and the vital, the plane of the life-force. Once the Supermind in some form or other is there, it becomes a portion of earth-history and sooner or later is bound to emerge into the gross layer. In that world of rarefied physicality - hence the term 'atmosphere' - Sri Aurobindo, as the Mother has told us, has a house. People in the Ashram visit it sometimes... Aurobindo would go to the subtle-physical plane where, according to the Mother, the Master after he had passed away would remain until his work was done. The Mother used the words "earth's atmosphere" for the subtle-physical plane. You may remember that she employed the same words in speaking of the Supramental Manifestation on earth. The subtle-physical plane is the earth's inner counterpart which may... seer. The brain-cells will open to hold what the ancient rishis would have called the nectar of Knowledge. In such a condition Light will come as a revelatory Laughter. Indeed the Light of the higher planes is best considered the aura of Ananda and this ultimate nature of it is realised best by the mind's putting its own individuality helplessly in the care of the Unthinkable, the Unnamable. The English ...
... mental and the vital planes of the being which are relatively more conscious, the physical plane is largely below the level of awareness. Therefore we become better aware of the characteristics of physical consciousness Page 86 when these manifest through the "physical mind" (part of the mind interfused with physical consciousness) or through the "physical vital" (part of the vital which is... not merely as the gross body, but as something that has a distinct consciousness of its own which is different from that of mind and vital, though interfused with mental and vital consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "Each plane of our being - mental, vital, physical - has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking... The Subconscient Not mentioned so far is the plane of consciousness below the physical, called the subconscient. Sri Aurobindo describes this part of the being as follows: "That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, u ...
... on with occult experiments in spite of the illness. I used to concentrate on things and persons and circum stances and wanted to see if the power worked. It worked very well on the mental and vital planes. Then I broadened the field of activity. I could go on doing my work in various parts of France and America and other places. I could clearly see the faces of the persons worked upon. They could... diary on 19th April, which makes it impossible for work on the physical plane to be done as ardently desired. What has happened? The physical being, far from accomplishing the transformation, is only seized with dull impassivity, The constructing mind has recognised its mistake and surrendered to the Divine Will. The vital is both contained and contented. In the result, on the one hand there is... y, Sri Aurobindo made a guarded statement regarding his far aims and the limited achievements till then: I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane, and I am now able to put myself into men and change them, removing the darkness and bringing light, giving them a new heart and a new mind. This I can do with great swiftness and completeness with ...
... "multiverse" whose "depths" are the mental and vital planes and whose "surface" is the plane of matter. Page 302 Two considerations, however, must modify the picture of the world-system we have presented with science's help, and a third must supply some very significant motifs. The first arises from the double character of our own plane: this plane not only has the lowest power, matter, as... the plane on which we exist. Evolution, in a world not explicable by materialism, means the graded release of powers higher than matter from an original involution - a release due to at once the expressive urge of what is involved and the liberative pressure of the full planes of those powers beyond matter. Can we generalise that an evolutionary process holds on the free vital and mental planes also... pluralism cannot be avoided in scientific philosophy. A plane of life and a plane of mind must be declared to exist together with the material plane. At the same time, within a certain range the close connection between matter and non- matter which science has demonstrated, the amount of correlation it has found between the physical and the vital- mental, the developmental and evolutionary continuity ...
... Quite recently, just before the present conflict broke out, I went to a realm in the vital world which is right above the earth, like a platform (not a mountain top, but a spot where you get an overall view, like the bridge of a ship, for instance, where the captain stands; it was a place like that in the vital world, overlooking all terrestrial life). I went there—it was rather dark, very dark in... the vital-physical determinism of the earth (Life and Matter), in which the catastrophe seems inevitable; but there are higher realms whose intervention can change everything. But one must see and live in those higher regions. In X's case, his personal contact rises to the heights, but it's purely personal. While his overall vision (I am not saying universal: overall) stops at the vital-physical... ical plane, with a touch of Page 419 the mental, and THAT'S ALL. There's a contradiction between his personal possibility, which reaches very high (although on quite a tenuous peak), and his overall vision. When his attention turns outward, it is very limited; it may be terrestrial, but it's... it's crusted over, so to speak. So that's the explanation I gave. But the truth.... That's ...
... ancient Indian tradition. But that is not all. Apart from these principal supraphysical beings, there are numerous types of elemental beings swarming in the subtle-physical and the lower vital planes bordering the atmosphere of the earth itself. The list of their names is quite a long one: gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, undines, dryads, salamanders, brownies, elves, imps, and so many others. ... here. There are many more of them to speak about. For example, when men, particularly the evil-natured ones, die, their hungry and desire-driven vital beings may assume many forms and move about in the earth's atmosphere just beyond the gross physical plane, being made prisoners there because of their unsatisfied thirst. These are variously named as ghosts, ghouls, vampires, asebs, pretas, pisachas... power of occult vision, saw that the vital being of 'A' was still hovering in his deserted room and searching for his clothes. (2)After leaving his body 'B' came to the Mother's chamber Page 43 in his subtle body and sat there in quiet repose. But as soon as his mortal remains were placed on the pyre for the purpose of fiery cremation, his vital being shuddered and vanished. ...
... Inconscience. It was for a long time held by the human mind as a 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... consciousness in separative mind and life or only after the plunge into inconscience. This resolves itself into the question whether falsehood, error, wrong and evil exist originally in the mental and vital planes and are native to mind and life or are proper only to the material manifestation because inflicted on mind and life there by the obscurity arising from the Inconscience. It may be questioned too... there should not be invisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature that act upon his mind and his life force. And if Mind and Life, impersonal forces, form conscious beings or use persons to embody them in physical forms and in a physical world and can act upon Matter and through Matter, it is not impossible that on their own planes they should form conscious beings whose subtler substance ...
... on the yet uncon-quered lower (physical) vital material plane." 2 Again we hear from Sri Aurobindo on December 31, 1934: "It is a little difficult to say whether all have to come down totally into the physical. The Mother and I had to do it because the work could not be otherwise done. We had tried to do it from above through the mind and higher vital, but it could not be because the Sadhaks were... 1936 on the spiritual fight upon the physical plane: "As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. We have not... Page 140 facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes—but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane. Till it is done, the fight there continues and, though there may be and is a force of Yogic action and defence, there cannot be immunity. The Mother's difficulties are ...
... the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental Plane, unless one practised a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the... harmony and certitude. These, inadequately expressed, are some of the differences. I speak, of course, of these planes in themselves—when acting in the human consciousness they are necessarily much diminished in their working by having to depend on the human instrumentation of mind, vital and physical. Only when these are quieted, they get a fuller force and reveal more their character.² The descent... Power, Bliss,—these need to be expressed in our dynamic Nature. And for that, according to Sri Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind. It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of ...
... terrestrial creation and movement. A gnostic being will possess not only a truth-conscious control of the realised spirit's power over its physical world, but also the full power of the mental and vital planes and the use of their greater forces for the perfection of the physical existence. This greater knowledge and wider hold of all existence will enormously increase the power of instrumentation of... the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the... of the spirit, the subliminal partly in this way but mainly by a simultaneous influx of the largeness of the same force from above: a mental or a vital being descended into the subliminal parts and formed from its secret station there a mental or a vital personality on the surface. But before the supramental change can begin, the veil between the subliminal and the surface parts must have been already ...
... world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of... mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane—it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, therefore in connection with the Higher Consciousness and reflects something of it, though it is not altogether that—it is also in tune with the cosmic Truth. In the change of the vital nature, is the external surface vital to be... gathered and acquired in the life just preceding. This is said not of the ego, but of the psychic being after it has shed its vital and other sheaths and is resting in the psychic world. Before that it passes through vital and other worlds on its way to the psychic plane. I would like to know whether it is possible to come into direct touch with those who have departed from this world. Yes ...
... he studied Sanskrit and the Vedas. - Jul-Aug Experiences, in a friend* garden in Courseulles, Normandy, 'all the life of that region between the subtle physical and the most material vital' - two planes of her inner consciousness which had seemed unbridgeable. She had worked on this problem for more than six months. 1906 Jul 14-Oct 15 First visit to Tlemcen, Algeria, to study occultism... of the cosmic consciousness - the Divine as all beings and all that is. To the other two, 'that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind', he is 'already on his way'. 1910 At a talk by Alexandra David-Neel on Buddhism, sees the Buddha in a bluish light, standing beside Alexandra. They... Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita and some of the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna. 1912 May 7 Speaks of the work to be done: To become conscious of and unite with the Divine Presence; to realise the higher planes of consciousness and 'put the earth in connection with one or more of the fountains of universal force that are still sealed to it'; 'to speak again to the world the eternal word'; and 'collectively ...
... the vital world, the kind of being we were talking about earlier. Very probably it had worn one of the subtle sheaths belonging to your friend - and certainly it intended to do you harm. These beings enjoy having fun at our expense, to make fools of us. It was your attachment to your friend that helped it to approach you. "Gradually you will get to know more about these beings and the planes they... strength or energy. Haven't you noticed small children, animals too, who are restless and active all day without feeling the least tired? This is because they draw their energies effortlessly from the vital planes. Have you understood something?" "A little bit!" (Laughter) "I have also spoken to you about my fast in the Alipore Jail." "Please tell us again about it. We've forgotten the details... supra-physical planes, who may pass under the old names. It is rare for the being to return clothed in its own sheaths which it had cast off earlier. The phenomenon that occurs in automatic writing does not concern merely these subtle sheaths of human beings. In some cases its source or inspiration is directly from beings of various non-physical though usually not very elevated planes. Most often they ...
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