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We see the world from the individual standpoint and place ourselves at the center of it. We believe we originate the thoughts, feelings, emotions and responses we give. This, however, is very much the illusion of the ego-sense.
Consider that for the longest time, human beings believed that ... Views: 48
Freud made a breakthrough for the development of Western psychology that finally recognised that the human being responds to situations and circumstances, not solely on the superficial, transactional level, but also from suppressed, subliminal and subconscient activities that actually have a ... Views: 47
The chakras are subtle energy centers, not physical centers in the body, although they generally correspond to various physical capacities ranged along the external body. They essentially act as vibrational ‘receptors’ and transmitters of energies. When they are closed or very much shut down, ... Views: 47
Most people, when asked, attribute consciousness to the mind, and center it in the brain. But consciousness does not stop there and, indeed, there are various types of consciousness associated with different aspects of the being. There is a mental consciousness, an emotional consciousness, a ... Views: 47
Students today face many academic challenges. Coursework deadlines, complex topics, and high expectations from teachers can make studies stressful. Many students struggle to manage everything at the same time. To handle this pressure, learners now rely on an online coursework helper for guidance ... Views: 45
Where does the consciousness go when we are deep asleep? Numerous reports tell us that it can go out to other planes or realms, or down into subconscious levels, or up into superconscious levels. When we awaken from sleep, we generally are unable to describe what we did during sleep or where we ... Views: 44
What happens when we sleep? Where does the consciousness go? For most people, sleep is a blank state. We have little awareness of what goes on during sleep, except for times when we are having a dream in a state near enough to the waking state that we actually remember details from the dream. We ... Views: 41
In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna explains to Arjuna: “Verily this Yoga is not for him who eats too much or sleeps too much, even as it is not for him who gives up sleep and food, O Arjuna.” (Bhagavad Gita and Its Message, tr. by Sri Aurobindo, Ch. 6, V. 16) It is interesting to note that one of ... Views: 40
Most people respond to life as it comes to them and react according to the energy that they are able to receive and process in some form or another. They remain immersed in the external personality. They become the fear, the anger, the hunger, the thirst, the craving, the pleasure, the pain, the ... Views: 40
The physical consciousness is the primary seat of the Guna of Tamas in the being, in general, and thus, when the waking consciousness of the mental and vital levels is in abeyance during sleep, there is a natural tendency for the tamasic energy to come forward for a time. One of the first ... Views: 39
Symbolic dreams are common and in many cases, similar thematic elements show up for most people. These dreams attempt to raise up from the subconscious levels some underlying need, concern, fear, or persistent issue that remains unresolved in the external life. Sigmund Freud, in his work on The ... Views: 39
Once we break out of the limitations set by Western psychologists, such as Freud, in our attempt to understand the nature of dreams, we can explore the much wider and more nuanced potential causes, triggers, images and significances of dreams.
We find it hard to appreciate that there are ... Views: 39
Giving the body the rest and recuperative time it needs, the spiritual aspirant still has to deal with the effects of what is normally a descent into a more tamasic status that can have its impacts on the waking consciousness. If we wake up tired, groggy or cloudy, we have not only not fully ... Views: 39
When the consciousness moves inward, away from the awareness of the external reality, it is frequently interpreted as ‘sleep’ by those who experience it for the first time. The reason they believe it is sleep is due to a lack of communication between that inward state of consciousness and the ... Views: 38
Many paths of spiritual practice disregard the needs of the physical body as being irrelevant, distracting, or obstructive to their spiritual development. This has not always been the case. The ancient Greek culture focused on a ‘sound mind in a sound body’ as an ideal. The ancient Vedic ... Views: 37
Western psychology has taken a very narrow, and therefore quite inadequate, view of the nature of dreams. There are several primary ways dreams are analyzed in the West. The first is the purely mechanical structuring of dreams as a chaotic processing of ‘undigested’ residues of the observations, ... Views: 37
Most people are not aware of the vital envelope, sometimes called the ‘aura’, that surrounds their physical body. Those who experience this vital envelope are sensitive on the vital plane. They are frequently ridiculed for speaking about the ‘aura’ which they can feel or even observe in ... Views: 37
If we examine how illness comes upon us, and what effects it has, we can identify multiple different contributing factors that can lead to the physical imbalances that we call illness. Many of the symptoms of illness are the result of the physical body actually resisting the effect of the ... Views: 36
It is a natural human tendency, and it carries over to those who take up spiritual practice. This tendency sees most things through the mental lens and tries to categorize them as black and white, positive and negative, etc., essentially creating a mental framework of exclusion that looks to ... Views: 34
In various places, Sri Aurobindo has noted that yoga is applied psychology. The practitioner of yoga is confronted by all of the instincts, habits, trained responses and reactions of human nature and is asked to address and change these in order to uplift the human being to the next stage of the ... Views: 33
When an individual takes up a spiritual path, he has to work through the seemingly fine lines of distinction that the various prescriptions and directions for progress along the path appear to carry. For example, ‘equality’ and ‘equanimity’ are counseled as essential characteristics for ... Views: 33
The spiritual aspirant practicing the integral yoga devotes his efforts to coming into contact with the Divine Force, being receptive to its influence and action, and bringing it down to transform the action of the mind, life and body. Once this force is completely assimilated into the physical ... Views: 33
A question recently arose about how to become aware of the subtle vital envelope that surrounds the physical body and acts to protect it. One can practice quieting the mind, the emotions, the vital energies and the body and just feeling the sensation of the wider body until it becomes vivid and ... Views: 32
In his poem Savitri, Sri Aurobindo provides imagery to describe the nature and role of the soul, and the significance of the psychic being hidden deep within, carrying our human experience and human life to its eventual fulfillment.
Sri Aurobindo writes: "But since she knows the toil of mind ... Views: 30
What if the life we lead is not our true purpose on earth? What if there is more to our existence than the daily round that we carry out, day after day, year after year, changing only the external trappings and specific activities, but falling into a similar groove regardless? How many of us ... Views: 29
There is considerable confusion about the nature of the soul. A sizable portion of humanity denies the existence of the soul, while another segment of humanity reduces its ‘value’ below that of material possessions and outward satisfactions. The ego-personality, bound up in the actions and ... Views: 29
The soul, the psychic being, is a portion of the Divine that resides deep within. For most people, who are living in the surface consciousness primarily, the existence of the soul is a question mark, if they think about it at all. As we grow and face life’s challenges, however, we may begin to ... Views: 29
Sri Aurobindo’s use of the terms ‘soul’ and ‘psychic’ started out with the common usage of the time, but as his work developed, he determined it was best to create a more precise terminology than was commonly in use. In order to appreciate the nuances involved and follow along with the central ... Views: 29
The English language leaves a lot of room for confusion, simply because terminology tends to be imprecise, inexact, or vague. The issue is made even more difficult because, particularly in the West, there is very little understanding of the vast field of consciousness, the various planes and ... Views: 27
How does one distinguish between psychic experience, as defined by Sri Aurobindo, as soul experiences, from the vast array of experiences that occur on the mental or vital planes that have been called ‘psychic’ phenomena? Once one has the clue about the different parts of the being and their ... Views: 26
In the Kena Upanishad, the powers of the physical plane, the vital plane and the mental plane all believe they are predominant and can wield their power to achieve whatever they want. These powers are embodied in the form of Agni on the physical plane, Vayu on the vital plane and Indra on the ... Views: 26
We tend to look at things through the standpoint of the external physical being, the body, life and mind with which we identify. From this standpoint we treat the soul as something that we need to search for, if we even acknowledge the existence of the soul, and as something secondary to and ... Views: 26
As with many words in the English language, the word soul has various nuanced meanings as Sri Aurobindo explains. English as a very fluid language can at times be very imprecise in this way. This, however, is just one of the issues Sri Aurobindo takes up here in the citation below.
One very ... Views: 24
The lack of experience and recognition of the action of the soul makes it difficult for most people to understand the reality of the soul. For this reason, people tend to confuse the true soul with the vital soul of desire, which Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘desire-soul’. This is an expression of ... Views: 22
There is considerable confusion about the concept of rebirth and the development and growth of the psychic being across multiple lifetimes. Popular imagination has it that the same individual personality is reborn, and that under certain circumstances, past lives can be identified and recalled. ... Views: 22
We frequently mistake the development of the external form as representing the state of the soul. In human beings, this often takes the form of assigning worth or status based on education, race, social position within the societal hierarchy, wealth or positions of power. None of these things, ... Views: 21
Humanity has grappled with finding a meaning and purpose to life since time immemorial. We ask ourselves, why have we been born? Is there a meaning to life? What are we here to do? Is life simply about acquiring wealth, status, power and creating offspring? Is there anything else that acts as ... Views: 20
A seed contains the entire genetic code from which the external form, energetic capacity and mental abilities of a living being develop. It can be seen as the most concentrated form of that being, a form that nevertheless has the capacity, through time, of manifesting a physical form, a vital ... Views: 20
The Taittiriya Upanishad describes the process of departure of the soul from an embodiment in the world: “The Spirit who is here in a man and the Spirit who is there in the Sun, it is one Spirit and there is no other. He who knoweth this, when he hath gone away from this world, passeth to this ... Views: 19
People get intimations, intuitions, ‘gut instincts’, or simply a feeling about something, maybe a form of uneasiness, or a sense of expectation, or some pressure, or new thought process or emotional reaction. Sometimes these things occur during the waking state, but often they come as elements ... Views: 19
The Knowledge plane, which Sri Aurobindo terms the “supramental consciousness” is the level where the unity of the Supreme consciousness is ‘refracted’ to create the apparent multiplicity of the manifested universe. This level holds both the Oneness and the Multiplicity with a consciousness that ... Views: 19
The Supreme Consciousness refracts itself into sub-spheres of awareness depending on the level of the creation that needs that awareness. Thus, the unified Supreme Consciousness, known as Sat-Chit-Ananda, creates apparent separate forms at the Knowledge level, the supramental consciousness, ... Views: 19
When we take the time to observe our own internal process, we can very quickly become aware of a part of the being that is able to observe and monitor thoughts and impulses that run through the mental space. Many paths of awareness, such as Raja Yoga, and mindfulness training, teach us how to ... Views: 18
When we gaze into space at night, we see stars unimaginably distant from us. We also can experience. if we suspend our thinking mind and vital desire-soul and physical demands temporarily, a sense of the timeless, the immutable, unchanging Reality that exceeds our ability to embrace and ... Views: 17
Spiritual seekers have differing affinities and capacities from which they begin their conscious spiritual focus. Some of them take up the seeking for the Self, the Jivatman, with liberation from the illusion of the external world and its temptations as a primary objective. They practice Jnana ... Views: 17
In order to carry out the complex creation, the Supreme Divine Consciousness has ‘distributed’ the awareness through a series of steps. The first step is the development of the Jivatman, the Divine Presence that does not involve itself directly in the individual beings of the manifestation, but ... Views: 17
Evolution of forms is the machinery for the manifestation of the universe. Evolution of consciousness provides the significance and inner direction. Similarly, we can look at the lower Nature, apra prakriti, as the mechanism and para prakriti, the higher Nature as the cause and conscious creator ... Views: 16
The Bhagavad Gita describes the lower nature and the higher nature. The lower nature is the external manifestation of forms, matter, life-energy, mind, that together constitute the creation and all the multiplicity of formations that together represent the external world. This can be seen as a ... Views: 16
A seed, in its essence, contains all the potentiality that eventually turns into a full grown tree. It is useful to reflect on this when we look at the position of the soul in relation to the psychic being. The soul is like that seed to the extent that it has all the potential of the Divine ... Views: 16
There is a type of cell in the body which is called a ‘stem cell’. The stem cell does not have a direct operational function; rather it is undifferentiated and capable of being activated to become any type of functional cell for any part of the body. Without pushing the example too far, the soul ... Views: 16