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The distinction between 'spiritual' and 'psychic' comes down to the experiential basis for the most part. As mental beings, we have a tendency to try to define, delineate, classify and analyze, creating fine differences and trying to then categorise based on these differences.
Sri Aurobindo ... Views: 28
We all generally understand the concept of force at the material level. Our entire world is driven by this force as the sun energizes the planet, as the wind, the water and the power of fire in the depths of the earth create our material environment. We understand the concept of force at the ... Views: 678
It is human nature to want to categorize and pigeon-hole what happens and make developments fit into definitions of our choosing. This same thing occurs when we look at openings of the spiritual nature and the development of or transformation of consciousness. Not only do we want to define and ... Views: 432
We try to judge situations and events from our human understanding. We do not generally see the chain of cause and effect that led to a specific circumstance, nor the impact of the result that we observe on future events. We see things from our own narrow egoistic viewpoint and judge them based ... Views: 117
From the time of our birth we are directed and focused on the external reality of the material world. We are trained to pay attention to that existence, to develop opportunities, and to find ways to survive and thrive. Along the way, we get successes and failures, meet with positive results and ... Views: 105
We are predisposed, through cultural habit, to see beauty in an outward form. Those who look a bit deeper warn us that ‘beauty is only skin-deep’, and that outward forms of beauty may hide inward blemishes. The essence of deception is to create the appearance of outward beauty while hiding ... Views: 527
When we recognise that the world is an actual manifestation of the Divine, we can begin to appreciate the Divine in all things that we experience, all things that we see, all that we hear, all that we feel or touch or smell. The Divine manifests through his power, Shakti, which takes various ... Views: 246
The earth is the locus of the evolutionary principle. It is said that when the gods themselves want to grow and evolve, they must consent to take birth on the earth. It is therefore important to understand that the beings who take birth on the earth-plane are, for the most part, taking part in ... Views: 367
Most individuals wind up having to abandon their childhood dreams and aspirations. They follow the career path set before them by their society, their family, their teachers and their peers. Yet, in most cases, they never fully lose their deeper aspiration which surfaced in their childhood ... Views: 348
The framework of the physical body and the limitations of the interface between the body, the life-force and the mental powers of the external being circumscribes our awareness and our ability to perceive the forces at work that shape our existence. We can experience, under various ... Views: 34
As long as we remain fixated on the evolution of forms, the Darwinian model of evolution, we fail to provide any deeper meaning to this process or, even, the significance of any individual being, since the evolution of forms deals with genus and species, not individuals. Even if we suppose the ... Views: 14
One of the most confusing issues for the spiritual seeker is the ‘care and feeding’ of the vital nature. We shift from one extreme to the other in our view of how to bring it under control, for it is virtually uniformly recognised that for spiritual development, the vital nature must be ... Views: 401
Rare are those individuals who can take up a practice and not see any result whatsoever, yet continue on with endless patience and persistence. We look at the example of Milarepa, the great yogi of Tibet who spent a number of years doing hard labor at the behest of his guru, Marpa, and who was ... Views: 325
A constant concern for spiritual aspirants is to distinguish the divine Will from their own ego-personality’s desires or ambitions. The vital nature has the uncanny ability to convince the mind that what it desires is actually something that can and should be justified, and once the mind adheres ... Views: 108
When we observe the standpoint we inhabit closely, we find that we tend to identify ourselves as a distinct ‘person’ or ‘personality’ with specific traits, habits, relationships and viewpoints about ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’. This is the ego-personality and we tend to try to associate ... Views: 373
The spiritual seeker invariably hears, repeated constantly, the requirement to overcome the ego and find his true Self. The Self is one with the Divine and shares the divine consciousness, knowledge and impetus to action. The ego, which anchors the sense of a separate and distinct individuality, ... Views: 404
We tend to have a more or less hidden bias in favor of our own view or position in various matters, which carries out at each level of the ego-standpoint, individual, family, community, religion, country, etc. as it expands its scope. We tend to see things from our unique viewpoint and not take ... Views: 375
If we review our lives through the lens of ‘history’, that is, looking back over the events of our lives from where we are today, we can see that things we thought, at the time, were positive things were in some cases, highly detrimental to us over time; and similarly, things we found ... Views: 300
The process of nature, the development of the physical form, the vital force and its expression, the advent of mind and development of its powers, and the formation of the ego-consciousness and the self-awareness that comes with that, is a long, slow, steady progression that can takes tens of ... Views: 1
Each new evolutionary stage of consciousness takes place within the framework of the previously evolved stages and over a course of time as adaptation of that framework must occur to ‘prepare the ground’ for the new action of consciousness. For example, physical matter, rock, ocean, volcanic ... Views: 632
The poet, John Keats, in his famous poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, concluded with “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
We receive intimations of the soul and the spiritual reality through our minds, our emotions, our feelings and our physical ... Views: 1
When they were asked how they develop their most inspired concepts or inventions, noted personalities such as Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla made it clear that it is not through some laborious process of thought, but through an inspiration, a vision, a process of understanding that is outside ... Views: 581
The advent of digitalization has taken the world by storm through its remarkable and robust impact on industries and its systems. One has to agree, today, there is barely any corner left on the planet that has not been brushed by the flaming wings of technology. From construction, communication, ... Views: 755
Under the influence of the gnostic consciousness, the entire framework of the mental organisation of life, which we accept as assumed and given, would necessarily be modified. The very basis of viewing and understanding things would have to shift from one of division and separation to one of ... Views: 381
Under the influence of the gnostic consciousness, the entire framework of the mental organisation of life, which we accept as assumed and given, would necessarily be modified. The very basis of viewing and understanding things would have to shift from one of division and separation to one of ... Views: 333
Under the influence of the gnostic consciousness, the entire framework of the mental organisation of life, which we accept as assumed and given, would necessarily be modified. The very basis of viewing and understanding things would have to shift from one of division and separation to one of ... Views: 320
The energy body - chakras and aura
Do you know the difference between chakras and aura? It is often a source of confusion; read on to find out more…
Aura
We all have a luminous glowing energy, like a halo we see traditionally encircling the head of a pure character, such as an angel. This ... Views: 2636
The ego-personality believes it ‘creates’ ideas, manufactures feelings, etc. It then takes pride in the accomplishment, and this becomes a source of enhancing the ego through a sense of vanity. Many systems in the world are set up to reward the creator or inventor or author, with the idea that ... Views: 585
Humanity has relied on social action, technology, and education as pillars of advancement and the development of humanity. Yet if we examine things closely we find that we are still driven primarily by the forces of ego and desire, even when they cloak themselves in a veneer of altruism or ... Views: 462
We tend to judge circumstances and events based on how they impacted our external personality, the individual ego. We call things ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on our perception of whether they satisfy our needs, wants and desires or not. What we fail to recognise, more often than not, is that the ... Views: 4
While there is a real difference between prayer, as an external action and aspiration as an inner status of being, there is also connection between the two which can be extremely potent in terms of bringing forth the aspiration into the external world and making it a living and real thing. When ... Views: 259
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks how one can identify a realised soul. His question indicates there should be some outward sign that can be observed. Sri Krishna, however, demurs and indicates it is not by any specific outward action or formation that such a soul can be recognised. Everything ... Views: 179
By putting emphasis on ‘headline’ spiritual experiences and attempting to hold onto them or repeat them, the seeker is potentially losing sight of the larger process that is taking place to effect the transformation of the nature. All progress represents what may be called a ‘vertical ascent’ to ... Views: 425
The aspiration and goal of seekers from time immemorial is the Eternal, which represents a status outside of the normal functioning of body-life-mind, that is, outside our normal experience. Through achievement of samadhi, the consciousness enters into the experience of pure existence, ... Views: 666
Transformation of the vital nature in man is a key and essential part of the transformation that must come with the evolution of the next stage of consciousness. Past yogic paths did not focus to any great degree, if at all, on transformation of the external being and life in the world; rather, ... Views: 487
Plato in the famous dialogues recounting the teaching of his mentor, Socrates, recounts the understanding that Socrates held that education was simply a recognition by the individual of what he already knows. The process of education was one of drawing out, removing the obstacles to the ... Views: 258
The human lifetime is extremely short in the context of Nature’s evolutionary development. This leads us to several possible explanations or conclusions. We can posit that life is just random chance and there is no real significance or meaning to our lives, or the fact that we have developed ... Views: 314
As with all things that are considered for the first time, new concepts appear difficult to grasp. Cognitive scientists have shown through studies they have done, that the brain builds ‘grooves’ through which thoughts flow smoothly. These ‘grooves’ develop over time through repeated attempts. ... Views: 13
From the point of view of animals, we may assume, the actions, and the powers that drive them, of human beings are some kind of ‘occult powers’ about which the animals know nothing. These actions may seem miraculous but they are in reality expressions of the evolution of the mental stage of the ... Views: 249
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: 43
Everywhere we look in Nature, we see a similar process. A seed sprouts and a tiny seedling struggles to grow and survive, eventually it grows, matures and comes into its adult strength. The animal kingdom has a similar reality. The newborn animal has to develop its body, its vital strength, ... Views: 20
When we reflect on the evolution of consciousness, it becomes obvious to us that nothing can evolve out of Matter that is not already involved in some way. We plant an acorn, and an oak tree grows. Someone unfamiliar with the science would treat this as a magical event. We put one form of ... Views: 516
The gradations of consciousness beyond the human level represent levels of awareness and power that far exceed anything that we can appreciate from the purely human mental level. In the Taittiriya Upanishad, there is a “calculus” of gradations of bliss. “Let there be a young man, excellent and ... Views: 381
Sri Aurobindo describes the long, slow process of development of the universal manifestation. There is an evolution of consciousness which takes place over time spanning many millennia, and which does not involve the conscious participation of the individual. At a certain point in time, when the ... Views: 412
As we are basically fixated on the physical world within which we reside, we tend to look at the development of forms and the relationship of form to function on the physical level. Scientists such as Darwin studied the evolution of species. Mendel looked at the genetic factors that have later ... Views: 363
People tend to assume that great beings such as Buddha or Christ are exempt from the issues that the “rest of us” have to face in the world, and in the practice of spiritual sadhana. They simply assume that these great souls somehow fly above the ground-level obstacles that plague us. In fact, ... Views: 563
We make resolutions to change certain behaviours. Our minds are made up. We are certain that we can make the needed change. Many people make ‘new year’s resolutions’ to change something, perhaps to lose weight, to discontinue some habit, to avoid expressing anger, or some other intention we ... Views: 163
Most people have had the experience. They decide to try a new diet or exercise regimen. They stick with it a few days or weeks and then it seems to get overlooked, forgotten or abandoned. Other things got in the way, or else, the impulses caused them to weaken their resolve. How many times ... Views: 287
Where do life and mind come from in the material world? How does inanimate Matter become the basis out of which life evolves? Western science, at a loss as to this process, simply has speculated that given enough time, the chemical/electrical interaction of material forces will spawn life and ... Views: 694
Thank you for your interest in this critical issue for the future survival of our entire human race.
There is a positive way forward for humanity as we face the intense challenges before us. When we are under intense pressure we have the impetus to make needed changes. That is the lesson of ... Views: 392