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We identify ourselves with the constructed ego-personality that we have assumed. We have certain ideas, feelings, relationships, preferences, desires, ambitions, fears and motivations of various sorts. We treat this ego-personality as a unified whole and do not usually investigate the varying ... Views: 10
Isaac Newton identified various forces that operate in the physical external world around us. His work was followed up by numerous others and codified into laws of physical substance. The force of gravity is one such force that impacts the movement and attraction of physical objects. Other ... Views: 332
We tend to live our lives in the belief that we are separate and isolated from one another. We struggle to survive and thrive in a world where every other being is competing with us for their own survival and self-aggrandisement. In such a world, we suffer from self-doubt, anxiety, fear, and ... Views: 301
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: 35
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: 38
There have been many tyrannical rulers throughout history. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, had killed many people during the Great Terror, coolly dispatching with his political opponents and other Russians, and also as a consequence of his economic policies, caused the famine in the ... Views: 1389
Ujjain is all set to host Kumbh festival again. Ujjain becomes the favorite destination of devotees and saints at the time of Khumb. Thousands of devotees come here to take bath in the auspicious Kshipra River. It is believed that it is one of the river in which drop of mortality were fallen at ... Views: 871
We spend little time or thought on the place we occupy in the universal creation. The larger forces at work, the consciousness that creates, builds, shapes and directs this massive and complex undertaking remain hidden from us. The power we can consciously receive and utilize is a minute amount ... Views: 316
For the vast majority of individuals, the idea of confronting the vast consciousness without any discernable or identifiable form is overwhelming. Anything that is undefined or unlimited breeds discomfort and fear in our being. in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is confronted with a vision of the ... Views: 478
The drive in the human individual to find out who he is, what he is here for, and how he can grow and become what he is intended to be in the creation sets him apart from the animal. Even in the midst of an almost complete immersion in the external life and its lures, somewhere deep inside, the ... Views: 169
It is a malady of modern society that we believe we must stay constantly busy, We do not understand nor appreciate the value of quiet time for contemplation and stepping outside of the whirl of day to day activities to unite our awareness with that of the consciousness which manifests in the ... Views: 548
Imagination is a window to the future. People who are stuck in their past, or the present, tend to close themselves off from development. They insist that things have always been done a certain way, and that is how they are going to be done. Change is anathema to them. They have little, if any, ... Views: 344
We many times fail to recognise the extent of the impact that the mind, and the vital nature, have on the body, its health and its capacities for growth, resilience and development. The mind-body connection is starting to come into focus, however. When the mind sends repeated ‘suggestions’ to ... Views: 281
In the advance and technological world, where everyone is busy in their life and no one care about the rights of others, even they can’t tolerate the presence of others in their work. The jealousy factor increases day by day and everyone wants to lead the others. This abhorrence then takings the ... Views: 1206
Well, the connect of Diwali celebrations and sweets is extremely close. Most of India cannot think of a Diwali without sweets or mithais. Though the kind of celebration may differ but sweet is an integral part of Diwali celebrations every year. This year due to the pandemic though new ... Views: 731
The Bhagavad Gita declares “yoga is skill in works”. For work to be a practice of yoga, there must be first the inward orientation that can make it into a consecrated and focused effort, and outwardly this translates into a skillful organization of the work and a harmonious development, keeping ... Views: 797
There are several advantages afforded the self-aware individual. With respect to their importance and value to empowering your teammates/clients, I will highlight some of those advantages in this article.
To begin with, your team will benefit from becoming self-aware by realizing that they ... Views: 1573
When we look around at the world today, as well as at the thoughts, feelings and moods of people, both ourselves, and others, we find that Sri Aurobindo has perfectly described the situation. He defines this as the underlying Inconscient ‘bed-rock’ of being. The basic material resistance that is ... Views: 538
The Bhagavad Gita provides an extensive review of the operation of the three Gunas, the qualities of Nature, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. These qualities are always interacting and changing based on that interaction. There is no consistency or constancy in how an individual responds so long as he is ... Views: 360
The vital nature wants to continue its old ways and achieve fulfillment of its desires. It is also very effective at finding ways to convince the mind to carry out its impulses and desires. When an individual takes up the spiritual path, the vital being does not get discouraged, it simply tries ... Views: 152
Many studies have been done, and real-life examples have shown the power of a body of people focused on a particular feeling, thought or action. Mob psychology shows that individuals who otherwise might be seen as quiet and peaceful can be riled up into paroxysms of anger when part of an angry ... Views: 534
Forces that operate in the world are not necessarily ‘hostile’ even if their effect on any particular individual appears to be extremely negative. These forces operate on a large scale to carry out their own role and fulfillment, without specific regard to who may be impacted. When an earthquake ... Views: 133
As each individual tries to understand his life and purpose, he begins a process of observation, review, and experimentation. At this stage, many seekers have little clue about the path that is best suited for them, and they may try out different approaches. Once a path has been identified, they ... Views: 451
We remain so fixated on the external surface being, that we fail to recognise the divinity within us. Just as we go through our daily lives in the light of the day and do not attend to our world’s connection to the vast galaxies and universe of which our world is a part, so also we do not ... Views: 360
One of the limitations of Mind embedded in a physical body is that it tends to fixate on what it can experience ‘here and now’. It has a hard time correlating past, present and future and seeing and understanding trends, directions, trajectories and momentum, other than in specific areas such as ... Views: 297
We live in a time of incredible feats of technological progress. Digital technologies, quantum computing, wireless transmission of energy, solar power, airplane flights, space flight, landing on the moon, instant communications of audio and video content world-wide are things we tend to take for ... Views: 290
Authoritarian states throughout history have understood, intuitively, the power of collective vibration and suggestion. Nazi Germany created a propaganda ministry that had as its goal continuously repeating certain key phrases, to raise up specific emotions and sentiments, and then to enforce ... Views: 300
In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo devotes a chapter to the ‘sevenfold ignorance’. While we are fixated on our external mind, life and body and the life we lead in the external world, we remain ignorant of the forces at work, behind the scenes, to create what we call our being and personality, ... Views: 466
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to go through various situations without a problem while others go through similar situations and have to undergo tremendous challenges and suffering? If someone escapes a harrowing incident once, we tend to call it “luck”. But if it happens repeatedly ... Views: 239
The paradigm that has ruled Western psychology has focused on treating the individual as a discrete entity, separate and apart from everyone else, and independent of his environment. Pressure may be exerted by societal influences, economic influences or family relationships and expectations, but ... Views: 650
The action of the psychic being is subtle, more of an influence than a direct action in the lives of most people who are focused on fulfilling the needs and objectives set by their body-life-mind complex of their external being. The influence can be experienced and felt in the way the external ... Views: 503
If we observe how we tend to respond to provocations from outside, things, events or people who impact our lives, either mentally, emotionally, vitally or physically, we see that the first tendency is to internalize the provocation with a pattern of vibration at one or another level of our ... Views: 495
It is common for an individual to take some kind of illumination of the mind, or some strong positive emotion in the heart, for instance, as a sign of their contact with the soul. Yet in many, if not most, cases the contact is with a mental or vital movement tinged with the influence of the ... Views: 367
When we can once appreciate and accept the fact that forces, unseen by us, unperceived by our senses, can, and do, act upon us, pushing us to act in certain ways, pressing on us to move in certain directions, it is but a small step to recognize that there are beings who inhabit these unseen and ... Views: 310
We can understand the role of genetic predispositions in the formation of the physical body. The transmission of physical characteristics from generation to generation, the blending of dominant and recessive genetic traits and the atavistic background that led to the status of the genetic ... Views: 349
We can learn much from the quite commonly related phenomenon called the ‘out of body’ experience. Many people have had such an experience where they resided in their awareness outside the body, in some cases from above the body and from that vantage point could observe the body as different and ... Views: 131
When the astronauts left the planet and were able to look back at Earth from outside, it radically changed their viewpoint. It represented a visceral shock that forced them to see things in an entirely new way from a new perspective.
Analogously, when the shift of standpoint occurs for the ... Views: 374
For those who live their lives on the surface, focused on fulfillment of their external lives, desires and their ego-personality, there is generally no direct knowledge of the existence of the soul. They may accept the idea of a soul without a clear sense of what that implies or means. Or they ... Views: 404
There are many times when people suddenly get a true ‘sense’ or a ‘feeling’ about something that is not directly perceptible to their senses. Sometimes one will feel that someone is watching or following, although the person cannot be seen or heard. There is some inner sense, with a wider and ... Views: 420
We tend to work from the outer to the inner consciousness. We treat the external world as more real and dominant to determine our physical body, our vital nature and our mental development. There is of course a certain amount of truth to this view, inasmuch as the outer and the inner are two ... Views: 150
The highest ideals of humanity can be looked at from the point of view of human capability or from the view of a divine purpose to the manifestation. The difference in viewpoint leads to different focus and result. From the human viewpoint, we would look at how to improve, perfect and optimize ... Views: 772
Our normal human view of things is based in the framing of the mental process which relies on distinguishing differences between one thing and another, between one being and another, between one event and another. This “fragmentation” leads us to focus primarily on the separation we have rather ... Views: 323
Having now referred to the Subliminal Self in our discussion of the creation of dreams, it is necessary to describe this part of our being more thoroughly, and Sri Aurobindo takes up the question. He points out that the subliminal self is not a creation out of the inconscience, but actually it ... Views: 443
It is not through the power of mind that one achieves knowledge of the truth of existence. The frame within which the mind operates, and the methodology that it utilizes, simply cannot appreciate, nor understand, those aspects of existence which fall outside of its direct scope or which exceed ... Views: 689
Mental health in the West is generally understood to be a ‘negative’ state, the absence of various forms of disruptions that affect whether and to what extent an individual can conform or fit into the society and meet its expectations. The integral yoga views mental health in an entirely ... Views: 569
The mental intellect receives impulses through the senses, organises them, and trues to determine what is true based on that. It then builds hypotheses, theories and ideation around its assortment of perceptions, memory, and experience based on various principles of symbolic logic that it has ... Views: 645
Until an individual takes up the issue of inner growth and development, whether this is for spiritual progress, mental development, emotional growth, vital discipline or some kind of physical control, he tends to take very little notice of any inner conflict or struggle. He just acts ‘naturally’ ... Views: 427
We tend to imagine that somehow the mind, the vital energy and the physical body we identify through our ego-complex as ourselves, is separate from those of everyone else. In reality, however, the physical, vital and mental substance is universal in nature and the portion we try to wall off ... Views: 389
The body has its own consciousness and much of its operation takes place without active mental intervention. However, there is also a serious interaction that takes place so that the mental power can influence, guide, train, direct and otherwise gain at least some control over certain aspects of ... Views: 422
We see many examples through time of individuals who began a spiritual quest with good intention and who later came to grief as they got caught up in the snares of what Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘intermediate zone’. When we leave behind the safety and security of the external consciousness and its ... Views: 454