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- The True Condition of Progress in the Spiritual Path - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Krishna taught Arjuna the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita on a battlefield. The setting is an important aspect of the teaching itself. The inner growth is not dependent on outer events or circumstances. Conditions will always be ‘imperfect’ if not absolutely terrible! Sri Aurobindo and the ...
Views: 450 - The True Condition of Spiritual Progress - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe frequently hear from people who say that they cannot focus on their spiritual practice as they don’t have a quiet space in which to meditate, or they live in a crowded, noisy city, or they are overwhelmed with all their duties relating to education, career, family, etc. They focus their ...
Views: 103 - The True Foundation of the Yoga - by Submitted on Nov 22, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe are generally so tied to our external ego-personality that we identify with it as what we consider to be our ‘self’. We then refer to this body-life-mind complex as our reality and we say that we ‘have a soul’. The reality is far different. The reality is that the soul, the psychic being, ...
Views: 79 - The True Nature of Rest - by Submitted on May 10, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor most people, rest is a state of lowered consciousness in which we recuperate from the fatigue generated through our various activities. If we reflect on how we respond to fatigue, we find that we have different modes depending on whether it is mental fatigue, vital exhaustion or physical ...
Views: 576 - The True Soul and the Desire Soul - by Submitted on Sep 22, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe confusion about the soul is pervasive at virtually every level of our being. Sri Aurobindo identifies what he calls the ‘desire soul’ which is a formation of the vital being, living on the surface of the consciousness and seeking gratification of desires for the external being. The amalgam ...
Views: 399 - The Truth About Lie - by Submitted on Feb 14, 2017 from Mitra ShahidiA lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. A single lie discovered is enough to create doubt in every truth expressed. If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future. We all know how difficult it ...
Views: 1629 - The Truth About Religion Today - by Submitted on Aug 24, 2014 from Albert WagnerWhat do you think? You might be pro-religion or anti-religion, but either way you might notice a decline in religious values in America today. This is a spiritual blog and the changes might impact you in some way. This post looks at the decline of religious influence in contemporary ...
Views: 1314 - The Truth About Your Divine Purpose - by Submitted on May 14, 2019 from Scott & Stephen PetulloSpiritual notions abound today regarding finding your calling, and the typical message can be summed up like this: Follow your heart to align yourself with and find your divine purpose, and you’ll find happiness and all the abundance you want, while avoiding life's challenges. We love ...
Views: 1157 - The Two Beings of Man: the External Self and the Inner Self - by Submitted on Aug 29, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs long as we focus our attention on the surface perceptions, events and actions, we respond to the vibrations associated with those things. We may focus on our physical needs, our vital desires, our mental interests, our emotional states, or on our aesthetic and artistic sensibilities, or on ...
Views: 360 - The Two Most Important Actions for Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Sep 18, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe integral Yoga does not depend, as many yogic paths do, on physical asanas or breathing techniques, nor on chanting of mantras, nor singing and dancing in ecstatic states of trance, nor deep philosophical inquiry or strict mental techniques. Nor does it depend on austerity or any kind of ...
Views: 520 - The Two Most Powerful Levers to Enter Into Contact with the Divine in One’s Psychic Being - by Submitted on May 04, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen an individual begins to recognise the existence of his soul, and seeks for a way to come into contact with it, and begin to thereby understand the purpose and significance of his life in the larger creation, the first question that comes to mind is ‘how do I do that?’ This leads to a ...
Views: 413 - The Two Most Powerful Levers to Enter into Contact with the Divine in One’s Psychic Being - by Submitted on Jan 26, 2024 from santosh krinskyEnthusiasm and gratitude. They represent the powers of aspiration and receptivity in the being, along with the impulse to surrender of the ego and widen to embrace the Divine. For those interested in the transformation of life in the world, it is not sufficient to simply have a direct connection ...
Views: 306 - The Two Uses of the Mind and Its True Role in the Manifestation - by Submitted on Aug 02, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe primary functionality of the mind is to organize and classify, breaking down and fragmenting the reality into component parts. We see this easily in the classification systems for flora and fauna, in our detailed review of the genetic structure of life, gene sequencing, and in our ability to ...
Views: 399 - The Ultimate Focus of Concentration - by Submitted on Oct 06, 2024 from santosh krinskyThe genius of the Rishis of ancient India was their ability to focus on the essential core of knowledge, will and existence. They reminded us that we can obtain many forms and types of knowledge, but each of these is but a fragment, an isolated fact or event, if we have not identified that ...
Views: 264 - The Ultimate Guide to Addiction Recovery 2019 - by Submitted on Mar 06, 2019 from Addiction AideWhat is Addiction? Addiction is a complicated disorder and chronic dysfunction, which changes the operating function of the brain and body, which can also create dangerous damage to families, relationships between couples, workplaces, schools, and communities. When a person is addicted to any ...
Views: 1031 - The Ultimate Importance and Value of a Human Birth - by Submitted on Nov 19, 2023 from santosh krinskyThere are tales in the Puranas that indicate that even the Gods, if they want to evolve and develop, must take birth on earth in a human incarnation. If we look broadly at the evolution of consciousness from the gross material, to the vital, to the vital-mental and eventually to the mental ...
Views: 383 - The Unconverted Vital Nature Must Not Be Permitted to Divert the Psychic and Spiritual Force to Its Own Limited Satisfactions - by Submitted on Jan 18, 2026 from santosh krinskyThere is a substantial and well-known danger of the vital nature taking advantage of the force that comes down through the psychic aspiration and using it to advance objectives of the vital rather than those that carry out the intended purpose of the Divine Power. There is a well known ...
Views: 63 - The Undercurrent - by Submitted on Jan 26, 2014 from Debra PayneWhat drags you down? I'll share what does it for me. My negative thoughts can attack me on even the best of days. They are so persistent and so effective that I have come to call them The Undercurrent. The Undercurrent is a quiet, unseen, and vicious tug that is always running just beneath ...
Views: 1483 - The Unified Field of All Consciousness and Existence - by Submitted on Aug 10, 2024 from santosh krinskyA powerful technique for inner growth and understanding is to sit quietly and simply observe one’s thoughts and feelings as they arise. Then, trace back any of them to where and how it arose. What triggered it? Where did it come from? Initially it is difficult to successfully carry out this ...
Views: 287 - The Unique Truth of Each Being in Relation to the Divine Manifestation - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2023 from santosh krinskyRecently the question arose about how and in what form the witness consciousness survives death. This is not a question for either philosophical reasoning or religious dogma. Regardless of the opinion that these general approaches put forth, it is between the individual soul, as a unique ...
Views: 336 - The Universal Tendency Moves Toward the Expression of Free Will - by Submitted on Feb 20, 2024 from santosh krinskyWe can identify the direction of the evolutionary development of the universe towards the expression of free will, despite the fact that at our current state we can recognise that there is apparently very little free will operative in our actions. In the physical world, Matter operates under ...
Views: 335 - The Universal, the Individual and the Evolution of Consciousness - by Submitted on Feb 04, 2026 from santosh krinskyWe 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: 54 - The Universality of the Spiritual Presence in All Existence - by Submitted on Jan 20, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe are educated and habituated to focus on our differences. We see different gender, different class, different racial characteristics, different religious backgrounds, different temperaments, different interests and focus, different value sets, different philosophies of life and living, ...
Views: 196 - The Unseen Societal Conditions That Frame Our Response to Events in Our Lives - by Submitted on Apr 17, 2024 from santosh krinskyEach society, each religion, each culture in the world has its own characteristic ideas and responses to the questions that arise during an individual’s life. Many of these are programmed into the individual in childhood, starting with prenatal conditioning based on the energies of the mother. ...
Views: 321 - The Usefulness of Suffering - by Submitted on Nov 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyDr. Dean Ornish held a webinar on Sunday November 20, 2022 with the Vegan Society of Honolulu, Hawaii, in which he succinctly explained the role of suffering in the progress of humanity. For those who do not know about his work, Dr. Ornish has spent decades studying the impact of diet and ...
Views: 508 - The Utilization of Powers That Arise Through the Development of the Yogic Practice - by Submitted on Jun 20, 2024 from santosh krinskySpiritual seekers are frequently advised not to indulge in or display any ‘powers’ that arise along the way. Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, describes a number of powers that can arise naturally through the practice of Yoga, and seekers throughout the ages have validated the reality of powers ...
Views: 297 - The Value and Importance of Looking from Within - by Submitted on Feb 10, 2025 from santosh krinskyExternal impressions, sensations, impulsions, events all traverse the nervous pathways from the sense organs to the mind, which tends to react to these sensations and thereby remains in a constant state of disturbance. In the modern world, with our addiction to social media, mobile phones, ...
Views: 186 - The Value and Rationale for the Yoga of Works — Karma Yoga - by Submitted on Feb 24, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe vital nature of man is a core existential element of our existence. In the past, those who took up serious spiritual practice frequently recognised both the power of the vital and the difficulty of bringing it under some kind of managed and focused control, and thus, they attempted to ...
Views: 674 - The Value of Attaining the Standpoint of the Witness Consciousness in Understanding the Complexity of Interaction of the Parts of the Being - by Submitted on Jun 06, 2023 from santosh krinskyIt has been famously stated that we cannot understand the system within which we are acting until we can shift our view to a standpoint outside that frame. As long as we are immersed within any particular system or standpoint, we are locked into the viewpoint and understanding embedded within ...
Views: 393 - The Value of Enthusiasm - by Submitted on May 03, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we think about what qualities within ourselves are aids to achieving conscious contact with the psychic being, the soul, we would likely not name ‘enthusiasm’ as one of them. The Mother, however, makes the case for this quality. Those things that motivate us to learn, to expand our ...
Views: 409 - The Value of Mental Preparation for the Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe mind can be a powerful tool for spiritual growth, or it can become an obstacle under certain circumstances. Many devotees take the position that aspiration, devotion, surrender to the Divine is the only way forward. For those individuals that may indeed be true. Not everyone is capable of ...
Views: 442 - The Value of Mental, Vital and Physical Progress for Future Births - by Submitted on May 09, 2023 from santosh krinskyOf what possible value is the effort at mental, emotional, vital or physical progress to the soul if it cannot carry that progress forward into the next, and future lives. In his epic poem, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo raises the issue: “But the oblivion that succeeds the fall, ...
Views: 404 - The Value of the Witness Consciousness in the Yogic Endeavour - by Submitted on Nov 23, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe witness consciousness is an extremely useful mode for the seeker to adopt in any attempt to overcome the limitations and deformations of the external nature, whether to try to attain liberation and release from the world, or, as Sri Aurobindo suggests, to work toward the eventual divinsation ...
Views: 81 - The Vigilance Needed to Ensure That Sattwic Calm, Peaceful Focus Does Not Get Distracted Through the Rise of Rajasic or Tamasic Reactions in the Being - by Submitted on Aug 07, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is a dynamic that frequently occurs when an individual starts to actively take up the yogic path. At a certain stage of development, the need to bring peace into the being, and the need for a calm, quiet energy to support the practice of meditation may take center stage. At that point, the ...
Views: 147 - The Vital Being: Its Nature, Its Role and Its Mode of Action - by Submitted on Jul 18, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen the vital nature is involved, which individual has the power to control its impulsions and demands and keep it focused on the higher aims of life? The vital nature is a powerful and essential component of life on earth. It animates material nature and functions through the force of desire. ...
Views: 388 - The Vital Desire Soul and the True Soul of the Psychic Being - by Submitted on Jul 19, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo and the Mother make a distinction between the ‘desire soul’ of the vital nature and the ‘true soul’ which expresses the inmost being that is a direct spark of the Divine. They differ in their focus, orientation, and basis of action. The desire soul incorporates the drives of the ...
Views: 395 - The Vital Desire-Soul and the True Soul - by Submitted on Apr 08, 2026 from santosh krinskyWe generally confuse the vital nature with the soul. We look at the external life of the body and recognise that when the life-force departs, the body dies and the lifetime and personality associated with that existence comes to an end. Some scientists decided that they could identify the ...
Views: 17 - The Vital Embodies Power of Realisation - by Submitted on Jul 29, 2023 from santosh krinskyA life focused solely on meditation, inner development, growth of knowledge, or on prayer and devotion, tends to avoid the implications of the ongoing evolution of consciousness and the need for transformation and positive change to create the circumstances for that evolution of consciousness to ...
Views: 379 - The Vital Envelope Is the First Line of Defense Against Illness - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2026 from santosh krinskyMost 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: 43 - The Vital Envelope Surrounding the Body and the Ability to Ward Off Illness - by Submitted on Dec 10, 2024 from santosh krinskyMany people have had the experience of a feeling that something is happening in the body, such as a feeling of a “cold coming on”. In some cases the feeling is very strong and the pressure is great. There may be some sneezing, some tickle in the throat, some coughing, some amount of congestion. ...
Views: 255 - The Vital Is Attached to Suffering - by Submitted on Oct 25, 2021 from santosh krinskyWe frequently hear people saying that this world is a world of opposites and one cannot have joy without sorrow, pleasure without pain. This is accepted basically as an axiom for living in the world. And it is true, that for virtually everyone there is a mixture of positive and negative vital ...
Views: 499 - The Vital Nature and Its Ability to Withhold Cooperation and Obstruct Progress in Spiritual Pursuits - by Submitted on Jul 26, 2023 from santosh krinskyIn order to carry out the spiritual practices and work for the transformation of human nature, the vital being needs to agree to changes its habitual sources of satisfaction and fulfillment to an entirely different basis. The pursuit of pleasure, and the accompanying experience of pain, is ...
Views: 357 - The Vital Nature and Its Role in Ordinary Life and Spiritual Life - by Submitted on Oct 26, 2021 from santosh krinskyIn the ordinary life in the world, the action of vital desire, and the attempt to fulfill the desires is accepted to such a degree that it is not even consciously noted or treated as anything other than ‘human nature’. Society sets certain customary restraints or limits in order to build a civil ...
Views: 634 - The Vital Nature and Its Transformation - by Submitted on Mar 10, 2021 from santosh krinskyAs each phase of the evolution of consciousness manifests, it arises from the prior stage and continues to interact with that stage. At the point of meeting, the stages take on characteristics that resemble in many ways both together. Thus, the higher forms of Matter begin to exhibit ...
Views: 659 - The Vital Nature Can Go On Strike When It Does Not Get What It Wants - by Submitted on Dec 29, 2024 from santosh krinskyMost people have had the experience. An individual has a dispute with a friend, a relative, a spouse. No resolution takes place. An attempt to convince or control the other person is met with resistance. There may be aggression or threats of violence. Or a period of silent avoidance may result. ...
Views: 222 - The Vital Nature: a Great Assistant, but an Impossible Master - by Submitted on Jul 23, 2022 from santosh krinskyLion tamers, horse whisperers, dog trainers, all learn certain things about how to bring the vital nature into a compliant and participatory mood, to carry out the wishes of the trainer. They quickly learn that they cannot simply allow these vital beings the absolute license to do whatever they ...
Views: 527 - The Vital Nature: Desire and the Reaction to Failure in Obtaining the Object of Desire - by Submitted on Dec 29, 2024 from santosh krinskyThe vital nature is closely tied to the operation of desire. Whether it is a desire for recognition, for money, for sex, for achievement of some sort, for acceptance or comfort, the vital nature activates its energy to reach out and grab some result it believes will satisfy that desire. At the ...
Views: 244 - The Vital Nature: Transformation Not Suppression - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe vital has a natural tendency to seek for the fulfillment of its being in some form of enjoyment. In the external surface being, this enjoyment takes the form of a seeking after pleasure. With this seeking after pleasure, however, comes also the experience of pain. Pleasure and pain alternate ...
Views: 380 - The Vital Reaction of Jealousy - by Submitted on Jul 14, 2022 from santosh krinskyIn Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice the vital reaction of jealousy is explored in considerable depth. The title character Othello is married to a young woman with whom he is passionately in love, in the normal sense of the word. Iago, who wants to bring down Othello, ...
Views: 669 - The Vital-Physical, the Physical-Vital and the Material Vital: the Linkages Between Matter and the Vital - by Submitted on Jul 30, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen Life emerges in Matter, there must, obviously, be some mechanism for the two principles to interact with one another. Matter must develop ways to sense, respond to and react to the action of the Life-Force. Similarly, when the Life-Force evolves and manifests in Matter, it must also become ...
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