Part Two Essays on Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought All truths, even those which seem to be in conflict, have their validity, but they need a reconciliation in some largest Truth which takes them into itself. Sri Aurobindo 1 The Nature and Methodology of Yoga Psychology The following account of Sri Aurobindo's first major spiritual experience provides a good starting-point for explicating the nature of yoga psychology: ...to reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by an

7 Sri Aurobindo on Human Development: a Transpersonal Perspective A study based on a survey of definitions of Transpersonal Psychology published in the literature between 1968 and 1991 identified five themes which occur most frequently in the forty definitions yielded by the survey.1 The authors of the study (Denise H. Lajoie & S. I. Shapiro) state the themes as follows: 1.States of consciousness. 2.Highest or ultimate potential. 3.Beyond ego or personal self. 4.Transcendence. 5.Spiritual. A few of the forty definitions are given below (some only in part) to illust

15 The Psychology of Faith Religion has opened itself to denial by its claim to determine the truth by divine authority, by inspiration, by a sacrosanct and infallible sovereignty given to it from on high; it has sought to impose itself on human thought, feeling, conduct without discussion or question. This is an excessive and premature claim, although imposed in a way on the religious idea by the imperative and absolute character of the inspirations and illuminations which are its warrant and justification and by the necessity of faith as an occult light and power from the soul amidst the mind's ignorance, doubts, weakness, incertitudes. Faith i

9 Purusha and Prakriti Soul and Nature ...we have to begin with a dualism of the thing and its shadow, Purusha and Prakriti, commonly called spirit and matter. Properly speaking, the distinction is illusory, since there is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter, nor can the Universe be strictly parcelled out between these; from the point of view of Reality spirit and matter are not different but the same. We may say, if we like, that the entire Universe is matter and spirit does not exist; we may say, if we like that the entire Universe is spirit and matter does not exist. In either case we are merely multiplying words wi

Introduction I am glad of my association with this very important and remarkably scholarly book by Dr. A.S. Dalai, a valued friend and esteemed colleague. A Greater Psychology is a gathering together under one cover of all the salient aspects of Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought, thus providing an excellent introduction for psychology students and scholars as well as for the interested general reader. The time for such a book has come and it is appearing at the right moment. For there is a growing interest in Indian yoga and spirituality in the Western world. Though much of this interest is not of the right kind it cannot be gainsaid that there a

5 The Subconscient The subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence where it meets the Inconscient, it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half-consciousness;... Or, from another viewpoint, this nether part of us may be described as the antechamber of the Inconscient. The Life Divine, pp. 422-23 ...we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organized reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of sti

-028_ Sri Aurobindo on the Structure and Organisation of the Being.htm 4 Sri Aurobindo on the Structure and Organisation of the Being An Integral Map for Self-Discovery We are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence.1 —Sri Aurobindo Our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the great body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters.2 —Sri Aurobindo Normally, one feels oneself to be a unitary entity, a single being. Someone who is to some extent consc

-004_Editor^s Preface.htm Editor's Preface Sri Aurobindo has been described by Ken Wilber as "India's greatest modern philosopher-sage" and also as "the greatest of all Vedantic philosophers". The aim of this book is to highlight another aspect of Sri Aurobindo, not that of a philosopher but of a mystic, for whom the ultimate Reality — popularly called God or Spirit — is not an abstract or philosophical concept but a concrete experience, "more concrete than anything sensed by ear or eye or touch in the world of Matter"(p. 190). The aim of the book is to present Sri Aurobindo as an Enlightened One whose view of the human being is based not on speculative theory nor on statistical inference but o

17 Sleep and Dreams The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision.... In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happenings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent con

18 Psychical1 Phenomena The range of the psychic consciousness and its experiences is almost illimitable and the variety and complexity of its phenomena almost infinite. Only some of the broad lines and main features can be noted here. The first and most prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a psychical hearing, touch, smell, taste: indeed the ph