Note on Illustrations In this book, we have used six illustrations of flowers under which their special spiritual significance is mentioned. The spiritual significance of these flowers was identified by The Mother. She said, "Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them. It is a subtle and fragrant language." The names of these flowers and their spiritual significance are as follows: Canna Xgeneralis (Physical Centre), Dendranthema Xgrandiflorum (Life Energy or Vital Energy), Thevetia Peruviana (Mind), Leucaena Leucocephala (Knowledge), Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis (Ananda). There is also a picture of Anthocephalus Cadamba (Supramental Sun). The rele

Dakshinamurti (Kanchipuram) Introduction I Just as the Kathopanishad belongs to the Krishna (Black) Yajurveda, even so the Taittiriya Upanishad also belongs to the same Veda. Both these Upanishads have internal connection. In particular, the knowledge of the soul, which we find in the Kathopanishad, is confirmed and elucidated in the Taittiriya Upanishad. And it is to this aspect that we may turn at once. The Kathopanishad speaks of three fires and five fires, indicating that the soul that is fire is to be found at three levels, the level of the body, the level of the vital being, and the level of the mental bein

PART FIVE Discovery of the Psychic Entity But even deeper than the subliminal, there is in us an inmost being, which Sri Aurobindo calls psychic entity or soul and which the Katha Upanishad describes as "the Purusha that is no larger than the thumb of a man and who is seated in the midst of our self (angustamātrah puruso madhye atmani tistati)?5 The psychic entity supports the submental, the subconscious, the conscious, and the subliminal. The discovery of the psychic entity is of capital importance in our journey of self-knowledge. It is the source of true individuality, entirely distinct from the ego-sense, and it is that entity which represents in our evolutiona

PART TWO Supramental Vision of the Supreme Reality: Indeterminability of the Absolute Let us first begin with the supramental vision of the ultimate reality. In the supramental realization, the ultimate reality is found to be indeterminable; this indeterminability has two senses; in the first sense, the reality or the absolute is seen to be not limitable or definable by any one determination and by any sum of determinations; in the second sense, the Absolute is seen to be not bound down to an indeterminable vacancy of pure existence. Thus the indeterminable is a source of all determinations, and its indeterminability is a natural and necessary condition b

Preface The most distinctive thesis of the Integral Yoga is that supramental consciousness can, by its descent in Matter transform earthly life into divine life. In other words, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have discovered the method by which supramental descent on the earth can be brought about and even Matter can manifest supramental consciousness. Sri Aurobindo has, while describing supermind, referred to the Vedic concept of truth-consciousness (rita-chit) and accepted the Vedic description of truth-consciousness as an apt description of the supermind. Both in the Vedas and the Upanishads, we have the evidence that the ancient Rishis had discovered the supramental con

Supermind in the Integral Yoga Problem of Ignorance, Bondage, Liberation and Perfection This book is addressed to all young people who, I urge, will study and respond to the following message of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the young who must be the builders of the new world, — not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, nor those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and trans

PART THREE Insights from the Veda and the Upanishad At the same time, it must be mentioned that we have, in the Veda and the Upanishads, as also in the Gita, great insights which can aid us in exploring this aspect of the integral yoga. (a) Ancient explorations had discovered that all aspects of the world-experience have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Even the aspect of the power of the Inconscience which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, it still corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. The Veda had discovered the Inconscience and there is, the image for it in the Veda of

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1Vide, Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, particularly, Letters on Yoga [Vols. 23-24, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL), 1971, Pondicherry], and Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vols. 20-21, 1971, Pondicherry). 2Vide, Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, Chapters XIII, XIV and XV. 3Ibid., p. 312. 4Vide, Ibid., pp. 311-2. 5Ibid., p. 122. 6Vide, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. X10, 1971, p. 34. Sri Aurobindo's discovery of the supermind was, thus, prior to his knowledge of what the Veda had contained of that highest faculty of consciousness and power. He 'did not learn of

PART FOUR Journey of Evolutionary Ignorance towards Knowledge: Journey of Yoga The human ignorant journey that turns inwards is a reversal of the involutionary movement of Ignorance which was a downward looking movement of consciousness speedily separating itself from the integral consciousness of unity and differentiations resulting in ignoring all that is behind that movement and in exclusive concentration on the workings of energy up to such an acute point that the consciousness becomes totally identified with the workings of energy. In contrast, this inward-looking (antarmukha) concentration recovers increasingly the distinction between the worki

Introduction The new synthesis of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has come to be known as the Integral Yoga1. This yoga has, as its first basis, the Vedantic realization of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss (Sachchidananda) as the ultimate reality and the ultimate foundation of the universe and all that is in the universe. However, the world that we see is the world of divided mentality which does not appear to be a direct manifestation of Sachchidananda. The divided mentality and the life and body, in which we exist on the earth, and the material existence which is governed by the divided mentality, must be, therefore, a development from that which originally manif