Glossary of Names and Terms The Glossary includes Sanskrit terms, certain proper names and special terms found in Sri Aurobindo's writings. Explanations of philosophical and psychological terms have generally been given in Sri Aurobindo's own words. Some of the terms defined below have more than one meaning, and may have different connotations in different contexts. The meanings given below apply to the terms as used in this book. the Absolute — the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to r

12 The Superconscient Gradations of the Higher Consciousness We become aware, in a certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all these three [the waking consciousness, the subconscient and the subliminal], aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality sustaining and exceeding them all, which humanity speaks of vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from these superconscient ranges we have visitations and in our highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit. There is then in our total range of existence a superconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience, overarching and perhaps enveloping our su

13 Liberation and Transformation Deep, intense, convincing, common to all who have overstepped a certain limit of the active mind-belt into horizonless inner space, this is the great experience of liberation, the consciousness of something within us that is behind and outside of the universe and all its forms, interests, aims, events and happenings, calm, untouched, unconcerned, illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha, the sense of an Infinity or a Timelessness that looks down on

3 The Surface Being and the Inner Being The very first step in getting out of the ignorance is to accept the fact that this outer consciousness is not one's soul, not oneself, not the real person, but only a temporary formation on the surface for the purposes of the surface play. The soul, the person is within, not on the surface — the outer personality is the person only in the first sense of the Latin word persona which meant originally a mask. Letters on Yoga, pp. 304-05 Our surface existence is only a surface and it is there that there is the full reign of the Ignorance; to know we have to go within ourselves and see