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- The Maturation of the Soul Across Lifetimes in Fulfillment of Its Evolutionary Role - by Submitted on May 01, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe Maturation of the Soul Across Lifetimes in Fulfillment of Its Evolutionary Role Posted on May 2, 2023 There is a considerable amount of time, amounting to innumerable lifetimes, when the spark of the soul, the psychic being, is subordinated, hidden, virtually unseen and unheard in the ...
Views: 308 - Your Greatest Weakness Identifies Your Greatest Strength - by Submitted on Apr 30, 2023 from santosh krinskyA particular propensity arises through affinity with an energetic flow through a particular energy center, or chakra. If the individual is receptive on that level, he is able to manifest the powers that are at play through that chakra centre. At the same time, it must be recognised that a ...
Views: 340 - The Complex Make-Up of the Human Personalities - by Submitted on Apr 29, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe tend to look on ourselves as being of a specific nature and having a specific personality. We see main lines of understanding, of reaction, and of action and look upon these as ‘who we are’. If we take a closer look, however, we soon begin to see that we are not as simple and homogeneous as ...
Views: 303 - Complex Interaction of the Gunas Can Bring About Opposite Responses from an Individual Under Various Circumstances - by Submitted on Apr 28, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs we take our standpoint primarily in the external nature, we are clearly subject to the action of the three Gunas, or ‘qualities’ of Nature. These qualities do not remain constant and are ever-changing, and they then determine the type of reaction and action an individual has in any particular ...
Views: 312 - The Growth and Evolution of the Soul - by Submitted on Apr 27, 2023 from santosh krinskyMost people are not directly aware of their soul, although it is frequently talked about. There seems to be much confusion. Western scientists have tried to determine the existence of the soul like they would measure particular chemical elements within the body. They weigh the body immediately ...
Views: 292 - The External Being and the Inner Being - by Submitted on Apr 26, 2023 from santosh krinskyMost people identify closely with their active external personality, and as a result, they consider that to be the extent of their existence. They leave on the surface, interact with others, family, friends, acquaintances, associates and other members of society, and respond to the outer ...
Views: 366 - The Growth of the Soul - by Submitted on Apr 25, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe become so used to all of the dark tendencies, hurtful energies and bad faith displayed throughout the world that we sometimes believe that this is the unchanging way that life is meant to be. What we often do not see is the secret evolutionary development of the soul, through time and ...
Views: 287 - The Essential Process of Ascent and Integration of Spiritual Progress - by Submitted on Apr 24, 2023 from santosh krinskyBy putting emphasis on ‘headline’ spiritual experiences and attempting to hold onto them or repeat them, the seeker is potentially losing sight of the larger process that is taking place to effect the transformation of the nature. All progress represents what may be called a ‘vertical ascent’ to ...
Views: 311 - Spiritual Progress Requires Non-Attachment to Specific Spiritual Experiences - by Submitted on Apr 23, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe external being wants to have a stable basis by which it can understand and act in the world. The tools that support this stable basis include habit, fixed tendencies, instincts, education, memory and even the way the mental processes work, comparing new impulses of the senses to past memory ...
Views: 283 - One Should Be Greater Than One’s Experience - by Submitted on Apr 22, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhenever an individual has any kind of powerful emotion or experience, he tends to “lose himself” in that experience. He becomes angry, or lustful, or ecstatic, or joyful and the feeling takes over his entire being and for a time, he “is” that force. The same thing can, and does, tend to happen ...
Views: 342 - The Spiritual Experience Gets Watered-Down or Lost As It is Transcribed into the Mental Framework - by Submitted on Apr 21, 2023 from santosh krinskyHuman beings are essentially dependent on their mental perception in order to function in the world. This mental perception frames what we see, how we experience it, and our interpretation. We thus try to transcribe anything provided to us by our senses (or provided directly to the mind without ...
Views: 306 - Why Speaking About One’s Spiritual Experiences Can Be Counter-Productive to the Sadhana - by Submitted on Apr 20, 2023 from santosh krinskyIt is a quite natural impulse. An individual has an extraordinary, unusual and in some cases, inexplicable experience, outside of his normal realm of experiences. Either through vital enthusiasm, a feeling of ego-aggrandisement due to the extraordinary nature of the experience, or through sense ...
Views: 342 - The Experience of Samadhi - by Submitted on Apr 19, 2023 from santosh krinskyIt is impossible for the mental consciousness to imagine what the state of Samadhi actually is. If we try to sit for meditation, we find all kinds of perceptions, feelings, nervous impulses, random thoughts and emotions flitting across our minds. We can observe an almost endless stream of inner ...
Views: 305 - The Need for Spiritual Discrimination, the Ability to Distinguish the Pure from the Impure - by Submitted on Apr 18, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs the spiritual seeker develops the sadhana over time, eventually he is confronted with lights, voices, and energies that come to him. It is not sufficient for him to simply accept that whatever comes is to be seen as valid and supportive of his spiritual aspiration. Spiritual discrimination, ...
Views: 297 - Three Rules for the Spiritual Practitioner with Respect to Experiences - by Submitted on Apr 17, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhat to do about spiritual experiences when they come? When we have a revelation of some sort, when we hear a communication that provides us insight or guidance, how are we to know whether it is truthful or misleading? Can we determine the source of the clairvoyant or clairaudient communication ...
Views: 274 - The Process of Changing Human Nature - by Submitted on Apr 16, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we take up the question of how to go about changing human nature, we are confronted with the difficulty of that attempt. Instincts, habits, trained responses, ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ all conspire to maintain the status quo. When we attempt to make any change, we run up against the opposition ...
Views: 299 - The Superman: an Evolutionary Leap Is Not Limited to the Mind’s Extrapolation from Its Present Status - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe human mind has difficulty imagining the possibility of an entirely new direction for evolutionary development, and tends to try to “read” the future by extrapolation from the present and the past. Thus, we see Nietzsche describing the “superman” as someone who has a higher mental ...
Views: 335 - The Supramental Society Is Based in a New Consciousness of Realisation of the Divine Reality of Oneness with Diversity - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe “master race”, the “white man’s burden”, “white supremacy”, “manifest destiny”, the “superman” of Nietzsche all represent past attempts of the mind to translate the urge to transcend the limits of the human mind-life-body and assert power and control over the society through what may be ...
Views: 350 - The Supramental Evolution Represents the Fulfillment of Life, Not the Abandonment of Life - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2023 from santosh krinskyFor much of human history, spirituality has been looked upon as a contradiction of an active life in the world. The anchorite in the desert, the renunciate, the Sannyasin, the monk or nun in the cloister are held up to us as the examples of dedication to spiritual growth and purpose. All of ...
Views: 313 - The Role of Spiritual Experiences in the Change of Human Nature - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe vital ego is attracted to the excitement of having experiences that are unusual or powerful. It therefore wants to find ways to repeat or expand upon them once they have had such an experience. In reality, however, there is very little of long-term value in this approach. The experiences ...
Views: 324 - Intensity of an Experience Does Not Guarantee Its Veracity - by Submitted on Apr 14, 2023 from santosh krinskyThere are occasions when an individual experiences something that is so powerful, so intense, that it causes him to trust the experience. Spiritual experiences in particular can have a force that overwhelms the normal mental standpoint of the individual and impose themselves upon the seeker in a ...
Views: 295 - The Connection to the Psychic Being Minimizes the Dangers of the Intermediate Zone - by Submitted on Apr 13, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe process of the yogic sadhana inevitably begins to shift the consciousness inward and upward, and exposes the seeker to powers, forces and energies that are not easily seen or understood from the standpoint of the external mind and life. Thus, there is what we may call a natural opening to ...
Views: 318 - The Intermediate Zone and Its Dangers - by Submitted on Apr 12, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe 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: 332 - Vedic Seers Describe the Sevenfold Ignorance and the Sevenfold Knowledge - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs we take up the next chapter in the Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo cites, in the headnotes, some revealing passages from the Rig Veda and the Upanishads to indicate the 7 types of Ignorance that needs to be overcome, and to point out the 7 forms of Knowledge required to achieve realisation. Before ...
Views: 369 - Heightening the Force of Consciousness is the Trend of Evolution - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2023 from santosh krinsky“All evolution is in essence a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest, from matter into life, from life into mind, from the mind into the spirit. It is this that must be the method of our ...
Views: 286 - An Overview of the Intermediate Zone and Ways the Seeker Can Safely Maneuver Through It - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs the seeker begins to shift the consciousness inward, he becomes aware of forces, powers, and realms that are the native venues for our physical, vital and mental energies and activities, as well as existing in and by their own form of reality and under rules that do not necessarily match up ...
Views: 321 - Establishing a Foundational Basis of Sattwic Qualities Is Important in Protecting the Seeker During the Yogic Development Process - by Submitted on Apr 10, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe importance of the development of a habit of quietude and reflection cannot be over-emphasized. The preliminary purifications of Patanjali’s yoga works to create this kind of foundational support to avoid imbalances and dangers that can arise when the seeker experiences openings to forces ...
Views: 339 - The Seven Forms of Knowledge - by Submitted on Apr 09, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo concludes that once we have defined the seven forms of Ignorance, our aim and goal in our human lives must be to successively overcome the Ignorance through the development of the sevenfold forms of knowledge. Each aspect of the knowledge we develop addresses one of the already ...
Views: 323 - Heightening the Force of Consciousness is the Trend of Evolution - by Submitted on Apr 09, 2023 from santosh krinsky“All evolution is in essence a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest, from matter into life, from life into mind, from the mind into the spirit. It is this that must be the method of our ...
Views: 313 - The Seven Rays of the Infinite - by Submitted on Apr 09, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo starts the review of the Knowledge and the Ignorance by reminding us of the sevenfold principles of existence: “In our scrutiny of the seven principles of existence it was found that they are one in their essential and fundamental reality: for if even the matter of the most ...
Views: 321 - Every Yogic Practitioner Must Develop Along His Own Path and Face His Own Difficulties - by Submitted on Apr 09, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe like to have certainty, safety, and fixed map that provides us directions, steps, milestone markers and which will lead us to the goal of our seeking. Spiritual development, however, is not quite the same as an automobile or train trip from one city to another. The complex nexus that is ...
Views: 344 - What Are Spiritual Experiences? - by Submitted on Apr 08, 2023 from santosh krinskyIn our normal human lives, we live in an externally focused standpoint and we create a distinction between ‘objective reality’ and ‘subjective reality’. Because we are so dependent on the body-life-mind complex and its relation to the outer world, we tend to assign a greater truth and reality to ...
Views: 320 - Recognizing and Understanding Spiritual Experiences - by Submitted on Apr 07, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we live primarily on the external surface of our being, anchored to the physical world, the vital energy and mental status of living in the world, we try to judge everything that occurs within us by the standards of what we expect and understand from our outward existence, experience and ...
Views: 297 - Cognitive Bias and Occult Experiences - by Submitted on Apr 06, 2023 from santosh krinskyWestern psychology has investigated the impact of subtle forms of bias on what and how we perceive things, and how we interpret what we perceive. An individual’s cognitive bias subtly influences what he believes has occurred, and various people, witnessing the same event, but coming from ...
Views: 328 - Occult Powers and the Spiritual Sadhana - by Submitted on Apr 05, 2023 from santosh krinskyIn his lectures on Raja Yoga, in the chapter titled “Powers”, Swami Vivekananda explains how various occult powers arise or can be developed. The process is an extension of the preceding efforts of purification, quieting of the ‘mind stuff’ and then gaining the ability to fix the concentration ...
Views: 328 - So-Called ‘Spiritual’ Experiences and True Spiritual Development - by Submitted on Apr 04, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe tend to associate experiences of various unusual powers as either evidence of high mental development or perhaps spiritual development. Most of what gets mooted about, however, may be seen as experiences of entering into various occult vital planes and bringing back the experience from those ...
Views: 310 - Transformative Spiritual Experiences - by Submitted on Apr 03, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs consciousness develops in the seeker, it clearly brings with it changes in the way the seeker perceives and understands and reactions to events, situations, people, opportunities, etc. What is often forgotten is that it is not the extraordinary and massive experiences that effectuate ...
Views: 322 - What’s the Use of Seeking to Have Spiritual Experiences? - by Submitted on Apr 02, 2023 from santosh krinskyPutting aside the ‘allurement factor’ of having some kind of special, unusual, extraordinary type of experience, which is clearly a way to feed the ego-personality, we come to the actual benefits of such experiences. There are cases where an individual is leading a perfectly ordinary life in the ...
Views: 321 - How Do Spiritual Experiences Come About? - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhile we are allured by the idea of spiritual experiences, or, if one looks at the popular media, the idea of some kind of unusual powers that an individual can develop, obtain or possess, we actually have very little idea about what is really possible, and how it actually occurs. Popular ...
Views: 385 - Spiritual Realisations and Experiences - by Submitted on Mar 31, 2023 from santosh krinskySpiritual Realisations and Experiences Posted on April 1, 2023 There is an interesting tale in the Mahabharata when the preceptor Drona was teaching the sons of Dhristarashtra and Pandu, the royal princes of the kingdom, the lesson of the day, which was “not to become angry”. He asked each of ...
Views: 408 - Reconciling the Opposites - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2023 from santosh krinskyIf we recognize that the two extremes, matter and spirit, despite their apparent and irreconcilable opposition, both speak to some deep seated truth within the human sense, then we can begin to accept the idea that this is not a matter of one being “true” and the other being “false”, but rather, ...
Views: 430 - Applying the “Hundredth Monkey” Phenomenon - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2023 from santosh krinsky“The liberation of the individual soul is therefore the keynote of the definite divine action; it is the primary divine necessity and the pivot on which all else turns.” This is the first step but what must also be recognized is that as individuals here and there achieve new states of ...
Views: 389 - Endurance and Persistence Is Essential for the Change of Consciousness Aimed for in the Yogic Practice - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2023 from santosh krinskyMany people have the mistaken idea that taking up a spiritual practice is somehow due to weakness or inability to deal with the tough conditions of the outer world. They envision seekers retreating from the world and living in a monastey, cloister or ashram, being sheltered from the worst things ...
Views: 325 - The Advent of Inner Experiences and the Unpurified Vital Nature; or Be Careful What You Wish For, Because You May Get It! - by Submitted on Mar 29, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe ego-personality, particularly the vital ego, feeds upon feelings of being special, having new and exciting experiences that are not part of the ordinary external consciousness. Spiritual seekers are allured by tales of meeting spiritual beings on subtle planes, traveling without the physical ...
Views: 341 - The External Personality and the Psychic Being - by Submitted on Mar 28, 2023 from santosh krinskyFor most people, the external personality and being, the body and its needs and habits, the life-force and its desires and the mind and its particular predilections, represent “who they are”. Rarely, an individual reflects deeply on the question of ‘who am I’ and begins to understand that there ...
Views: 391 - Addressing Alternations in Spiritual Progress Over Time - by Submitted on Mar 27, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen Milarepa approached Marpa, requesting liberation in one lifetime, he was haunted by the misdeeds he recognised in his own recent past and the harm he had caused many people. He had justified the harm based on the misdeeds of those individuals towards his family, but eventually he understood ...
Views: 395 - The Day and Night of the Vedic Mystics - by Submitted on Mar 26, 2023 from santosh krinskyHowever much we try, we find that we cannot constantly and consistently hold onto any particular focus of concentration, emotional state, mood or feeling for an extended period of time. The constant action of the 3 Gunas cycles us through periods of light and darkness, action and inaction, ...
Views: 340 - Dealing with Periods of Dryness or Dullness in the Yogic Sadhana - by Submitted on Mar 25, 2023 from santosh krinskyIt is a frequent and universal experience that when an individual takes up the practice of yoga, there are periods of great enthusiasm, aspiration is active and progress is palpable. It is however virtually impossible to maintain the intensity of the sadhana all the time, so as the action of the ...
Views: 344 - The Yogic Practitioner and the External World - by Submitted on Mar 24, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe generally live under an illusion of separateness from other beings and the rest of the world. We believe our individual personality, individual body, life, mind are independent from everyone and everything else. This fixed idea, however, is part of the confusion we experience that misleads us ...
Views: 355 - Light and Shadow - by Submitted on Mar 23, 2023 from santosh krinskyYin and Yang, dualities that are inextricably intertwined with one another, that continue to play into one another and which contain an element of the opposite quality within themselves. We live in a world characterized by duality and when we examine closely we find that we cannot have light ...
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