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Articles from santosh krinsky | Selfgrowth.com
- 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: 190 - 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: 677 - 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: 397 - 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: 415 - 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: 446 - 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: 407 - 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: 85 - 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: 151 - 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: 393 - 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: 400 - 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: 22 - 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: 382 - 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: 48 - 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: 260 - The Vital Envelope, the Aura, and Its Protection of the Physical Body - by Submitted on Jul 31, 2022 from santosh krinskyPeople speak about an aura surrounding the physical body. Because many people cannot physically see the aura, they remain skeptical about its existence. This however is not a proof of its non-existence. Occultists and those who have developed subtle sense perception have described the aura ...
Views: 750 - 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: 503 - 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: 360 - 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: 636 - 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: 663 - 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: 225 - 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: 531 - 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: 247 - 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: 383 - 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: 675 - 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 ...
Views: 368 - The Voice of the Soul — Distinguishing the Aspiration of the Psychic Being - by Submitted on Apr 04, 2026 from santosh krinskyMost people have their spiritual motivation filtered through their external personality. If the mind is their predominant part, then it may take a mental turn. If the vital, then a vital turn. If the physical, a physical turn. In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo describes the human aspiration as ...
Views: 26 - The Way of Repulsion and the Way of Attraction in the Path of Inner Growth - by Submitted on Jul 17, 2024 from santosh krinskyWhat makes us move in one direction or another? How do we choose, decide, set forth in one direction as opposed to another? There is the inner readiness that creates a sense of incompleteness, dissatisfaction or a view of something better, more perfect, more beautiful, more essential than what ...
Views: 294 - The Way of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Apr 23, 2021 from santosh krinskyMany paths of yoga teach a fixed method that everyone who takes it up is asked to follow in a precise and standardized way. Whether it is the use of a fixed set of asanas, pre-determined pranayama routines, set routines of prayer, mantra, japa, or devotional practices, everyone is given ...
Views: 584 - The Way Out of the Existential Dread That Accompanies Lack of Knowing Oneself and One’s Purpose in Life - by Submitted on Mar 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of ...
Views: 177 - The Way to Help Others - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is a characteristic trait of the human ego-personality that we easily see faults and issues in others and in external circumstances, that we fail to see within ourselves. But how do we recognise something outside if we have no way to relate to it, if we do not produce the vibrational pattern ...
Views: 138 - The Way to Make Steady and Lasting Progress in Spiritual Growth - by Submitted on May 13, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we begin to observe ourselves, the thoughts we entertain, the emotions we express, the feelings we have and accept, the physical reactions that occur within ourselves, it soon becomes clear that we are more ‘reactive’ than ‘active’. We respond to energies, vibrations, pressures from outside ...
Views: 390 - The Western Mind and the Relationship to the Guru - by Submitted on Jan 11, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe cultural background of the West clearly differs from the background found in India, which has a history of spiritual development stretching back thousands of years. Westerners tend to have difficulty with the concept of surrender to the Guru’s guidance, whereas in India, this is an accepted ...
Views: 537 - The Will to Endure and the Body’s Ability to Withstand Hardship and Suffering - by Submitted on Oct 29, 2024 from santosh krinskyWhile most people are quite insulated from direct confrontation with extremes which the body is asked to endure, our modern media makes it possible to see and relate to some of these extreme situations. Far beyond the pressure of training for and running in a marathon race, there are ...
Views: 247 - The Wish-Fulfilling Gem: the Divine Standpoint and the Oneness of the Entire Creation - by Submitted on Apr 30, 2026 from santosh krinskyWe are so used to judging everything from the external viewpoint, with our mental process, that we do not generally comprehend the significance of consciousness and the oneness of all existence as the starting point, container and content of all that exists. This means that we are judging how ...
Views: 11 - The Witness and the Nature: Purusha and Prakriti - by Submitted on Mar 19, 2026 from santosh krinskyWhen we take the time to observe our own internal process, we can very quickly become aware of a part of the being that is able to observe and monitor thoughts and impulses that run through the mental space. Many paths of awareness, such as Raja Yoga, and mindfulness training, teach us how to ...
Views: 29 - The Witness Consciousness - by Submitted on Dec 21, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen the seeker first becomes aware of the practice of separating the witness consciousness from the active external nature, he may naturally take his stance in the mental awareness and begin to observe his actions and reactions from the mental standpoint. This generally yields some kind of ...
Views: 338 - The Witness Consciousness and the Role and Action of the Three Gunas - by Submitted on Oct 30, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe establishment of the witness-consciousness, separated from and observing the actions of the external nature, is an important process, not just for those taking up the practice of the integral yoga; rather, it can be a valuable tool for everyone to be more effective in directing their own ...
Views: 357 - The World is a Manifestation of the Divine - by Submitted on Feb 10, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe mind can justify a world of illusion that has its outlet in an escape to unity with an undifferentiated, unmoving Absolute; and it can equally justify a world of reality that is the manifestation of the Being who creates, sustains, informs, contains and constitutes that world. The various ...
Views: 740 - The Worlds and Planes of Consciousness - by Submitted on Feb 28, 2021 from santosh krinskyWe tend to take for granted the feelings, emotions, ideas, thoughts, creative impulses, imaginations, insights, inspirations and intuitions we experience. We do not generally try to find out the source of these things, or how they come to be known to or experienced by us. We treat our bodies as ...
Views: 750 - The Yoga of Nature, Spiritual Sadhana and the Transformation of Action Into a Conscious Expression of the Divine Will - by Submitted on Apr 25, 2025 from santosh krinskyAll life, our entire existence, whether we are actively involved in a conscious spiritual discipline, or living a ‘normal’ life in the world following the demands of our needs, desires, relationships and ambitions, etc. is a field of growth, experience and develop. We respond to opportunities, ...
Views: 168 - The Yoga-Shakti Active in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Sep 23, 2021 from santosh krinskyFor the majority of individuals who live on the surface of their being, the energy they experience, the thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions are simply the working of the machinery, with no understanding about the process or source of this energetic action in their lives. For those who have ...
Views: 535 - 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: 464 - The Yogic Practitioner Confronts the Issues of Changing Human Nature - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe integral yoga does not focus on the abandonment of human life in the world. The liberation from the hold of the ego-consciousness and its fixation on the terms of success for life that the ego concentrates on, is an important preliminary step. In the end however, nothing less is envisioned ...
Views: 588 - The Yogic Practitioner Experiences a Reversal of Consciousness Compared to Most of Humanity - by Submitted on May 14, 2023 from santosh krinskyIt is said that for the yogic practitioner, day and night are reversed when compared to the vast majority of human beings. This statement has many possible implications that can be explored. “Day” and “Night” are representative of opposite concepts, different ways of seeing and reacting to ...
Views: 429 - The Yogic Practitioner Should Not Obsess About Hostile Attacks - by Submitted on Dec 13, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe focus on attacks by hostile forces, and difficulties faced, easily engages the ego-personality in a form of vanity. It strengthens the hold of the ego, rather than loosening attachment to open the way for the shift to the divine standpoint. When it takes a rajasic form, the ego glorifies in ...
Views: 626 - Those Who Observe and Reflect Can Recognise the Higher Planes and Worlds of Existence - by Submitted on Jul 03, 2024 from santosh krinskyModern day scientists, researchers and philosophers are beginning to explore the mysteries of life and as they do so, they are beginning to recognise the existence of domains, planes, worlds and universes that the external mind of humanity has avoided or at least resisted. Now scientists speak ...
Views: 321 - Thought Forms Originate and Are Based in the Mental Plane Creating the Noosphere Which Acts Upon the Biosphere and Geosphere of the External World - by Submitted on Sep 03, 2024 from santosh krinskyPhysical forces take physical forms. Vital forces take vital forms. Even though they may act upon the physical existence of the being, they are not physical forces. Similarly, mental forces take mental forms on the mental plane. Once again, they may act upon vital forces and physical forces, but ...
Views: 268 - Thought-Forms - by Submitted on Apr 25, 2024 from santosh krinskyWhen we examine the question of thought-forms, we recognise that people usually want to imply that a thought is able to turn into some kind of physical reality, purely through the power of thought. This, however, is one element of the question, but not the only element. Thought-forms have a ...
Views: 329 - Thought-Forms - by Submitted on Apr 25, 2024 from santosh krinskyWhen we examine the question of thought-forms, we recognise that people usually want to imply that a thought is able to turn into some kind of physical reality, purely through the power of thought. This, however, is one element of the question, but not the only element. Thought-forms have a ...
Views: 313 - Thought-Forms and Their Results - by Submitted on Sep 02, 2024 from santosh krinskyWe take the chatter in our minds for granted and do not attribute any real significance or power to it most of the time. The constant influx of thoughts is just a lot of background noise, for the most part. When we concentrate on something and focus the thoughts, we recognise that we can ...
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