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Articles from santosh krinsky | Selfgrowth.com
- Vibrational Patterns of Existence and the Advent of Harmony Through Intervention from Higher Planes - by Submitted on Aug 05, 2024 from santosh krinskyWhen we are fixed in the external consciousness and perceive things with the external senses, we treat material objects as ‘solid’. We do not see that they are actually energy that has been condensed to appear solid to us, while in fact, they are a form of energy. Western scientists, however, ...
Views: 277 - Vigilance - by Submitted on Aug 05, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe ancient texts, such as the Upanishads or the Dhammapada, focus on distinguishing the true and eternal, from the transitory and illusory existence upon which most people spend their time and attention. Thus, the term ‘vigilance’ means something entirely different than what a person, awake in ...
Views: 141 - Vigilant Awareness Is Needed to Manage the Energies That Arise in the Lower Regions of the Being - by Submitted on Feb 09, 2026 from santosh krinskyMost people respond to life as it comes to them and react according to the energy that they are able to receive and process in some form or another. They remain immersed in the external personality. They become the fear, the anger, the hunger, the thirst, the craving, the pleasure, the pain, the ...
Views: 50 - Violence and Non-Violence — in Life and in Yoga - by Submitted on Jan 05, 2022 from santosh krinsky‘The law of the jungle.’ ‘Dog eat dog’. ‘Survival of the fittest.’ ‘Darwinian evolution.’ These ideas illustrate the way we understand life on earth, and its requirements for survival and success in worldly life. When Jesus proclaimed ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’, he expressed an idea that ...
Views: 534 - Violence and Spiritual Change - by Submitted on Jan 04, 2022 from santosh krinskyThrough ambition or impatience, the spiritual seeker may try to rush the spiritual progress, and in many cases, this is attempted through various forms of overt or sublimated violence. The overt forms include various extreme penances or even self-punishment, while the sublimated forms may ...
Views: 530 - Visiting the Symbolic Transcription of One’s Inner Being As Displayed to the Conscious Awareness - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor those who are anchored in their outer external awareness of the world and of themselves, there is no understanding or acceptance of the reality of inner occult states of awareness. Thus, they deny the reality of the inner experiences, until perhaps they happen to have a near death ...
Views: 482 - Visualization as an Aid for Entering into Contact with One’s Psychic Being - by Submitted on Sep 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor those who have the power of visualisation and who are ready and willing to concentrate in this way, there can be tremendous progress in developing the relation to the psychic being. The mind transcribes the energetic relationships of the various parts of the being into different rooms and ...
Views: 475 - Vital and Mental Life Forms Interact With Us in the Material World - by Submitted on Jun 28, 2024 from santosh krinskyWe scour the galaxy for signs of intelligent life elsewhere. The reality is that unless an extra-terrestrial race has found a way to circumvent the constant of the speed of light, through some method of ‘folding’ space or creating “wormholes” that truncate the distance to be travelled, setting ...
Views: 276 - Vital Beings and Their Interaction in the Evolutionary World on the Material Plane - by Submitted on Jun 12, 2024 from santosh krinskyAccording to sages and rishis who have investigated the issue deeply, the earth, the material manifested world we live in, is the place where evolution of consciousness takes place, and thus, where the psychic being develops to carry the progress in this evolution at the individual level through ...
Views: 322 - Vital Beings Utilize Vital Drives to Control Human Action for Their Own Benefit and Enjoyment - by Submitted on Jun 23, 2024 from santosh krinskyVital beings, by their very nature, take advantage of our ambitions, desires, greed, and fears to convince us to interact with them, and they then use these responses for their own enjoyment or nourishment. The more we are motivated by these vital drives, the easier it is for such beings to toy ...
Views: 284 - Vital Disturbances Arise from Universal Nature and Bring Forth Habitual Responses - by Submitted on Oct 30, 2021 from santosh krinskyIn The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo explores the boundaries of the Ignorance and a framework for attaining knowledge. He describes at some length, the ‘circumconscient’ influence on what we believe are our own internal actions and reactions. We view ourselves through the ego-consciousness and ...
Views: 520 - Vital Energy in Ordinary Life and in the Spiritual Life - by Submitted on Jul 25, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe generally do not question the movements of the vital nature in our ordinary daily life. They are so much a part of what we consider to be human nature and human experience that we simply accept them and treat them as inevitable. It is true that human society has developed a framework within ...
Views: 376 - Vital Forces and Spiritual Forces and the Evolution of Consciousness - by Submitted on Jan 08, 2026 from santosh krinskyVital Forces and Spiritual Forces and the Evolution of Consciousness Posted on January 8, 2026 Most people do not recognise the active role and intention of conscious vital forces in their lives. First, the physical body tends to shield them from direct perception of these forces. While they ...
Views: 67 - Vital Impatience and a Hurried Effort Are Obstacles to the Transformation of the Human Instrument - by Submitted on Nov 30, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe vital ego is impatient. It wants to keep pressing on regardless of the impact on the body or the mind, or even its own native energy. It wants to get somewhere and begrudges the journey and the time and the waypoints along the path. It believes that haste will achieve the goal sooner, while ...
Views: 80 - Vital Motivations in Action May Disguise Their True Nature from the Spiritual Seeker - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2023 from santosh krinskyIndividuals become famous as great philanthropists. Some pledge their wealth to a great cause, such as solving the climate crisis, others undertake to build hospitals or feed large numbers of people. These individuals are looked up to and used as examples of selfless individuals. Yet, a deeper ...
Views: 344 - Vital Movements Rising Up During the Practice of the Yoga - by Submitted on Oct 28, 2021 from santosh krinskyEvery individual has all the long-established vital movements embedded deep in the nature. When the force of the yoga begins to open up the various energy centers, particularly the vital centers, these movements are stirred and use the opportunity to capitalize on the new energy and try to ...
Views: 501 - Vital Vibrations and the Response to Them - by Submitted on Aug 14, 2024 from santosh krinskyWe are able to perceive and respond to specific frequency ranges. Anything above, or below the frequency ranges to which we are attuned, does not register with us consciously, although there may be some subtle impact and energetic action that takes place, even so. We see that in the case of the ...
Views: 302 - Waking and Sleep, Day and Night - by Submitted on Aug 25, 2021 from santosh krinskyDuring daytime, we see the sun, the atmosphere and the world around us, and our thoughts and activities, for the most part, are focused on the life of the world. At night, we see the vast ranges of space and the myriad of stars, and can thereby recognise that our world is a small part of a much ...
Views: 560 - We Tend to Take Ourselves Too Seriously - by Submitted on Aug 02, 2025 from santosh krinskySeriously, we get all wound up about things that have no real significance in the larger picture of life. Whether it is someone cutting in front of us in a queue or on the road, or whether someone says something about us which we do not like, we tend to get revved up and stew on what happened. ...
Views: 123 - Weakness of Limitation or the Power of Omnipotence Depends on the Status of Consciousness - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen we are feeling weak or limited, we become unhappy, we react with frustration and are discontented with our lot. We feel in many cases oppressed by circumstances. We can become depressed if things are not going the way we expect or want them to go. We can become angry with ourselves, with ...
Views: 161 - Weaknesses of the Vital Nature That Impede the Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Nov 09, 2025 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo describes three conditions that can derail the practice of integral yoga. Each of the three represent a form of weakness of the vital nature. The normal vital nature craves excitement and seeks new experiences all the time. The transformation of human nature, however, involves ...
Views: 113 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 1: Is It Possible For Westerns to Practice Yoga? - by Submitted on Mar 28, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe question is frequently raised as to whether Westerners, with a background and culture grounded in materialism, the fulfillment of the vital ambitions and desires, and the development of the mental faculties, can truly enter into the spirit of yoga and obtain the fruits of the yogic practice ...
Views: 586 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 2: A Hindu Temperament in a Westerner’s Body? - by Submitted on Mar 29, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhen a Westerner takes up a serious yogic practice, they frequently hear that they must be Hindu souls born into Western bodies. They are then viewed as somehow anomalous to the cast of mind, vital force and emotions that tend to develop through life-long exposure to Western culture, educational ...
Views: 562 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 3: Are There Advantages to an Indian Birth for the Practice of Yoga? - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2022 from santosh krinskyIf we look at the qualities required for bringing about the emergence of the psychic being, the development of a devotional attitude, and support for the idea of focusing on the Eternal through subordination or even abandonment of the relations of the outer life, it is clear that India has ...
Views: 489 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 4: Obstacles Faced by Westerners and the Soul’s Aspiration to Overcome Them in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Mar 31, 2022 from santosh krinskyAll human beings, regardless of whether they are born in the West, the East, or elsewhere, find the challenges of taking up yoga to be daunting and requiring of them unstinting efforts to understand the obstacles, and identify and implement ways to overcome them. With its long history of support ...
Views: 487 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 5: the Yogic Path Is Not Limited by Race, Origin or Religious or Cultural Background - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe objective of the integral yoga is to support the evolutionary process of the development and integration of the next stage of consciousness, beyond the mental consciousness. This step is necessary to overcome the limitations of the current mental framework which have helped create the ...
Views: 541 - What Actually Is Spirituality? - by Submitted on Jul 11, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe speak of ‘spirituality’ and we have a conception in our minds about what it actually is. We vaguely sense that it encompasses a devotion and focus on something other than our daily external life and relationships. Many people state that they are ‘spiritual, not religious’. We sometimes ...
Views: 134 - 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: 443 - What Causes the Wind? - by Submitted on May 07, 2024 from santosh krinskyA young child was asked what causes the wind. The child replied: “When the trees move their branches and leaves, that is what makes the wind!” This extremely logical observation mirrors the way we tend to look at the world. We think that we make the decisions, that we are ‘in charge’ of what we ...
Views: 322 - What Does It Mean to ‘Be Calm’ in the Mind - by Submitted on Feb 06, 2023 from santosh krinskyAttaining a deep inner peace in the being is a process that can begin wherever an individual current is in their inner life. For someone just starting out, there is no expectation of some sudden miraculous silencing of the mind (although of course, it is possible). Rather, the initial attempts ...
Views: 527 - What Does Sri Aurobindo Mean by Transformation of the Nature? - by Submitted on Sep 11, 2021 from santosh krinskyIn setting forth a goal of transformation of the nature through the advent of the spiritual consciousness and the supramental level, Sri Aurobindo goes beyond the goals of other traditional spiritual paths which have ‘liberation’ as the goal. He describes the impact of each new manifestation of ...
Views: 588 - What Is a ‘Natural” Response to Circumstances for the Human Individual? - by Submitted on Dec 11, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we see any individual stopping to reflect, choose his line of action and make a specific, conscious determination of how to respond, we consider this action to be unnatural, stilted, and we imply that it is somehow subject to some kind of ulterior motive, and thus, tend to distrust it. ...
Views: 348 - What Is a ‘Natural” Response to Circumstances for the Human Individual? - by Submitted on Dec 11, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen we see any individual stopping to reflect, choose his line of action and make a specific, conscious determination of how to respond, we consider this action to be unnatural, stilted, and we imply that it is somehow subject to some kind of ulterior motive, and thus, tend to distrust it. ...
Views: 334 - What Is Cosmic Consciousness? - by Submitted on Aug 05, 2021 from santosh krinskyOur normal human consciousness revolves around the standpoint and awareness of our ego-personality. We look at things from our own viewpoint, and determine our relation to everything that takes place based on how we perceive these things to impact the ego. We tend to treat the universal creation ...
Views: 619 - What Is Immortality? - by Submitted on Feb 06, 2024 from santosh krinskyA common conception about immortality is that this personality, this individuality that we identify with, will somehow survive intact, maintain its existence and continuity of existence and thus, have a continuous line of memory stretching endlessly into the future. This is not, however, a ...
Views: 351 - What Is Meant by Spontaneity and How to Apply It - by Submitted on Jan 11, 2024 from santosh krinskyThere are two types of spontaneity and each of them proceeds from a different cause and has a vastly different effect. Spontaneity is generally understood in the context of responding ‘naturally’ to situations without a lot of thinking, planning or detailed consideration of one’s actions or ...
Views: 362 - What Is Meant By the Concept of Mental Health? - by Submitted on Apr 04, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor the most part, Western psychology is focused on treating what is considered ‘abnormal’ in order to help an individual fit into society and act ‘normally’. Much focus is put on external causes of various forms of disturbance and how the individual can adjust, adapt or respond to those ...
Views: 660 - What is Meant by the Term ‘Meditation’? - by Submitted on Jun 12, 2021 from santosh krinskyWe are asked to meditate and for most, the question arises, what is meditation? How do i do it and what is supposed to happen when I meditate. Those with an active or highly devotional nature may find it difficult to sit for formal meditation, but for those who have a developed mental process, ...
Views: 778 - What Is Spirituality? - by Submitted on Jul 16, 2021 from santosh krinskySurveys done of young people today indicate a strong movement to reduce the role of the mainstream organised religions with people claiming to be “spiritual” not “religious”. What is spirituality and how does it differ from being religious? Religions tend to focus on a fixed belief system and ...
Views: 587 - What is the Atman? How Do We Experience the Self? - by Submitted on Aug 01, 2021 from santosh krinskyAs long as we are enmeshed in the ego-life, it is essentially impossible to conceive of the status or existence of the Atman. We relate to the physical world, we relate to other individuals as if we are just this limited human existence and being, we perceive and react to everything from our own ...
Views: 623 - What Is the Difference Between Spiritual and Psychic? - by Submitted on Jan 24, 2024 from santosh krinskyFirst, we must remember that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother relate the term ‘psychic’ to the soul, the aspect of the individual that maintains a direct connection with the Divine. The soul is an organising principle within the earth-consciousness and, while it maintains a connection to the Divine, ...
Views: 357 - What Is the Divine? - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe term “Divine” is used by Sri Aurobindo, starting with the title of his magnum opus, The Life Divine. How do we understand the term? In the Taittiriya Upanishad, a seeker asks his father and guru, “Lord, teach me the Eternal.” The response provides us an understanding of the Divine: “Seek ...
Views: 850 - What Is the Purpose? Why Am I Alive? Is There a Meaning to Life? - by Submitted on Dec 09, 2022 from santosh krinskyModern day civilisation suffers from an epidemic of ’emptiness’, a feeling that life has no meaning or purpose. This leads to various coping mechanisms such as dissipation through use of drugs or alcohol, or through consumption of mindless entertainment. For those who do not choose these ...
Views: 494 - What Is the Role and Importance of the Physical Body for the Evolution of Consciousness? - by Submitted on Dec 01, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhy do we have a physical body? We undergo pain and suffering related to having a body as we age, experience illness, injury, the infirmities of old age, and eventually the process of death of the body, in some cases through very painful means. Those who conclude that the body is purely an ...
Views: 363 - What is the Role of the Spirit? - by Submitted on Jan 31, 2025 from santosh krinskyPeople are always asking about the difference between spirituality and religion, as well as the difference between the mind and the spirit. The term ‘spirit’ has been used in so many different ways and contexts, that it is hard to comprehend exactly what is meant by it. When ‘spiritual ...
Views: 206 - What Is to Be Done With Our Multiple Personalities in the Spiritual Path - by Submitted on Nov 21, 2023 from santosh krinskyThere are numerous strategies adopted by spiritual seekers throughout the ages to try to address the divergent pulls of the various aspects or ‘personalities’ within each individual. Brute force has been tried. Stoicism and resistance to the force of desire has been tried. Abandonment of the ...
Views: 356 - What Is Transformation of the Nature? - by Submitted on Sep 02, 2021 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo describes a goal for humanity which involves a change of consciousness and the transformation of human nature. There is considerable debate about whether it is possible to change human nature, or whether we are doomed to be stuck in our animal nature for all times. Sri Aurobindo ...
Views: 733 - What Technique or Practice Is Prescribed in the Integral Yoga? - by Submitted on Feb 12, 2023 from santosh krinskyit is a frequent inquiry: ‘Tell us what technique we should use to reach the spiritual goal?” Many ask what specific technique Sri Aurobindo or the Mother recommends for everyone to follow. They point out that other paths of spirituality offer specific actions one must undertake to succeed. ...
Views: 474 - 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: 439 - When the Fire Has Consumed All Its Fuel - by Submitted on May 07, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo translates Shwetashwatara Upanishad, Chapter Six, Verse 19: “Who hath neither parts nor works, for He is utterly tranquil, faultless, stainless, therefore He is the one great bridge that carrieth us over to Immortality, even as when a fire hath burnt up all its fuel.” When we ...
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