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- The Spiritual Aspirant’s Opening to the Action of the Spiritual Force - by Submitted on Nov 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere are many things in the world that we cannot directly observe with our senses, yet which we otherwise believe to be real, based on the noticeable and palpable effects they have. We cannot ‘see’ gravity, but we feel its effects. Similarly, we cannot ‘see’ electricity, but we not only can ...
Views: 0 - The Principle Thing in the Practice of Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Nov 03, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn his book The Mother, Sri Aurobindo provides a detailed roadmap for understanding the relatively simple idea that one must have the ‘will to overcome all attachments’, etc. In order to do this, we need to be able to appreciate what is meant by ‘attachments’. Most people would associate this ...
Views: 0 - The Flame of Aspiration, the Mystic Fire - by Submitted on Nov 02, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe Rig Veda has a large number of hymns to Agni, the mystic fire. Sri Aurobindo translated and commented on the hymns to Agni in his book, Hymns to the Mystic Fire. The importance of the mystic fire, which we may call the flame of aspiration for the spiritual seeker is evidenced by both the ...
Views: 1 - The Secret of Success in Spiritual Sadhana Is to Maintain the Aspiration and Focus and Never Give Up - by Submitted on Nov 01, 2025 from santosh krinskyFailure turns out to be the stepping stone to success. We tend to become obsessed with being ‘perfect’ in the spiritual sadhana. We identify things we should be thinking, things we should be doing, ways we should be acting and responding to situations, and create for ourselves a set of rules or ...
Views: 2 - Personal Effort and Divine Action in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen we reflect on the action of the Divine Force, and its ability to impact the individual and transform aspects of his life, we are frequently met with the skepticism of those who do not have the experience. How can one explain colors to a person who is blind from birth? How can music be ...
Views: 3 - Personal Effort in Service of the Divine Is an Initial Step Towards Complete Shift to the Divine Standpoint - by Submitted on Oct 30, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe normal human action is based in the ego-consciousness. We act as if we are fully independent, making our own decisions based on our own criteria, needs and concerns. We treat ourselves as something of a self-standing actor, working to survive in a somewhat hostile world and environment, ...
Views: 4 - Personal Effort Needed in Spiritual Practice and the Action of the Divine Force - by Submitted on Oct 29, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe spiritual seeker starts out from the standpoint of the human individual, the ego-consciousness. The process of spiritual development involves a systematic shift of the standpoint to the divine standpoint. This process does not occur overnight, and does not proceed ‘automatically’ but ...
Views: 5 - The Cure for the Spiritual Aspirant for Doubt, Guilt, Feelings of Unsuitability and Despair - by Submitted on Oct 28, 2025 from santosh krinskyAs long as we base ourselves in the individual personal identity, what we term the ‘ego-consciousness’ we are subject to mistakes, failures, indiscretions, and other situations where we do not meet our own internal concept of what we ‘should’ do. Most of this is based on the background and ...
Views: 6 - Actualizing the Surrender to the Divine in All the Parts of the Being - by Submitted on Oct 27, 2025 from santosh krinskyParticularly when we are predominantly seated in our mental consciousness, we tend to believe that 'knowing' something with our minds represents 'knowing' it in its reality. We gain what may be called the arrogance of the mental consciousness. We soon learn, however, that mental knowledge is not ...
Views: 7 - Sincerity in the Aspiration Is the Basis of the Divine Life - by Submitted on Oct 27, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe ego-consciousness is deeply embedded in each human individual, through the evolutionary process that created the ego as a mechanism for individuation and self-awareness, as the mental phase of this process took shape over long periods of time. The ego provided a needed framework to allow ...
Views: 7 - Reliance on the Divine Power Rather Than on the Individual Mind and Will - by Submitted on Oct 26, 2025 from santosh krinskyA strong mental consciousness and will may aid the individual in determining a way forward, but they are not the powers that can eventually succeed in the yogic process. If we view the yoga of Nature, we find that as a new power emerges, it brings with it unique, new ways of dealing with the ...
Views: 8 - How to Change Human Nature - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2025 from santosh krinskyHuman beings have struggled in their attempts to make changes to human nature throughout human history. Many approaches have been tried, including adopting tough disciplines, isolating oneself from society to avoid the impulses and temptations, as well as harsh tortures to which the body has ...
Views: 9 - Spiritual Development Through Action of the Divine Force Rather Than Through Purely Personal Effort - by Submitted on Oct 23, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe are wrapped up in the ego-consciousness from the moment we take birth. The entire societal structure, as well as the weight of millennia of evolutionary development to create an entity that could develop the powers of the vital and mental being as a self-aware and seemingly independent being, ...
Views: 10 - The Means of Focus and Receptivity in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Oct 22, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe human instrument is essentially a receiver. Through the various energy centres, vibrational patterns are picked up. Most of what is received is not consciously attended to, but it has its subtle impact. The human being is able to respond to a limited range of vibrations on the ...
Views: 12 - Active Versus Passive Forms of Surrender to the Divine - by Submitted on Oct 21, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn his book, The Mother, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes between the needed attitude of surrender to the Divine and what he terms a 'tamasic surrender'. "Note that a tamasic surrender refusing to fulfil the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a ...
Views: 12 - Wisdom of Muhammad Ali - by Submitted on Oct 20, 2025 from Scott & Stephen PetulloMuhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. (January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016). He is known as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. After Ali refused to be drafted into the military in 1967, he was found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his boxing titles. His conviction ...
Views: 13 - The True Attitude of Sadhana - by Submitted on Oct 19, 2025 from santosh krinskyMost people act under the impulsion of their vital desires, physical wants, and mental opinions, which are colored by the society within which an individual lives and its established norms and expectations. When an individual takes up the spiritual life and attempts to live according to the ...
Views: 14 - The Divine Intention and Will Goes Beyond the Human Ability to Conceive and Grasp It - by Submitted on Oct 19, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe try to judge situations and events from our human understanding. We do not generally see the chain of cause and effect that led to a specific circumstance, nor the impact of the result that we observe on future events. We see things from our own narrow egoistic viewpoint and judge them based ...
Views: 15 - Beyond Mental Ideas to Spiritual Experience - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe human mind is always at work, trying to figure out what life is all about, where we came from, why we are here, what we are to do, what lies in the future. We have developed a countless number of ideas, philosophies, religious concepts, and we become adherents to those that make sense to our ...
Views: 16 - Introduction to the Higher Levels of Consciousness Beyond the Mind - by Submitted on Oct 16, 2025 from santosh krinskyWestern psychology has begun to explore the levels and ‘realms’ of mind. This study has been going on for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years in India, where the psychological framework of ‘inner space’ has been a key focus of yogic psychology. Western study started with the mental powers ...
Views: 17 - Necessary Conditions for the Transformation of the Physical Body - by Submitted on Oct 13, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen the body experiences an influx of energy, for whatever source, it frequently finds that it cannot ‘hold’ that energy and must find a release for it. This may be expressed as some form of twitching or moving of the limbs, nervous drumming with the fingers, uncontrolled activity of the facial ...
Views: 16 - Addressing Depression and Vital Struggle in the Yogic Practice By Building Calm and Equality in Mind, Life and Body - by Submitted on Oct 12, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe play of the Gunas in the external nature explains the various reactions, moods and psychological states we experience. This is true not just in the ordinary life of the individual in society, but also for those who take up the practice of Yoga. The patterns of reaction based in the action of ...
Views: 17 - The Total Change of the Nature Cannot Be Done in a Day - by Submitted on Oct 11, 2025 from santosh krinskyModern life moves at high speed. We expect things to take place virtually instantaneously. As a result, we judge things in the light of the time it takes to accomplish them. If we have to expend an effort, we hope and expect that we will immediately begin to see palpable results. We want an ...
Views: 17 - Insights About the Need for Strength and Flexibility in the Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Oct 10, 2025 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo makes several essential points here that bear some reflection. First, the need for strength in all the parts of the being. Until it actually begins to happen to an individual, he has no idea about the power of the Divine Force descending into the being and what impact it has on the ...
Views: 17 - Sadhana in the Path of Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Oct 09, 2025 from santosh krinskyWith its focus on transformation of body, life and mind through the descent, development and expression of the next term in the evolution of consciousness, the integral yoga sets a different aim than other paths of yoga, which tend to focus on individual liberation, salvation or ...
Views: 18 - Spiritual Experience Impacting the External Being - by Submitted on Oct 08, 2025 from santosh krinskySpiritual experiences are not purely subjective events impacting the mind or the emotions. They can also take on a very concrete form that impacts the vital nature and the physical body. Because of a general mental, religious and social bias against what appear to be unusual experiences, many ...
Views: 18 - Spiritual Experience Beyond the Mind - by Submitted on Oct 07, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo states: “God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep.” Until an individual has an actual experience of an inward state of consciousness, or that of the silent mind, or one in which the experience is that of an uninvolved ...
Views: 19 - Wise Words from Sigmund Freud - by Submitted on Oct 06, 2025 from Scott & Stephen PetulloSigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst. His seminal works, including The Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and Its ...
Views: 21 - Facing and Overcoming the Dangers of an Opening to Forces of the Vital Plane Without Sufficient Foundation in Peace and Calm in the Being - by Submitted on Oct 05, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere are sound reasons to establish calm, peace and equality in the being as the foundation for the spiritual practice. When an individual takes up some form of concentrated practice, tapasya, it can lead to the uprising of powerful energies, as well as an influx of thoughts, emotions, feelings ...
Views: 23 - Three Necessary Conditions for the Divine Power To Work Through the Seeker in the Outward Life - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyUnder normal conditions, we are pushed from one reaction to another by external impulsions and our trained responses to circumstances. There is very little chance, therefore, to inject a higher divine power directly into the life-action. Sri Aurobindo outlines the conditions that help the ...
Views: 22 - The True Condition of Spiritual Progress - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe frequently hear from people who say that they cannot focus on their spiritual practice as they don’t have a quiet space in which to meditate, or they live in a crowded, noisy city, or they are overwhelmed with all their duties relating to education, career, family, etc. They focus their ...
Views: 22 - The Divine Must Always Come First for the Spiritual Seeker - by Submitted on Oct 01, 2025 from santosh krinskyFrom the time of our birth we are directed and focused on the external reality of the material world. We are trained to pay attention to that existence, to develop opportunities, and to find ways to survive and thrive. Along the way, we get successes and failures, meet with positive results and ...
Views: 22 - Gaining an Unbiased Perspective in Judging One’s Own Actions and the Actions of Others - by Submitted on Sep 30, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is much easier to spot faults in others than in oneself. The New Testament of the Bible relates a parable directly on point: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of ...
Views: 20 - Increasing Awareness, Detachment and Mastery Are the Requirements for the Practitioner of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Sep 29, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe have something of a conflict in the way we tend to view the development of consciousness. On the one side, we generally try to minimize the distractions and reactions to sensations, impulses, feelings, thoughts from outside while we attend to our meditation or deep spiritual concentration. ...
Views: 23 - The Spiritual Seeker’s Aspiration and Prayer - by Submitted on Sep 28, 2025 from santosh krinskyParticularly in the West, when people think about Yoga, they believe it is a series of physical postures or exercises done with a certain sense of concentration. They associate Hatha Yoga with the entirety of yogic practice, and in many instances, treat Yoga as a form of physical ...
Views: 22 - Gaining Control Over and Mastery of One’s Mind and Thoughts - by Submitted on Sep 20, 2025 from santosh krinskyAs each stage of the evolution of consciousness develops, it brings a greater power of knowledge and action than the prior stage. Inevitably, there is an impact on those prior stages. Life effectuated changes in Matter. Mind effectuates changes in Life and Matter. Although the power is not ...
Views: 21 - Two Necessary Things in the Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Sep 18, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is a considerable amount of confusion about objectives and methods related to the practice of the integral yoga, primarily due to widely spread ideas about spirituality in general and well-known paths and disciplines that have their own fixed methodologies. Integral Yoga has a different ...
Views: 20 - Comparing a Vacant Mind and a Calm Mind - by Submitted on Sep 17, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen one steps back and begins to observe the mind’s action and what Swami Vivekananda calls the ‘mind-stuff’, chitta, a number of different statuses can be seen. The normal human mind is usually constantly active and it jumps from one thing to another in response to impulses, impressions, ...
Views: 24 - A Quiet Mind - by Submitted on Sep 16, 2025 from santosh krinskyNormally the mind is something of a chaotic marketplace. Sensations come in, feelings, emotions, ideas, all kinds of distractions arise and the mind reacts and follows them willy-nilly until the next impulse moves it in another direction. The past arises as we review things that have occurred to ...
Views: 19 - The Need for a Settled Peace and Silence in the Mind As the First Stage of Yogic Practice - by Submitted on Sep 15, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe vital nature seeks ‘experiences’. These experiences are something special that sets the individual apart. In most cases, these experiences come as signposts along the way to motivate the seeker and guide. But the vital ego latches on to them and desires them to repeat as well as have new ...
Views: 21 - The First Aim of the Yoga: Receptivity to a Higher Spiritual Consciousness - by Submitted on Sep 14, 2025 from santosh krinskyHistorically, much of the spiritual focus has been directed towards seeing through the illusory nature of the external reality and shifting the awareness to a pure spiritual consciousness that is not involved in that external reality. Regardless of terminology used, whether it is maya or samsara ...
Views: 23 - Bases of Yoga — Introduction - by Submitted on Sep 13, 2025 from santosh krinskyAs one begins the actual practice of yoga, one becomes aware of the various forms of difficulties in gaining the cooperation of and control over the various parts of our internal being. The mind races when we try to sit for meditation. We become aware of desires and compulsions that formerly ...
Views: 23 - Looking from Within — Summary and Conclusions - by Submitted on Sep 12, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is a deeply embedded aspiration wtihin humanity to discover some purpoe or significance to our lives, and to the very existence of the creation within which we live and act. Our training and education, from our earliest childhood, is fixated on achieving our standing within the external ...
Views: 25 - Consecrating Oneself Entirely to the Divine Life Represents the Way Forward for the Seeker Against All Doubt, Opposition and Negativity - by Submitted on Sep 12, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe spiritual path tends to breed considerable opposition from friends, family and associates because it takes the seeker along an entirely different line of development that does not necessarily meet the expectations of those people. It is a “path less travelled”. It is not infrequent that ...
Views: 29 - The Joy of Action — Independent of Concern for the Fruits of the Action - by Submitted on Sep 10, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe goal of the integral yoga is nothing less than the transformation of human nature, the uplifting of consciousness to the next evolutionary stage in the manifestation and the consequent changes that brings about to create a new harmony and a new balance in the life of the individual and in ...
Views: 26 - Acting Without Expectation for the Fruits of Action - by Submitted on Sep 09, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, v. 47-48, as translated by Sri Aurobindo, states: “Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity. Fixed in Yoga to thy actions, having ...
Views: 29 - Liberation and Self-Perfection: Adherence to the Divine Intention in the Universal Manifestation - by Submitted on Sep 08, 2025 from santosh krinskyMuch of the historical context of spirituality has been centered around the idea of individual realisation and liberation. The disciplines, practices and methods have been geared towards the individual achieving some form of release from what is recognised to be the ‘illusion’ of the external ...
Views: 28 - The One Essential Thing in Spiritual Development is an Inward Focus of the Awareness on the Divine Presence - by Submitted on Sep 07, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, v. 54, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna how to recognise the enlightened man. Sri Aurobindo translates: “What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” Sri ...
Views: 33 - Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2025 from santosh krinskyA popular proverb in recent years is ‘you are what you eat’. There is certainly an element of deeper truth in this expression. All material substance holds vibratory patterns. Rocks absorb heat and radiate it back afterwards for hours. Water absorbs thought vibrations as shown by Masaru Emoto in ...
Views: 32 - Balance and Harmony in Relation to Food and the Nourishment of the Body - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is a human trait. We tend to oscillate between extremes. Too much, or too little, seems to be our method of living. Wise men, sages and Rishis throughout the ages have counseled ‘moderation in all things’, the ‘middle way’, the way of ‘balance’. These tenets for living are also helpful in our ...
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