A DICTIONARY
of some English terms used by
Mother and Sri Aurobindo
(mainly in Their own words) 

(by the editorial staff of arianuova.org) 

 

A 

Absolute (the) [brahman]
The supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God. It is a self-existent which is perfectly free and free from deficiency, absolved of all bondage to relativities and from relation or qualification. Brahman is at the same time the Omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace.

Active Brahman [saguna brahman]
The dynamic aspect of  Brahman which is expressed in the cosmic movement. A universal  Divine, one in being, multiple in personality and power, who conveys to us, when we enter into the consciousness of his universal forces, a  sense of infinite quality and will and act and world-wide knowledge and a one yet innumerable delight. Realised by the mind separately  from the silent brahman, it is an aspect of universal  being which though wonderfully freed, uplifted and illumined, supports only the present self-expression of the Cosmic Spirit and does not transform, as would a transcendental Descent, the ambiguous symbols and veiled mysteries of a world of Ignorance.

Adequate (vak)
Having the qualities of the lowest level of Overhead Poetry style, which has the power to make us see the object or idea in a certain temperate lucidity of vision.

Aspiration [abhipsa]
The call of the individual for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or divine consciousness and its insistence to bring it down on earth in a Divine Life. Adapted from the Latin adspirare, to seek to reach.

 

C

Central being [jivatman]
The Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. It has two forms — above, it is the Jivatman proper, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes; below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it.

Consacration [abhisheka]
That which is made sacred in offering to the Divine. From the Latin consecrare, to make wholly sacred.

Consciousness [cit]
Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.

Consciousness-Force [cit-shakti]
The Divine Conscious Force that builds the worlds; a universal Energy that is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things.

Cosmic consciousness [brahmanda]
The consciousness of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature, with all the beings and forces within it. In the cosmic consciousness the limits of the ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or is filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces.

 

D

Divine (the) [paratpara]
The Supreme Being from which all comes and in which all lives. In its supreme Truth the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and delight. The Transcendent, the Cosmic (Universal) and the Individual are three powers of the Divine, overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation.

Dynamic mind
That part of the mind which is concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of ideas; it thinks, plans and acts in order to achieve things.

 

E

Earth-consciousness
The global consciousness of the earth which evolves with the evolution of life on the planet.

Effective (vak)
Having the qualities of the second level of Overhead Poetry style, more dynamic and powerfully expressive than the adequate style and characterised by aptness and vividness and richness and beauty of phrase. 

Ego [ahamkara]
The separative sense of individuality which makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality. Ego implies the identification of one’s existence with the outer mental, vital and physical self. The subjective principle by which the soul is induced to identify himself with nature and her activities; the limited ‘I’ in us, freedom from which is part of the liberation of the nature: the egoistic consciousness, including the ego-sense in the life stuff and the ego-idea in the mind which maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being and whose nature is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of its play and its exclusive absorption in one form, one combination of tendencies, one field of the movement of energies.

Emotional vital (the)
That part of the higher vital being which is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred, and the rest.

Environmental consciousness
Something that each person carries around him, outside his body, by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces.
The individual is not limited to the physical body — it is only the external consciousness which feels like that. As soon as one gets over this feeling of limitation, one can feel first the inner consciousness which is connected with the body, but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes of consciousness above the body, also a consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic forces and with other beings. The last is what I have called the environmental consciousness.» «The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond all these sheaths (mental, vital, subtle-physical) and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world and can become aware of them and deal with them before they enter. The subliminal is able to widen indefinitely this circumconscient envelope and more and more enlarge its self-projection into the cosmic existence around it. A point comes where it can break through the separation altogether, unite, identify itself with cosmic being, feel itself universal, one with all existence.
If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. 

Equality [samata]
Equality of soul and mind to all things and happenings, equanimity founded on the sense of the one Self, the one Divine everywhere; the capacity to remain unmoved within all conditions.

Evolution
The progressive unfolding of Spirit in the earth-consciousness; a heightening of the force of consciousness in the individual as in the collective being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest in the world, bringing into Matter the powers of Life, then of Mind, then of Supermind and the Spirit of pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss [saccidananda].

Existence
Existence is not an illusion, a Maya that had no reason, a thing that unaccountably happened to be. Existence is a Truth of things unfolding by a gradual process of manifestation, an evolution of its own involved Reality.

Exteriorisation
The consciousness going out of the body. The act of moving out of the physical body.

Externalising mind
That part of the mind which is concerned with the expression of ideas in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).

 

F

Faith [shraddha]
A dynamic intuitive conviction in the inner being of the truth of suprasensible things which cannot be proved by any physical evidence but which are real; the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving; the soul’s belief in the Divine’s existence, wisdom, power, love, and grace.

Falsehood
Not Ignorance [avidya], but an extreme result of it. Falsehood is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power puts forth its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its willful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. Whenever these perversions created out of the stuff of ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense.

Force (the) [shakti]
The Divine Force, the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible, for this Force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; in the individual it is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, for all that has to be done in the yoga.

Force (the Mother’s) [mahashakti]
The higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature; the Divine Force which works to remove the Ignorance and change the nature into the divine nature.

 

G

Gnosis [vijnana]
Adapted directly from the Greek word meaning knowledge, it equates with the Supermind and it is the Knowledge self-contained in and all-aware, all-powerful consciousness based on the truth of being. A power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self, possessing not only the concentrated consciousness of the infinite Essence, but also and at the same time an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the Infinite.

God [ishvara]
The Absolute, the Spirit, the Self spaceless and timeless, the Self manifest in the Cosmos and Lord of Nature. God is the All and that which transcends the All.

Godhead [devata]
The one supreme divine Being.

Gods [deva]
Personalities and Powers of the dynamic Divine.

Grace (Divine Grace) [kripa]
The help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature.

 

H

Hemisphere [parardha]
Half of the sphere of existence —
   - Higher hemisphere: the Existence-Cosciousness-Bliss of the Eternal;
   - Lower hemisphere: the triple realm of Matter-Life-Mind.

Higher consciousness [caitanya]
The higher spiritual or divine consciousness.

Higher Mind
A luminous thought-mind whose instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness.

Hostile forces [asura]
Anti-divine (not merely undivine forces) that are in revolt against the Divine, against the Truth and Light, and opposed to the Yoga-Maya of the Divine.

 

I

Ignorance (the) [avidya]
The Ignorance of oneness; the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life; the consciousness of the divided Many divorced from the unifying knowledge of the One.

Illumined Mind
A mind no longer of higher thought, but of spiritual light; here the clarity of the intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit.

Illuminative (vak) 
Having the qualities of the third level of Overmind Poetry style, which gives the pure untranslated language of intuitive vision full of a greater illumination in which the inner mind sees and feels object, emotion, idea not only clearly or richly or distinctly and powerfully, but in a flash or outbreak of transforming light which kindles the thought or image into a disclosure of new significances of a much more inner character, a more profoundly revealing vision, emotion, spiritual response.

Immanent (the)
The indwelling Spirit, existing within in each being and in each form of nature.

Impersonal (the) [nirguna brahma]
Not a He, but an It. The Impersonal Brahman is inactive, aloof, indifferent, not concerned with what happens in the universe; It is everywhere, all-pervading, without form or limit in any place or time.

Inconscience (the)
The Supreme’s state of self-involved, self-oblivious consciousness and force which is at the basis of the material world; this state is the apparent opposite of the Supreme and in it there can be darkness, inertia, insensibility, disharmony and disintegration. Not really inconscient at all, it is rather a complete “sub”conscience, a supposed or involved consciousness.

Inconscient (the) [salilamapraketam]
That which has lapsed from consciousness into a nethermost, self-oblivious or self-absorbed swoon or trance.
The Inconscient is that part of Nature which is so obscure and asleep that it seems to be wholly devoid of consciousness; at any rate, as in the stone, the mineral kingdom, the consciousness there is entirely inactive and hidden. The history of the earth begins with this inconscience.
We too carry it in ourselves, in the substance of our body, since the substance of our body is the same as that of the earth.
But by evolution, this sleeping and hidden consciousness gradually awakens through the vegetal and animal kingdoms, and in them subconscience begins; this subconscience, with the appearance of mind in man, culminates in consciousness. This consciousness likewise is progressive, and as man evolves, it will change into superconscience. We too, then, carry in ourselves the subconscience which links us to the animal, and the superconscience which is our hope and assurance of future realisation. 

Inevitable (vak)
Having the qualities of the highest level of Overmind Poetry style, which brings the absolute and revealing word, either in the pure inevitable form or as a magical transformation of a lesser style raised to inevitability in its own line. 

Inner being [antahkharana]
The inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, with the psychic behind as the inmost.

Inner mind
That which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality); this inner or subliminal mind senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act up on the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience.

Inner physical
The physical part of the inner being.

Inner vital
The vital part of the inner being.

Insentience
Absence of sense-perception.

Inspiration [shruti]
A faculty wich is of the nature of truth-hearing; it is an immediate reception of the very voice of the truth, and it readily brings the word that perfectly embodies it and it carries something more then the light of its idea; there is seized some stream of its inner reality and vivid arriving movement of its substance.

Integral Yoga [purnayoga]
A union [yoga] in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work.

Intellect [buddhi]
That part of the mind proper which is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; its function is to observe, inquire, understand and judge. Lower buddhi [aparabuddhi]: “understanding”; higher buddhi [parabuddhi]: “overstanding”.

Intermediate Zone
A zone of formations, a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual, but there is no order or firm foothold; this zone is a passage between the physical and the true spiritual realms.

Intuitive Mind [vijnanabuddhi]
A mind of intuitive reason characterised by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination; it is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. intuitive mindintuitive mind — a higher form of the buddhi whose inspirations, revelations, intuitions, self-luminous discernings are messages from a higher knowledge-plane, but which can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision.

Intuition [smrti]
A power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the lower ranges of spiritual mind to the original knowledge by identity; it gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into intuitions - intuitive ideas. Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition.

Involution
Involution of a superconscient Spirit in inconscient Matter is the secret of this visible and apparent world and the evolution of this Superconscient out of inconscient Nature is the keyword of the earth's riddle. Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be an involution of the Divine.

 

K

Knowledge (the) [vidya]
The knowledge of the One Reality, the consciousness of Unity.

Knowledge by identity [atmani atmanam atmana]
The supermind knows most completely and securely not by thought but by identity, by a pure awareness of the self-truth of things in the self and by the self.

 

L

Liberation [moksha, mukti]
The sense of release as if from ego and desire which always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soulìs freedom. The release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature. A liberation of the soul in nature perfect and self-existent whether in action or in inaction.

Life [pranamayapurusha]
Being at labour in Matter to express itself in terms of Conscious Force; an energy of Spirit subordinated to action of mind and body, which fulfills itself through mentality and physicality and acts as a link between them.

Life-force [pranashakti]
The life-energy itself, not material energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and involved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it no physical form could have come into being or could remain in being.

Light (the) [jyoti]
Primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; spiritual Light is not knowledge, but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.

 

M

Man [purusha]
Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood. Man is a middle term of the evolution, not its end, crown or consummating masterpiece.

Material vital
That part of the lower vital turned entirely to physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.

Matter [annamayapurusha]
Being manifested as substance; substance of the one Conscious Being. A self-formed mask and robe of the divine Spirit, matter is not fundamentally real, but a form of the force of Conscious Being.

Mechanical mind (or mental physical)
A part of the mind closely connected with the physical mind; its nature is to go on repeating without use whatever has happened - recent events, impressions, old habitual thoughts or ways of thinking and feeling.

Mental plane [manakosha]
A world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant; mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction.

Mental vital
That part of the higher vital being which gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations and other movements of the vital being.

Mind [manas]
The words “mind” and “mental” are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will etc. that are part of man's intelligence. The ordinary mind has three main parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind.
   The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life.
   The vital mind or desire mind is a mind of dynamic will, action, desire; it is occupied with force and achievement and satisfaction and possession, with enjoyment and suffering, giving and taking, growth and expansion, etc.
   The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with physical things only; limited by the physical view and experience of things it mentalises the experience brought by the contact of outward life and things, but does not go beyond that. The mechanical mind, closely connected with the physical mind, goes on repeating without use whatever has happened.
   Overtopping the ordinary mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, there are higher ranges of Mind, gradations of spiritualised mind leading to the Supermind. In ascending order they are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind (and Intuition proper) and Overmind at the apex of the Mind consciousness.

Mother (the Divine Mother) [sri mata]
The consciousness and force of the Divine; the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Mother is the Divine Conscious-Force that dominates all existence, upholding us and the universe, manifesting all from the fiat of the Supreme Lord.

 

N

Nature [prakriti]
The outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. The higher, divine Nature (paraprakriti) is free from Ignorance and its consequences; the lower nature (aparaprakriti) is a mechanism of active Force put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. The lower nature of an individual is his mind, life and body.

Nescience
The complete self-ignorance in Nature. It comes from the Latin ne-, non, and scire, to know.

Non-Being [asat]
Non-Existence, Nothingness. Non-existent, unreal; non-being, nothingness; the Negation of things made possible by the Spirit’s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being — an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves; something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe, not a mere negation but a zero which is All or an indefinable Infinite which appears to the mind a blank, because mind grasps only finite constructions.

 

O

Occultism
The knowledge and right use of the hidden forces of nature; true occultism means a search into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface.

Opening
The release of the consciousness by which it begins to admit into itself the working of the Divine Life and Power; the ability of the consciousness on the various levels to receive the descent of the Higher Consciousness above.

Outer being
The surface being, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness.

Overmind [para manisha]
The apex of the Mind consciousness, is the heighest of the planes below the supramental. Full of lights and powers, the Overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators; only each create in his own way; he sees all but sees all from his own viewpoint. There is not the absolute supramental harmony and certitude. The Overmind is a delegate of the Supramental Consciousness, its delegate to the cosmic Ignorance. The Supramental is the total Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate identity.
The Overmind is the region of the gods, the beings of divine origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and organising the evolution of the universe; and more specifically, since the formation of the earth they have served as messengers and intermediaries to bring to the earth the help of the higher regions and to preside over the formation of the mind and its progressive ascension. It is usually to the gods of the overmind that the prayers of the various religions are addressed. These religions most often choose, for various reason, one of these gods and transform him for their personal use into the supreme God. In the individual evolution, one must develop in oneself a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or open oneself to it. Almost all the occult systems and disciplines aim at the development and mastery of the Overmind.

 

P

Passive Brahman [nirguna brahman]
The Absolute in its static poise above all manifestation.

Perfection [siddhi]
A self-fulfilling movement of growth of the lower nature into a higher divine nature; accomplishment of the aims of the integral yoga, with the final manifestation of a Divine Life on earth.

Person (the)
The human birth in this world is on its spiritual side a complex of two elements, a spiritual Person and a soul of personality; the former is man's eternal being, the latter is his cosmic and mutable being.

Physical consciousness
The physical mind, the physical vital as well as the body consciousness proper.

Physical nature
Not the body alone, but the whole physical mind, vital, material nature.

Physical self [annamayapurusha]
The physical conscious being; the material being.

Physical (the) [annam]
The physical consciousness and body.

Physical vital
The part of the vital that is turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.

Plasticity
To be able to identify oneself with the Supreme in the Becoming; a suppleness necessary to receive the Supermind.

Possession (by hostile forces)
An intervention from the non-human worlds in which the hostile forces act on humans.

Presence (the)
The sense and perception of the Divine as a Being felt as present in one's existence and consciousness or in relation with it.

Psychic [hrt purusha]
Of or relating to the soul (as distinguished from the mind and vital). Used in the sense of the Greek word psyche, meaning “soul”, the term “psychic” refers to all the movements and experiences of the soul, those which rise from or directly touch the psychic being. It does not refer to all the more inward and all the abnormal experiences in which the mind and vital predominate; such experiences, in Sri Aurobindo's terminology, would be called psychological (surface or occult), not psychic.
The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya purusa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward temporary personalities which compose our outer individuality and whose combined superficial action and appearance of status we call ourselves: this inmost entity also, taking form in us as the psychic Person, puts forward a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops from life to life; for this is the traveller between birth and death and between death and birth, our nature parts are only its manifold and changing vesture. The psychic being can at first exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for the future growth of the instruments which it has to use until they are ready to be a luminous instrumentation of the Divine. It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. On the contrary, where the psychic personality is weak, crude or ill-developed, the finer parts and movements in us are lacking or poor in character and power, even though the mind may be forceful and brilliant, the heart of vital emotions hard and strong and masterful, the life-force dominant and successful, the bodily existence rich and fortunate and an apparent lord and victor. It is then the outer desire-soul, the pseudo-psychic entity, that reigns and we mistake its misinterpretations of psychic suggestion and aspiration, its ideas and ideals, its desires and yearnings for true soul-stuff and wealth of spiritual experience note. If the secret psychic Person can come forward into the front and, replacing the desire-soul, govern overtly and entirely and not only partially and from behind the veil this outer nature of mind, life and body, then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence.» «The word “psychic” in our ordinary parlance is more often used in reference to this desire-soul than to the true psychic. It is used still more loosely of psychological and other phenomena of an abnormal or supernormal character which are really connected with the inner mind, inner vital, subtle physical being subliminal in us and are not at all direct operations of the psyche. Even such phenomena as materialisation and dematerialisation are included, though, if established, they evidently are not soul-action and would not shed any light upon the nature or existence of the psychic entity, but would rather be an abnormal action of an occult subtle physical energy intervening in the ordinary status of the gross body of things, reducing it to its own subtle condition and again reconstituting it in the terms of pass matter.
At the beginning the soul in Nature, the psychic entity, whose unfolding is the first step towards a spiritual change, is an entirely veiled part of us, although it is that by which we exist and persist as individual beings in Nature. The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is immaculate and luminous and, because it is perfectly luminous, it is immediately, intimately, directly aware of truth of being and truth of nature; it is deeply conscious of truth and good and beauty because truth and good and beauty are akin to its own native character, forms of something that is inherent in its own substance. It is aware also of all that contradicts these things, of all that deviates from its own native character, of falsehood and evil and the ugly and the unseemly; but it does not become these things nor is it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body. For the soul, the permanent being in us, puts forth and uses mind, life and body as its instruments, undergoes the envelopment of their conditions, but it is other and greater than its members.
Normally, it takes several lives for the psychic to become completely formed, and it is the psychic that passes from one body to another; that’s why we aren’t conscious of our past lives — because we aren’t conscious of our psychic being.

Psychic being [caitya purusha]
The evolving soul of the individual, the divine portion in him which evolves from life to life, growing by its experiences until it becomes a fully conscious being. From its place behind the heart-centre, the psychic being supports the mind, life and body, aiding their growth and development. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being", but strictly speaking there is a distinction: the soul is the psychic essence, the psychic being is the soul-personality put forward and developed by the psychic essence to represent it in the evolution.

Psychic essence
The soul in its essence; the divine essence in the individual, the divine spark which supports the evolution of the being in Nature. In the course of the evolution the psychic essence grows and takes form as the psychic being.

Psychicisation (psychic transformation)
The psychic change in which the psychic being comes forward to dominate the mind, vital and physical and change the lower nature.

Pulling
Drawing down too eagerly the divine force or a spiritual experience, instead of letting it descend quietly.

 

R

Real-Idea
Is a truth-perception which is self-effective; for it is the idea and will of the Spirit in direct action.

Realisation
The reception in the consciousness and the establishment there of the fundamental truths of the Divine; the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine.

Reality (the)
A Truth of all existence which is greater and more abiding than all its formations and manifestations; behind the appearance of the universe is the Reality of an infinite existence, an infinite consciousness, an infinite force and will, an infinite delight of being.

Receptivity [grahanashilata]
The power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action; the capacity of admitting and retaining the divine workings. One may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. The force works...behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little.

Rejection [parityagah]
Rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.

Revelation [drshthi]
The direct sight of Truth.

 

S

Self (the) [atman]
The universal Spirit, the self-existent Being, the conscious essential Existence, one in all. The Self is being, not a being; it is the original and essential nature of our existence. Everything acts in the self: the whole play of Nature takes place in the self, in the Divine. The self contains the universe.

Self-knowledge [atmajnana]
The knowledge of the Self.

Sheaths [karana]
The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language.

Scrutinizers
Each one carries in his atmosphere some scrutinizer — they are a kind of adverse forces who critizise always each action, each thought, each feeling and indirectly, in doing so, they pitilessly unveil all wrong movement in the consciousness.

Silence [niscala niravata]
Freedom from thoughts and vital movements, when the whole consciousness is quite still; not only cessation of thoughts but a stillness of the mental and vital substance.

Sincerity [satyanishtha]
To mean what one says, feel what one professes, be earnest in one’s will; sincerity in the sadhak means that he is really in earnest in his aspiration for the Divine and refuses all other will or impulse except the Divine’s; it means to allow no part of the being to contradict the highest aspiration towards the Divine.

Soul [purusha]
The psychic essence or entity, the divine essence in the individual; a spark of the Divine that comes down into the manifestation to support the evolution of the individual. In the course of the evolution, the soul grows and evolves in the form of a soul-personality, the psychic being. The term “soul” is often used as a synonym for “psychic being”.

Spirit [atman]
The Consciousness above mind, the universal Self which is always in oneness with the Divine.

Spiritual [daivika]
Of the spirit. All contacts with the Self, the Higher Consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual.

Spiritualisation
The spiritual change in which there is the established descent of the divine peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole nature to that.

Spiritualised mind (gradations of)
Higher ranges of Mind overtopping our normal Mind and leading to Supermind; these successive states, levels or graded powers of being are hidden in our own superconscious parts. In ascending order the gradations of spiritualised mind are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind.

Spirituality
An awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life, and body.

States of being
The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding to cosmic zones or planes, and as these inner states of being are developed one becomes conscious of those domains. This consciousness is double, at first psychological and subjective, within oneself, expressing itself through thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations; then objective and concrete when one is able to move about in the various cosmic regions, grow conscious of them and act freely in them.

Subconscient (the)
The subconscient or subconscious of the individual is that submerged part of his being in which there is no waking conscious and coherent thought, will, feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up; from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. In the ordinary man the subconscient includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and the secret body-consciousness. It is not to be confused with the subliminal: the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence.

Subliminal (the) [antaratman]
The inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical, with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. The subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature; it is not subconscient, but conscient and greater than the waking consciousness. It has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower suconscient ranges.
The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconcient ranges.

Subtle body [karana sharira]
A subtler material existence behind our outer body which provides the substance not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths.

Sunlit path (the) [hiranmayena patra]
When the psychic being comes out in its inherent power; is usually or habitually in front; a natural spirit of faith and surrender; a bright settled faith and happy bhakti.

Superconscient (the Superconscience)
Something above our present awareness from which the higher consciousness comes down into the body; it includes the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being.
In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being.

Supermind [vijnana]
The Supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Divine Gnosis, the highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe, always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence. It is a principle of consciousness which acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by which the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is that.
Supermind or Gnosis is the characteristic, illumined, significant action of Spirit in its own native reality.
The supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. It alone contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness and is necessary for a Truth-creation.
The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence.

Supernature
Supernature is the Nature superior to material or physical Nature — what we usually call “Nature”. But this Nature that we see, feel and study, this Nature that has been our familiar environment since our birth upon earth, is not the only one. There is a vital nature, a mental nature, and so on. It is this that, for the ordinary consciousness, is Supernature.

Surrender [atma-samarpana]
To consecrate everything in oneself to the Divine, to offer all one is and has, not to insist on one's ideas, desires, habits, etc. but to allow the divine Truth to replace them by its knowledge, will and action everywhere.

Symbol
The form of one plane that represents a truth of another.

 

T

Thinking mind
That part of the mind proper which is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; its function is to observe, inquire, understand and judge.

Trance [samadhi]
Degrees of consciousness less and less communicable to the waking mind.

Transformation
The bringing down of the higher, divine consciousness and nature into the lower nature of mind, life and body, and the replacement of the lower by the higher. The human nature assumes the spontaneous dynamism and the harmonised process of the Spirit.
The supramental transformation is the final stage in the integral yoga, enabling the birth of a new individual fully formed by the supramental power, the same power that enabled the universe to be created in the first place from out of a Divine Source. Such individuals would be the forerunners of a new truth-consciousness based supra-humanity. Among their capacities are: a total oneness and identity with the environment and with others; total integral knowledge replacing our essential ignorance, i.e. knowledge by identity; a unification of knowledge and will (what one knows is automatically created, what is willed is fully known in its truth); the Force of creation reunited with the Consciousness; and a complete unity of the Individual, Universal, and Transcendent purpose expressed through the person. Also, all aspects of division and ignorance of consciousness at the vital and mental levels would be overcome, replaced with a unity of consciousness at every plane, and even the physical body transformed and divinised. A new supramental species would then emerge, living a supramental, gnostic, divine life on earth.
There will probably be intermediary beings who won’t last, just as there were intermediary beings between the chimpanzee and man.

Triple transformation
First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness.

Truth-Consciousness [rta-cit]
The Supermind; the consciousness of essential truth of being (satyam), of ordered truth of active being (rtam), and the vast self-awareness (brhat) in which alone this consciousness is possible.

 

V

Vital (the) [pranomaya]
The life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul of man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of nature. The vital part of man is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and governed by the spiritual light and power. The vital has three main parts —
   Higher vital - The mental vital and emotional vital taken together. The mental vital gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations or other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest.
   Middle vital or vital proper - Dynamic, sensational and passionate, it is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passion of various kinds and the field of many vital energies.
   Lower vital - Made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. The material vital is that part of the lower vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.

Vital physical
The nervous part of the being, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body.

Vital plane [pranaloka]
The plane connected with the life-world or desire-world, a plane in which life and desire find their untrammeled play and their easy self-expression and from there throw their influences and formations on our outer life.

 

W

Will
A force put upon a thing to be changed.

Will (Divine)
Something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will not be an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and bliss.

Witness (the) [sakshi]
The witness Purusha, a consciousness or Purusha calm and detached from the outer actions of Nature.