Sri Aurobindo: The greater the plasticity in any part of the nature, the less the resistance there.  By the higher vital parts of the nature I mean the vital mind, the emotional nature, the life-force dynamis in the being. The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines, arranges things and thoughts according to the life-pushes, desires, will to power or possession, will to action, emotions, vital ego reactions of the nature. It must be distinguished from the reasoning will which plans and arranges things according to the dictates of the thinking mind proper, the discriminating reason or according to the mental intuition or a direct insight and judgment. The vital mind uses thought for the service not of reason but of life-push and life-power and when it calls in reasoning it uses that for justifying the dictates of these powers, imposes their dictates on the reason instead of governing by a discriminating will the action of the life-forces.


Sri Aurobindo: This higher vital with all its parts is situated in the chest and has the cardiac centre as its main stronghold governing all this part down to the navel. I need not say anything about the emotional nature, for its character and movements are known to all. From the navel downwards is the reign of the vital passions and sensations and all the small life-impulses that constitute the bulk of the ordinary human life and character. This is what we call the lower vital nature. The Muladhara is the main support of the physical consciousness and the material parts of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] is a mind of dynamic (not rationalising) will, action, desire — occupied with force and achievement and satisfaction and possession, enjoyment and suffering, giving and taking, growth, expansion, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune etc. etc.   That [] is the ordinary activity of the vital mind which is always imagining and thinking and planning what to do about this and how to arrange about that. It has obviously its utility in human nature and human action, but acts in a random and excessive way without discipline, economy of its powers or concentration on the things that have really to be done.   The things which come to you in this way in sleep or waking are of the nature of vital mind imaginations and activities about things and work and whatever presents itself to the mind. On all things that present themselves to the mind, the vital imagination in man is able to work, imagining, speculating, building ideas or plans for the future etc. etc.


Sri Aurobindo: It has its utility for the consciousness in ordinary life, but must quiet down and be replaced by a higher action in Yoga. In sleep it is also the vital plane into which you enter. If properly seen and coordinated, what is experienced in the vital plane has its value and gives knowledge which is useful and control over the vital self and vital plane. But all that is coming to you through the subconscient in an incoherent way — this is the cause of the trouble. The whole thing has to be quieted down and we shall try to get that done.


Sri Aurobindo: When I spoke of your opening yourself, I meant simply that you should ﬁx it in your mind that the help is coming and have the will to receive it — not necessarily that you should open yourself by an effort.     The source from which these imaginations come has nothing to do with the reason and does not care for any rational objections.  They come either from the vital mind, the same source from which come all the ﬁne imaginations and long stories which men tell themselves in which they are the heroes and do great things or they come from little entities attached to the physical mind which pick up any random suggestion anywhere and present it to the mind just to see whether it will be accepted.


Sri Aurobindo: If one watches oneself closely one can ﬁnd the most queer and extraordinary or nonsensical things crossing the mind or peeping in on it in this way. Usually one laughs or hardly notices and the thing falls back to the world of incoherent thought from which it came.     It is again the vital mind.


Sri Aurobindo: It has no sense of proportion or measure and is eager to be or achieve something big at once.     All that [] is the vital mind — it has in everybody the habit of such imaginations. It is not very important, but of course it has to be got rid of, as the basis is ego.


Sri Aurobindo:   The vital mind in the ordinary nature cannot get on without these imaginations — so the habit remains for a long time. To be detached and indifferent is the best, then after a time it may get disgusted and drop the habit.


Sri Aurobindo:   That kind of talking [] is very common with the vital mind. It is a way it has of acting on the subtle plane on things in which it is interested, especially if the physical action is stopped or restricted.  The emotional being is itself a part of the vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   The heart is the centre of the emotional being and the emotions are vital movements. When the heart is puriﬁed, the vital emotions change into psychic feelings or else psychicised vital movements.


Sri Aurobindo: The heart is part of the vital — it has to be controlled in the same way as the rest, by rejection of the wrong movements, by acceptance of the true psychic surrender which prevents all demand and clamour, by calling in the higher light and knowledge. It is not usually however the heart that bothers about mental questions and the answer to them.     Pure and true thoughts and emotions and impulsions can rise from the human mind, heart and vital, because all is not evil there.


Sri Aurobindo: The heart may be unpuriﬁed, but that does not mean that everything in it is impure.   I make the distinction [ ] by noting where these things rise from. Anger, fear, jealousy touch the heart no doubt just as they touch the mind but they rise from the navel region and entrails (i.e. the lower or at highest the middle vital). Stevenson has a striking passage in where the hero notes that his fear is felt primarily not in the heart but the stomach. Love, hope have their primary seat in the heart, so with pity etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Above the heart is the vital mind — sense and the rising of sensation is lower than the emotion, not higher.  Sensation is much nearer the physical than emotion.   The place of desire is below the heart in the central vital (navel) and in the lower vital, but it invades the emotion and the vital mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   A mistake []; many men are not after happiness and do not believe it is the true aim of life. It is the physical vital that seeks after happiness, the bigger vital is ready to sacriﬁce it in order to satisfy its passions, search for power, ambition, fame or any other motive. If you say it is because of the happiness power, fame etc. gives, that again is not universally true. Power can give anything else, but not happiness; it is something in its very nature arduous and full of difﬁculty to get, to keep or to use — I speak of course of power in the ordinary sense.


Sri Aurobindo: A man may know he can never have fame in this life but yet work in the hope of posthumous fame or in the chance of it. He may know that the satisfaction of his passion will bring him everything rather than happiness — suffering, torture, destruction — yet he will follow his impulse.  So also the mind as well as the larger vital is not bound by the pursuit of happiness. It can seek Truth rather or the victory of a cause. To reduce all to a single hedonistic strain seems to me very poor psychology.


Sri Aurobindo: Neither Nature nor the vast Spirit in things are so limited and one-tracked as that.    The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital — it is the vital physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions etc. having as their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and sensibilities, the emotions and intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been puriﬁed by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.


Sri Aurobindo: Below the navel is the lower vital plane, which is ignorant and obscure, the seat of small desires, greeds, passions and enjoyments.    As there is a physical mind, so there is a physical vital — a vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.   That [] is the attitude not of the whole vital but of the physical vital, the animal part of the human being. Of course it cannot be convinced by mental reasoning of any kind.


Sri Aurobindo: In most men it is the natural and accepted attitude towards life varnished over with some conventional moralism and idealism as a concession to the mind and higher vital. In a few this part of the being is gripped and subordinated to the mental or the higher vital aim, forced to take a subordinate place so that the mind may absorb itself persistently in mental pursuits or idealisms or great political or personal ambitions (Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini). The ascetic and the Puritan try to suppress it mostly or altogether. In our Yoga the principle is that all must become an instrument of the Spirit and the parts of enjoyment taste the Ananda in things, not the animal enjoyment of the surface. But the Ananda will not come or will not stay so long as this part is not converted and insists on its own way of satisfaction.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes — they [ ] become very clear to the increasing consciousness. And the distinctions are necessary — otherwise one may inﬂuence or control the lower vital or a part of the physical vital and then be astonished to ﬁnd that something intangible but


Sri Aurobindo: apparently invincible still resists — it is the material vital with so much of the rest as it can inﬂuence by its resistance.    I don’t know about subtle vital. One says subtle physical to distinguish from gross material physical — because to our normal experience all physical is gross,.


Sri Aurobindo: But the vital is in its nature non-material, so the adjective is superﬂuous. By material vital, we mean the vital so involved in matter as to be bound by its movements and gross physical character. The action is to support and energise the body and keep in it the capacity of life, growth, movement etc., also of sensitiveness to outer impacts.  A strong vital is one that is full of life-force, has ambition, courage, great energy, a force for action or for creation, a large expansive movement whether for generosity in giving or for possession and lead and domination, a power to fulﬁl and materialise — many other forms of vital strength there are also. It is often difﬁcult for such a vital to surrender itself because of this sense of its own powers — but if it can do so, it becomes an admirable instrument for the Divine Work.


Sri Aurobindo:   No, a weak vital has not the strength to turn spiritually — and being weak more easily falls under a wrong inﬂuence and even when it wants, ﬁnds it difﬁcult to accept anything beyond its own habitual nature. The strong vital when the will is there can do it much more easily — its one central difﬁculty is the pride of its ego and the attraction of its powers.  The chest has more connection with the psychic than the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: A strong vital may have a good physique, but as often it has not — it draws too much on the physical, eats it up as it were.    In a mere vampire there is no psychic, for the vampire is a vital being — but in all humans (even if dominated by a vital being or vampire force), there is a psychic veiled behind it all.  The physical life cannot last without the body nor can the body live without the life force, but the life in itself has a separate existence and a separate body of its own, the vital body, just as the mind has a separate existence and can exist on its own plane.


Sri Aurobindo: All the organisation is held together by the psychic which is the support of all.  It was not your own vital that you saw, but the general vital Nature in the Ignorance that took form and spoke. The battle you saw was the struggle between the Powers of the Light and the Powers of the Darkness for possession of the vital Nature on earth.   vital cannot be destroyed, because it is needed as an instrument for the manifestation of the Divine element in you.  There can be no life and no manifestation here on earth without the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: It has not to be destroyed, but puriﬁed and changed into the true Vital.  Things do happen on the vital plane — but they are not important than what happens here because it is here we have to realise and what happens in the vital is only a help.   Most things happen in the vital before they happen in the physical, but all that happens in the vital does not realise itself in the physical or not in the same way. There is always or at least usually a change in the form, time, circumstances due to the different conditions of the physical plane.  Where do you ﬁnd in “The Life Heavens” that I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are glorious and suited to the Divine Life?


Sri Aurobindo: There is not a word to that effect there! The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisﬁed senses and vital desires only. If there is to be a Harmony, it must be of all the powers raised to their highest and harmonised together.  All the non-evolutionary worlds are worlds of a type limited to its own harmony like the Life Heavens. The Earth on the other hand is an evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious even as a material world (except in certain appearances), but rather most sorrowful, disharmonious, imperfect.


Sri Aurobindo: Yet in that imperfection is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last ﬁnite which yet yearns to the supreme inﬁnite (it is not to be satisﬁed by sense-joys precisely because in the conditions of earth it is able to see their limitations). God is pent in the mire (mire is not glorious, so there is no claim to glory or beauty here) but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights. And so on. That “a deeper power”, not a greater actual glory or perfection.


Sri Aurobindo: All that may be true or not to the mind, but it is the traditional attitude of Indian spiritual experience. Ask any Yogin, he will tell you that the Life Heavens are childish things; even the gods, says the Purana, must come down to earth and be embodied there if they want, giving up the pride of their limited perfection — they must enter into the last ﬁnite if they want to reach the last inﬁnite. A poem is not a philosophical treatise or a profession of religious faith — it is the expression of a vision or an experience of some kind, mundane or spiritual. Here it is the vision of the Life Heavens, its perfection, its limitations and the counterclaim of the Earth or rather the Spirit or Power behind the earth consciousness. It has to be taken at that, as an expression of a certain aspect of things, an expression of a certain kind of experience, not of a mental dogma.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a deep truth behind it, though it may not be the whole truth of the matter. In the poem, also, there is no question of a Divine Life here, though that is hinted at as the unexpressed possible result of the ascent — because the Earth is not put aside (“Earth’s heart was felt beating below me still”); nevertheless the poem expresses only the ascent towards the Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the Earth-Spirit claims that power and does not speak of any descent of a Divine Life. I say so much in order to get rid of that misconception so as not to have to go back to it when dealing with Earth’s disharmonies.


Sri Aurobindo: They wouldn’t be heavens if they were not immune [ ] — a heaven with fear in it would be no heaven. The Life Heavens have an inﬂuence on earth and so have the Life Hells, but it does not follow that they inﬂuence each other in their own domain. Overmind can inﬂuence earth, so can the hostile Powers, but it does not follow that hostile Powers can penetrate the Overmind — they can’t: they can only spoil what it sends to the earth. Each power of the Divine (life like mind and matter are powers of the Divine) has its own harmony inherent in the purity of its own principle — it is only if it is disturbed or perverted that it produces disorder. That is another reason why the evolution could have been a progressing harmony, not a series of discords through which harmony of a precarious and wounded kind has to be struggled for at each step: for the Divine Principle is there within.


Sri Aurobindo: Each plane therefore has its heavens; there are the subtle physical heavens, the vital heavens, the mental heavens. If Powers of disharmony got in, they would cease to be heavens.  The physical consciousness is that part which directly responds to physical things and physical Nature, sees the outer only as real, is occupied with it — not like the thinking mind with thought and knowledge, or like the vital with emotion, passion, subtler satisfaction of desire. If this part is obscure, then it is difﬁcult to bring into it the consciousness of deeper or spiritual things, feelings etc. even when the mind or the vital are after these deeper things.


Sri Aurobindo: You ask whether the mind and vital do not come in the way as well as the physical. Yes, but when I speak of the physical consciousness, I mean the physical mind and the physical vital as well as the body consciousness proper. This physical mind and physical vital are concerned with the small ordinary movements of life and are governed by a very external view of things and by habitual small reactions and do not respond at once to the inner consciousness not because they are in active opposition to it, as the vital mind and vital proper can be, but because they ﬁnd it difﬁcult to change their habitual movements. It is this now that you feel and that makes you think you have a poor responsiveness to the inner experience. But that is not a fact; in your mind and in a great part of your vital there is a considerable capacity of response.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the physical its difﬁculty is universal in everybody and not peculiar to you. It has come up because it always comes up in the sadhana when the physical consciousness has to be worked upon for the necessary change. As soon as that is done, the difﬁculty you feel will ﬁrst diminish and then go.  It is this work that is going on and when you felt the white light in meditation and the result which lasted even after opening the eyes, the head and eyes cool and all vast and wide, it was this working taking place in your physical mind to change it. The rest of the physical consciousness was still undergoing another kind of working and so felt heat and not this release and wideness.


Sri Aurobindo: But afterwards the working can go down ﬁrst to the heart and then still lower and to all the body and the same release and wideness come there. Naturally, at present these results are not permanent but only for a time, they come as experiences, not lasting realisations. But it cannot be otherwise at the present stage. These experiences, however passing, are meant to prepare and do prepare the different parts of the nature.   They [] are very near to it [] — except that part of the physical mind which is trained to deal with physical objects and affairs.


Sri Aurobindo: But that is agile and active and competent only in its own limits. When it has to deal with supraphysical things it becomes incompetent, often imbecile and yet positive and arrogant and dogmatic in its ignorance. The rest of the physical consciousness is near to the inconscient. Here again in its own ﬁeld it can have accurate perceptions and instincts if it is able to act spontaneously; but usually in the human being it is not allowed to do so, for the mind and vital intervene. The vital physical is entirely irrational in its action — even when it is right, it cannot explain why; for it is made more of automatic or habitual instincts, impulses, sensations and feelings than anything else.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the mind that gives reasons and justiﬁcations to its movements and if the mind stands back and judges and questions, the vital physical can only answer “I want”, “I like”, “I dislike”, “I feel like that”.     Each plane of our being — mental, vital, physical — has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking experience, they are all confused together. The body, for instance, has its own consciousness and acts from it, even without any conscious mental will of our own or even against that will, and our surface mind knows very little about this body consciousness, feels it only in an imperfect way, sees only its results and has the greatest difﬁculty in ﬁnding out their causes.


Sri Aurobindo: It is part of the Yoga to become aware of this separate consciousness of the body, to see and feel its movements and the forces that act upon it from inside or outside and to learn how to control and direct it even in its most hidden and (to us) subconscient processes. But the body consciousness itself is only part of the individualised physical consciousness in us which we gather and build out of the secretly conscious forces of universal physical Nature.  There is the universal physical consciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct dealing with all these external objects and movements and forces. This physical consciousnessplane receives from the other planes their powers and inﬂuences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper; we have a vital physical part in us — the nervous being — as well as the vital proper; and both are largely conditioned by the gross material bodily part which is almost entirely subconscient to our experience.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical mind is that which is ﬁxed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difﬁculty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it is sceptical of the existence of supraphysical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can ﬁnd no clue; even when it has spiritual experiences, it forgets them easily, loses the impression and result and ﬁnds it difﬁcult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one object of this Yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.  The vital physical on the other hand is the vehicle of the nervous responses of our physical nature; it is the ﬁeld and instrument of the smaller sensations, desires, reactions of all kinds to the impacts of the outer physical and gross material life.  This vital physical part (supported by the lowest part of the vital proper) is therefore the agent of most of the lesser movements of our external life; its habitual reactions and obstinate pettinesses are the chief stumbling-block in the way of the transformation of the outer consciousness by the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: It is also largely responsible for most of the suffering and disease of mind or body to which the physical being is subject in Nature.  As to the gross material part it is not necessary to specify its place, for that is obvious, but it must be remembered that this too has a consciousness of its own, the obscure consciousness proper to the limbs, cells, tissues, glands, organs. To make this obscurity luminous and directly instrumental to the higher planes and to the divine movement is what we mean in our Yoga by making the body conscious, — that is to say, full of a true, awake and responsive awareness instead of its own obscure, limited half-subconscience.


Sri Aurobindo: There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being and far the larger part of us is below the surface, the frontal consciousness.  Or, more accurately, it is behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Modern psychology and psychic science have begun to perceive this truth just a little. Materialistic psychology calls this hidden part the Inconscient, although practically admitting that it is far greater, more powerful and profound than the surface conscious self, — very much as the Upanishads called the superconscient in us the Sleep self, although this Sleep self is said to be an inﬁnitely greater Intelligence, omniscient, omnipotent, Prajna, the Ishwara. Psychic science calls this hidden consciousness the subliminal self, and, here too, it is seen that this subliminal self has more powers, more knowledge, a freer ﬁeld of movement than the smaller self that is on the surface. But the truth is that all this that is behind, this sea of which our waking consciousness is only a wave or series of waves, cannot be described by any one term, for it is very complex. Part of it is subconscient, lower than our waking consciousness; part of it is on a level with it but behind and much larger than it; part is above and superconscient to us.


Sri Aurobindo: What we call our mind is only an outer mind, a surface mental action, instrumental for the partial expression of a larger mind behind of which we are not ordinarily aware and can only know by going inside ourselves. So too what we know of the vital in us is only the outer vital, a surface activity partially expressing a larger secret vital which we can only know by going within. Equally, what we call our physical being is only a visible projection of a greater and subtler invisible physical consciousness which is much more complex, much more aware, much wider in its receptiveness, much more open and plastic and free.  If you understand and experience this truth, then only you will be able to realise what is meant by the inner mental, the inner vital, the inner physical consciousness. But it must be noted that this term “inner” is used in two different senses.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes it denotes the consciousness behind the veil of the outer being, the mental or vital or physical within, which is in direct touch with the universal mind, the universal life forces, the universal physical forces. Sometimes, on the other hand, we mean an inmost mental, vital, physical, more speciﬁcally called the true mind, the true vital, the true physical consciousness which is nearest to the soul and can most easily and directly respond to the Divine Light and Power. There is no real Yoga possible, still less any integral Yoga, if we do not go back from the outer self and become aware of all this inner being and inner nature.  For then alone can we break the limitations of the ignorant external self which receives consciously only the outer touches and knows things indirectly through the outer mind and senses, and become directly aware of the universal consciousness and the universal forces that play through us and around us. And then only too can we hope to be directly aware of the Divine in us and directly in touch with the Divine Light and the Divine Force.


Sri Aurobindo: Otherwise we can feel the Divine only through external signs and external results and that is a difﬁcult and uncertain way and very occasional and inconstant, and it leads only to belief and not to knowledge, not to the direct consciousness and awareness of the constant presence.  As for instances of the difference, I may give you two from the opposite poles of experience, one from the most external phenomena showing how the inward opens to the awareness of universal forces, one of spiritual experience indicating how the inward opens to the Divine. Take illness. If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, we do not usually know that we are going to be ill until the symptoms of the malady declare themselves in the body. But if we develop the inward physical consciousness, we become aware of a subtle environmental physical atmosphere and can feel the forces of illness coming towards us through it, feel them even at a distance and, if we have learned how to do it, we can stop them by the will or otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: We sense too around us a vital physical or nervous envelope which radiates from the body and protects it, and we can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. Take now the call for the Divine Power, Light, Ananda.  If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, it may descend and work behind the veil but we shall feel nothing and only see certain results after a long time. Or at most we feel a certain clarity and peace in the mind, a joy in the vital, a happy state in the physical and infer the touch of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: But if we are awake in the inward physical, we shall feel the light, power or Ananda ﬂowing through the body, the limbs, nerves, blood, breath and, through the subtle body, affecting the most material cells and making them conscious and blissful and we shall sense directly the Divine Power and Presence. These are only two instances out of a thousand that are possible and can be constantly experienced by the sadhaka.  So far as it [] can be said to be distinguishable by outward signs, it is a state of fundamental passivity in which one is and does what the forces of the physical plane make one be and do. When one lives in the mind, there is an active mental intelligence and mental will that tries to control and shape action and experience and life and everything else. When one is in the vital one is full of energy and enthusiasm and passion and force which may be right or wrong, but is very much alive.


Sri Aurobindo: These things in the physical inertia either disappear or become weak or are forces that act upon the system occasionally but are not possessed by it. This condition may not be absolute, for one has a mind and a vital, but it is what predominates. There are two ways of getting out of this — one is to rise above in the self and see the physical from there as an instrument, not oneself, the other is to bring down the divine Force from above and make the physical the instrument of that Force.    The forces of the physical mind, vital physical, material consciousness [].


Sri Aurobindo: Of course, as I said, the statement must be taken with a qualiﬁcation, for the true mind and vital are also there, but in this condition [ ] it is the forces of the physical consciousness that predominate and determine the general condition which is a proneness to and sometimes.  The physical consciousness? It opens just like the rest, receives a new consciousness, obeys the Force, feels a change even in the cells, aspires to and seeks self-giving and union with the Divine.  It [] is to record the divine or true appearance of things and return to them the reaction of an equal Ananda without dislike or desire.  Everything has a physical part — even the mind has a physical part; there is a mental physical, a mind of the body and the material.


Sri Aurobindo: So the emotional being has a physical part. It has no location separate from the rest of the emotional. One can only distinguish it when the consciousness becomes sufﬁciently subtle to do so.  That is the nature of the mental physical to go on repeating without use the movement that has happened. It is what we call the mechanical mind — it is strong in childhood because the thinking mind is not developed and has besides a narrow range of interests.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards it becomes an undercurrent in the mental activities. It must now have risen up with the other characteristics of the mental physical because it is in the physical that the action has come down. Sometimes also when there is silence of the mind, these things come up till they also are quieted down.


Sri Aurobindo: The mechanical mind is a sort of engine — whatever comes to it it puts into the machine and goes on turning it round and round — no matter what it is.     From what you describe it seems that you have got into contact with the mechanical mind whose nature is to go on turning round in a circle on the thoughts that come into it. This sometimes happens when the thinking mind is quiet.


Sri Aurobindo: This is part of the physical mind and you should not be disturbed or alarmed by its rising up, but see what it is and quiet it down or get control of its movements.   What is called the mechanical mind is necessary for the maintenance (in the physical) of things gained — it is by conservation and repetition that Nature does that. The subconscient is the basis of conservation and the mechanical mind is the means of repetition. Only they have to be enlightened and change and conserve and repeat the new divine things and not the old undivine ones.


Sri Aurobindo:  If there is a strong activity of the higher parts of the consciousness, the possibility of the mechanical mind working is very much diminished. It may come up in moments of relaxation or fatigue but usually it is active only in a subordinate way that does not attract notice.     When the higher consciousness takes hold of the mechanical mind, it ceases to be mechanical.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical vital is the being of small desires and greeds etc. — the vital physical is the nervous being; they are closely connected together.     The vital physical governs all the small daily reactions to outward things — reactions of the nerves and the body consciousness and the reﬂex reactions and sensations; it motives much of the ordinary actions of man and joins with the lower parts of the vital proper in producing lust, jealousy, anger, violence etc.  In its lowest parts (vital-material) it is the agent of pain, physical illness etc.


Sri Aurobindo:  The vital physical forces can be received from anywhere by the body, from around, below or above. The order of the planes is in reference to each other, not in reference to the body. In reference to each other, the vital physical is below the physical mind, but above the material: but at the same time these powers interpenetrate each other.    The body energy is a manifestation of material forces supported by a vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it.


Sri Aurobindo: By material is meant the body consciousness, the consciousness of Matter etc. Physical is a wider term. There is for instance a physical mind (which cannot be called material) dealing with outside earthly things.


Sri Aurobindo: A great part of the body consciousness is subconscient and the body consciousness and the subconscient are closely bound together. The body and the physical do not coincide — the body consciousness is only part of the whole physical consciousness.    What you describe is the material consciousness; it is mostly subconscient, but the part of it that is conscious, is mechanical, inertly moved by habits or by the forces of the lower nature. Always repeating the same unintelligent and unenlightened movements, it is attached to the routine and established rule of what already exists, unwilling to change, unwilling to receive the Light or obey the higher Force.


Sri Aurobindo: Or, if it is willing, then it is unable. Or if it is able, then it turns the action given to it by the Light or the Force into a new mechanical routine and so takes out of it all soul or life. It is obscure, stupid, indolent, full of ignorance and inertia, darkness and slowness of tamas.  It is this material consciousness into which we are seeking to bring ﬁrst the higher (divine or spiritual) Light and Power and Ananda, and then the supramental Truth which is the object of our Yoga. But there is an obstinate dark and inert resistance both from material Nature and from the physical consciousness of the sadhaks — of which the lower vital and the material consciousness, both of them still unregenerated, are the cause.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] is the most physical grade of the physical — there is the mental physical, the vital physical, the material physical.    Yes — or at least it [] is a separate part of the physical consciousness. Physical mind for instance is narrow and limited and often stupid, but not inert. Matter


Sri Aurobindo: consciousness is on the contrary inert as well as largely subconscious — active only when driven by an energy, otherwise inactive and immobile. When one ﬁrst falls into direct contact with this level, the feeling in the body is that of inertia and immobility, in the vital physical exhaustion or lassitude, in the physical mind absence of and or only the most ordinary thoughts and impulses. It took me a long time to get down any kind of light or power into this level. But when once it is illumined, the advantage is that the subconscient becomes conscient and this removes a very fundamental obstacle from the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: By the gross physical is meant the earthly and bodily physical — as experienced by the outward sense mind and senses. But that is not the whole of Matter. There is a subtle physical also with a subtler consciousness in it which can (for instance) go to a distance from the body and yet feel and be aware of things in a not merely mental or vital way. As for mind and vital they are everywhere — there is an obscure mind and life even in the cells of the body, the stones or in molecules and atoms.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is difﬁcult to realise without deﬁnite experience, e.g. as when light or ananda or force come into the body and one feels it working as if in the cells, yet with a little attention it becomes clear that it is not the material cells, but something more subtle that feels it.     There is what is called the nervous envelope surrounding the body — you are probably seeing the and the nervous envelope in one view.


Sri Aurobindo: The contains the.  Only it is not bound to itself and can contract or expand unlike the material body.   The physical nerves are part of the material body, but they are extended into subtle nerves in the subtle body and there is a connection between the two.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, there are nerves in the subtle body.    The physical nerves have many centres or plexuses. The nervous being proper is part of the physical — and it starts from the physical centre, the Muladhara.


Sri Aurobindo:   The nerves are distributed all over the body — but the vitalphysical action is concentrated in its origin between the Muladhara and the centre just above it.  Yes []. Sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death.


Sri Aurobindo:   You can only distinguish [] either by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.  Everyone carries around him an environmental consciousness or atmosphere through which he is in relation with others or with the universal forces. It is through this that these forces or the thoughts or feelings of others enter.


Sri Aurobindo:   The environmental is not a world — it is an individual thing.    The individual is not limited to the physical body — it is only the external consciousness which feels like that.


Sri Aurobindo: 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. This last is what I have called the environmental consciousness.    Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses.  Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it.


Sri Aurobindo: He is aware only of thoughts, feelings etc. that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation etc. which take particular forms in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside.  But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the aura) into which they ﬁrst enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness, or whatever it may be, before it enters and prevent it from entering into you.


Sri Aurobindo: If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there try to get in again or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.   It [] can become silent when there is the wideness. One can become conscious of it and deal with what passes through it. A man without it would be without contact with the rest of the world.  These things [] usually hide in recesses of the vital or the physical in which there is not yet the full force of the Peace and Light.


Sri Aurobindo: When they are quite driven out from there, they may lodge in the subconscient and send up suggestions from there. Thrown out altogether they remain in the environmental consciousness and try to act from there, but then they are no longer part of one’s own consciousness and are not felt as such but as something trying to come in from outside.    One can be free [], but one cannot say that the freedom has been made absolutely complete or secure until the complete transformation takes place. For these things always remain in the environmental consciousness or even at a distance in the universal itself and take any opportunity to come in from there.


Sri Aurobindo:   These [] are things that wander about in the atmosphere and jump upon one without notice. It is often difﬁcult to see where precisely they come from and often there is no reason at all or any inviting cause in oneself.  They have simply to be thrown off as when something falls on the body.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no mystery [].  These things were violent and obstinate in you for a long time and you were indulging them — hence they acquired a great force to return even after you began rejecting them, ﬁrst because of habit, secondly because of their belief that they have acquired a right over you, thirdly because of the habit of assent and passive response to them or endurance of them that has been stamped on the physical consciousness. This physical consciousness is not as yet liberated, it has not begun to be as responsive to the higher force as the vital, so it cannot resist their invasion.


Sri Aurobindo: So these forces when thrown out retreat into the environmental consciousness and remain there concealed and at any opportunity make an attack on the centres accustomed to receive them (external mind and the external emotional) and get in. This happens with most sadhaks. Two things are necessary — (1) to open fully the physical to the higher forces, (2) to reach the stage when even if the forces attack, they cannot come fully in, the inner being remaining calm and free. Then even if there is still a surface difﬁculty, there will not be these overpowerings.  They [] are two quite different things.


Sri Aurobindo: What is stored in the subconscient — impressions, memories, rise up from there into the conscious parts. In the environmental things are not stored up and ﬁxed, although they move about there. It is full of mobility, a ﬁeld of vibration or passage of forces.  In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganised manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates.


Sri Aurobindo: In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, ﬁxed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or inﬂuences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.   The subconscient is below the waking physical consciousness — it is an automatic, obscure, incoherent, half-unconscious realm into which light and awareness can with difﬁculty come.


Sri Aurobindo: The inner vital and physical are quite different — they have a larger, plastic, subtler, freer and richer consciousness than the surface vital and physical, much more open to the Truth and in direct touch with the universal.     The subconscient is not the whole foundation of our nature; it is only the lower basis of the Ignorance and governs mostly the lower vital and physical exterior consciousness and these again affect the higher parts of the nature. While it is necessary to see what it is and how it acts, one must not be too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being.


Sri Aurobindo: One should rather regard it as something not oneself, a mask of false nature imposed on the true being by the Ignorance. The true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine, turned to all that is good and true and beautiful. The exterior being has to be taken hold of by the inner being and turned into an instrument no longer of the upsurgings of the ignorant subconscient Nature, but of the Divine. It is by remembering always that and opening the nature upwards that the Divine Consciousness can be reached and descend from above into the whole inner and outer existence, mental, vital, physical, the subconscient, the subliminal, all that we overtly or secretly are.  This should be the main preoccupation.


Sri Aurobindo: To dwell solely on the subconscient and the aspect of imperfection creates depression and should be avoided. One has to keep a right balance and stress on the positive side most, recognising the other but only to reject and change it. This and a constant faith and reliance on the Mother are what is needed for the transformation to come.    The Subconscient is the basis of much of the lower activities — that is now generally admitted.


Sri Aurobindo:   The subconscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious part and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.  There are three occult sources of our action — the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware.


Sri Aurobindo: What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, — universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that, whether formed now or before our birth, is what we usually call ourselves. A good deal of this is in habitual movement and use in our known conscious part on the surface, a great deal more is concealed in the other unknown three which are below or behind the surface.  But what we are on the surface is being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of the general Nature coming in on us either directly or else indirectly through others, through circumstances, through various agencies or channels. Some of this ﬂows straight into the conscious part and acts there, but our mind ignores its source, appropriates it and regards all that as its own; a part comes secretly into the subconscient or sinks into it and waits for an opportunity of rising up into the conscious surface; a good deal goes into the subliminal and may at any time come out — or may not, may rather rest there as unused matter.


Sri Aurobindo: Part passes through and is rejected, thrown back or thrown out or spilt into the universal sea. Our nature is a constant activity of forces supplied to us out of which (or rather out of a small amount of it) we make what we will or can. What we make seems ﬁxed and formed for good, but in reality it is all a play of forces, a ﬂux, nothing ﬁxed or stable; the appearance of stability is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations. That is why our nature can be changed in spite of Vivekananda’s saying and Horace’s adage and in spite of the conservative resistance of the subconscient, but it is a difﬁcult job because the master mode of Nature is this obstinate repetition and recurrence.  As for the things in our nature that are thrown away from us by rejection but come back, it depends on where you throw them.


Sri Aurobindo: Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. The mind rejects its mentalities, the vital its vitalities, the physical its physicalities — these usually go back into the corresponding domain of general Nature. It all stays at ﬁrst, when that happens, in the environmental consciousness which we carry about with us, by which we communicate with the outside Nature, and often it persistently rushes back from there — until it is so absolutely rejected, or thrown far away as it were, that it cannot return upon us any more. But when what the thinking and willing mind rejects is strongly supported by the vital, it leaves the mind indeed but sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind and compel or capture our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too — the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness.


Sri Aurobindo: When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams, in passivity, in extreme tamas. The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.  As for the waves that recur from the general Nature, it is the natural tendency of the inferior forces there to try and perpetuate their action in the individual, to rebuild what he has unbuilt of their deposits in him, so they return on him, often with an increased force, even with a stupendous violence, when they ﬁnd their inﬂuence rejected. But they cannot last long once the environmental consciousness is cleared — unless the “Hostiles” take a hand.


Sri Aurobindo: Even then they can indeed attack, but if the sadhak has established his position in the inner self, they can only attack and retire.  It is true that we bring most of ourselves — or rather most of our predispositions, tendencies of reaction to the universal Nature — from past lives. Heredity only affects strongly the external being; besides, all the effects of heredity are not accepted even there, only those that are in consonance with what we are to be or not preventive of it at least.   The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.


Sri Aurobindo: Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.  Men are not ordinarily conscious of either of these planes of their own being, but by sadhana they can become aware.  The subconscient retains the impressions of all our past experiences of life and they can come up from there in dream forms. Most dreams in ordinary sleep are formations made from subconscient impressions.  The habit of strong recurrence of the same things in our physical consciousness, so that it is difﬁcult to get rid of its habits, is largely due to a subconscient support.


Sri Aurobindo: The subconscient is full of irrational habits.  When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the subconscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone.  When the physical consciousness is being changed, the chief resistance comes from the subconscient. It is constantly maintaining or bringing back the inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afﬂict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is prone.  If light, strength, the Mother’s consciousness is brought down into the body it can penetrate the subconscient also and convert its obscurity and resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: When something is erased from the subconscient so completely that it leaves no seed and thrown out of the circumconscient so completely that it can return no more, then only can we be sure that we have ﬁnished with it for ever.     About the subconscient — it is the submaterial base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed on it, it keeps.


Sri Aurobindo: If one impresses the right movement on it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature.  When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also. Then no farther trouble from the subconscient will be possible. But even before that one can minimise the trouble by putting the right will and the right habit of reaction on the subconscient parts.


Sri Aurobindo:  All that one does and thinks leaves its trace in the subconscient.     Yes, the subconscient is a cosmic as well as an individual plane.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know that there is any [ ] — this plane was spoken of more as inconscient than subconscient — it is practically the indiscriminate or, perhaps — or the seed state. In the Veda it is symbolised by the cave of the Panis. Perhaps by looking through books like the Yogavasishtha one could ﬁnd something about the subconscient in fact though not in express terms.    You had asked the other day about the subconscient, what it was.


Sri Aurobindo: In the vision you describe you were shown the universal subconscient in the ﬁgure of Patala, a place without light of consciousness and, because universal, therefore without bounds or end — the dark unconscious inﬁnite out of which this material universe has arisen — it is walled with darkness on all sides, it seems also to have no bottom. The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous.   “Patala” [] is a name for the subconscient — the beings there had no heads, that is to say, there is there no mental consciousness; men have all of them such a subconscient plane in their own being and from there rise all sorts of irrational and ignorant (headless) instincts, impulsions, memories etc. which have an effect upon their acts and feelings without their detecting the real source. At night many incoherent dreams come from this world or plane.  The world above is the superconscient plane of being — above the human consciousness — there are many worlds of that kind; they are divine worlds.


Sri Aurobindo: Below the feet is the subconscient, just as above the head is the superconscient.  Subliminal is a general term used for all the parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.


Sri Aurobindo:  What he [] has written about the subconscient and the outer nature is true. But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve if they do not yet dispel the ignorance.  The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual man out of the mental half-animal. That also cannot be called an insigniﬁcant role.  Exact images are retained by the subliminal memory.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is subliminal is described by ordinary psychology as subconscient; but in our psychology that cannot be done, for the consciousness that holds them is as precise and far wider and fuller than our waking or surface consciousness, so how can it be called subconscient? Conscious memory is that which can bring up at any moment we like the memory of a thing, it is under our control. Subliminal memory can hold all things, even those which the mind cannot understand, e.g. if you hear somebody talking Hebrew, the subliminal memory can hold that and bring it up accurately in some abnormal state, e.g. the hypnotic. Subconscient memory is a memory of impressions; when they come up as in dream, either the result is something incoherent or fancifully rearranged or it is only the essence of the thing, its psychological deposit that comes up, e.g. sex, fear, some particular libido as the psychoanalysts call it, but the expression given to the latter need not be the same as memory would give; it may repeat the same forms if it gets hold of the mechanical mind in the physical to help its expression, but also it may be quite different from anything in real life.


Sri Aurobindo:  The clear memory of words, images and thoughts is an action of the conscious mind, not the unconscious. Of course the memory goes behind, so to speak, in the back part of the mind, but it can be brought out. Also the memory can be lost or defaced, so that one remembers wrongly or forgets altogether, but that is still an imperfect action of the conscious mind, not an action of the subconscious. What the subconscious keeps is a mass of impressions, not of clear or exact images and these can come up as in dreams in an incoherent jumble distorted altogether or else in the waking state as a mechanical recurrence or repetition of the same suggestions, impulses (subconscient vital) or sensations.  There is a recognisable difference between the two functionings.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] is not in the mind alone; it is stored in the subconscient (mind, vital and physical) as impressions — also in the inner being all is present but held back as a store of past experience.    All that our consciousness meets in day-to-day experience is registered in subconscient memory and from there can be brought up to the mind or come of itself. But what we call memory is when the thing registered is kept in the conscious mind at its back and brought forward at will — that is conscious memory.


Sri Aurobindo:   No — that [] is quite different [ ], since it belongs to something where the records are precise and accurate. The subconscient is a suppressed and obscure seed state where things are emerging out of the indeterminate inconscience of original Nature but are yet ﬂuent and imprecise, having all the potentiality of determination in them, but not yet determinate. The past things fall back into it not as memories, but as impressions which is a quite different thing. When they come up from there it is in all sorts of queer forms with variations and mixtures.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is very often a complaint of this kind [ ] made during the course of the sadhana. I suppose that the usual action of memory is for a time suspended by the mental silence or else by the physical tamas.


Sri Aurobindo: By the change of consciousness there can be a more conscious and perfect functioning of the memory replacing the old mechanism.  The subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete “sub”-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies in between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.


Sri Aurobindo: It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert obscurity of Matter and form by a constant development a slowly evolving and self-formulating consciousness; it contains them not as ideas or perceptions or conscious reactions but as the ﬂuid substance of these things. But also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient, not as precise though submerged memories but as obscure yet obstinate impressions of experience, and these can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feelings, action etc., as “complexes” exploding into action and event etc. etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearances. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever.  All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains in seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.  The centres or Chakras are seven in number —  (1) The thousand-petalled lotus on the top of the head.  (2) In the middle of the forehead — the Ajna Chakra — (will, vision, dynamic thought).  (3) Throat centre — externalising mind.


Sri Aurobindo: (4) Heart-lotus — emotional centre. The psychic is behind it.  (5) Navel — higher vital (proper).  (6) Below navel — lower vital.  (7) Muladhara — physical.


Sri Aurobindo: All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body,, though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake.    Chakras The thousand-petalled Chakra or centre of the higher (head) lotus will and knowledge  The lotus in the forehead Will, vision, mental dynamism The lotus in the throat Expression — external mind The lotus of the heart Emotion, dynamic vital feeling  (behind the heart is the seat of the psychic being)


Sri Aurobindo: The lotus of the navel Higher vital The lotus of the abdomen  Lower vital  The lotus at the end of Physical consciousness the spine (Muladhara)    In the process of our Yoga the centres have each a ﬁxed psychological use and general function which base all their special powers and functionings.


Sri Aurobindo: The governs the physical down to the subconscient; the abdominal centre —  — governs the lower vital; the navel centre —  or — governs the larger vital; the heart centre — or — governs the emotional being;  the throat centre — — governs the expressive and externalising mind; the centre between the eyebrows — — governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus — — above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at its highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an overﬂooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact.     I never heard of two lotuses in the heart centre; but it is the seat of two powers, in front the higher vital or emotional being, behind and concealed the soul or psychic being.


Sri Aurobindo: The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deeper purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eyebrows, two petals, white; (7) the thousandpetalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our Yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mindmovements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind.  The seventh is sometimes confused with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre,, either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters ﬁrst into the silence of the self or spiritual being.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is one centre below the navel (lower vital), another at the navel (central vital), another in the chest (emotional vital, heart centre), another in the throat (physical mind), another above the head (higher consciousness); besides these there is the centre in the forehead (mind, will, vision) and one at the bottom of the spine (muladhara, physical centre). The working in each will be according to the nature of the centre.  One can speak of the chakras only in reference to Yoga. In ordinary people the chakras are not open, it is only when they do sadhana that they open.


Sri Aurobindo: For the chakras are the centres of the inner consciousness and belong organically to the subtle body.  So much as is active in ordinary people is very little — for in them it is the outer consciousness that is active.    The centres of consciousness [], the chakras. It is by their opening that the Yogic or inner consciousness develops — otherwise you are bound to the ordinary outer consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   One does not pass through the psychic centre or any centre []. The centres open under the pressure of the sadhana. You can say that the Force descends or ascends into a centre.


Sri Aurobindo:   The spine is the support of the centres and it is through the spine that in the Tantric sadhana the Kundalini rises.     Allow me to state my difﬁculty [ ].


Sri Aurobindo: How the devil can a spirit entity be enclosed in a material gland? So far as I know the self or spirit is not enclosed in the body, rather the body is in the Self. When we have the full experience of the Self, we feel it as a wide consciousness in which the body is a very small thing, an adjunct, or a thing contained, not a container. What then is this spirit entity? There can be a small formation which stands for the Self or Spirit, like the Upanishad’s Purusha no bigger than a man’s thumb.


Sri Aurobindo: Is this the spirit entity? But even then in which sense, in what relativity of space can it be said to be the very material pineal gland? A spirit conﬁned in a gland and dislodged from it by a pistol shot is a kind of language which I buck at.  A spirit touching grey brain matter and so entering into contact with universal mind and touching white matter and so entering into contact with loftier spiritual realities is also too weird a conception for my intelligence. What happens to it when it has no matter to touch?


Sri Aurobindo: Dissolution? laya?  When we speak of the Purusha in the head, heart etc., we are using a ﬁgure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body, but in the subtle body (the subtle body is that in which the being goes out in deep trance or more radically, at the time of death); so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these chakras and certain centres in the physical proper.


Sri Aurobindo: So ﬁguratively we speak of the Purusha in this or that centre of the body. Owing to this correspondence, again, when the Ananda or anything else comes down into the being, it is the subtle body that it pervades, but it communicates itself through it to the gross body and its consciousness, so that it is felt as if pervading the body. But all that is very different from saying that the spirit is lodged in a gland. The gross body is an engine, a means of communication and action of the spirit upon the world and it is only a small part of the instrumentation. It is absurd to make so much of it as all that.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a sort of false materialism intended to placate minds that have a scanty knowledge of science. But what is the use of that? Everybody now knows that science is not a statement of the truth of things, but only a language expressing a certain experience of objects, their structure, their mathematics, a coordinated and utilisable impression of their processes — it is nothing more. Matter itself is something (a formation of energy perhaps?) of which we know superﬁcially the structure as it appears to our mind and senses and to certain examining instruments (about which it is now suspected that they largely determine their own results, Nature adapting its replies to the instrument used), but more than that no scientist knows or can know. If the Radhasoami afﬁrmations [ ] are meant to be another kind of language expressing certain psycho-physical experiences, I have no objection.


Sri Aurobindo: But why all this pineal glandism and talk about entities and bullets?  N.B. If I say the Purusha is in the heart, do I mean it is there in the physical heart, tumbling about in the ﬂow of the blood or stuck in the valves or muscular portions and when a bullet is lodged in the heart it jumps with an Ooah! and tumbles down dead or goes off skating and swimming into some grey or white matter worlds beyond? Certainly not. I am using a signiﬁcant language which expresses certain relations between the psychic consciousness and the physical of which we become aware by Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: Each centre of the system () represents or centralises a plane of experience and each is supported on the spine which is the support of the nervous energies. When the serpent Energy from above and below have free passage through the centres (which is represented by the spine appearing like a serpent) then they open and there is the free wideness of the universal or inﬁnite consciousness on all these planes.   All the centres above the Muladhara are connected with the higher worlds above the physical, with the vital, mental, psychic and still higher worlds — the Muladhara and below with the physical and subconscient worlds (subconscient physical and sub-physical). The whole physical body of course belongs to the earth-world, but it is connected through these centres with the other worlds.


Sri Aurobindo:   According to our system the three lower centres are the vital, the lower vital and the physical — but the planes are quite different.  The three lower planes are mind, life and matter and it is true that the human mind conﬁnes itself to these three activities.  But it is not true that its activities are conﬁned to the vital and physical things.


Sri Aurobindo: What is the fourth centre? In our system the fourth centre is the heart and the Divine is there in the psychic, behind the heart.  But the fourth of our seven planes is the supramental which is far above the head, but can be communicated with through the seventh centre, the Sahasradala padma.  This must be the psychicised higher mental being — the position above the head points to that. In other words, you have become aware of your higher mental being which is in contact at once with the Divine above and with the psychic behind the heart and is aware of the Truth and has the psychic and spiritual insight and view into things.


Sri Aurobindo: Above the head extends the higher consciousness centre, sahasradala padma. But usually there is partial working of the forehead centre also when the sahasradala opens.  The ordinary mind is at the highest the free intelligence, receiving perhaps intuitions and intimations from above which it intellectualises. It is on the surface and sees things from outside except in so far as it is helped by intuition and other powers to see a little deeper. When this ordinary mind opens within to inner mind and psychic and above to higher mind and higher consciousness generally, then it begins to be spiritualised and its highest ranges merge into the spiritual mind-consciousness of which this higher mind can be a beginning.


Sri Aurobindo: This merging is part of the spiritual transformation.  For the mind there are many centres: (1) the sahasradala which centralises spiritual mind, higher mind, intuitive mind and acts as a receiving station for the intuition proper and overmind, (2) the centre in the forehead for inner thought, will and vision, (3) the throat centre for the externalising or physical mind.  The thousand-petalled lotus is above the head. It is the seventh and highest centre.  Usually those who take the centres in the body only, count six centres, the Sahasrara being excluded.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is evidently the sahasradala padma through which the higher intuition, illumined mind and overmind all pass their rays.   The sahasradala commands all between the ordinary mind and the supermind — therefore its opening necessarily takes long.  But opening by itself only creates a connection or communication — to dwell in that centre, one needs to have overpassed the mind and be able to live mainly in the spiritual self.


Sri Aurobindo: The Supramental is not organised in the body so there is no separate centre for it; but all that comes from above the Mind uses the Sahasrara for its transit and so opens something there.    The centre at the crown must be part of the, the centre of communication direct between the individual being and the Inﬁnite Consciousness above. There is not supposed to be any other main centre of dynamism between that and the Ajna Chakra. But there can be many nerve-centres in various parts of the body, apart from the six or rather seven main centres.


Sri Aurobindo:   The crown centre open removes the difﬁculty of the lid between the ordinary mind and the higher consciousness above. If the ajnachakra also is open, then it is possible to have a clear communication between the higher consciousness and the inner mind and the outer mind (throat centre) also. That is the condition for the realisation of knowledge and the mental illumination and transformation. The heart centre commands the psychic and vital — that opening enables the psychic inﬂuence to work in the vital and ends in the coming forward of the psychic being.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is the Brahmarandhra through which there is the communication between the higher consciousness and the lower in the body. It is a passage, not a centre. The centre is the thousand-petalled lotus just above the head, at that part.


Sri Aurobindo:   The crown is the place of passage between the body consciousness with all it contains of mind and life and the higher being above the body. It is there that the two consciousnesses begin to meet.    The brain is only a centre of the physical consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: One feels stationed there so long as one dwells in the physical mind or is identiﬁed with the body consciousness, then one receives through the sahasradala into the brain. When one ceases to be stationed in the body, then the brain is not a station but only a passive and silent transmitting channel.  There are different centres in the body which are represented in vision by these lotuses — one is between the eyebrows in the forehead, a centre of inner consciousness, will and visions — that is opening in you.    If the forehead centre opens, it is fairly certain that the crown centre must have opened sufﬁciently at least to allow the passage of the higher force which is above it.


Sri Aurobindo: The psychic is a different matter — it stands behind the centres and the time of its opening varies with different people — in fact it is not so much the opening of a centre as the coming forward of the psychic being.  The usual rule in this Yoga is from above downwards. There may be variations in the preparatory stage. There may for instance be a partial opening ﬁrst of the heart centre. The higher vital centre may become active ﬁrst also, but that means much struggle and difﬁculty.


Sri Aurobindo:   The psychic being is behind the heart-centre — the centre between the eyes is that of inner (occult) thought, will and vision.  This inner or occult vision is called by ordinary people psychic vision.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is the centre of the inner mind — therefore also of the inner mental will and inner mental vision.     The centre of vision is between the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead. When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things and people and begins to understand things and people from within and not only from outside, develops a power of will which also acts in the inner (Yogic) way on things and people etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Its opening is often the beginning of the Yogic as opposed to the ordinary mental consciousness.    In the forehead between the eyes but a little above is the Ajnachakra, the centre of the inner will, also of the inner vision, the dynamic mind etc. (This is not the ordinary outer mental will and sight, but something more powerful, belonging to the inner being.) When this centre opens and the Force there is active, then there is the opening of a greater will, power of decision, formation, effectiveness beyond what the ordinary mind can achieve.


Sri Aurobindo:  The centre Ajnachakra is in the place I indicated [ ], but the pressure can be felt in all the forehead and the eyebrows also or anywhere there. It radiates from the centre.    The forehead centre is that of inner mind and vision.


Sri Aurobindo: It is really through that inner vision that one sees the lights — the open eyes are only a channel for seeing them outside as well as within.     The pressure from within upon the forehead centre begins very often after the pressure from above on the forehead — something of the Force has come in sufﬁciently to exercise this second pressure. That on the back must be a direct pressure on the psychic region (if it is in or near the middle of the back) mainly to prepare the action in the heart.


Sri Aurobindo: When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent — gradually one becomes aware of one’s inner being as separate from the outer and what can be called a Yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superﬁcial mental and vital movements.   A third eye does open there [] —  it represents the occult vision and the occult power which goes with that vision — it is connected with the Ajnachakra.  The throat centre is the centre of the physical mind, the external will and the expression.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes []. It is the centre of externalisation, — speech, expression, the power to deal mentally with physical things etc. Its opening brings the power to open the physical mind to the light of the divine consciousness instead of remaining in the ordinary outward-going mentality.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is so — it is the physical mind that acts like that [ ]. The centre of the physical mind or externalising mind is in the subtle body in the throat and connected strongly with the speech — but it acts by connection with the brain. All forces that want to cover the consciousness rise up to do it, covering and acting on the mind centres if they can — because otherwise the covering is not complete.    Speech comes from the throat centre, but it is associated with whatever is the governing centre or level of the consciousness — wherever one thinks from.


Sri Aurobindo: If one rises above the head, then thought takes place above the head and one can speak from there , that is to say, the direction of the speech is from there.  The throat centre is the externalising (physical) mind, the heart is the emotional mind and beginning of the higher vital. If the heart centre is dominated by the physical mind to any extent, it will necessarily be open to the outer attacks that affect the physical and nervous consciousness. The heart has to be in connection with the psychic and the higher consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   The centre in the throat is that of the physical mind and all between it and the centre in the heart is the joining place of the mind and the vital-emotional being. If the pain is of the nerves, then there must be some resistance and difﬁculty there which should go with the full opening.    The heart is the centre of the emotional being, the highest part of the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: The navel is the centre of the dynamic and sensational vital (this is the source of pride, sense of possession, ambition, anger and other passions — but it expresses them often through the heart centre). The centre between the navel and the Muladhara commands the lower vital (physical desires, small greeds, passions etc.). The throat centre is not the vital — it is the physical mind, the expressive externalising consciousness.  What you feel may be the vital taking hold of the physical mind and using it for expression.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical mind centre is in the throat and mouth — the vital physical is between the two lowest centres — the material consciousness is in the.  The heart is the centre of the being and commands the rest, as the psychic being or chaitya purusha is there. It is only in that sense that all ﬂows from it, for it is the psychic being who each time creates a new mind, vital and body for himself.


Sri Aurobindo: There is one centre for the heart, although it is a double centre, in front the emotional, behind the psychic.    The apex of the psychic and emotional centre (like the apex of all centres) is in the backbone, the base in front in the middle of the sternum.    The physical heart is in the left side, but the heart centre of Yoga is in the middle of the chest — the cardiac centre.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not quite understand what you mean by soul. The psychic being (which is the soul) does not make centres for itself in the Adhar — the centres are there. The psychic being can take control of the centres that are already there — the heart and the navel centre and the two below the navel. Also the mind and vital are not abolished — they are brought under the psychic inﬂuence and psychicised, or they are occupied by the higher consciousness from above and transformed into its instruments.


Sri Aurobindo:   The heart-centre is the emotional centre. The navel is the main vital centre. In the abdomen is the lower vital centre. It is in these two that there is the origination of desire — but desire rises and becomes emotional in the heart and mental in the higher centres above.


Sri Aurobindo: The navel is the chief vital centre below the emotional — there is another centre of small vital movements below it, between the navel and Muladhara.    The navel is the vital centre in the physical body but the natural seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades; but for action through the gross body it is centred at the navel and below it.


Sri Aurobindo: A centre may be opened and still there may be resistances in that part of the nature. If the vital were clear of all difﬁculties one would be on the point of Yogic perfection. Below the navel is the physical vital.    The navel is the seat of the central vital, below it is the lower vital.


Sri Aurobindo: It must have been the resistance of the lower vital to the ﬁre that you felt.    The feeling you have of coming down to the navel corresponds to the actual fact of a change of the centre of consciousness, which one speaks of as a lowering of the consciousness. In this stage of sadhana one must keep always above until one is seated for good in the above-head position and the higher consciousness has pervaded the lower centres and ﬁelds down to the Muladhara and the whole body.  The Muladhara is the centre of the physical consciousness proper, and all below in the body is the sheer physical, which as it goes downward becomes increasingly subconscient, but the real seat of the subconscient is below the body as the real seat of the higher consciousness (superconscient) is above the body.


Sri Aurobindo: At the same time, the subconscient can be felt anywhere, felt as something below the movement of the consciousness and, in a way, supporting it from beneath or else drawing the consciousness down towards itself. The subconscient is the main support of all habitual movements, especially the physical and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason why it is so difﬁcult to get rid of habitual vital movements or to change the character; for, supported or refreshed from this source, preserved in this matrix your vital movements, even when suppressed or repressed, surge up again and recur. The action of the subconscient is irrational, mechanical, repetitive.


Sri Aurobindo: It does not listen to reason or the mental will. It is only by bringing the higher light and force into it that it can change.    The Muladhara is the centre of the physical consciousness, but the legs below represent the special ﬁeld governed by it — as distinct from the mental and vital parts in the body. So when there is working there, it means a working in the physical proper itself.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course the physical is half-subconscient, but the ﬁeld of the subconscient proper is below the feet, just as the ﬁeld of the superconscient is above the head.    The lowest centre at the bottom of the spine []. It contains many other things, but also it is in its front the support of the sexual movements.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is the place of the physical centre which is also the sex-centre. The apex of it is at the end of the spine and it projects forward from there — commanding the organ and its action.


Sri Aurobindo: The sex centre is the physical centre — it [] happens to be the centre for sex and physical propagation also, but it is not separately and solely the centre of sex. If that were so, there would be no centre governing the physical consciousness, but only a centre governing the sex organ.  There is no subconscient centre. Its plane is below the feet as that of the superconscient is above the head.


Sri Aurobindo:   No, the subconscient is too vague to have a centre. It has a level — below the feet as the superconscient is above, but from there it can surge up anywhere.  Different parts of the body indicate for this purpose different parts of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The head is the seat of the mind (buddhi) and the lower part of the mouth, chin, neck are the seat of the external or physical mind. It indicates that the force is working there to change and prepare this part of the mind and get rid of resistance and wrong mental habits.  Yes, it [] has some connection with the subconscient.  It cannot be anything physical but only a subtle physical sensation. The ear is the passage of communion between the inner mind centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It sounds like a sensation of opening and enlarging of this passage.    The nose is connected with the vital dynamic part of the mental — a man with a strong nose is supposed to have a strong will or a strong mental personality, — though I don’t know whether it is invariably true. But the vital physical? Of course the nose is the passage of the Prana and the Prana is the support of the vital physical.


Sri Aurobindo:  The working on the lower part of the face always indicates an action on the externalising mind (physical mental) whose centre is in the throat.   The neck and throat and the lower part of the face belong to the externalising mind, the physical mental. The forehead to the inner Mind. Above the head are the higher planes of Mind.


Sri Aurobindo: The organ of speech is an instrument of the physical mental or expressive externalising mind.  It is because the centre of your difﬁculties has been there [ ]. The chest = the emotional nature exposed to wrong feelings; the stomach = the dynamic vital centre, exposed to wrong desires, ambitions, sense of possession and vital ego etc. But all that will progressively become things of the past, when the Peace, the Presence, the inner happiness increase and take possession of the external nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yogically, psycho-physically etc. etc. stomach, heart and intestine lodge the vital movements, the physical consciousness — it is there that anger, fear, love, hate and all the other psychological privileges of the animal tumble about and upset the physical and moral digestion. The Muladhara is the seat of the physical consciousness proper.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the lower part of the body, it is the physical and external vital that it represents at present and that has still to be penetrated and held by the Force. But the conditions under which it can be done are growing more complete. The physical opening needs a great quietude which replaces the tamasic inertia of body nature by a true peace. Then all else can be done.  It is the material consciousness that is indicated by the legs and feet.


Sri Aurobindo: Below the feet is the subconscient. There is no big centre below the Muladhara in the body, but there are minor centres everywhere.    The leg indicates the physical (material) consciousness. All below the Muladhara is the range of the physical consciousness proper including the mental physical, vital physical, material physical.


Sri Aurobindo: This [] would indicate therefore an aspiration from Matter (bodily Matter).  The two sides of the body are supposed to represent two different sides of the being, the side of consciousness and knowledge and the side of force and action. The feeling you had at meditation may have been the sense of the removal of some veil of obscurity covering the mind — the head from the crown to the throat being the seat of the thinking mind.   It is usually supposed that the left is the side of power, the right of knowledge.  The ascent from below [] means of course the material and subconscient calling down the higher power — and it is true that there is a correspondence between the depth from which the ascension goes and the height from which the power from above comes.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not to be denied, no spiritual experience will deny that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world, strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering, evil. Indeed this perception is in a way almost the starting-point of the spiritual urge — except for the few to whom the greater experience comes spontaneously without being forced to seek it by the strong or overwhelming, the afﬂicting and detaching sense of the Shadow overhanging the whole range of this manifested existence. But still the question remains whether this is indeed, as is contended, the essential character of all manifestation or so long at least as there is a physical world it must be of this nature, so that the desire of birth, the will to manifest or create has to be regarded as the original sin and withdrawal from birth or manifestation as the sole possible way of salvation. For those who perceive it so or with some kindred look — and these have been the majority — there are well-known ways of issue, a straight-cut to spiritual deliverance. But equally it may not be so but only seem so to our ignorance or to a partial knowledge — the imperfection, the evil, the suffering may be a besetting circumstance or a dolorous passage, but not the very condition of manifestation, not the very essence of birth in Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: And if so, the highest wisdom will lie not in escape, but in the urge towards a victory here, in a consenting association with the Will behind the world, in a discovery of the spiritual gate to perfection which will be at the same time an opening for the entire descent of the Divine Light, Knowledge, Power, Beatitude.  All spiritual experience afﬁrms that there is a Permanent above the transience of this manifested world we live in and this limited consciousness in whose narrow borders we grope and struggle, and that its characters are inﬁnity, self-existence, freedom, absolute Light, absolute Beatitude. Is there then an unbridgeable gulf between that which is beyond and that which is here or are they two perpetual opposites and only by leaving this adventure in Time behind, by overleaping the gulf can men  reach the Eternal? That is what seems to be at the end of one line of experience which has been followed to its rigorous conclusion by Buddhism and a little less rigorously by a certain type of Monistic spirituality which admits some connection of the world with the Divine, but still opposes them in the last resort to each other as truth and illusion.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is also this other and indubitable experience that the Divine is here in everything as well as above and behind everything, that all is in That and is That when we go back from its appearance to its Reality. It is a signiﬁcant and illumining fact that the knower of Brahman even moving and acting in this world, even bearing all its shocks, can live in some absolute peace, light and beatitude of the Divine.  There is then something here other than that mere trenchant opposition, — there is a mystery, a problem which one would think must admit of some less desperate solution. This spiritual possibility points beyond itself and brings a ray of hope into the darkness of our fallen existence.  And at once a ﬁrst question arises — is this world an unchanging succession of the same phenomena always or is there in it an evolutionary urge, an evolutionary fact, a ladder of ascension somewhere from an original apparent Inconscience to a more and more developed consciousness, from each development still ascending, emerging on highest heights not yet within our normal reach?