Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology
From the blurb,
`This book is meant to bear out Sri Aurobindo's oft-quoted statement, "Yoga is nothing but practical psychology". Generally, yoga is viewed as made up of certain set practices and certain rules and norms pertaining to one's outer life. In contrast to this view, Our Many Selves ... presents Yoga as consisting essentially in inner psychological work aimed at the transformation of consciousness.'
This book presents in detail the various planes and parts of the being and how they are to be harmonised and unified around the soul.
About the Authors:
The Mother:
Born in Paris in 1878, the Mother studied painting at an art studio and became an accomplished artist. Primarily interested in inner development, she was associated with several groups of spiritual seekers in France.
In 1914 she journeyed to India to meet the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry and settled there permanently in 1920. For nearly fifty years, she was the head of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, from its founding in 1926 until her passing in 1973. She also established a school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, in 1952, and an international township, Auroville, in 1968.
Sri Aurobindo:
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian/Hindu nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru. After a short political career in which he became one of leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, Sri Aurobindo turned to the development and practice of a new spiritual path which he called the "integral yoga," the aim of which was to further the evolution of life on earth by establishing a high level of spiritual consciousness which he called the Supermind that would represent a divine life.
Sri Aurobindo wrote prolifically in English on his spiritual philosophy and practice, on social and political development, on Indian culture including extensive commentaries and translations of ancient Indian scriptures, on literature and poetry including the writing of much spiritual poetry. VEDIC BOOKS » MASTERS » SRI AUROBINDO » Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology
`This book is meant to bear out Sri Aurobindo's oft-quoted statement, "Yoga is nothing but practical psychology". Generally, yoga is viewed as made up of certain set practices and certain rules and norms pertaining to one's outer life. In contrast to this view, Our Many Selves ... presents Yoga as consisting essentially in inner psychological work aimed at the transformation of consciousness.'
This book presents in detail the various planes and parts of the being and how they are to be harmonised and unified around the soul.
About the Authors:
The Mother:
Born in Paris in 1878, the Mother studied painting at an art studio and became an accomplished artist. Primarily interested in inner development, she was associated with several groups of spiritual seekers in France.
In 1914 she journeyed to India to meet the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry and settled there permanently in 1920. For nearly fifty years, she was the head of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, from its founding in 1926 until her passing in 1973. She also established a school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, in 1952, and an international township, Auroville, in 1968.
Sri Aurobindo:
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian/Hindu nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru. After a short political career in which he became one of leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, Sri Aurobindo turned to the development and practice of a new spiritual path which he called the "integral yoga," the aim of which was to further the evolution of life on earth by establishing a high level of spiritual consciousness which he called the Supermind that would represent a divine life.
Sri Aurobindo wrote prolifically in English on his spiritual philosophy and practice, on social and political development, on Indian culture including extensive commentaries and translations of ancient Indian scriptures, on literature and poetry including the writing of much spiritual poetry. VEDIC BOOKS » MASTERS » SRI AUROBINDO » Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology
The Future Realization
ReplyDeleteAll myths and wisdom teachings share common primordial themes but there is one more important than all others because it involves the revelation of an absolute fixed point where the sacred unveils itself and establishes the order of the world. This mythic point is known as the ‘Axis-Mundi’ - ‘junction of heaven and earth’ where a vision of the sacred bursts into view. A proper alignment with this axis allows for a sublime communication between these two realms and the acquisition of a supra-physical knowledge. Many ancient cultures built their temples and holy cities on these consecrated sites, for they were believed to exert a harmonious influence upon the population. Throughout history there have been numerous images of this eternal archetype from Moses and the Burning Bush to the Totem poles of the Native Americans to the Egyptian Pillar of Djed, and the Omphalos stone at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. With each manifestation of the sacred axis came a more complete body of knowledge and a greater understanding of Reality and the Cosmic Order. Our culture is rich with these images of an evolving spirituality but there is none so important as the axis mundi of our presently emerging Supramental species – “SKAMBHA.”
Skambha is mentioned in the Vedic scriptures of ancient India as the Supreme Principle of Creation; the universal Pillar which at once connects and supports Heaven and Earth. Its realization goes to the very heart of creation and unveils the mysteries of existence itself. While there can be no doubt of Skambha’s supreme importance as the foundation of the total reality, almost no one since the Vedic age has attained this incomparable realization. Fortunately for us, there is one individual, now living, who has realized Skambha and revealed its deepest secrets. Her name is Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) and she lives in southern India where she directs the operations of the Aeon Centre of Cosmology and continues the great evolutionary work and yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The first law of the Aeon Centre, and the foundation of its higher knowledge is: “The Symbol is the Thing Symbolized”. For this reason Thea has named the physical site of her work “Skambha”.
Over the last century, Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Thea, known collectively as the ‘Solar Line’, have revealed a body of knowledge unequalled in the history of the world. Each forms a link in a chain of divine births which has taken form as a ‘Living Axis Mundi’ bridging the multiple planes from Spirit to Matter. Each member of the line has revealed a new and integral knowledge of their respective planes and each has performed their allotted tasks to facilitate the greatest collective transformation in human history; what Sri Aurobindo called the “Descent of the Supermind.”
Through the collaboration of these Divine incarnations, the two ends of existence have become linked. The Spiritual summit and the Material base were purposefully joined so as to interpenetrate the intermediate regions of Soul, Mind and Life. After a lifetime of the most intense yogic tapasya to achieve this goal, the Mother announced:
"The greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvelous thing since the beginning of creation, the Miracle has happened... A new world, yes, a completely new world is born and here. Yet even now, there are very few people who are aware of its birth and of the difference it brings into the world."
The birth of this new world follows the ancient Vedic dictum that the material creation is born and expands from a core, a central point, like the hub of a wheel. All that happens in the periphery extends from and has its origin in the Hub or Center. From that Center alone can one obtain a true vision of the order of things decreed behind the veil and taking form in the physical. Only from that Skambha can we begin to See in such a way that nothing that we can observe in the Physical will be seen as separate from its Source again. Sri Aurobindo called this gnostic vision the Truth-Consciousness and today Skambha is the only place on earth where one can be initiated into these mysteries and attain that coveted realization.
These mysteries are not for the masses but for those intrepid seekers who wish to move beyond our present immature culture of “Spiritual relativism” in which no one’s religious truth is more relevant than anyone else’s. They are for the advanced spiritual aspirant seeking an exactness, clarity, and order that only absolute knowledge can confer. But most of all, these Supramental mysteries are for those rare souls who recognize the desperate need in the world today for a body of spiritual absolutes through which we may end generations of sectarian strife and move forward together in real knowledge, acquiring along the way a more harmonious orientation to life and the cosmos in which we live. These seekers alone are qualified for the Supramental initiation.