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- The Surface Being and the Inner Being - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2021 from santosh krinskyFor most people, their lives are focused on the external world and their inner life consists mainly of brooding over or planning actions within that context. Even the distinction between extrovert and introvert is primarily a difference in ways of response to the world. The extrovert tends to be ...
Views: 791 - The Surface Consciousness and the Subliminal - by Submitted on Aug 27, 2023 from santosh krinskyHuman awareness can be compared to an iceberg on the physical plane. The iceberg appears small and insignificant above the surface of the ocean, yet it is massive below the surface, as was found out by the ‘unsinkable’ cruise ship, the Titanic during its maiden voyage. Similarly, the awareness ...
Views: 397 - The Surface Consciousness and the Subliminal Consciousness - by Submitted on Aug 31, 2023 from santosh krinskyWe focus our attention and awareness on the external world in which we are active. We receive impressions, sensations, vibrations, impulsions and pressures from that world and it fixes our mind on that palpable experience of reality. This is however not the entirely of our existence nor of the ...
Views: 393 - The Surface Personality Is Not the Real Self of Our Existence - by Submitted on Sep 13, 2021 from santosh krinskyDevelopment in our world of existence takes place in a sequential manner, systematically developing the physical framework, the body, and then manifesting the vital, life-force and developing its powers, adding in thereafter the mental layer and subsequently, we see the signs that further stages ...
Views: 573 - The Surface Vital, Mental and Physical Being and the True Vital, Mental and Physical Being - by Submitted on Oct 09, 2023 from santosh krinskyA frequently mentioned method in the practice of the integral yoga is the separation of the Witness Consciousness from the Nature (Purusha and Prakriti). This separation allows the seeker to recognise the surface consciousness, the play of body, life and mind based in the ego-sense as separate ...
Views: 408 - The Surrender of the Ego-Personality to the Divine - by Submitted on Apr 28, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe ego-sense, in its attempt to be in control and glorify in its success, abhors the very idea of “surrender”. The connotation of the term in English is loaded with negative inferences, yet in other languages there are more subtle and deeper meanings to be unlocked. For instance, in Sanskrit, ...
Views: 598 - The Tantra and the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Feb 15, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe Tantric tradition has developed a methodology (frequently and widely misunderstood and misapplied), to bring about the opening of the subtle energy centers, called chakras, that reside within our energetic body and control the various functionality of powers of body, life and mind within our ...
Views: 694 - The Taste, or Rasa, of Food Can Be Enjoyed by the Yogic Practitioner If Desire Is Removed From the Experience - by Submitted on Dec 29, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is a factor of enjoyment of taste of various foods which is called rasa in Sanskrit. We experience this when we eat something that excites our taste buds and sends signals of pleasure to the brain. For many people, the sweet taste, and more particularly the taste of rich chocolate, seems ...
Views: 84 - The Tension of the Current State of Human Existence - by Submitted on Jul 13, 2024 from santosh krinskyEverywhere we turn we see mounting crises. The news reports are dire. Climate disasters are increasing, we are poisoned daily by toxic substances in our food, water and the very air we breathe. On a day-to-day level, we are struggling in a world that seems to be impossible to understand, with ...
Views: 328 - The Test of Yogic Equality - by Submitted on Jun 02, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe setting of Sri Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, symbolizing the ‘battle of life’ is an essential message to all who seek to progress in their spiritual growth and development. We do not normally associate a battlefield as the place to learn about our spiritual ...
Views: 622 - The Third Step in the Mental Discipline: Control of Thoughts - by Submitted on Jun 19, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe inner control of thoughts is a further development once the poise of the witness consciousness has been attained. As the seeker observes the thoughts, he can also determine their effect in the being, and see if they lead to uplifting, widening, and harmonizing results, or whether they shrink ...
Views: 522 - The Three General Forms of Response to the Touches of Nature - by Submitted on Oct 30, 2024 from santosh krinskyEndurance can be trained and developed. There are entire philosophical programs that have developed to systematically help an individual face the pressures and circumstances of the world with a sense of equality and equanimity. Some of these disciplines rely on acclimating the body to handle ...
Views: 263 - The Three Gunas and Spiritual Practice - by Submitted on Nov 28, 2021 from santosh krinskySpiritual aspirants, just as all others in the world, are impacted by the play of the three Gunas the qualities of Nature. These qualities are always in movement, constantly combining, jostling one another, becoming predominant, and then being suppressed as the next movement arises. We can see ...
Views: 593 - The Three Gunas, the Operation of Prakriti in the External Nature, and the Exercise of Will - by Submitted on Mar 17, 2024 from santosh krinskyThe actions that take place in the external world are controlled by the action of the three Gunas, or qualities, of Nature. This includes not only the physical nature, but also the vital nature and the mental nature. There is what we may call a ‘machinery’ of Nature that drives the creation ...
Views: 330 - The Three Transformations of Consciousness in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Feb 19, 2021 from santosh krinskyIn The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo provides a detailed explanation of what he describes as the “triple transformation”. The first two, the psychic and spiritual transformations, are well-known steps in the spiritual journey and thus, for a good portion of the way, the traditional paths of yoga ...
Views: 649 - The Time Needed for the Transition of the Ego-Consciousness to Become a Conscious Instrument of the Divine - by Submitted on Oct 18, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen the seeker becomes aware of the need for consecration and the aspiration awakens within him, he can become very impatient with the obstacles put up by the ego as it works to maintain and enhance its position. After all, the ego has developed over long periods of time as a stage toward ...
Views: 671 - The Total Change of the Nature Cannot Be Done in a Day - by Submitted on Oct 11, 2025 from santosh krinskyModern life moves at high speed. We expect things to take place virtually instantaneously. As a result, we judge things in the light of the time it takes to accomplish them. If we have to expend an effort, we hope and expect that we will immediately begin to see palpable results. We want an ...
Views: 120 - The Transcendent Divine, the Cosmic or Universal Plane of Consciousness and Material Existence - by Submitted on Mar 21, 2024 from santosh krinskyThe seer of the Taittiriya Upanishad identified various planes of ever more subtle and powerful consciousness, with the most subtle and powerful being the ultimate causative agent of the denser and lower formations of Matter, Life and Mind. If we look at the experience of the vedic seers, we ...
Views: 333 - The Transcendental, the Cosmic and the Individual Divine - by Submitted on Apr 02, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe idea of a trinity of aspects or statuses of the Divine has arisen throughout the major religious and spiritual traditions of the world. It is relatively easy to conceptualise this by looking at how we experience the world. We start with an individual perspective, and reference life from that ...
Views: 861 - The Transformation of the Mind - by Submitted on Oct 16, 2021 from santosh krinskyit is typical of the mental intelligence to believe that reading and remembering something implies that we have realised the truth of what we have read. Those who have taken the time to reflect on this make it clear that ‘reading a book about swimming’ does not mean one knows how to swim! ...
Views: 583 - The Transformation of the Sex Centre and Its Energy - by Submitted on Jan 10, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor the practitioner of the integral Yoga, energy is utilized to redirect and shift the standpoint away from the ego-personality into the divine standpoint, and then to effectuate actions to carry out the divine manifestation in the world. Energy dedicated to the enhancement or satisfactions of ...
Views: 692 - The Transition from Supermind through Overmind to the Consciousness of Body-Life-Mind - by Submitted on Mar 21, 2021 from santosh krinskyWe start in our human way of mental understanding simply accepting what we believe to be the entirety of our existence as we experience it. We see the outer world, we see the interaction and relations between the various beings and vital forces at work in the world, and we experience the mental ...
Views: 754 - The Transition to the Soul’s Guidance of Mind, Life and Body - by Submitted on Sep 09, 2021 from santosh krinskyWith the development of the mental being in evolution, we can observe the central leadership role that the mind plays in dealing with the vital and physical levels of our existence. The mental being, however, is limited by its strict framework and sequential process, and thus, is something like ...
Views: 540 - The Transitional Stage of Shifting from the Outer Surface Consciousness to the Inner Consciousness - by Submitted on Jul 29, 2021 from santosh krinskyAt a certain stage of spiritual development, seekers tend to go through a phase where the world, its actions, objects, goals and results seem to be an illusion. The philosophical path of Mayavada resulted from just such an insight and experience. The seeker sees that everything is transitory and ...
Views: 515 - The Triple Aspects of the Divine Presence - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2026 from santosh krinskyIn order to carry out the complex creation, the Supreme Divine Consciousness has ‘distributed’ the awareness through a series of steps. The first step is the development of the Jivatman, the Divine Presence that does not involve itself directly in the individual beings of the manifestation, but ...
Views: 42 - The Triple Transformation of the Consciousness - by Submitted on Jun 17, 2026 from santosh krinskyPeople have opinions and argue about what the best way to carry out religious or spiritual practices happens to be. Some believe in various forms of austerities, some concentration, some meditation, some prayer, some devotional service, some selfless work. Some take vows of poverty. Others ...
Views: 9 - The Trouble Based on the Nature of the Vital That Needs to be Overcome - by Submitted on Jul 22, 2022 from santosh krinskyIt is a universal human experience that the vital force in the being is either extremely reactive to situations, particularly when it has a desire or craving to fulfill, or, if not given its desire, it can sulk or withdraw its energy and the being goes into a state of torpor or indolence, ...
Views: 554 - The True Attitude of Sadhana - by Submitted on Oct 19, 2025 from santosh krinskyMost people act under the impulsion of their vital desires, physical wants, and mental opinions, which are colored by the society within which an individual lives and its established norms and expectations. When an individual takes up the spiritual life and attempts to live according to the ...
Views: 114 - The True Condition of Progress in the Spiritual Path - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2023 from santosh krinskySri Krishna taught Arjuna the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita on a battlefield. The setting is an important aspect of the teaching itself. The inner growth is not dependent on outer events or circumstances. Conditions will always be ‘imperfect’ if not absolutely terrible! Sri Aurobindo and the ...
Views: 460 - The True Condition of Spiritual Progress - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe frequently hear from people who say that they cannot focus on their spiritual practice as they don’t have a quiet space in which to meditate, or they live in a crowded, noisy city, or they are overwhelmed with all their duties relating to education, career, family, etc. They focus their ...
Views: 117 - The True Foundation of the Yoga - by Submitted on Nov 22, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe are generally so tied to our external ego-personality that we identify with it as what we consider to be our ‘self’. We then refer to this body-life-mind complex as our reality and we say that we ‘have a soul’. The reality is far different. The reality is that the soul, the psychic being, ...
Views: 90 - The True Nature of Rest - by Submitted on May 10, 2022 from santosh krinskyFor most people, rest is a state of lowered consciousness in which we recuperate from the fatigue generated through our various activities. If we reflect on how we respond to fatigue, we find that we have different modes depending on whether it is mental fatigue, vital exhaustion or physical ...
Views: 591 - The True Soul and the Desire Soul - by Submitted on Sep 22, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe confusion about the soul is pervasive at virtually every level of our being. Sri Aurobindo identifies what he calls the ‘desire soul’ which is a formation of the vital being, living on the surface of the consciousness and seeking gratification of desires for the external being. The amalgam ...
Views: 415 - The True Soul: the Psychic Being - by Submitted on Mar 16, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe nature of the soul and its function has been a subject of intense interest and debate for thousands of years around the world. Some claim there is no soul and that everything is simply a function of material forces randomly combining to create our existence and sense of intelligence. Others ...
Views: 730 - The Two Beings of Man: the External Self and the Inner Self - by Submitted on Aug 29, 2023 from santosh krinskyAs long as we focus our attention on the surface perceptions, events and actions, we respond to the vibrations associated with those things. We may focus on our physical needs, our vital desires, our mental interests, our emotional states, or on our aesthetic and artistic sensibilities, or on ...
Views: 376 - The Two Most Important Actions for Practice of the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Sep 18, 2021 from santosh krinskyThe integral Yoga does not depend, as many yogic paths do, on physical asanas or breathing techniques, nor on chanting of mantras, nor singing and dancing in ecstatic states of trance, nor deep philosophical inquiry or strict mental techniques. Nor does it depend on austerity or any kind of ...
Views: 530 - The Two Most Powerful Levers to Enter Into Contact with the Divine in One’s Psychic Being - by Submitted on May 04, 2023 from santosh krinskyWhen an individual begins to recognise the existence of his soul, and seeks for a way to come into contact with it, and begin to thereby understand the purpose and significance of his life in the larger creation, the first question that comes to mind is ‘how do I do that?’ This leads to a ...
Views: 426 - The Two Most Powerful Levers to Enter into Contact with the Divine in One’s Psychic Being - by Submitted on Jan 26, 2024 from santosh krinskyEnthusiasm and gratitude. They represent the powers of aspiration and receptivity in the being, along with the impulse to surrender of the ego and widen to embrace the Divine. For those interested in the transformation of life in the world, it is not sufficient to simply have a direct connection ...
Views: 320 - The Two Uses of the Mind and Its True Role in the Manifestation - by Submitted on Aug 02, 2023 from santosh krinskyThe primary functionality of the mind is to organize and classify, breaking down and fragmenting the reality into component parts. We see this easily in the classification systems for flora and fauna, in our detailed review of the genetic structure of life, gene sequencing, and in our ability to ...
Views: 410 - The Ultimate Focus of Concentration - by Submitted on Oct 06, 2024 from santosh krinskyThe genius of the Rishis of ancient India was their ability to focus on the essential core of knowledge, will and existence. They reminded us that we can obtain many forms and types of knowledge, but each of these is but a fragment, an isolated fact or event, if we have not identified that ...
Views: 280 - The Ultimate Importance and Value of a Human Birth - by Submitted on Nov 19, 2023 from santosh krinskyThere are tales in the Puranas that indicate that even the Gods, if they want to evolve and develop, must take birth on earth in a human incarnation. If we look broadly at the evolution of consciousness from the gross material, to the vital, to the vital-mental and eventually to the mental ...
Views: 399 - The Unconscious Drivers of Human Decisions and Actions - by Submitted on May 17, 2026 from santosh krinskyMost people believe they are in control of their actions, their decisions and their circumstances, at least until they find things not turning out the way they expected or wished for! When an individual takes up the spiritual path consciously, he begins to examine this assumption. First, he ...
Views: 18 - The Unconverted Vital Nature Must Not Be Permitted to Divert the Psychic and Spiritual Force to Its Own Limited Satisfactions - by Submitted on Jan 18, 2026 from santosh krinskyThere is a substantial and well-known danger of the vital nature taking advantage of the force that comes down through the psychic aspiration and using it to advance objectives of the vital rather than those that carry out the intended purpose of the Divine Power. There is a well known ...
Views: 84 - The Unified Field of All Consciousness and Existence - by Submitted on Aug 10, 2024 from santosh krinskyA powerful technique for inner growth and understanding is to sit quietly and simply observe one’s thoughts and feelings as they arise. Then, trace back any of them to where and how it arose. What triggered it? Where did it come from? Initially it is difficult to successfully carry out this ...
Views: 304 - The Unique Truth of Each Being in Relation to the Divine Manifestation - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2023 from santosh krinskyRecently the question arose about how and in what form the witness consciousness survives death. This is not a question for either philosophical reasoning or religious dogma. Regardless of the opinion that these general approaches put forth, it is between the individual soul, as a unique ...
Views: 351 - The Universal Tendency Moves Toward the Expression of Free Will - by Submitted on Feb 20, 2024 from santosh krinskyWe can identify the direction of the evolutionary development of the universe towards the expression of free will, despite the fact that at our current state we can recognise that there is apparently very little free will operative in our actions. In the physical world, Matter operates under ...
Views: 348 - The Universal, the Individual and the Evolution of Consciousness - by Submitted on Feb 04, 2026 from santosh krinskyWe see the world from the individual standpoint and place ourselves at the center of it. We believe we originate the thoughts, feelings, emotions and responses we give. This, however, is very much the illusion of the ego-sense. Consider that for the longest time, human beings believed that ...
Views: 75 - The Universality of the Spiritual Presence in All Existence - by Submitted on Jan 20, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe are educated and habituated to focus on our differences. We see different gender, different class, different racial characteristics, different religious backgrounds, different temperaments, different interests and focus, different value sets, different philosophies of life and living, ...
Views: 210 - The Unseen Societal Conditions That Frame Our Response to Events in Our Lives - by Submitted on Apr 17, 2024 from santosh krinskyEach society, each religion, each culture in the world has its own characteristic ideas and responses to the questions that arise during an individual’s life. Many of these are programmed into the individual in childhood, starting with prenatal conditioning based on the energies of the mother. ...
Views: 332 - The Usefulness of Suffering - by Submitted on Nov 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyDr. Dean Ornish held a webinar on Sunday November 20, 2022 with the Vegan Society of Honolulu, Hawaii, in which he succinctly explained the role of suffering in the progress of humanity. For those who do not know about his work, Dr. Ornish has spent decades studying the impact of diet and ...
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