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- Passivity and Weakness of Will-Power Can Be a Disturbance of the Physical Consciousness - by Submitted on Apr 22, 2022 from santosh krinskyPeople struggle all the time with the force of desire and how to deal with it in their lives. For the yogic practitioner this becomes an even greater concern as desire causes countless difficulties in bringing the inner being to a state of peace in which the yogic consciousness can flourish. ...
Views: 530 - The Predominant Characteristic of Physical Consciousness: Tamas or Inertia - by Submitted on Apr 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyAn understanding of the three gunas, or qualities of Nature, is extremely helpful in gaining an understanding of the responses to external stimuli, events, people and circumstances. The gunas are sattwa, with a predominant quality of light and harmony, rajas with a predominant quality of ...
Views: 510 - Desire — and the Need to Control Desire - by Submitted on Apr 20, 2022 from santosh krinskyPeople believe that suppression of the vital forces that are actuated by the force of desire can lead to imbalance and mental illness. For this reason, Western psychology has recommended the moderate expression of these forces, and has generally counseled having a healthy vital life that does ...
Views: 599 - Disturbances of the Vital Caused by Life-Changes, Negative and Positive - by Submitted on Apr 19, 2022 from santosh krinskySome years ago we were witnesses to an event that clearly illustrated the disturbance to the vital that can be caused by a positive experience. In that case, a married couple were planning to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and their extended family and friends were there to join the ...
Views: 599 - Impatience - by Submitted on Apr 18, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhile at its root impatience has as a primary source the frustration associated with either lack of ability to fulfill a desire, or a delayed gratification of that desire, in the modern world, these root causes are accentuated and provoked through acculturation and the systemic operation of the ...
Views: 556 - Where Does Desire Come From? - by Submitted on Apr 15, 2022 from santosh krinskyEveryone experiences the tug of desire. We observe something and suddenly we want to have it. We experience something pleasant and we want to have it happen once again. Sometimes we feel a sudden urge for something after being exposed to a commercial message. At other times we can simply be in a ...
Views: 623 - Additional Forms of Disturbance Associated with the Physical Mind - by Submitted on Apr 14, 2022 from santosh krinskyDr. Dalal identifies other manifestations of the physical mind which can present issues for an individual. Everyone has had the experience, at some point or another, of thoughts that keep revolving around in the brain, and no matter how much one tries, they continue to crop up and recur. We chew ...
Views: 637 - Disturbances Attributed to the Physical Mind - by Submitted on Apr 13, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhat is the physical mind? The element of mental activity that relates to the actual physical substance that conveys and responds to sense perceptions and the operations of the physical body is considered to be the ‘physical mind’. We normally believe that the operation of our mind is ...
Views: 677 - Understanding the Defense Mechanism of Projection - by Submitted on Apr 12, 2022 from santosh krinskyDue to what we may call ‘observational bias’ we tend to attribute intention and motive to others that we ourselves have internally and project our internal response onto the other party, without knowing exactly what the cause of their action may be from their standpoint. Some of this is due to ...
Views: 587 - Understanding the Defense Mechanism of Rationalization - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2022 from santosh krinskyWe can clearly see the influence of the vital on the mind when we understand the lengths to which the mind will go to justify satisfaction of the needs, desires or actions of the vital nature. The defense mechanism of ‘rationalization’ is a clear example. We understand, intellectually, that ...
Views: 603 - The Nature of the Mind Creates and Enhances Much Human Psychological Suffering - by Submitted on Apr 10, 2022 from santosh krinskyIt is often said that animals do not suffer in the same way that humans do. They experience pain and can suffer from it, but they seem to not be tortured by all of the mental suffering that we go through in our lives. The major differences are first, the ability of the mind to observe itself and ...
Views: 562 - Major Subdivisions of the Primary Parts of the Being - by Submitted on Apr 09, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe more one examines the play of awareness and activity internally, the more one begins to recognise the subtle interactions that take place between the various parts of the being. There are not clear borderlines but rather influences and actions that are based primarily in one part of the ...
Views: 539 - Characteristics of the Body Consciousness - by Submitted on Apr 08, 2022 from santosh krinskyImagine we had to manage all the functions of the body through conscious attention by the mind, telling the body how to operate each organ, controlling each breath and heartbeat, controlling the energy production activities in the cells, etc. It would be clearly impossible. We depend entirely on ...
Views: 598 - Three Parts of the Outer Being: Mental, Vital and Physical - by Submitted on Apr 07, 2022 from santosh krinskyOnce an individual recognises that there are three separate foundations of consciousness in the outer being, and that they are not simply part of one unified awareness, it becomes much easier to untangle the numerous strands of pressure internally and understand how to address and deal with the ...
Views: 603 - Separate Consciousness in the Mind, the Vital Being and the Body - by Submitted on Apr 06, 2022 from santosh krinskyDuring the Olympic games in the summer of 2021, we were able to hear about the separate consciousness of the various parts of the being. One of the premier gymnasts in the world withdrew from events by saying that she had lost, at least temporarily, the body consciousness that basically oriented ...
Views: 542 - Necessary Elements Required to Understand and Apply Techniques of Psychological Healing - by Submitted on Apr 05, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhether one is working with a professional in the field of psychology, or one is working on one’s own internally to resolve disturbances and inner conflicts, attain peace, or achieve balance in one’s life, certain basic knowledge is required. One needs to understand the complex nature of the ...
Views: 580 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 5: the Yogic Path Is Not Limited by Race, Origin or Religious or Cultural Background - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe objective of the integral yoga is to support the evolutionary process of the development and integration of the next stage of consciousness, beyond the mental consciousness. This step is necessary to overcome the limitations of the current mental framework which have helped create the ...
Views: 545 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 4: Obstacles Faced by Westerners and the Soul’s Aspiration to Overcome Them in the Integral Yoga - by Submitted on Mar 31, 2022 from santosh krinskyAll human beings, regardless of whether they are born in the West, the East, or elsewhere, find the challenges of taking up yoga to be daunting and requiring of them unstinting efforts to understand the obstacles, and identify and implement ways to overcome them. With its long history of support ...
Views: 489 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 3: Are There Advantages to an Indian Birth for the Practice of Yoga? - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2022 from santosh krinskyIf we look at the qualities required for bringing about the emergence of the psychic being, the development of a devotional attitude, and support for the idea of focusing on the Eternal through subordination or even abandonment of the relations of the outer life, it is clear that India has ...
Views: 494 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 2: A Hindu Temperament in a Westerner’s Body? - by Submitted on Mar 29, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhen a Westerner takes up a serious yogic practice, they frequently hear that they must be Hindu souls born into Western bodies. They are then viewed as somehow anomalous to the cast of mind, vital force and emotions that tend to develop through life-long exposure to Western culture, educational ...
Views: 567 - Westerners and Indian Yoga, Part 1: Is It Possible For Westerns to Practice Yoga? - by Submitted on Mar 28, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe question is frequently raised as to whether Westerners, with a background and culture grounded in materialism, the fulfillment of the vital ambitions and desires, and the development of the mental faculties, can truly enter into the spirit of yoga and obtain the fruits of the yogic practice ...
Views: 590 - Reading and the Concentration and Dispersion of Conscious Awareness - by Submitted on Mar 27, 2022 from santosh krinskyAs we become aware of the states of conscious awareness within our being, it becomes clear that there are times when the consciousness is highly concentrated, intensely focused, and other times when it is dispersed and wandering seemingly aimlessly. Our activities, including reading, are ...
Views: 592 - Reading as a Spiritual Practice and Its Limitations - by Submitted on Mar 26, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhile Sri Aurobindo created an enormous body of written materials regarding the integral yoga, the development of the next phase of consciousness growth in the earth-evolution, he also clearly recognized that there are limits to how much reading can aid the spiritual seeker. He made a clear ...
Views: 610 - Intellectual Understanding and Understanding in the Consciousness - by Submitted on Mar 25, 2022 from santosh krinskyThose who find their basis primarily in the mind tend to believe that their intellectual understanding of something represents something real and definitive and that their “knowing” means they “know” something. This is however, not quite accurate. For instance, one can read books and “know” ...
Views: 519 - Reading, Mental Development and Spiritual Growth - by Submitted on Mar 24, 2022 from santosh krinskyThere is a general bias in our society that holds that someone who has a developed mentality, and who is ‘well-read’ is smarter or more intelligent than those who cannot read or who have limited reading capacity. Yet it must be recognised that intelligence cannot be measured, as is done in the ...
Views: 573 - The Needed Balance of Spiritual Development and Mental Development - by Submitted on Mar 23, 2022 from santosh krinskyThere has been a long-standing debate between those who believe in the power of mental development, under the rubric of ‘science’ and those who believe in the power of faith and spiritual aspiration, under the general terminology of ‘religion’. A similar debate rages between the position of ...
Views: 538 - The Sheer Vitality of Providing a Global Perspective to Today’s Children - by Submitted on Mar 22, 2022 from Saurabh GuptaThe necessity for 21st-century children to be capable enough to empathize with their counterparts has never been bigger. They need to assess varied viewpoints and cultures, know how events around the globe are intertwined, and resolve evils that rise above the borders. Just look at the ...
Views: 704 - Gaining the Support of the Vital Being for the Sadhana Through the Joy of Creative Activity - by Submitted on Mar 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyOne of the issues that every spiritual seeker eventually faces is what to do about the vital nature. The vital being is an essential element of life on earth. Normally however it is distracted with its needs and desires, the seeking for pleasure and enjoyment, the avoidance of pain and ...
Views: 493 - Art and Literature in the Service of Spiritual Development - by Submitted on Mar 20, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhile they are not a substitute for spiritual sadhana, art, music and literature nevertheless have a role to play, both as a means to access and express the inner aspiration and as a way to bring to the external being some of the force of the spiritual development taking place internally. Those ...
Views: 568 - Sadhana Is the Core Focus — Mental and Emotional Practices Are Secondary - by Submitted on Mar 19, 2022 from santosh krinskySri Aurobindo makes a clear distinction between development of the mind and the heart through various intellectual or artistic pursuits, or through music or devotional activities, and the practice of Sadhana, which is the primary need and focus for the spiritual aspirant. While any of these ...
Views: 571 - Art and Intellectual Development Are Not Essentially Spiritual Pursuits - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2022 from santosh krinskyWe tend to confuse artistic and various intellectual pursuits as somehow being spiritual accomplishments. These are, however, developments of the higher emotional and mental spheres to a great degree, except when they are channeling energies of the lower vital levels of our being, which, in ...
Views: 585 - Yogic View of Beauty - by Submitted on Mar 17, 2022 from santosh krinskyWe are trained to appreciate external beauty of form, whether in life or in art. This training internalizes cultural preferences. Thus, the ideal of beauty changes depending on which culture is providing the cultural background and which time-frame encompasses the judgment term. Based on ...
Views: 617 - The Divine Nature of Beauty: an Expression of Ananda in Manifestation - by Submitted on Mar 16, 2022 from santosh krinskyWe are predisposed, through cultural habit, to see beauty in an outward form. Those who look a bit deeper warn us that ‘beauty is only skin-deep’, and that outward forms of beauty may hide inward blemishes. The essence of deception is to create the appearance of outward beauty while hiding ...
Views: 526 - The Power to Unfix Yourself from Any Negative State - by Submitted on Mar 13, 2022 from Guy FinleyWe value negative states because of the strong sense of self we get from them. This may be very difficult for us to see, but a strong light will show us the freeing facts. No one wants to believe that he or she values things like self-pity, anger, and depression. We would insist we don't, and as ...
Views: 875 - Rebirth and the Individual - by Submitted on Mar 06, 2022 from santosh krinskyHow do we imagine our past, or future, existences? What about past life regression therapy? Is there a reality to the experience and if so, what does it mean to us? Many who believe in a future reincarnation have no conception of any past lifetime at all. They accept the reality of their current ...
Views: 566 - The Soul’s Journey Through Life, Death and Rebirth - by Submitted on Mar 05, 2022 from santosh krinskyOne level of the deep ignorance within which we live and act is our bondage to the specific individual life, personality and situation that we inhabit. We are generally unaware of anything prior to our birth or which occurs after our death. Some even take the view that there is no “meaning” and ...
Views: 597 - The Mechanism of the Soul’s Evolutionary Development Through Death and Rebirth - by Submitted on Mar 04, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe human being is actually composed of a number of “sheaths” as described in the Taittiriya Upanishad. The outer form is the physical sheath. Informing the physical sheath with energy and responsiveness is the vital sheath. More subtle than the vital sheath is the mental sheath that provides ...
Views: 540 - The Action of Karma and the Nature of Suffering - by Submitted on Mar 03, 2022 from santosh krinsky“What goes around comes around” and “karma” both basically indicate that there is a factor in existence that rewards good deeds and punishes bad deeds. But do we really see that things work this way? Is there some divine entity sitting up in the clouds, watching our good and bad actions, and ...
Views: 642 - Evolution of Consciousness, Rebirth and Overcoming Suffering - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2022 from santosh krinskyThere are many ideas about rebirth, how it works, and the relationship of suffering to an individual’s life and, through operation of karma, potential future lifetimes. Much of this is based on an underlying implicit assumption that the self-awareness that an individual holds in this lifetime ...
Views: 695 - Evolution of Consciousness and the Need for Rebirth as a Mechanism of that Evolution - by Submitted on Mar 01, 2022 from santosh krinskyWe observe an outer fact of existence, but we do not see the motive force behind it, nor the intention behind the motive force. Thus, Darwin identified an evolution of species, and researchers have identified families of species, development of specific characteristics within those families and ...
Views: 557 - The Cure for Inner Loneliness - by Submitted on Feb 28, 2022 from santosh krinskyHuman beings are social animals, and they crave contact and relationship with others. Modern society has broken or weakened many of the links that formerly brought people together, including the nuclear and extended family, and tight-knit communities where people socialized and interacted with ...
Views: 687 - The Need to Shift the Consciousness Beyond the Ego - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2022 from santosh krinskyThe ego-consciousness has its evolutionary purpose. The distinction of the individual from the mass of existence led to the ability to move beyond the instinctual and habitual patterns of the species. With this consciousness, variation and innovation became more easily possible. Observation from ...
Views: 587 - The Potential Impact of Positive or Negative Thoughts on Another Individual - by Submitted on Feb 26, 2022 from santosh krinskyThought has power. Power, however, has its conditions of action. A ‘passing’ thought running through the mind, disappearing as quickly as it enters, does not have the same impact as a concentrated and persistent focus coupled with the gathering of emotional or vital force to accentuate its ...
Views: 858 - Developing Harmonious Relationships with Close Family, Friends and Associates - by Submitted on Feb 24, 2022 from santosh krinskyEven among those closest to one another, there remain differences of habit and temperament. Issues of personal grooming, dietary choices, choices in music or other media interactions, time commitments, interactions about caring for the common shared space all work to create minor daily ...
Views: 610 - Two Methods for Achieving Equality of Feelings with Others - by Submitted on Feb 23, 2022 from santosh krinskyWhat causes an individual to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ someone they meet. Some obvious reasons include similarities or differences in temperament, responses to situations, idea-sets, lifestyle, and, based on acculturation, accidental characteristics such as religion, social standing, career, or ...
Views: 577 - Speak Truth, Not Falsehood - by Submitted on Feb 22, 2022 from santosh krinskyTruth. This term is subjected to considerable interpretation in today’s world. Some say that there is no such thing as ‘truth’ and that ‘truth is relative’. Some hold that what one person understands as ‘truth’, seen from a different perspective, is falsehood. Some indicate that ‘today’s truth ...
Views: 536 - Speaking About One’s Spiritual Experiences - by Submitted on Feb 21, 2022 from santosh krinskyAn individual has a peak spiritual experience, or something unusual takes place in his inner life about which he has no prior knowledge or understanding. This creates an impulse to speak of the experience to other people. There can be a number of motivations for talking about an inner experience ...
Views: 654 - Six Recommendations for Speech and Social Relationships - by Submitted on Feb 20, 2022 from santosh krinskySpeech not only can affect one’s own energy, but it can also affect one’s relationship with others and the dynamics of a social relationship and a community. For the most part, people tend to speak whatever comes to them without a great deal (if any) reflection. This practice however can have ...
Views: 592 - Observing and Controlling One’s Speech - by Submitted on Feb 19, 2022 from santosh krinskyMauna Sadhana, the discipline of silence, can be a very powerful way to gain insight into the impulse to speech and the control of speech. We frequently speak without filtering what we have to say. The idea comes into our mind and before we know it, it is making its way out in the form of ...
Views: 529 - The Circumstances and Need of a Temporary Withdrawal and Quiet of the Being - by Submitted on Feb 18, 2022 from santosh krinskyThere are occasions where the practice of silence and a temporary withdrawal from the hustle and bustle of the outer life, to the degree feasible, becomes a necessary part of the sadhana for the practitioner of yoga. Yoga is, by definition, a change of consciousness, and it involves an inward ...
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