….The world is made up of innumerable planes of consciousness and each has its own distinct laws; the laws of one plane do not hold good for another.…
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 3, p. 31
…. it is the creative essence of the universe—without consciousness, no universe; for consciousness means objectification. I could also say that consciousness is what “is”, because without consciousness nothing is—this is the best reason. Without consciousness no life, no light, no objectification, no creation, no universe.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 4, p. 233
Consciousness is not only the power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – I: CWSA,Vol. 28, p. 15
There are two things to be considered: consciousness and the instruments through which consciousness manifests. Let us take the instruments: there is the mental being which produces thoughts, the emotional being which produces feeling, the vital being which produces the power of action and the physical being that acts.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 4, p. 40
It is not an image, it is not just fine words when it is said that if one enters the true consciousness, if one changes one’s consciousness, well, the world itself changes for you….
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 8, p. 12
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.
(4) Heart-lotus—emotional centre. The psychic is behind it.
(5) Navel—higher vital (proper).
(6) Below navel—lower vital.
(7) Muladhara—physical.
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, sūkṣma deha, though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – I: CWSA,Vol. 28, p. 229
One must, if one can, widen one’s consciousness.
I knew somebody who wanted to widen his consciousness; he said he had found a way, it was to lie flat on his back at night, out-of-doors, and look at the stars and try to identify himself with them, and go away deep into an immense world, and so lose completely all sense of proportion, of the order of the earth and all its little things, and become vast as the sky—you couldn’t say as vast as the universe, for we see only a tiny bit of it, but vast as the sky with all the stars. And so, you know, the little impurities fall off for the time being, and one understands things on a very vast scale. It is a good exercise.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 5, p. 151
The first indispensable condition to prepare ourselves to receive the new consciousness is a true and spontaneous humility which makes us feel deeply that we know nothing and are nothing in the face of the marvellous things we have to acquire.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – III: CWM, Vol. 15, p.108
What we want is the transformation of the physical consciousness, not its rejection.
And so, in this case, what Sri Aurobindo has recommended as the most direct and most total way is surrender to the Divine—a surrender made more and more integral, progressively, comprising the physical consciousness and physical activities. And if one succeeds in this, then the physical, instead of being an obstacle, becomes a help.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 8, p. 300
….For example, your physical consciousness or your subtle physical consciousness, your vital consciousness or the consciousness of your higher or lower vital, your psychic consciousness, your mental consciousness, each one is completely different! So when you sleep you have one consciousness, and when you are awake you have another. In your waking state you look at things projected outside you, in your sleep state you see them interiorised. So it is as though in one case you were pushed altogether outside yourself, in front, and in the other it is as though you were looking at yourself in an inner mirror.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 7, p. 131
Ignorance is dispelled by a growing consciousness; what you need is consciousness and always more consciousness, a consciousness pure, simple and luminous. In the light of this perfected consciousness, things appear as they are and not as they want to appear….
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 3, p. 101
What is necessary is an aspiration which burns in the being like a constant fire, and every time you have a desire, a preference, an attraction it must be thrown into this fire. If you do this persistently, you will see that a little gleam of true consciousness begins to dawn in your ordinary consciousness. At first it will be faint, very far behind all the din of desires, preferences, attractions, likings. But you must go behind all this and find that true consciousness, all calm, tranquil, almost silent.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 4, p. 2
You may be engaged in the most active action, for example, in playing basketball, which needs a great deal of movement, and yet not lose the attitude of inner meditation and concentration upon the Divine. And when you get that, you will see that all you do changes its quality; not only will you do it better, but you will do it with an altogether unexpected strength, and at the same time keep your consciousness so high and so pure that nothing will be able to touch you any longer. And note that this can go so far that even if an accident occurs, it will not hurt you. Naturally, this is a peak, but it is a peak to which one can aspire.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 4, p. 121
…. But in any case, when you are bored by something, when something is painful to you or very unpleasant, if you begin to think of the eternity of time and the immensity of space, if you think of all that has gone before and all that will come afterwards, and that this second in eternity is truly just a passing breath, and that it seems so utterly ridiculous to be upset by something which in the eternity of time is… one doesn’t even have the time to become aware of it, it has no place, no importance, because, what indeed is a second in eternity? If one can manage to realise that, to… how to put it?… visualise, picture the little person one is, in the little earth where one is, and the tiny second of consciousness which for the moment is hurting you or is unpleasant for you, just this—which in itself is only a second in your existence, and that you yourself have been many things before and will be many more things afterwards, that what affects you now you will have probably completely forgotten in ten years, or if you remember it you will say, “How did I happen to attach any importance to that?”… if you can realise that first and then realise your
little person which is a second in eternity, not even a second, you know, imperceptible, a fragment of a second in eternity, that the whole world has unrolled before this and will unroll yet, indefinitely—before, behind—and that… well, then suddenly you see the utter ridiculousness of the importance you attach to what happened to you… Truly you feel… to what an extent it is absurd to attach any importance to one’s life, to oneself, and to what happen to you. And in the space of three minutes, if you do this properly, all unpleasantness
is swept away. Even a very deep pain can be swept away. Simply a concentration like this, and to place oneself in infinity and eternity. Everything goes away. One comes out of it cleansed. One can get rid of all attachments and even, I say, of the deepest sorrows—of everything, in this way—if one knows how to do it in the right way. It immediately takes you out of your little ego. There we are.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 6, pp. 345 – 46
In this drop from consciousness to consciousness
Each leaned on the occult Inconscient’s power,
The fountain of its needed Ignorance,
Archmason of the limits by which it lives.
In this soar from consciousness to consciousness
Each lifted tops to That from which it came,
Origin of all that it had ever been
And home of all that it could still become.
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 33 , Book One, p. 89
For the true consciousness is the divine Consciousness. If you cut yourself off from the divine Consciousness, you become absolutely unconscious; that is exactly what has happened. And so, everything there is, the world as it is, your consciousness as it is, things in the state they are in, are the result of this separation of the consciousness and its immediate obscuration.
The minute the individual consciousness is separated from the divine Consciousness, it enters what we call the inconscience, and it is this inconscience that is the cause of all its miseries.
But all that is, is essentially divine, and the divine Oneness is a fact, you can’t do anything about it; all your unconsciousness and all your denials will change nothing—it is a fact, it’s like that.
And the conclusion is this, that the true transformation is the transformation of consciousness—all the rest will follow automatically.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 8, p. 77
Aditi-the Divine Consciousness
Pure, immaculate, gloriously powerful.
Nelumbo nucifera ‘Alba’
Sacred lotus, East Indian lotus
Very large fragrant chalice-shaped white flower with several rows of loosely arranged cupped translucent petals surrounding a unique centre of numerous golden stamens that encircle a raised yellow disc; borne singly on sturdy stems high above the water. A vigorous aquatic rhizomatous plant with large, concave orbicular leaves that repel water.
The Mother – Spiritual significance of flowers
