S

Back to Glossary

Sacrifice

In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning—it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one’s being, one’s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of “making sacred” and is used as an equivalent of the word yajña. When the Gita speaks of the “sacrifice of knowledge“, it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works.

Sadhaka

A sadhaka is one who is doing sadhana to attain union with the divine consciousness.

Sadhana

Sadhana is the practice of Yoga.

The object of the sadhana is opening of the consciousness to the Divine and the change of the nature. Meditation or contemplation is one means to this but only one means; bhakti is another; work is another.

Sādharmya

Sādharmya is becoming of one law of being and action with the Divine.

It is the eternal wisdom, the great spiritual experience by which all the sages attained to that highest perfection, grew into one law of being-with the Supreme and live for ever in his eternity, not born in the creation, not troubled by the anguish of the universal dissolution. This perfection, then, this sādharmya is the way of immortality and the indispensable condition without which the soul cannot consciously live in the Eternal.

Sādṛsya

The Yoga of works leads to oneness in power of being and nature, sādṛśya.

Each finds its own way, such as the love and worship of the Bhakta and the growing into the likeness of the Divine by love.

Sahasradala

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 sahasradala centralises spiritual mind, higher mind, intuitive mind and acts as a receiving station for the intuition proper and overmind.

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.

Sālokya

The Yoga of adoration envisages an eternal habitation or nearness as the greater release, sālokya.

There is an eternal ecstatic dwelling in the highest existence of the Supreme.

Samāna

Samana, seated centrally in the body, balances, equalises and harmonises the vital operations and is the agent for the assimilation of food.

Regulates the interchange of these two forces[Prana and Apana] at their meeting-place, equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their functions.

Samata

Yogic Samata is equality of soul, equanimity founded on the sense of the one Self, the one Divine everywhere—seeing the One in spite of all differences, degrees, disparities in the manifestation.

Sāmīpya

There is an eternal love and adoration in a uniting nearness, there is an embrace of the liberated spirit by its divine Lover and the enveloping Self of its infinitudes, sāmīpya.

Saṁskārā

Made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable. Old associations. It is these saṁskāras, the habits formed by experience in the body, heart or mind, that form the laws of our psychology. The associations of the mind are the stuff of which our life is made. They are more persistent in the body than in the mind and therefore harder to alter. They are more persistent in the race than in the individual; the conquest of the body and mind by the individual is comparatively easy and can be done in the space of a single life, but the same conquest by the race involves the development of ages.

Samyama

Samyama is a process of pressure on the consciousness by which the secret Truth, the involved intuition is released—so by a constant pressure on the consciousness by which the Divine Truth is liberated the Knowledge of the worlds can come.

This process is the basis of what Patanjali calls samyama, a concentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness, by which, he says, one can become aware of all that is in the object. But the necessity of concentration becomes slight or nil when the active oneness grows; the luminous consciousness of the object and its contents becomes more spontaneous, normal, facile.

Sanjnana

Sanjnana is the contact of consciousness with an image of things by which there is a sensible possession of it in its substance. Sanjnana can be described as the in bringing movement of apprehensive consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it.

Sankalpa

Resolution; determination; consent of the will.

Sannyasa

Eenunciation of worldly life. This movement of recoil in the path of Sannyasa prepares an absorbed disappearance of the individual in the Eternal, and renunciation of action and life in the world is an indispensable step in the process.

Śāstra

The knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation. By śāstra it means the knowledge which regulates karma, which fixes the kartavyam and the akartavyam, that which should be done and that which should not, and it recognizes two sources of that knowledge,—the eternal wisdom, as distinct from the temporary injunctions in our ancient books and the book that is written by God in the human heart, the eternal and apauruṣeya Veda.

Sat

The supreme self-contained absolute Existence.

Sat or Being in the universe contains all forms as things in themselves in its Chit or self-consciousness, but for all cosmic purposes avyakta, unexpressed, undefined.

Satsanga

This is a kind of good company.

Sattva

Sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction. Dominated by sattva, man seeks in the midst of the strife for a principle of law, right, poise, harmony, peace, satisfaction. The purely sattwic man tends to seek this within, whether for himself alone or with an impulse to communicate it, when won, to other human minds, but usually by a sort of inner detachment from or else an outer rejection of the strife and turmoil of the active world-energy; but if the sattwic mind accepts partly the rajasic impulse, it seeks rather to impose this poise and harmony upon the struggle and apparent chaos, to vindicate a victory for peace, love and harmony over the principle of war, discord and struggle.

Seeing

Seeing is of many kinds. There is the superficial seeing which only erects or receives momentarily or for some time an image of the Being seen; that brings no change unless the inner bhakti makes it a means for change. There is also the reception of the living image in one of its forms into oneself—let us say, in the heart; that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle-physical or physical way.

Self

By self is meant the conscious essential existence, one in all.

Everything acts in the self. The whole play of Nature takes place in the self, in the Divine. The self contains the universe.

The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe.

Self-Consecration

Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.

This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature’s all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine[p.80] response to the Divine Force,—but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above.

Self-Esteem

Stubbornly asserts itself at every step or else wherever it can.

Self-Gathering

Broadly, the sadhana consists of a progressive surrender of oneself—inward and based upon it the outward also—to the Guru, to the Divine; meditation, concentration, work, service—all these are means for a self-gathering in all one‘s movements with the sole aim of delivering oneself into the hands of a Higher Power for being worked on and led towards the Goal.

Self-Justification

Self-justification is always a sign of ego and ignorance. When one has a wider consciousness, one knows that each one has his own way of looking at things and finds in that way his own justification, so that both parties in a quarrel believe themselves to be in the right. It is only when one looks from above in a consciousness clear of ego that one sees all sides of a thing and also their real truth.

Self-Mastery

To be aware of one’s central consciousness and to know the action of the forces is the first definite step towards self-mastery.

By a total self-mastery, one is no longer a slave of Nature’s laws which make men act according to subconscious or semi-conscious impulses and maintain them in the rut of ordinary life. With this liberation one can decide in full knowledge the path to be taken, choose the action to be accomplished and free oneself from all blind determinism, so that nothing is allowed to intervene in the course of one’s life but the highest will, the truest knowledge, the supramental consciousness.

Sensation

Above the heart is the vital mind, but the rising of sensation is lower than the emotion, not higher.

Sensation is much nearer the physical than emotion.

Supramental

Supramental is simply the direct selfexistent Truth-Consciousness and the direct self-effective Truth- Power.

The supramental is the Truth-Consciousness and what it brings ill its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter.

The Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also. The fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is That. Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance trying to know - Supermind is the Knower possessing Knowledge, because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the light of His own Truth, the light of their true self which is He. It is a dynamic and not only a static Power, not only a Knowledge, but a Will according to Knowledge - there is a Supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest direct its world of Light and Truth in which all is luminously based on the harmony and unity of the One, not disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise.