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==Spirituality==
 
==Spirituality==
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Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-evolution-of-the-spiritual-man#p8</ref>
  
 
==Spiritualisation==
 
==Spiritualisation==

Revision as of 07:37, 4 April 2019

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. [1]

Sadhaka

A sadhaka is one who is doing sadhana to attain union with the divine consciousness. [2]

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. [3]

Sādharmya

Sādharmya is becoming of one law of being and action with the Divine. [4]

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. [5]

Sādṛsya

The Yoga of works leads to oneness in power of being and nature, sādṛśya. [6]

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. [7]

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.[8]

Sālokya

The Yoga of adoration envisages an eternal habitation or nearness as the greater release, sālokya. [9]

There is an eternal ecstatic dwelling in the highest existence of the Supreme. [10]

Samāna

Samana, seated centrally in the body, balances, equalises and harmonises the vital operations and is the agent for the assimilation of food. [11]

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.[12]

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.[13]

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. [14]

Saṁskārā

Made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable. [15] 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. [16]

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.[17]

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.[18]

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.[19]

Sankalpa

Resolution; determination; consent of the will.

Sannyasa

Eenunciation of worldly life. [20] 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. [21]

Śāstra

The knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation. [22] 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.[23]

Sat

The supreme self-contained absolute Existence. [24]

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. [25]

Satsanga

This is a kind of good company. [26]

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.[27]

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. [28]

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.[29]

The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe.[30]

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. [31]

Self-Esteem

Stubbornly asserts itself at every step or else wherever it can. [32]

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.[33]

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.[34]

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.[35]

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.[36]

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. [37]

Sex

The sex-energy itself is a great power with two components in its physical basis, one meant for procreation and the process necessary for it, the other for feeding the general energies of the body, mind and vital,—also of the spiritual energies of the body. The old yogis call these two components retas and ojas.

The sex-energy utilised by Nature for the purpose of reproduction is in its real nature a fundamental energy of Life. It can be used not for the heightening but for a certain intensification of the vital-emotional life; it can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of retas into ojas by Brahmacharya. [38]

Shakti

Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.

The Conscious-Power, the Shakti that acts and creates[39]

Power of the Eternal.[40]

Shankara

Shankara, standing between the world and the eternal Reality, saw that the mystery of the world must be ultimately suprarational, not conceivable or expressible by our reason, anirvacanīya; but he maintained the world as seen by the reason and sense as valid and had therefore to posit an unreal reality, because he did not take one step still farther. For to know the real truth of the world, its reality, it must be seen from the suprarational awareness, from the view of the Superconscience that maintains and surpasses and by surpassing knows it in its truth, and no longer from the view of the consciousness that is maintained by it and surpassed by it and therefore does not know it or knows it only by its appearance. It cannot be that to that self-creative supreme consciousness the world is an incomprehensible mystery or that it is to it an illusion that is yet not altogether an illusion, a reality that is yet unreal. The mystery of the universe must have a divine sense to the Divine; it must have a significance or a truth of cosmic being that is luminous to the Reality that upholds it with its transcending and yet immanent superconscience. [41]

Sheaths

A term for bodies because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. You can only distinguish the different sheaths either by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.[42]

Shock

You enter into a condition of deep inwardness and quiet. But if one comes too suddenly out of it into the ordinary consciousness, then there may be a slight nervous shock or a beating of the heart such as you describe, for a short time. It is always best to remain quiet for a few moments before opening the eyes and coming out of this inwardness.[43]

Silence

Silence is a state of the consciousness which comes of itself from above when you open to the Divine Consciousness—you need not trouble about that now.[44]

Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter.[45]

Silent Self

The silent Self is there as a separate reality, not bound or involved in the activity of Nature, aloof, detached and self-existent. Even if thoughts come across this[p.453] silence, they do not disturb it; the Self is separate from the thinking mind also. In this connection the feeling “I think” is a survival from the old consciousness; in the full silence what one feels is “thought occurs in me”—the identification with thoughts as well as with the perception of objects ceases.[46]

Shiva

Shiva is the Lord of Tapas. The power is the power of Tapas.[47]

Shiva the white and pure, the ascetic, the still, contemplative Yogin. [48]

Soul

The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.[49]

Space and Time

Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. [50]

Space and Time are our names for this self-extension of the one Reality. We are apt to see Space as a static extension in which all things stand or move together in a fixed order; we see Time as a mobile extension which is measured by movement and event: Space then would be Brahman in self-extended status; Time would be Brahman in self-extended movement. [51]

Speech

The organ of speech is an instrument of the physical mental or expressive externalising mind. [52]

Speech is a formation which in the past has worked much more as an expression of the vital in man than of the mental will. Speech breaks out as the expression of the vital and its habits, without caring to wait for the control of the mind; the tongue has been spoken of as the unruly member. [53]

Spiritism

It is quite possible for the dead or rather the departed—for they are not dead—who are still in regions near the earth to have communication with the living; sometimes it happens automatically, sometimes by an effort at communication on one side of the curtain or the other. There is no impossibility of such communication by the means used by the spiritists; usually, however, genuine communications or a contact can only be with those who are yet in a world which is a sort of idealised replica of the earth-consciousness and in which the same personality, ideas, memories persist that the person had here. But all that pretends to be communications with departed souls is not genuine, especially when it is done through a paid professional medium. There is there an enormous amount of mixture of a very undesirable kind—for apart from the great mass of unconscious suggestions from the sitters or the contributions of the medium’s subliminal consciousness, one gets into contact with a world of beings which is of a very deceptive or self-deceptive illusory nature. Many of these come and claim to be the departed souls of relatives, acquaintances, well-known men, famous personalities, etc. There are also beings who pick up the discarded feelings and memories of the dead and masquerade with them. There are a great number of beings who come to such seances only to play with the consciousness of men or exercise their[p.485] powers through this contact with the earth and who dope the mediums and sitters with their falsehoods, tricks and illusions. [54]

Spiritual Evolution

Life is only one brief episode in a long history of spiritual evolution in which the soul follows the curve of the line set for the earth, passing through many lives to complete it. It is an evolution out of material inconscience to consciousness and on towards the divine Consciousness, from ignorance to divine Knowledge, from darkness through half-lights to Light, from death to Immortality, from suffering to the Divine Bliss.

Each soul follows its own line and these lines meet, journey together for a space, then part to meet again perhaps hereafter. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental consciousness and the Supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the Supramental Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and fulfilment of our spiritual evolution. [55]

Spiritual Force

The spiritual force within not only creates the future but creates the materials for the future. It is not limited to the existing materials either in their nature or in their quantity. It can transform bad material into good material, insufficient means into abundant means.[56]

It is possible only when one has had the experience of complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them into a channel of direct expression, without using these means to express themselves. [57]

Spiritual Life

To live the spiritual life is to open to another world within oneself. It is to reverse one’s consciousness, as it were. The ordinary human consciousness, even in the most developed, even in men of great talent and great realisation, is a movement turned outwards—all the energies are directed outwards, the whole consciousness is spread outwards; and if anything is turned inwards, it is very little, very rare, very fragmentary, it happens only under the pressure of very special circumstances, violent shocks, the shocks life gives precisely with the intention of slightly reversing this movement of exteriorisation of the consciousness.[58]

Spirituality

Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.[59]

Spiritualisation

Strength

Struggle

Subconscient

Subjective

Subliminal

Subtle Forces

Success

Suffering

Suicide

Sun

Sunlit path

Superconscient

Supermind

Supernatural Phenomena

Supression

Supramental

Supramental is simply the direct selfexistent Truth-Consciousness and the direct self-effective Truth- Power. [60]

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. [61]

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. [62]

Supramentalisation

Supraphysical Worlds

Surrender

Symbol

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  2. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-and-realisations#p9
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