EGO is a necessary initial formation of Nature in the mind, vital and physical, and serves to individualise our outer personality and action. When the Psychic is discovered, its utility ceases and it becomes more of a hindrance to further progress than a help.
“The ‘I’ or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being [the Psychic] is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place.” – Sri Aurobindo
SPIRITUAL The Supreme Origin, the Transcendent, the Absolute.
“… the psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and the eternal, to be projected beyond all creation, beyond time and space.” – The Mother
OUTER BEING is the surface personality consisting of our mind, life and body.
SUPRAMENTAL “The supramental is simply the direct self-existent Truth Consciousness and the direct self-effective Truth Power.” – Sri Aurobindo
The action of the Supramental is necessary for the full transformation of terrestrial life and being.
FREE PROGRESS SYSTEM “A progress guided by the soul and not subjected to habits, conventions or preconceived ideas.” – The Mother
This does not mean that children are allowed to grow anyway that they want to. To clarify this, the Mother has said: “’free progress’ does not mean indiscipline.... The student should not arrive half an hour late just because he is free, because this kind of freedom is not freedom, it is simply disorderliness. Each one must have a very strict discipline for himself. But a child is not capable of self-discipline, he must be taught the habit of discipline. So he should get up at the same time, get ready at the same time and go to school at the same time. That is indispensable, otherwise it becomes an impossible muddle.”
YOGA “means union with the Divine, but it also means awaking first to your inner self and then to your higher self,—a movement inward and a movement upward.” – Sri Aurobindo
Integral Education being a Science of Living, has its own unique vocabulary. Here is a basic list of important words used:
INTEGRAL EDUCATION is a completer form of education, having “five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.”
PHYSICAL it is the human body made up of matter, along with its subtler physical components driving it.
VITAL is “the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts.” – The Mother
“The vital has to be carefully distinguished from mind, even though it has a mind element transfused into it; the vital is the Life nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust etc. that belong to this field of the nature.” – Sri Aurobindo
It is also the repository of all our emotions and primarily determines our character. As we go deeper into its constitution, a further division is made as the Lower Vital, Central/Middle Vital, Higher/Emotional Vital and Mental Vital – these are beyond the scope of this Glossary.
MENTAL or MIND “The ‘Mind’ in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this Yoga, the words mind and mental are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will etc. that are part of his intelligence.” – Sri Aurobindo
PSYCHIC or PSYCHIC BEING or Chaitya Purusha
“The psychic being is the Soul, the Purusha in the secret heart supporting by its presence the action of the mind, life and body.” – Sri Aurobindo
“We give the name ‘psychic’ to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement.” – The Mother
It is the inmost self, an individual’s true personality, around which the physical, vital and mental are to be developed and harmonised so that they become direct instruments of an individual’s self-expression. It may also be loosely referred to as the Soul in human beings.
Experience of the “spiritual” in us: “… even if the experience is only momentary, it produces in the consciousness results that are never obliterated and have repercussions on all states of the being, both internal and external.” – The Mother
