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What is the Atman? How Do We Experience the Self? · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  As long as we are in mashed in the ego life.
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  It is essentially impossible to conceive of the status or
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  existence of the Ottoman. We relate to the physical world.
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  We relate to other individuals, as if we are just this limited
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  human existence and being we perceive and react to everything
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  from our own egoistic framework. We find it difficult if not
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  virtually impossible to conceive of infinite and interrelated
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  existence and Universal Oneness. Even if our most advanced
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  scientists and sages, tell us that the entire universe is one
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  and indivisible with the same energy creating and running
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  through everything. When we conceived of our death,
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  we either believe that there is nothing afterwards or we accept
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  the tenets of our religious teachings, which either point to
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  a form of rebirth, or entry into some kind of afterlife of a
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  heaven, or possibly, a Purgatory or Hell within which we will be
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  reunited with our family and loved ones.
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  In the form that we experience ourselves.
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  And then in our current lifetime, of course, none of
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  this makes any sense. If we take a wider view of
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  things when we age and die Warren and shriveled or diseased
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  and demented, we expect that after death.
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  We will be are young healthy and vibrant cells of memory and join
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  up with everyone in their best days and forms.
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  After all who would want to be rewarded with eternal life in
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  heaven with friends and family. If everyone was in the form,
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  they were at the time of their death.
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  In order to understand the optimum, we need to have an
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  experience that takes us out of this ego bound individuality.
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  And when such an experience comes to us, it suddenly becomes
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  crystal clear that none of these ego-driven fantastic ideas can
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  possibly be the end result of the enormous and yet extremely
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  detailed Universal creation. Lifted out of the limitations of
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  the body life. Mine complex.
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  We partake of a wider life. Well we do not experience this
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  wider life we can yet use our power of visualization to gain
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  at least some approximate concept of what is involved.
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  We can visualize ourselves in the vast silent realms of outer
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  space with no sounds that we can perceive and vast empty
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  stretches within which universe's galaxies stars
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  planets. Black holes make up a tiny
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  fragment of the immensity. Nothing is moving in this wide
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  space and we feel like we have spread out with a deep
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  unshakeable peace. This space is a representation
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  of the container within which the universal creation forms and
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  carries out its activity. It is not disturbed by the
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  activity, but holds it without comment or response observing at
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  peace and still, We can move our standpoint from one object to
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  another without losing the sense of unity with everything else,
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  that is created standing apart. Even while viewing from an
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  individual perspective, experiencing the individual, as
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  a portion of that larger existence, We can visualize each
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  cell in our bodies is having its own level of awareness and
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  existence, separately living yet, part of a larger Unity that
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  we call ourselves the cells cannot exist without the larger
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  being the larger being does not manifest without the cells.
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  The energy that enlivens both is the same energy which itself
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  comes from another aspect of the universal creation.
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  SRI aurobindo writes, quote. The self is, felt either as
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  universal one in all or as universalized individual the
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  same in essence, as others extended everywhere from each
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  being. But centered here, of course,
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  Center is a way of speaking, because no physical Center is
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  usually felt. Only all the actions.
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  Take place around the individual.
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  Everything axe in the self, the whole play of nature takes place
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  in the south in the Divine. The self contains the universe.
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  The show for Atman is in active nature property or Shakti Acts.
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  When the self is felt, it is first an infinite existence
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  silence. Freedom, peace.
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  That is felt, that is called Atman or self. what action takes
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  place in it, is according to the realization, either felt as
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  forces of nature working in that wideness, as the defined Shakti
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  working, or as the cosmic Divine or various powers of them
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  working, it is not felt that the self is acting in quote
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  reference SRI aurobindo, integral yoga, SRI aurobindo
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  teaching in method of practice chapter 7, Experiences in
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  realizations. The consciousness of the self
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  ages, 181 to 184. The consciousness of the self
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  ages, 181 to 184.