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The Knowledge Based in the Mystic Heart · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Man, the mental being the mental capacities that are associated
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  with the human species, are considered to be our unique
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  trait distinguishing humanity from the rest of the animal
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  Kingdom. We drive this narrative with a
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  focus on training and developing the mind in our schools.
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  We believe that knowledge resides in our mental abilities.
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  We measure intelligence through tests that are designed for the
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  mind. We look up to scientists,
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  philosophers, deep thinkers as models for the expression of
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  human knowledge. We are essentially brain centric
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  in the way we view and understand the power of
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  knowledge and its impact on our lives.
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  Spiritual paths of develop which are based in this mental view of
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  knowledge. Deep training of the mind such
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  as through mindfulness training. Vypasana, Raja Yoga, and Nyani
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  Yoga have explored the constitution and the boundaries
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  of the mental powers. The paths based in the mind have
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  tended toward more abstraction and distance from the life in
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  the world. But knowledge is not limited to
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  that of the mind. There are other powers and
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  elements of our being, and they each have their own unique forms
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  of knowledge, whether we can formulate them in mental terms
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  or not. Even the physical body has
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  certain forms of inherent knowledge which it does not
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  share with the mind directly. How else can we heal from a
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  wound? How indeed can our entire
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  physical system function with all the complex interactions
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  that occur and the interrelations that take place
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  in the segments of the physical body itself without some innate
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  knowledge at work there? There is a vital intelligence
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  that responds to the vibrations virtually automatically without
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  mental analysis. Whether we are looking at the
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  phenomena of the alpha male or the pecking order, we find a non
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  mental response in the vital being to a hidden power dynamic
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  that is taking place between people.
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  Various researchers in the West have begun to appreciate that
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  there are indeed other valuable forms of knowledge not bounded
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  within the methods and framework of the mind.
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  There is, for instance, an entire body of knowledge related
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  to what is called emotional intelligence.
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  The ancient paths of yoga recognize this with the
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  development of the yoga of love and devotion, Bhakti Yoga.
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  This yoga focuses on the almost intuitive knowledge of truth
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  that comes through receptivity, aspiration and an outflowing of
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  love that creates a direct relation with the divine being.
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  This relation provides an innate non mental form of knowledge
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  that directly knows the divine will and seeks to carry it out,
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  Sriorobindo writes. Quote If knowledge is the widest
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  power of the consciousness, and its function is to free and
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  illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense, and
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  its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret
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  recesses of the Divine. Mystery Man, because he is a
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  mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the
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  thinking mind and its reason and will, and to its way of
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  approach, an effectuation of truth, and even he is inclined
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  to hold that there is no other. The heart, with its emotions and
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  incalculable movements, is to the eye of his intellect an
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  obscure, uncertain, and often a perilous and misleading power,
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  which needs to be kept in control by the reason and the
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  mental will and intelligence. And yet there is in the heart or
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  behind it, a profounder Mystic light, which, if not what we
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  call intuition, for that, though not of the mind, yet descends
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  through the mind, has yet a direct touch upon truth, and is
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  nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of
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  knowledge. According to the ancient
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  teaching, the seat of the imminent Divine, the hidden
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  Purusha, is in the Mystic heart, the secret hard cave, Hrudayeh
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  Guhaya, as the Upanishads put it.
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  And according to the experience of many Yogans, it is from its
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  depths that there come the voice or the breath of the inner
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  Oracle. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu
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  and the Mother. The psychic being soul, its
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  nature, mission and evolution. Section 1.
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  Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being, pages 26 to 27.