In the Sevenfold Chord of Being (part 1 of Life Divine) he refers to the psyche, the psychic being, as the projection of the Anandamaya plane. At the very least, Satchitananda is elsewhere posited as a transcendent principle, beyond the 5 planes. At least that's my understanding.
here's the passage from that chapter:
In addition, there is a fourth principle which comes into manifestation at the nodus of mind, life and body, that which we call the soul; but this has a double appearance, in front the desire-soul which strives for the possession and delight of things, and, behind and either largely or entirely concealed by the desire-soul, the true psychic entity which is the real repository of the experiences of the spirit.
And we have concluded that this fourth human principle is a projection and an action of the third divine principle of infinite Bliss, but an action in the terms of our consciousness and under the conditions of soul-evolution in this world. As the existence of the Divine is in its nature an infinite consciousness and the self-power of that consciousness, so the nature of its infinite consciousness is pure and infinite Bliss; self-possession and self-awareness are the essence of its self-delight. The cosmos also is a play of this divine self-delight and the delight of that play is entirely possessed by the Universal; but in the individual owing to the action of ignorance and division it is held back in the subliminal and the superconscient being; on our surface it lacks and has to be sought for, found and possessed by the development of the individual consciousness towards universality and transcendence.
We may, therefore, if we will, pose eight[2] principles instead of seven, and then we perceive that our existence is a sort of refraction of the divine existence, in inverted order of ascent and descent, thus ranged, —
Existence Matter
Consciousness-Force Life
Bliss Psyche
Supermind Mind
The Life Divine: 1 (pp. 277-278). Lotus Press. Kindle Edition.
Yes, I guess one should replace the Anandamaya kosha with something describing Satcitananda as a whole, not only its bliss aspect (one might say that Satcitananda "contains" Anandamaya kosha - as I understand it, the Upanishads spoke of Anandamaya kosha in these terms). And it is not a "plane". Maybe "Transcedent self," or sort of would be better.
Love it. Wonderful essay. Small quibble - I've never heard Sat Chit Ananda equated with the Anandamaya plane. My understanding is that Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is transcendent to all 5 planes. Do you have a reference for this equivalence?
Yes, I guess that should be the Ananda-Brahman, being the "sheet of bliss" which is only one aspect of the Satcitananda. Will see if the IR is willing to correct this. I recall Sri Aurobindo once made this kind of table, but can't find it anymore.
yes, although Matthijs made the point, partially tongue in cheek, that whenever Sri Aurobindo made any kind of chart or precise correlations, you could be sure you could find at least 3 passages giving 3 different (or 6 different!) perspectives. Particularly tables (I think its in "Hour of God" - an Ashram pamphlet.
Matthijs told me he jotted it down somewhere and told disciples to not take it too seriously.
As he wrote somewhere else, "Humor... it's the salt of the earth."
Yes, these are mental orderings that can be arbitrary and can be read differently. However, the anandamaya kosha is a vedic concept that placed it beyond the vijnananmaya kosha (supermind). So, even though Sri Aurobindo never explicitly used it, he didn't even reject it. I guess that it is not so wrong, after all.
I don't have any experiential sense of this particular distinction so I can't say more. My experience/knowing of Sat Chit Ananda is one of "Unitarian" Consciousness, above all planes.
But I don't know enough to say how it relates to the Ananda plane also, so I really couldn't say more about that.
I've talked with Vladimir a lot about how many of us in the Yoga rephrase, paraphrase writings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo without having a clear experience.
I know when I go into the experience (or knowing) of the Self and psychic being, they are far more interfused and overlapping than many of the interpretations of Their writings would suggest (it was some years ago when I started to notice in the Letters, from both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, that when disciples talked about their experiences, They very often gave descriptions of the Self that sounded like writings on the psychic being, and vice versa. I've asked quite a few "famous" IY writers to give their own distinctions, without using any paraphrases, and none could do it.
I had the same difficulty talking to McGilchrist fans about right and left hemisphere attention. In day to day life they're always completely mixed, so these dictionary definitions don't help.
In your writing, on the other hand, communicating to people in relation to science and philosophy, I can see the value of making these clear cut mental distinctions. I just might like to see a bit more warnings about how limited these distinctions are.
Coincidentally, I just wrote this remark for one of my upcoming posts.
"This numbering of planes must not be taken literally, it comes from an arbitrary mental demarcation line over a continuum of states of consciousness, serving as a framework for our intellect that operates on the mental plane and can’t, even not in principle, capture the nature of these superconscious planes. The essential point to keep in mind is that we can understand this spiritual cosmology only if we expand our metaphysical worldview from a simple two-modal Cartesian matter-soul duality or Platonic matter-form metaphysics to a multi-modal spiritual cosmology with several levels of consciousness and planes of diverse subtleness of non-physical substance that separate the divinity from gross matter, which is ultimately still the same divinity forgetful of itself. The precise categorizations aren’t necessary for this understanding."
In the Sevenfold Chord of Being (part 1 of Life Divine) he refers to the psyche, the psychic being, as the projection of the Anandamaya plane. At the very least, Satchitananda is elsewhere posited as a transcendent principle, beyond the 5 planes. At least that's my understanding.
here's the passage from that chapter:
In addition, there is a fourth principle which comes into manifestation at the nodus of mind, life and body, that which we call the soul; but this has a double appearance, in front the desire-soul which strives for the possession and delight of things, and, behind and either largely or entirely concealed by the desire-soul, the true psychic entity which is the real repository of the experiences of the spirit.
And we have concluded that this fourth human principle is a projection and an action of the third divine principle of infinite Bliss, but an action in the terms of our consciousness and under the conditions of soul-evolution in this world. As the existence of the Divine is in its nature an infinite consciousness and the self-power of that consciousness, so the nature of its infinite consciousness is pure and infinite Bliss; self-possession and self-awareness are the essence of its self-delight. The cosmos also is a play of this divine self-delight and the delight of that play is entirely possessed by the Universal; but in the individual owing to the action of ignorance and division it is held back in the subliminal and the superconscient being; on our surface it lacks and has to be sought for, found and possessed by the development of the individual consciousness towards universality and transcendence.
We may, therefore, if we will, pose eight[2] principles instead of seven, and then we perceive that our existence is a sort of refraction of the divine existence, in inverted order of ascent and descent, thus ranged, —
Existence Matter
Consciousness-Force Life
Bliss Psyche
Supermind Mind
The Life Divine: 1 (pp. 277-278). Lotus Press. Kindle Edition.
Yes, I guess one should replace the Anandamaya kosha with something describing Satcitananda as a whole, not only its bliss aspect (one might say that Satcitananda "contains" Anandamaya kosha - as I understand it, the Upanishads spoke of Anandamaya kosha in these terms). And it is not a "plane". Maybe "Transcedent self," or sort of would be better.
Love it. Wonderful essay. Small quibble - I've never heard Sat Chit Ananda equated with the Anandamaya plane. My understanding is that Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is transcendent to all 5 planes. Do you have a reference for this equivalence?
Yes, I guess that should be the Ananda-Brahman, being the "sheet of bliss" which is only one aspect of the Satcitananda. Will see if the IR is willing to correct this. I recall Sri Aurobindo once made this kind of table, but can't find it anymore.
yes, although Matthijs made the point, partially tongue in cheek, that whenever Sri Aurobindo made any kind of chart or precise correlations, you could be sure you could find at least 3 passages giving 3 different (or 6 different!) perspectives. Particularly tables (I think its in "Hour of God" - an Ashram pamphlet.
Matthijs told me he jotted it down somewhere and told disciples to not take it too seriously.
As he wrote somewhere else, "Humor... it's the salt of the earth."
Yes, these are mental orderings that can be arbitrary and can be read differently. However, the anandamaya kosha is a vedic concept that placed it beyond the vijnananmaya kosha (supermind). So, even though Sri Aurobindo never explicitly used it, he didn't even reject it. I guess that it is not so wrong, after all.
I don't have any experiential sense of this particular distinction so I can't say more. My experience/knowing of Sat Chit Ananda is one of "Unitarian" Consciousness, above all planes.
But I don't know enough to say how it relates to the Ananda plane also, so I really couldn't say more about that.
I've talked with Vladimir a lot about how many of us in the Yoga rephrase, paraphrase writings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo without having a clear experience.
I know when I go into the experience (or knowing) of the Self and psychic being, they are far more interfused and overlapping than many of the interpretations of Their writings would suggest (it was some years ago when I started to notice in the Letters, from both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, that when disciples talked about their experiences, They very often gave descriptions of the Self that sounded like writings on the psychic being, and vice versa. I've asked quite a few "famous" IY writers to give their own distinctions, without using any paraphrases, and none could do it.
I had the same difficulty talking to McGilchrist fans about right and left hemisphere attention. In day to day life they're always completely mixed, so these dictionary definitions don't help.
In your writing, on the other hand, communicating to people in relation to science and philosophy, I can see the value of making these clear cut mental distinctions. I just might like to see a bit more warnings about how limited these distinctions are.
Coincidentally, I just wrote this remark for one of my upcoming posts.
"This numbering of planes must not be taken literally, it comes from an arbitrary mental demarcation line over a continuum of states of consciousness, serving as a framework for our intellect that operates on the mental plane and can’t, even not in principle, capture the nature of these superconscious planes. The essential point to keep in mind is that we can understand this spiritual cosmology only if we expand our metaphysical worldview from a simple two-modal Cartesian matter-soul duality or Platonic matter-form metaphysics to a multi-modal spiritual cosmology with several levels of consciousness and planes of diverse subtleness of non-physical substance that separate the divinity from gross matter, which is ultimately still the same divinity forgetful of itself. The precise categorizations aren’t necessary for this understanding."
Ah, you stole the words right out of my mouth.
But you said it much better:>)