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Laghimā

Laghima is a power of lightness, that is to say of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, pranic or physical being. By Laghima it is possible to get rid of weariness and exhaustion and to overcome gravitation.

Laya

Absolute disappearance, the annullation of the individual soul in the Infinite.

According to both Buddha and Shankara liberation means laya of the individual in some transcendent Permanence that is not individualise.

The impulse towards laya is a creation of the mind, it is not the sole possible destiny of the soul. When the mind tries to abolish its own Ignorance, it finds no escape from it except laya, because it supposes that there is no higher principle of cosmic existence beyond itself—beyond itself is only the pure Spirit, the absolute impersonal Divine. Those who go through the heart (love, bhakti) do not accept laya, they believe in a state beyond of eternal companionship with the Divine or dwelling in the Divine without laya.

Liberation

Liberation is the first necessity—to live in the peace, silence, purity, freedom of the Self. Along with that or afterwards if one wakens to the cosmic consciousness, then one can be free, yet one with all things.

A liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the spirit is the first form of release. A farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of supreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation.

Life

Mind manifests itself in the form of Force to which we give the name of Life, and Life in Matter is an energy or power in dynamic movement which builds up forms, energises, maintains, disintegrates and recreates; death itself is only a process of life. It is one all-pervading Life or constant movement of dynamic energy which creates all these forms of the material universe and is not destroyed in the destruction of its forms.—The distinction between animal and plant life is unreal and that between the animate and the inanimate unessential. Plant-life has been found to be identical in organisation with animal-life and, although the organisation may differ, life is also present in the metal, the earth, the atom.

The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine, but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one’s true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine.

Light

Light indicates an illumination of the consciousness.

All lights are indications of a Force or Power. It is the work of the Lights and Forces they represent to act in their descent on the lower nature and change it.

It [Light] is the power that enlightens whatever it falls upon—the result may be vision, memory, knowledge, right will, right impulse etc.

Love

Love must be turned singly towards the Divine. What men call by that name is a vital interchange for mental satisfaction of desire, vital impulse or physical pleasure.

Bliss and oneness are the essential condition of the absolute reality, and love as the most characteristic dynamic power of bliss and oneness must support fundamentally and colour their activities.

The true love for the Divine is a self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender; it makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger - for these things are not in its composition.

Lower Vital

...lower vital...is concerned with the pettier movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital physical where it supports the life of the more external activities and all physical sensations, hungers, cravings, satisfactions. The term lower must not be considered in a pejorative sense; it refers only to the position in the hierarchy of the planes. For although this part of the nature in earthly beings tends to be very obscure and is full of perversions,—lust, greed of all kinds, vanity, small ambitions, petty anger, envy, jealousy are its ordinary guests,—still there is another side to it which makes it an indispensable mediator between the inner being and the outer life.

Lust

Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign.

There is a vital love, a physical love. It is possible for the vital to desire a woman for various vital reasons without love—in order to satisfy the instinct of domination or possession, in order to draw in the vital forces of a woman so as to feed one’s own vital, for the exchange of vital forces, to satisfy vanity, the hunter’s instinct of the chase, etc., etc. (This is from man’s viewpoint—but the woman also has her vital motives.) This is often called love, but it is only vital desire, a kind of lust. If, however, the emotions of the heart are awakened, then it becomes vital love—a mixed affair with any or all of these vital motives, strong, but still vital love.

Lila

[T]he manifestation is a Lila or play of the Lord who is in His being all delight; the play, too, therefore, is not only a play of Existence and Consciousness, but also a play of delight.