A Greater Psychology

6

Self, Ego and Individuality

Sri Aurobindo's Integral View

When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.¹ — Sri Aurobindo

Self, Ego and Individuality in Ordinary Consciousness

A fundamental characteristic of our ordinary or "normal" state of consciousness is the sense of I-ness, of being an individual who has an independent existence, who is distinct and separate from other individuals and things in the universe. In its basic connotation, the term "ego" (derived from the Latin word for "I") is applied to this core of our being as we experience it in our ordinary consciousness and which we refer to as "I". The ego is what we regard as the agent of our thoughts, feelings and actions; thus we say "I think", "I feel", etc.

We may note four features of the ego which appear self-evident to us in our ordinary state of consciousness:

(i)The ego is experienced as the self; "I" and "myself" are felt to be the same. Hence, generally the terms "ego" and "self" are used synonymously by most writers.²

(ii)The ego or self is felt as a living reality, existing in a physical body. As Assagioli states, "...man's basic existential experience... is being a living self."³ And as William James remarks, "No psychology... can question the existence of personal selves."⁴ An impairment of the sense of one's personal reality is generally associated with depersonalisation, a state denoting a psychiatric disorder.

(iii)The ego or self is experienced as an entity who is separate from all other beings and things in the universe. All that is other than oneself is experienced as the not-self. Part of normal psychological development consists in establishing an

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"ego-boundary" which separates one's self from everything else — the not-self. As Ken Wilber observes,

So fundamental is the primary boundary between self and not-self that all our other boundaries depend on it. We can hardly distinguish boundaries between things until we have distinguished ourselves from things. Every boundary you create depends upon your separate existence, that is, your primary boundary of self vs. not-self.⁵

(iv) The ego or self is experienced as being distinct from everyone else, that is, as having an individuality. The sense of ego or self is bound up with the sense of individuality as well as of separateness.

Self, Ego and Individuality in Cosmic Consciousness

In sharp contrast to our ordinary state of consciousness as regards our perceptions of ego, self and individuality stated above are certain non-ordinary states of consciousness, which have been described as mystical or spiritual, in which these perceptions are almost totally reversed.

R.M. Bucke, the first writer who published a scientific and comprehensive account of such mystical states, called them states of "cosmic consciousness", of which he gave fifty instances evidenced by personalities in different epochs, from the Buddha and Christ to Francis Bacon and Walt Whitman.⁶ Since Bucke's classic publication, diverse types of mystical states have been more or less loosely described as states of cosmic consciousness. Sri Aurobindo uses the term "cosmic consciousness" in a more specific sense:

The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual

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is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.⁷

The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces,... It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one's own greater reality.⁸

Regarding the way in which ego, self and individuality are experienced in the cosmic consciousness as described above we may note the following:

(i)Ego and self are not felt to be the same as in the ordinary consciousness; the ego is perceived as only a small part of one's self; the larger universal self is felt to be one's greater reality.

(ii)The sense of separateness based on the ego-boundary which, in the ordinary consciousness, distinguishes self from not-self disappears; one feels all others as part of oneself.

(iii)Though there is an implicit sense of individuality, enabling one to distinguish oneself from others, the sense of individuality in the cosmic consciousness, unlike individuality in the ordinary state of consciousness, co-exists with a sense of unity: all others are perceived as "part of oneself" or "varied repetitions of oneself". In other words, the self is perceived as being both an individual self and a cosmic self.

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Self, Ego and Individuality in Transcendent Consciousness

A more radical disaffirmation of our ordinary perceptions of self, ego and individuality is found in some theories based on the experience of a state transcending that of cosmic consciousness, termed variously Nirvana (Extinction), Laya (Dissolution), Mukti or Moksha (Liberation). About this transcendent state of liberation, Sri Aurobindo writes:

...on the other side of the cosmic consciousness there is, attainable to us a consciousness yet more transcendent, — transcendent not only of the ego, but of the Cosmos itself, — against which the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture against an immeasurable background.⁹

Deep, intense, convincing, common to all who have overstepped a certain limit of the active mind-belt into the horizonless inner space, this is the great experience of liberation, the consciousness of something within us that is behind and outside of the universe and all its forms, interests, aims, events and happenings, calm, untouched, unconcerned, illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha,¹⁰ the sense of an Infinity or a Transcendence that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real.¹¹

Two prominent philosophical theories have each constructed a radical view of reality as well as of the nature of self, ego and individuality on the basis of the experience of Nirvana or Moksha. The two theories are Nagarjuna's Buddhist theory of Nihilism and Shankara's theory of Mayavada (Illusionism), a version of the Vedantic philosophy of Adwaita (Monism).

According to Nihilism, what we experience as our ego or self is not a real entity but an illusion. There is no such thing as a real self but only a stream of experience, ideas, sensations and associations (Sanskaras). The self is merely a name for the

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continuity of the flow of experience, like the continuous river which is yet never the same river, or the persistent flame which is yet never the same flame. Behind the flux of experience is Nihil, the Void, Non-Being, Non-Existence, an infinite Zero (Shunya), which alone is the enduring Reality. The continuity of experience is maintained by the successions of energies of Action (Karma), kept in motion by desire (Kama) which is the root cause of suffering (Duhkha). The cessation of desire breaks up the continuity of the painful flow of energies by bringing about the disintegration of the bundle of Sanskaras. This produces the extinction of the ego and the disappearance of the idea of selfhood, leading to Nirvana, the state of Non-Existence or Non-Being, the ultimate Reality. Thus from the viewpoint of Nihilism, all sense of ego, self and individuality is an illusion, consisting in an imposition (Adhyaropa) of our ignorance on eternal Non-Existence.

According to Monism, on which Illusionism bases itself, Reality is an infinite and eternal Supreme Being and Absolute Existence (Brahman) whose nature is that of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss), the One besides whom nothing else exists. By its essentiality the Supreme Being is also the Self (Atman); therefore the Supreme is our own true and highest Self. According to Illusionism, the universe is a creation of Maya, the power of self-illusion in the Brahman by which the Brahman imposes on itself the cosmic illusion; the cosmos is, as it were, a dream that takes place in the Absolute. Ahamkara, the separative ego-sense which makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality, is a creation of the cosmic illusion. Monism does admit of a Jivatman, an individual self, but the Jivatman is regarded as simply an appearance of the Brahman in illusory Maya. With the attainment of knowledge in the state of Moksha, the individual self is extinguished in the Reality. There is thus no real, eternal self of the individual, even no real eternal universal self, but only the One Self, the One Reality. Therefore, from the viewpoint of Illusionism, both ego and individuality are unreal, the One Self alone is real.

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Integral View of Reality

The theories of Nihilism and Illusionism show that the view regarding the nature of self is inextricably tied up with the view of Reality. The two theories view Reality in seemingly opposite ways and consequently assert opposite views regarding the nature of self. Nihilism regards Reality as Absolute Non-Existence and Non-Being, and therefore looks upon the self as an illusion. On the other hand, Illusionism sees Reality as Absolute Existence and Being, and so regards the One Self as identical with Reality.

Regarding the philosophical differences in explaining the nature of the ultimate reality, Sri Aurobindo states: "The overmind¹² presents the truth of things in all sorts of aspects and mind, even the spiritual mind, fastens on one or the other as the very truth, the one real truth of the matter. It is the mind that makes these differences...."¹³ Reconciling the mutually exclusive theories of Nihilism and Illusionism in the light of a more comprehensive view of Reality, Sri Aurobindo writes:

The impressions in the approach to Infinity or the entry into it are not always the same; much depends on the way in which the mind approaches it.... If certain schools of Buddhists felt it in their experience as a limitless Shunya, the Vedantists, on the contrary, see it as a positive Self-Existence featureless and absolute. No doubt, the various experiences were erected into various philosophies, each putting its conception as definitive; but behind each conception there was such an experience.¹⁴

Buddha, it must be remembered, refused always to discuss what was beyond the world. But from the little he said it would appear that he was aware of a Permanent beyond equivalent to the Vedantic Para-Brahman, but which he was quite unwilling to describe. The denial of anything beyond the world except a negative state of Nirvana was a later teaching, not Buddha's.¹⁵

The universe is only a partial manifestation and Brahman as its foundation is the Sat.¹⁶ But there is also that which is not

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manifested and beyond manifestation and is not contained in the basis of manifestation. The Buddhists and others got from that the conception of Asat¹⁷ as the ultimate thing.¹⁸

The feeling of the Self as a vast peaceful Void, a liberation from existence as we know it, is one that one can always have, Buddhist or no Buddhist. It is the negative aspect of Nirvana — it is quite natural for the mind, if it follows the negative movement of withdrawal, to get that first, and if you lay hold on that and refuse to go farther, being satisfied with this liberated Non-Existence, then you will naturally philosophise like the Buddhists that Shunya is the eternal truth. Lao Tse is more perspicacious when he spoke of it as the Nothing that is All. Many of course have the positive experience of the Atman first, not as a void but as pure unrelated Existence like the Adwaitins (Shankara) or as the one Existent.¹⁹

The experience of Nirvana, on which the theories of Nihilism and Illusionism are based, was for Sri Aurobindo only the beginning of his realisation.

I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the experience [of Nirvana], as it then came to me, — (the ineffable Ananda²⁰ I had years afterwards), — but what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an infinity of release and freedom. I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion²¹ is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from

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supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Infinity remained always, with the world or all worlds as a continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.

...Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale. It came unasked, unsought for, though quite welcome.... It just happened and settled in as if for all eternity or as if it had been really there always. And then it slowly grew into something not less but greater than its first self.²²

Whereas Sri Aurobindo's first major spiritual experience — that of Nirvana — confirmed the basic views of Nihilism and of Illusionism (unreality of the ego and illusoriness of the world), his subsequent realisations fusing with the original experience brought a deeper view according to which he saw Nirvana to be an extinction not necessarily of all being but of being as we know it — the being of ego and desire; he found it to be not the end of the Path with nothing beyond to explore; but the end merely of the Path through the lower Nature, and a beginning of a Higher Evolution. He came to see the illusoriness of the world as not a feature of the world itself but as consisting in a false interpretation of the world by the mind and senses. Stating his view of reality, he wrote:

The world is a manifestation of the Real and therefore is itself real. The reality is the infinite and eternal Divine.... This Divine by his power has created the world or rather manifested it in his own infinite Being. But here in the material world or at its basis he has hidden himself in what seem to be his opposites, Non-Being, Inconscience and Insentience.... The Being which is hidden in what seems to be an inconscient void emerges in the world first in Matter, then in Life, then in Mind and finally as the Spirit.... This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of Consciousness

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and an evolution of the Spirit in things and only outwardly an evolution of species.²³

The Shankara knowledge is... only one side of the Truth; it is the knowledge of the Supreme as realised by the spiritual Mind through the static silence of the pure Existence. It was because he went by this side only that Shankara was unable to accept or explain the origin of the universe except as illusion, a creation of Maya. Unless one realises the Supreme on the dynamic as well as the static side, one cannot experience the true origin of things and the equal reality of the active Brahman.... This other side was developed by the Shakta²⁴ Tantriks. The two together, the Vedantic and the Tantric truth unified, can arrive at the integral knowledge.²⁵

For me all is Brahman and I find the Divine everywhere.... In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview — the spiritual and the material — and to try to establish the Divine Consciousness and the Divine Power in men's hearts and earthly life, not for a personal salvation only but for a life divine here.... This at least has always been my view and experience of the reality and nature of the world and things and the Divine.... ²⁶

Sri Aurobindo's views regarding the nature of self, ego and individuality stem from his view of reality just stated.

Integral View of Self

Identity of Reality and Self

...all this that is... is the Brahman, the Reality. The Brahman becomes all these beings, all beings must be seen in the Self, the Reality, and the Reality must be seen in them, the Reality must be seen as being actually all these beings; for not only the Self is Brahman, but all is the Self, all this that is is the Brahman, the Reality.²⁷

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Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one spirit, one self and one existence.²⁸

Brahman is, subjectively, Atman, the Self or immutable existence of all that is in the universe.²⁹

The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe.³⁰

Aspects of the Self

Sri Aurobindo states that both for philosophical understanding and spiritual experience it is highly important to distinguish among different aspects of the Self, otherwise the nature of the Self is blurred and a confusion arises both in intellectual understanding and inner experience.

The word 'Atman' like 'spirit' in English is popularly used in all kinds of senses, but both for spiritual and philosophical knowledge it is necessary to be clear and precise in one's use of terms so as to avoid confusion of thought and vision by confusion in the words we use to express them.³¹

The Self or Atman, states Sri Aurobindo, is experienced as the true being or self of the individual and as the Self of the cosmos. It has also an existence above the individual and transcending the cosmos in its aspect of Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the Divine. The individual, the cosmic and the transcendent are the three statuses of the Self.

As the Self is at once one and many, the universal Self manifests also as the individual self, the Jivatman, which presides over individual birth and evolution, though the Jivatman itself is unborn, unevolving, above the manifestation. What comes down into the manifestation, descending into the individual being as the representative of the Jivatman, evolving from life to life is the Antaratman, the soul or psychic being.

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Jivatman, the individual self, feels his oneness with the universal Atman, but at the same time feels also his distinctness as an individual centre of the universal Self. The Jivatman therefore sees everything in itself or itself in everything or both together according to its state of consciousness. But the Jivatman is one of the centres of the One, not the One itself. If one does not make this distinction, and if there is the least vestige of egoism in the lower nature of one's being, then upon discovering the Jivatman one may think of oneself as an Avatar, an embodiment of the One.

Whereas the Jivatman presides over individual manifestation from above, its representative below in the manifestation — the psychic being — supports from within the evolution of the individual, standing behind and guiding the parts of the outer instrumental being — mental, vital and physical, receiving the essence of all their experiences and growing by these experiences, carrying the consciousness from life to life. When the psychic being realises its oneness with the Jivatman in the state of liberation, it does not disappear or change into the Jivatman. On attaining liberation the Jivatman may choose to merge into the One and pass into the state of Nirvana, Moksha or Laya (Dissolution); but it can also choose to remain in the universe to carry on the evolution beyond liberation.

Integral View of Ego

Ego and the Ignorance

...to the how of the fall into the Ignorance as opposed to the why, the effective cause, there is a substantial agreement in all spiritual experience. It is the division, the separation, the principle of isolation from the Permanent and One that brought it about; it is because the ego set up for itself in the world emphasising its own desire and self-affirmation in preference to its unity with the Divine and its oneness with all; it is because instead of the one supreme

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Force, Wisdom, Light determining the harmony of all forces each Idea, Force, Form of things was allowed to work itself out as far as it could in the mass of infinite possibilities by its separate will and inevitably in the end by conflict with others. Division, ego, the imperfect consciousness and groping and struggle of a separate self-affirmation are the efficient cause of the suffering and ignorance of this world.³²

Of the world he [man] regards only one little foam-bubble, his life and body, as himself. But when we get into our subliminal consciousness, we find it extending itself to be commensurate with its world; when we get into our superconscient Self, we find that the world is only its manifestation and that all in it is the One, all in it is our self. We see that there is one indivisible Matter of which our body is a knot, one indivisible Life of which our life is an eddy, one indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording, forming or translating and transmitting station, one indivisible Spirit of which our soul and individual being are a portion or a manifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain the strong though always permeable walls it has created to be its own prison. Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance.³³

Ego: Provisional Substitute for Self

Ego implies the identification of our existence with outer self, the ignorance of our true self above and our psychic being within us.³⁴

In the Ignorance Nature centres the order of her psychological movements, not around the secret spiritual self, but around its substitute, the ego-principle; a certain ego-centrism is the basis on which we bind together our experiences and relations in the midst of the complex contacts, contradictions, dualities, incoherences of the world in which we live; this ego-centrism is our rock of safety against the cosmic and the infinite, our defence.³⁵

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...this constant outer ego-building is only a provisional device... so that the secret individual, the spirit within, may establish a representative and instrumental formation of itself in physical nature, a provisional individualisation in the nature of the Ignorance, which is all that can at first be done in a world emerging out of a universal Inconscience.³⁶

The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a subjective substitute for the true self in our surface experience: it is separated by ignorance from other-self and from the inner Divinity, but it is still pushed secretly towards an evolutionary unification in diversity; it has behind itself, though finite, the impulse to the infinite. But this in the terms of an ignorant consciousness translates itself into the will to expand, to be a boundless finite, to take everything it can into itself.... ³⁷

Utility and Necessity of Ego

...Nature invented the ego that the individual might disengage himself from the inconscience or subconscience of the mass and become an independent living mind, life-power, soul, spirit, co-ordinating himself with the world around him but not drowned in it and separately inexistent and ineffective. For the individual is indeed part of the cosmic being, but he is also something more, he is a soul that has descended from the Transcendence. This he cannot manifest at once, because he is too near to the cosmic Inconscience not near enough to the original Superconscience; he has to find himself as the mental and vital ego before he can find himself as the soul or spirit.³⁸

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 is discovered, the utility of the ego is over.... ³⁹

I suppose the ego came there first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly, as an

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incentive for tamasic⁴⁰ animal man to act and get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and sleep and done nothing else. With that incentive of ego (possession, vanity, ambition, eagerness for power etc. etc.) he began doing all sorts of things he might never otherwise have done.⁴¹

In the evolution of the lower consciousness here ego and selfishness were a necessity. So long as the higher consciousness above ordinary mind does not descend, ego remains a necessity even in aspiring towards the Divine.... ⁴²

...the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.⁴³

Liberation from Ego

As our consciousness changes into the height and depth and wideness of the spirit, the ego can no longer survive there: it is too small and feeble to subsist in that vastness and dissolves into it; for it exists by its limits and perishes by the loss of its limits. The being breaks out of its imprisonment in a separated individuality, becomes universal, assumes a cosmic consciousness in which it identifies itself with the self and spirit, the life, the mind, the body of all beings. Or it breaks out upward into a supreme pinnacle and infinity and eternity of self-existence independent of its cosmic or its individual existence. The ego collapses, losing its wall of separation, into the cosmic immensity; or it falls into nothingness, unable to breathe in the heights of the spiritual ether.⁴⁴

Without the liberation of the psychic and the realisation of the true Self the ego cannot go, both are necessary.⁴⁵

The sense of ego can disappear into that of the Self or the Purusha but that of itself does not bring about the disappearance of the

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ego-reactions in the Prakriti. The Purusha has to get rid of these by a process of constant rejection and remoulding.⁴⁶

Without persistent rejection it [liberation from the ego] cannot be done. Going up into the Self liberates the higher parts, but the ego remains in the lower parts. The most effective force for this liberation is the psychic control along with steady rejection.⁴⁷

Integral View of Individuality

Distinction between Two Individualities

What we usually call by that name [individuality] is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body...; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.⁴⁸

...the ego is the individual only in the ignorance; there is a true individual who is not the ego and still has an eternal relation with all other individuals which is not egoistic or self-separative, but of which the essential character is practical mutuality founded on essential unity.⁴⁹

Eternal Reality of True Individuality

An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence; so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person

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manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.⁵⁰

...the Self is always one in all, yet we see that for the purposes at least of the cyclic manifestation it expresses itself in perpetual soul-forms which preside over the movements of our personality through the worlds and the aeons. This persistent soul-existence is the real Individuality which stands behind the constant mutations of the thing we call our personality. It is not a limited ego but a thing in itself infinite; it is in truth the Infinite itself consenting from one plane of its being to reflect itself in a perpetual soul-experience.... We are not a mere mass of changing mind-stuff, life-stuff, body-stuff taking different forms of mind and life and body from birth to birth, so that at no time is there any real self or conscious reason of existence behind all the flux.... There is a real and stable power of our being behind the constant mutation of our mental, vital and physical personality, and this we have to know and preserve in order that the Infinite may manifest Himself through it according to His will in whatever range and for whatever purpose of His eternal cosmic activity.⁵¹

Importance and Necessity of Individuality

The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience. This importance can only be justified if the Self as individual is no less real than the Self as cosmic being or Spirit and both are powers of the Eternal. It is only so that can be explained the necessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of himself as a condition for the discovery of the cosmic Self and Consciousness and of the supreme Reality.⁵²

...the World-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not exclude it, even as the universe embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude him. The individual is a

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centre of the whole universal consciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Indefinable.

This is always the true relation, veiled from us by our ignorance or our wrong consciousness of things. When we attain to knowledge or right consciousness, nothing essential in the eternal relation is changed.... The individual is still necessary to the action of the Transcendent in the universe and that action in him does not cease to be possible by his illumination. On the contrary, since the conscious manifestation of the Transcendent in the individual is the means by which the collective, the universal is also to become conscious of itself, the continuation of the illumined individual in the action of the world is an imperative need of the world-play.⁵³

Recapitulation of Sri Aurobindo's Views

The ordinary existence of man is not only an individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly as not himself and something which he possesses and uses, but of the ego he says, "It is I". By detaching himself from all identification with mind, life and body he can get back from his ego to the consciousness of the true Individual, the Jivatman, who is the real possessor of mind, life and body. Looking back from this Individual to that of which it is the representative and conscious figure, he can get back to the transcendent consciousness of pure Self, absolute Existence or absolute Non-Being, three poises of the same eternal Reality.⁵⁴

In the abolition of the mental, vital, physical ego, even of the spiritual ego, it is the formless and limitless Individual that has the

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peace and joy of his escape into his own infinity. In the experience that he is nothing and no one, or everything and everyone, or the One which is beyond all things and absolute, it is the Brahman in the individual that effectuates this stupendous merger or this marvellous joining, Yoga, of its eternal unit of being with its vast all-comprehending or supreme all-transcending unity of eternal existence. To get beyond the ego is imperative, but one cannot get beyond the self, — except by finding it supremely, universally. For the self is not the ego; it is one with the All and the One and in finding it it is the All and the One that we discover in our self: the contradiction, the separation disappears, but the self, the spiritual reality remains, united with the One and the All by that delivering disappearance.⁵⁵

Notes and References

1. Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Glimpses" in The Suparmental Manifestation and Other Writings, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (hereafter SABCL), (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-75), Vol. 16, p. 377.

2. The majority of psychologists tend to eschew the term "self" which is regarded as somewhat philosophical, and prefer to use the more phenomenological term "ego".

3. Roberto Assagioli, The Act of Will (Penguin Books, 1987), p. 126.

4. William James, Psychology: Briefer Course, (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1926), p. 153.

5. Ken Wilber, No Boundary (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1979), p. 46.

6. R.M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969).

7. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 315.

8. Ibid., p. 316.

9. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 17.

10. Conscious Being.

11. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 278.

12. Sri Aurobindo speaks of various levels of Mind above the ordinary

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mind. The Overmind is the highest of these levels, above which is Supermind, the principle beyond Mind, and radically different from it.

13. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 271.

14. Ibid., p. 63.

15. Ibid., p. 62.

16. The Existent.

17. The Non-Existent.

18. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 65.

19. Ibid.

20. Bliss.

21. Sri Aurobindo's footnote: "In fact it is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a misinterpretation by the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying misuse of manifested existence."

22. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, pp. 101-02.

23. Ibid., p. 105.

24. Worshippers of Shakti, the dynamic Power of the Eternal.

25. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 39.

26. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, p. 98.

27. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 451.

28. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 282.

29. Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, SABCL Vol. 12, p. 87.

30. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 347.

31. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 276.

32. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 27.

33. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, pp. 563-64.

34. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 300.

35. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 229.

36. Ibid., p. 531.

37. Ibid., p. 624.

38. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 694.

39. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 278.

40. Governed by Tamas, principle of inertia.

41. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, p. 1376.

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42. Ibid.

43. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 554.

44. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 740.

45. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, p. 1379.

46. Ibid., p. 1378.

47. Ibid.

48. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, pp. 46-47.

49. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 372.

50. Ibid., p. 353.

51. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 360.

52. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 755.

53. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 37.

54. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 392.

55. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 696.

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