The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11

The Ladder of Unconsciousness

      Consciousness, the normal consciousness we know, has various degrees of potency: its familiar form is the rational consciousness or intellect; then at a higher level, there is the intuitive consciousness and at a still higher level the visionary consciousness, that is, the consciousness that sees the Truth, and at the highest, the objectless consciousness, consciousness in itself or the sachchidananda consciousness.

      Likewise unconsciousness too has its own various degrees. As consciousness rises up to higher and higher grades of consciousness, so unconsciousness too descends into lower and lower grades of unconsciousness. The first degree of unconsciousness is simple forgetfulness. It is the absence of consciousness, not the loss of consciousness. The consciousness is there but it is not apparent or expressed, it is held back for the time. One can recall it; it can be remembered and brought forward. The abeyance of consciousness, when it persists, when it amounts to a turn of nature, is called ignorance. Yet ignorance is not the negation of consciousness, it is clouded or veiled consciousness; it is not that the sun is set and gone but simply that it is behind the clouds, it is up in the sky but shrouded. This behind-the-veil consciousness is the subliminal consciousness or simply sub-consciousness. Subconsciousness is a consciousness that is not dormant or asleep, stilled into silence, it is at work but behind the normal waking state—it is the swapna-state as the Indian sages termedit.

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Lower down is the state of unconsciousness proper. It is a still more diminished degree of consciousness, apparently a total absence of consciousness, not merely an abeyance or subsidence of consciousness, it is a lack of consciousness. The animal consciousness might be taken as an instance or expression of the ignorant consciousness, likewise the plant-consciousness parallels the subliminal consciousness —the Indian description of it is antaḥprajña. Next to it is the consciousness in the mineral, it is unconsciousness. By unconsciousness it is meant here naturally the absence of the mental consciousness: the presence or absence of consciousness means the presence or absence of the mental consciousness. There is a generic consciousness, consciousness in itself, or pure consciousness, which is imbedded in all created things, for creation itself is at bottom a vibration or pulsation of consciousness (vijñāna-vijṛmbhaṇam). There is a range or rung still further below with a still lesser degree of consciousness: it is called the inconscient, which is a totally total, in depth and in extent, absence of consciousness. In the other degree that is above it, there is the probability of consciousness in the midst of apparent absence, here it is reduced almost to nothingness or to just a possibility: for, as I have said, some consciousness, the presence of Sachchidananda is always there everywhere in the core of things. Yet there is also an absolute negation and this has been termed Nescience, it is the zero of things, where there is no question of possibility or impossibility: it is the final and definite end, śunyam of the Buddhists, termed asat by the Vedantists.

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      Now, the curious and most interesting thing is that the end is not the end of things; for beyond the zero there is the minus sign and what does minus mean? It does not mean mere negation, it means a reality—a negative real. It is a moot problem in philosophy—philosophers have questioned, argued, discussed at length about it—whether negation means only denial, just the contrary of affirmation. If affirmation means a real, negation means simply the unreal. It has been declared by competent authorities that negation, like affirmation, is also a reality but of the opposite sign. We know in mathematics the minus sign is as real as the plus.

      The minus consciousness is something like the minus numerical figure. And indeed in its pure and essential reality, its ultimate, it has or is a figure—a very ominous figure—it is Death. And as such it becomes an altogether real, living entity, of the opposite sign as I said. This minus reality stretches downward and goes round and touches as it were, the back of the Supreme plus reality, 'the Supreme Consciousnes'. That is the negative infinite, the great shadow of the Infinite Light.

      The absolute Nescience is the mere reversal of the Supreme Consciousness, the ever-lasting Nay is the everlasting Yes turned inside out. Death making a right aboutturn is Immortality.

      Modern science speaks of anti-matter and the possibility of a world of anti-matter. A world of anti-matter seems to be self-contradictory if it does not amount to be an absolute impossiblity. The only possibility or plausibility is a world in which matter and anti-matter co-exist

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      (as actually in the present world), but the miracle is that they do not cancel or annihilate each other producing an absolute zero; indeed the two opposing elements in their interaction through a process of continuous creation and destruction carry on the world ad infinitum.

      But we are more concerned with the mystery of antimatter which is the ultimate form of what we have called minus consciousness whose image, as I have said, is Death. Sri Aurobindo has described in Savitri how Death the unreal or the negative Being in its ultimate recession turns round and stands face to face with the Divine in His plenary light and power, merges into it and becomes one with it, for Death was nothing else than the Divine. Only when ignorance and unconsciousness (the negation) is thus transformed into its original essence and reality, it adds to it something, a quality which was not there, so to say, which is the fruition or summation of its long journey of material evolution. It is the delight of union, or fusion of two in place of mere unity—the delight of unity in multiplicity.

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