The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6

THE CONSCIOUS BEING

The conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is behind at present and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. We are conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know and feel it as our self, as "I".

The mind, however, has a central consciousness which may be called the Witness Mind, the Purusha in the mind. It stands apart and observes whatever is happening in the mind and in other parts as well; it is in fact the observer of the whole adhar. The other parts are the vital and the physical. The vital too has its own central consciousness, its witness Purusha, which observes all the vital movements and also through its own angle the other parts. Likewise the physical has a Purusha and it too observes through its own consciousness. The mental Purusha says, "I see I am thinking, reasoning etc."; the vital Purusha says, "I see I am angry, violent or enjoying, energising etc."; the physical Purusha says, "I see I am acting, walking, running etc." Now each of these three Purushas, in an ordinary person, stands separately, each is conscious

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in its own way; they are not clearly conscious of each other; they intermix, but not happily, they are more often than not at cross purposes. Very rarely are they unified and harmonised or bound together as a team for serving a common purpose, a single aim. That union and harmonisation can be done only through the supreme Purusha, the Divine Witness who is the true conscious Being, the one Purusha behind or above all the others, whose light first of all centralises in the psychic being and then through it is canalised into its delegates or emanations on the lower levels, the mind, the vital and the physical.

What is consciousness? It is the inverse of Inconscience. It is the creative essence of the universe: without consciousness there is no creation. Inconscience means non-existence. The supreme Non-manifest becomes conscious of itself, that is, objectifies itself, sees itself created or reflected in multiple centres: that is the origin of all creation. By consciousness all is, by unconsciousness nothing is. Consciousness is light, consciousness is life.

The original consciousness is one and indivisible and at its highest potential. But when it gets devolved and divided, i.e., individualised, it gets at the same time diffracted and minimised, like the reflections in a rough mirror. What we normally understand by consciousness is this diminished degree of it in the

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individual. But although diminished and diffracted in many forms and modes, the basic consciousness is still the divine consciousness which is there behind and at the origin of all the partial formulations. It is through this core of Divine Presence—which is nothing else than the psychic—that the individual maintains and develops its contact with the Divine, grows into the fullness of the divine consciousness even as an individual and earthly embodiment.

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