... even inevitable. The first emergence from the Inconscient is Matter, and in Matter it would seem that falsehood and evil cannot exist, because both are created by a divided and ignorant surface consciousness and its reactions. There is no such active surface organisation of consciousness, no such reactions in material forces or objects: whatever indwelling secret consciousness there may be in them... this outward means of expression. As mentality increases, this vital and material individual takes the more developed form of a constantly self-affirming mental, vital and physical ego. Our surface consciousness and type of existence, our natural being, has developed its present character under the compulsion of these two initial and basic facts of the evolutionary emergence. In its first appearance... to the surface. The individual animal being in its first conscious self-affirmation has to rely on two sources of knowledge. As it is nescient and helpless, a small modicum of uninformed surface consciousness in a world unknown to it, the secret Conscious-Force sends up to this surface the minimum of intuition necessary for it to maintain its existence and go through the operations indispensable ...
... times under the influence of psychologists like Freud, Jung and Adier.12 The surface consciousness is limited to the awareness that is excited by the sense experience, impulses, and operations of observing mind which aim at understanding, criticizing and organizing for purposes of dealing with life. This surface consciousness is sustained by self-experience, memory and ego, and although its limits can... inner vital being and inner mental being, as also the awareness of what is cognized by these inner beings. It is recognized that it is always difficult for surface consciousness to open up to inner or subliminal consciousness; surface consciousness is normally unaware of the presence of the inner or subliminal consciousness, just as it is unaware of subconscious and unconscious. The inner or subliminal... subliminal consciousness is a larger consciousness behind the surface; it is a more organized consciousness, and it is aware of what is in surface consciousness and aware also of limitations of surface consciousness. The psychic consciousness, which is the inmost consciousness, is a consciousness of the secret organizer and builder of outer and inner personality, and it is the secret ruler, although most ...
... on of the human constitution, man's surface consciousness, derived from the three universal principles just mentioned, is composed of mind, life (generally referred to by Sri Aurobindo as the vital) and body-consciousness. Sri Page 32 Aurobindo states that the term "mind", which has been used indiscriminately to cover the whole surface consciousness, connotes in the language of his yoga... "subliminal" as a general term to denote all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface consciousness, "so conceiving it as to include in it our lower subconscient and upper super-conscient ends." 26 However, for the most part he distinguishes three parts of the being which are outside the surface consciousness: that which lies below (the sub- Page 38 conscient), that which lies behind... order to know what lies outside mental awareness and be able to distinguish among the subconscient, the subliminal and the superconscient, it is necessary to break the walls that separate the surface consciousness from what lies behind and beyond it so as to emerge into the subliminal and the superconscient. As he states: Page 45 "A descent into the subconscient would not help us to explore ...
... inmost depths right up to our surface consciousness. A major effort is required to make our surface consciousness sensitive to the spiritual Reality. That major effort assumes gradually the character of disciplined and methodized pursuit of yoga. In a sense, it may be said that every system of yoga is a specialized method by means of which our surface consciousness is so sensitized that our soul... too, there are stages of growth and development. First of all, the crust of our outer nature begins to crack, as the walls between the psychic depths and surface consciousness begin to break down. The inner light gets to the surface consciousness, and one begins to feel increasingly the presence of the inner fire in the heart. As a result, the substance of the nature and the stuff of consciousness ...
... belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinct action and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. It is quite possible and even usual during a time shorter or... Manas, Buddhi etc. ] myself as a rule—they are the psychological phraseology of the old Yoga. Page 168 The terms Manas etc. belong to the ordinary psychology applied to the surface consciousness. In our Yoga we adopt a different classification based on the Yoga experience. What answers to this movement of the Manas there would be two separate things—a part of the physical mind communicating... arise—all these are called chittavritti, movements of the chitta. It was distinguished from Chit, the higher or divine consciousness. Usually the word [ Chitta ] is employed for the general surface consciousness in which thoughts, feelings, desires, emotions, sensations (these being called chittavritti) arise. There is therefore no special location. Its function is to receive the impacts of the world ...
... there, so that there are two consciousnesses, the inner consciousness always connected with the Mother and full of her working or her presence or both and the surface consciousness occupied with outer things. Finally, even the surface consciousness begins to feel the direct connection in action itself. One need not mind if there are intervals when the true condition is not there. It does not prove that... 457 in which what is not yet changed comes up to be worked upon and prepared for change. When the inner consciousness is well established, then these periods take place only in the surface consciousness and are no longer troublesome as before. P. S. Probably the difficulty you feel is in the externalising mind the centre of which is in the throat. When there is no resistance there, the Force ...
... unity and diversity coexist. One is that man realises that all knowledge he has is of partial self, an incomplete knowledge of self. That is to say, he is only living on surface consciousness. He knows only his surface consciousness and is unconscious of his own subconscious and subliminal being which are not the same. Below the surface is the subconscious and behind the veil the subliminal. That is... surface self, working as the desire-soul in mind, life and body. Each instrument of nature has a conscious part which is on the surface and a part that is subliminal, behind the veil. Mind has a surface consciousness, and a subliminal consciousness. Life is two-fold, body is two-fold and this being also when it comes here forgets one part in the ignorance and one part is kept behind. In case of the psychic ...
... unlimited field of experience opened out by these occult sciences. The subliminal part of man's being is not so ignorant as his surface Consciousness; it has a vast store of knowledge which can be available to man. So the human being has not only the surface consciousness —body Page 274 and senses, desires and ideas but he also has a subconscient and a subliminal part which are... apepars to us from outside,—the surface consiousness ? Modern psychology will tell you that man's waking consciousness is only a fraction of his subconscious being. In fact, what man does on the surface-consciousness is very often the result of the action of the subconscient, or even of the environmental consciousness. There is available to man even a subliminal consciousness in which the incidence of his ...
... the Divine; but it is only then that one can feel clearly the Force at work, the divine Presence, the direct communion. So long as you live only in thoughts and other movements of the surface consciousness, you cannot be conscious in the Yogic sense. It is when the mind becomes quiet that the real (inner) consciousness comes out or the higher consciousness above the mind comes down. It is only... happens outside. To remain within, above and untouched, full of the inner consciousness and the inner experience,—listening, when need be, Page 226 to X or another with the surface consciousness, but with even that undisturbed, not either pulled outwards or invaded, that is the perfect condition for the sadhana. You must gather yourself within more firmly. If you disperse yourself... of the working of the Divine Force in you and you feel it as that and you feel in it the joy of that working. This condition you had of the inner being and its silence, separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings, is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is the fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the ...
... clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. We find that the contradictions and the struggles of our surface consciousness are largely due to the contrary or mutually discordant tendencies of our mental, vital and physical parts opposing and unreconciled with each other and these again to the discord of many different... formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being. Page 555... when it is fully intuitive, self-evident to the inner awareness; or it is taken in from the object contacted but with an immediate response as to something intimately recognisable. In the surface consciousness knowledge represents itself as a truth seen from outside, thrown on us from the object, or as a response to its touch on the sense, a perceptive reproduction of its objective actuality. Our ...
... yet when it learns to fix itself in this direct self-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this is the language of its changing self-experience which only expresses the relations of its surface consciousness to the environment and to externalities. Distinguishing these, detaching itself from Page 529 these, it perceives that the self of which it is directly conscious does not in any... the subjective field of a changing experience. It is then the eternal "I am", the unchanging consciousness on whose surface changes of conscious experience occur in the process of Time. The surface consciousness is constantly adding to its experience or rejecting from its experience, and by every addition it is modified and by every rejection also it is modified; although that deeper self which supports... immobile self, observes everything else as a mutable not-self; he comes eventually to regard the latter as the result of a deluding trick of consciousness. But let us look a little at this surface consciousness without theorising, studying it only in its facts. We see it first as a purely subjective phenomenon. There is a constant rapid shifting of Time-point which it is impossible to arrest for a ...
... assimilation—or so at least it appeared to be, since there was no fretting. Not that there was no questioning or doubting of myself. But it all went on in the surface consciousness and a sense was pervasive that beyond the surface consciousness a wonderful work was proceeding. As a symbol of this was the fact that I felt a Page 87 great peace to be not quite within me but all around... but a somewhat neutral day. No exaltations or ecstasies, yet once more I feel that this has been a day of assimilation and preparation. The Mother's face seemed a mirror of things behind my surface consciousness. I saw the same kind of lingering look and steady smile as on Monday. So I'm full of expectation and look forward towards tomorrow. With the approach of evening and night, some little foretaste ...
... consciousness participates during this period in new inner activities of which, alas, only an insignificant port ion - the portion actually occurring or getting recorded on the thresh old of our surface consciousness - we somehow remember as imperfect and interpretative dreams of our night. We must carefully note in this connection that it is not our thinking mind that sees dreams and is conscious... appalling indeed is the extent Page 314 and intensity of our present psycho-constitutional ignorance. Our ordinary 'waking consciousness' is a limping and cabined surface consciousness shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. In this part of our being, we receive consciously only the outer touches and know things in ourselves... awareness. The subconscious is all the time "swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, sending upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin remains obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulsions and motives, in mental, ...
... is that I was having many incoherent dreams and visions—perhaps in the surface consciousness. . SRI AUROBINDO: The surface consciousness of the inner vital being. Such experiences are common. Of course, when one goes still deeper, one doesn't see incoherent dreams and visions. There is a point between the surface consciousness and the deeper vital which is full of these fantasies. They are apparently ...
... many incoherent dreams and visions – that is all I can say, perhaps it was in the surface consciousness. Sri Aurobindo : Surface consciousness of the inner vital being. Such things are very common; of course, when one goes still deeper one does not see them. There is a point between the surface consciousness and the deeper vital which is full of these fantasies and dreams. They are apparently ...
... the surface consciousness of the waking being. Behind, there must be something much vaster than the human mental consciousness, than the superficial consciousness which we have, and which is capable of contacting impartially the delight universal that is flowing in creation. The delight that is flowing must be available to man somewhere in his depths, somewhere behind the surface consciousness, and... in the delight Self, the ā nanda-maya —behind the mental—consciousness, ever blissful. This Self is the truth of self. It is within ourself though not easily available to at present to our surface consciousness. Now we come to the problem of pain. The first proposition which Sri Aurobindo wants us to consider is that pleasure, pain and neutral indifference have no absoluteness about them. Thre ...
... is that the surface self which is all that we are ordinarily aware of is only the superficial stratum of our being; there are other vaster strata of being below, behind and above the surface consciousness. These are, respectively, the subconscient, the subliminal and the superconscient parts of the being. Page 362 ...what we know of ourselves, our present conscious existence... and economy of life in the material universe. 6 The third discovery to which one is led through the practice of yoga is that the personal self does not live, as we feel in our surface consciousness, in a private and solitary inner world circumscribed by the physical body and separated from all that is beyond the body, but is connected with the entire cosmos. The individual ...
... prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a psychical hearing, touch, smell, taste: indeed the... formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being. It should ...
... example. On her journey to the north of the Indian subcontinent, while her bearers were setting up camp, Alexandra went for a walk and became absorbed in meditation. Later on, returning to her surface consciousness, she found that she had strayed a long way from the camp and began to walk back – until she stood in front of a river. As the camp was definitely on the other side of it, she could only conclude... departure may still have been with her when the Kaga Maru sailed through the Suez Canal, where the desert on both sides made it seem that they glided through sand: ‘In my outer being, my surface consciousness, I no longer have the least feeling of being in my own home and the owner of anything here: I am a stranger in a strange land … I am a visitor here as elsewhere, as everywhere, Thy servant and ...
... surface mind of ignorance, do not know what is going on behind and see only the phenomenal process of Nature. There the apparent fact is an overwhelming determinism of Nature and as our surface consciousness is part of that process, we are unable to see the other term of the biune reality . For practical purposes on the surface there is an entire determinism in Matter—though this is now disputed... i or else into a susupti trance—the latter being what the word trance usually means in English, but it can be extended to the swapna kind also. To the outer mind this deep loss of the surface consciousness seems like a swoon, though it is really nothing of the kind— hence the impression. Many sadhaks here get at times or sometimes for a long period this deeper swapna-samādhi 'in what began as ...
... contacts through the subliminal in special states of consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. Our physical mind is not the whole of us nor, even though it dominates almost the whole of our surface consciousness, the best or greatest part of us; reality cannot be restricted to a sole field of this narrowness or to the dimensions known within its rigid circle. If it be said that subjective experience... upon us, but take them as formations of our own life and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them and strives not to be mastered: but when we go inwards away from the restricted surface consciousness and develop a subtler sense and deeper awareness, we begin to get an intimation of the origin of these movements and are able to watch their action and process, to accept or reject or modify ...
... limited necessity and purpose, and that in the rest of the operations of the nature there is a double action, one uncertain and ignorant of the surface consciousness and the other subliminal implying a secret subconscient direction. The surface consciousness is full of a groping and seeking which increases rather than diminishes as life rises in its scale and widens in the scope of its conscious powers; ...
... life, is a small part even of our waking individual consciousness. We fasten only upon a very limited number of the mental sensations and perceptions of self and things which come up into our surface consciousness in our continual present: of these again memory saves up only a scanty part from the oblivious gulf of the past; of the storings of memory our intelligence utilises only a small portion for... into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths Page 579 impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulsions and motives, in mental, vital ...
... or cannot at once receive and absorb it; it needs periods of assimilation, but this assimilation goes on behind the veil of the surface consciousness; the experience or the realisation that has descended retires behind that veil and leaves this outer or surface consciousness to lie fallow and become ready for a new descent. In the more developed stages of the Yoga these dark or dull periods become shorter ...
... parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. * There is a vital... belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. It is quite possible and even usual during a time shorter or longer ...
... of our being — so appalling indeed is the extent and intensity of our psychological sleep! The waking consciousness : Our ordinary waking consciousness is a limping and cabined surface consciousness that is shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. In this part of our being, we receive consciously only the outer touches, know things in... motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulṣions and motives, in mental, ...
... sleep a tamasic (inert) condition? SRI AUROBINDO: Maybe; but since you had a dream you may have gone within and not sunk into mere Tamas. In such cases either one goes within, while the surface consciousness falls into the subconscient or one goes down into the subconscient altogether. NIRODBARAN: Champaklal was also sleeping. SRI AUROBINDO: Champaklal can sleep anytime unless he has a toothache... toothache. (Laughter. Champaklal was actually suffering from a toothache at this time.) NIRODBARAN: Are there no dreams in tamasic sleep? SRI AUROBINDO: There are especially when the surface consciousness goes into the subconscient. But then the dreams are incoherent. NIRODBARAN: Doesn't tamasic sleep leave a heaviness afterwards? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. NIRODBARAN: But sometimes after ...
... illumination of the mental, vital and physical beings; secondly, the making intuitive of the mind, through will etc. and development of the hidden soul consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness; thirdly, the supramentalising of the changed mental, vital and physical beings and finally the descent of the true supramental and the rising into the supramental plane. This is the natural... always is the steady harmonious and increasingly organised opening and change of the different parts of the consciousness and the being. Among Rati's experiences there is one paper headed "surface consciousness". What is described there is the nervous or physico-vital envelope. This is the thing observed by the mediums and it is by exteriorising it to a less or greater extent that they produce their ...
... It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing—or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware. Your influence on him for turning towards the Yoga was good, but it was not able to change his vital nature. No human influence—which can only be mental... were quite convincing to anyone who knows anything at all about these things. When there is this inner Yogin inside, the coming to the way of Yoga is sure and not even the most externalised surface consciousness—not even a regular homo Russelicus outside and you are not that, only a little Russelicatus on the surface,—can prevent final success in the Yoga. But the tussle between the inward and the ...
... parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications Page 216 or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. ... described by ordinary psychology as subconscient; but in our psychology that cannot be done, for the consciousness that holds them is as precise and far wider and fuller than our waking or surface consciousness, so how can it be called subconscient? Conscious memory is that which can bring up at Page 223 any moment we like the memory of a thing, it is under our control. Subliminal memory ...
... tension and a straining which made the consciousness thus rigid and closed it up. Not that it closed you to the Force or that it took away the inner receptivity, but it did close you to the surface consciousness of what is being done. When that happens, the Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little... al knowledge which does not end with the surface of things and looks at these hidden movements. It is impossible to deal with things for the purposes of Yoga if we confine ourselves to the surface consciousness only. I cannot candidly say that the Mother and I approve of the idea of your going to Calcutta for a fortnight for relief from your sufferings: if we ever sanction such a movement, it ...
... penetrate, englobe the life of all with a much greater reality and dynamic force than is in our surface consciousness at all possible. Our utmost universalisation on the surface is a poor and limping endeavour,—it is a construction, a make-believe and not the real thing: for in our surface consciousness we are bound to separation of consciousness from others and wear the fetters of the ego. There our ...
... immense ranges behind of which we could be aware if we opened the doors of our inner being. These ranges are there already in action and known to a subliminal self in us, and much even of our surface consciousness is directly projected from them and without our knowing it influences our subjective experience of things. There is a range of independent vital or pranic experiences behind, subliminal to and... prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a psychical hearing, touch, smell, taste: indeed the physical ...
... some unknowable light and joy. He tried to wake me up but as I was not in the surface consciousness, I could not hear his shouts. He shook my body and went on shouting: After fifteen minutes I could open my eyes, though I could not come out immediately. It took me another fifteen minutes to come to the surface consciousness, slowly took my bag and got down from the bus. The Principal enquired with amazement ...
... always is the steady harmonious and increasingly organised opening and change of the different parts of the consciousness and the being. Among the experiences there is one paper headed “Surface Consciousness”. What is described there is the nervous or physico-vital envelope. This is the thing observed by the medium and it is by exteriorising it to a less or greater extent that they produce their... illumination of the mental, vital and the physical beings. Secondly;—Making intuitive of the mind, thought, will etc., and development of the hidden consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness. Thirdly:— The supramentalizing of the changed mental, vital and the physical beings and finally the descent of the true Supramental and the rising into the Supramental plane. This is ...
... must be a will not only to be detached and separate from the surface consciousness but also to reject its egoic movements. Without rejection one may arrive at the liberation of the inner being as a detached Witness, but one cannot become Master of one's whole being; one continues to experience reactions in one's surface consciousness although the inner being is free and unaffected by the reactions ...
... when it learns to fix itself in this direct self-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this is the language of its changing self-experience which only expresses the relations of its surface consciousness to the environment and to externalities. Distinguishing these, detaching itself from these, it perceives that the self of which it is directly conscious does not in any way change by these... e; the principle of life-affirmation of the ego is the necessary consequence. 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 ...
... our inward being and the surface field of our outward nature. The majority of men put the whole emphasis of life on the outward and and Page 24 live very strongly in their surface consciousness and very little in the inward existence. Even the choice spirits raised from the grossness of the common vital and physical mould by the stress of thought and culture do not usually get farther... clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. We find that the contradictions and the struggles of our surface consciousness are largely due to the contrary or mutually discordant tendencies of our mental, vital and physical parts opposing and unreconciled with each other and these again to the discord of many ...
... mind, life, and body, if certain conditions are fulfilled. Immortality of the mind can come about only if the mental being of the individual comes to be so powerfully individualised on the surface consciousness and so much with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha and at the same time so open plastically to the progressive action of the Infinite that the soul no longer needs to dissolve the old... create a new one in order to progress. Similarly, the vital being can also attain immortality, if it becomes similarly individualised and integrated and at the same time becomes open on the surface consciousness to the inner vital Purusha and to the progressive action of the Infinite. The wall between the inner Page 51 self and the outer individuality would have broken down. The immortality ...
... namely, that of the phenomenon of identification, which is central to the evolutionary processes of Ignorance. Page 41 Ignorance and Identification: Analysis of Ego-Sense: Surface Consciousness, Subconscious and Subliminal 33 In the human consciousness, there are several knots of identification, but the principal knot of identification is that of the self with the non-self... motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulsions and motives, in mental, vital ...
... — which demonstrate that (i) behind the surface consciousness in which we are awake in our waking state, there is a subliminal consciousness, (ii) there is, below our waking state, the subconscient mind which has at its depth totally unconscious rock from which the strivings of the subconscious mind seem to emerge, (iii) above our surface consciousness, there are greater and higher heights of ...
... nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient world-energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, — and even in this construction, these functions, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable... The fact of the matter is that our consciousness sinks so deep into the subconscient or travels so far afield in the subliminal that the recording apparatus loses all touch with it and in our surface consciousness there is the impression of a dreamless sleep, an unfilled void. But the dreams take place all the same, and the deeper layers of our consciousness participate in them. But it is possible, as ...
... of Time and that Time therefore and all in time is an illusion or to suppose that Time alone exists and we are its temporal creations is to impose the ignorance and limitation of our little surface consciousness on the Divine Eternal. In reality we ourselves below our surface are the timeless developing in movement our existence in eternal Time. 10 One sole Reality constitutes all the infinite ...
... worlds, the depths upon depths of our inward being and the surface field of our outward nature. The majority of men put the whole emphasis of life on the outward and live very strongly in their surface consciousness and very little in the inward existence. Even the choice spirits raised from the grossness of the common vital and physical mould by the stress of thought and culture do not usually get farther ...
... orthodox way of life had definitely fallen off from me as do the withered leaves from trees. Something else more important had begun to take shape in me imperceptibly. It was not visible to my surface consciousness. Because it was working behind the scenes my wrong conduct, mithyācāra — the false way of life — continued yet for a few years. “I should live firmly in the truth, express the truth in each ...
... existence...It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernatural faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being." Elsewhere a ...
... ck to its manifestation, but this state has come about from an evolutionary necessity and represents a transcendence of the animal level, a new perceptive and conceptive orientation in the surface consciousness, without which whatever more-than-intellectual power exists cannot operate in its largest or profoundest or most luminous mode as a surface presence. The obstruction this state may offer to ...
... belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. 36 Because mind is, as previously stated, from the evolutionary ...
... illumination of the mental, vital and the physical beings. Secondly:— Making intuitive of the mind, thought, will etc., and development of the hidden consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness. Thirdly:— The supramentalising of the changed mental, vital and the physical beings and finally the descent of the true Supramental and the rising into the Supramental plane. This is ...
... 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 ...
... Subliminal —comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; (sometimes) all that lies outside the surface consciousness, including the subconscient, the subliminal proper and the superconscient. the Superconscient; Superconscience — consciousness above and beyond our present level of awareness in which ...
... contacts through the subliminal in special states of consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. Our physical mind is not the whole of us nor, even though it dominates almost the whole of our surface consciousness, the best or greatest part of us; reality cannot be restricted to a sole field of this narrowness or to the dimensions known within its rigid circle. If it be said that subjective ...
... always is the steady harmonious and increasingly organised opening and change of the different parts of the consciousness and the being. Among the experiences there is one paper headed" Surface Consciousness". What is described there is the nervous or physicovital envelope. This is the thing observed by the medium and it is by exteriorising it to a less or greater extent that they produce their ...
... the nature. Mind and vital Page 85 are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures." 4 Another equally important concept is that of the physical ...
... were quite convincing to anyone who knows anything at all about these things. When there is this inner Yogi inside, the coming to the way of Yoga is sure and not even the most externalised surface consciousness — (not even a regular homo Russellins outside, and you are not that — only a little Russellicatus on the surface) — can prevent final success in the Yoga. But the tussle between the inward ...
... no arrière pensée of any kind — his outlook on life and things is emphasised in a way which almost bewilders us for the simple reason that we who have learned to live all along in our surface consciousness have thereby forfeited our birth-right to the inner view, so native to the Yogi. That is why we find a deal too much of head-shaking when men live in and act from a deeper consciousness and ...
... far as the Mother was concerned, however, the ‘malfunctioning’ was a voluntary and always totally conscious submission to the demands of the transformation (even when at first she lost the surface consciousness). In her case the disorganization of the organs and body functions did not result in a diminution of the possibilities of the adhara, but in an augmentation and expansion of them. She once ...
... must be in this kind of relation, if only because they consist of elementary particles. The relationships within the cosmic unity are a fundamental capacity of the cells though not in their surface consciousness, otherwise all of us would be conscious cosmic beings, which we are not. (Consisting of cells, elementary particles, a subliminal mind and vital, and a soul, we are indeed cosmic beings un ...
... the surface mind of ignorance, do not know what is going on behind and see only the phenomenal process of Nature. There the apparent fact is an overwhelming determinism of Nature and as our surface consciousness is part of that process, we are unable to see the other term of the biune reality. For practical purposes, on the surface there is an entire determinism in Matter – though this is now disputed ...
... remain quite alert, and I hope it will soon be over. Your letter is quite good and nothing more need be said. Let quietness and calm be with you, not only in the depths but also in the surface consciousness, as I am indeed always with you. 30 July 1935 ...
... creation under the stress of Krishna light. All these are symbols of what is going on in the inner being, in the consciousness behind, and the results well up from time to time in the external or surface consciousness in such feeling as the awareness of a softening and opening which you had, devotion/joy, peace, Ananda, etc. When the opening is complete, there is likely to be a more direct consciousness ...
... which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself. Its presence with the Sadhak is not dependent on his consciousness of it. If everything were dependent on the surface consciousness of the Sadhak, there would be no possibility of the divine action anywhere; the human worm would remain the human worm and the human ass the human ass, for ever and ever. For if the Divine could ...
... difficult. We remember that, after her experience of the ship of the New World, the Mother had said that some people on Earth were supramentalized in part of their personality, even without their surface consciousness being aware of it. After death we carry with us what we are inwardly. It may be assumed that people who are in part supramentalized are fully mature souls, sufficiently developed to dwell in ...
... has ever been given to such perplexities. So you can't expect me to outshine the great doctors of theology. 1 can only put down some thoughts that do not seem to be skimmed from the mere surface consciousness. First of all, service of the Mother's cause has not to be done with the hope that one will be always immune to what a poet has called "crass casualty" - the uncertain and apparently ...
... equanimity. When the inmost heart opened to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and began to feel a warm stream of self-giving and a happy glow of devotion, the distance, the standing back, from the surface consciousness, which equa- Page 167 nimity entailed, began to diminish and the hidden presence of the Divine in all came to be caught with a certain vividness which brought a natural insight ...
... spiritual individual, but by his coming to his full, large and perfect self-consciousness, we Page 386 must suppose that the individual always included the cosmos, and it is only the surface consciousness which by ignorance failed to possess that inclusion because of its self-limitation in ego. But when we speak of the mutual inclusion of the cosmic and the individual, the world in me, I in the ...
... the surface mind of ignorance, do not know what is going on behind and see only the phenomenal process of Nature. There the apparent fact is an overwhelming determinism of Nature and as our surface consciousness is part of that process we are unable to see the other term of the biune reality. For practical purposes, on the surface there is an entire determinism in Matter—though this is now disputed ...
... communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream Consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we see ...
... the self; when identified with the universal self, all is in you. Also, the microcosm reproduces the macrocosm—so all is present in each, though all is not expressed (and cannot be) in the surface consciousness. The Atman, the Soul and the Psychic Being The Atman is one in all, is not born, does not evolve or change. The soul is something that comes from the Divine into the evolution and as ...
... nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable ...
... of our superficial mentality and the laws of our bodily life is not enough; it brings us always to all that mysterious and hidden depth of subjective existence below and behind of which our surface consciousness is only a fringe or an outer court. We come to see that what is present to our physical senses is only the material shell of cosmic existence and what is obvious in our superficial mentality ...
... other hand, as an equally mechanical play of ideas and energies arising out of an original Non-Existence or else reflected in the passive Soul or the evolution of a dream or nightmare in the surface consciousness of an indifferent, immutable Transcendence which is unaffected by the dream and has no real part in it,—if we accept at all, as the Gita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say of the ...
... his spirit he attributes to his ego-personality and gives it a false application, a false form and a mass of ignorant consequences. The ignorance lies in this fundamental deficiency of his surface consciousness that he identifies himself only with the outward mechanical part of him which is a convenience of Nature and with so much only of the soul as reflects and is reflected in these workings. He ...
... The truth of the self, even as the truth of the Divine, is held back from her surface force absorbed here in its outer action—much as man's deeper being is held back from the knowledge of his surface consciousness—until the soul in her turns to find out this hidden thing, gets inside itself and discovers its own real verities, its heights and its depths. That is why it has to draw back from its little ...
... place in the divine Whole and delivered from the inadequacy of an exclusive state or experience. The Supramental Yoga 156 All Yoga is in its very nature a means of passing out of our surface consciousness of limitation and ignorance into a larger and deeper Reality of ourselves and the world and some supreme or total Existence now veiled to us by this surface. There is a Reality which underlies ...
... and the Mother Page 352 may not, as you say, be part of the bhakti itself, but they could not be there were not the bhakti deep inside. It is its coming out in full force into the surface consciousness that is to be brought about and it seems to me that it is inevitable that it should come as the outer coverings fall off. What is within must surely make its way to the surface. You believe ...
... step towards the unveiling of the psychic being. The condition in which all movements become superficial and empty with no connection with the soul is a stage in the withdrawal from the surface consciousness to the inner consciousness. When one goes into the inner consciousness, it is felt as a calm, pure existence without any movement, but eternally tranquil, unmoved and separate from the outer ...
... existence. Yes, that is right—to remember constantly and live in the peace and calmness so that the Force may work and the Light may come. The small things of daily life must go on in the surface consciousness, not filling too large a place in it, until the Force and Light have taken possession and can lay direct hold of these also. It is the ego that gives them too big a place—the ego must be discouraged ...
... parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or illorganised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. The subconscient is below ...
... reappear and dispel the disturbance. That would make the elimination of the restlessness or impatience easier; but in any case the Mother's force is there working behind the variations of the surface consciousness and it will bring you through them. The experiences you had were renewed glimpses of the Page 33 psychic working that is going on all the time even when there is no sign of it ...
... to catch these thoughts? If so, what is the way to stop it so that it does not turn them into stuff of sensations? The terms Manas etc. belong to the ordinary psychology applied to the surface consciousness. In our Yoga we adopt a different classification based on the Yoga experience. What answers to this movement of the Manas there would be two separate things—a part of the physical mind communicating ...
... strong force of the current which you felt is an evident proof that the wider opening is there. You have only to persist and the effects both of the fire and the force will come out in the surface consciousness—for always there is a preparatory work behind the veil in the inner being before the veil thins or disappears and all the working can be done with the participation of the outer consciousness ...
... the Krishna light. All these are symbols of what is Page 102 going on in the inner being, in the consciousness behind, and the results well up from time to time in the external or surface consciousness in such feelings as the awareness of a softening and opening which you had, devotion, joy, peace, Ananda etc. When the opening is complete, there is likely to be a more direct consciousness ...
... mind—the supramental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised,—for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek Page 404 the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise ...
... suṣupta trance— Page 16 the latter being what the word trance usually means in English, but it can be extended to the svapna kind also. To the outer mind this deep loss of the surface consciousness seems like a swoon, though it is really nothing of the kind—hence the impression. Many sadhaks here get at times or sometimes for a long period this deeper svapna samādhi in what began as ...
... is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised,—for they are all spiritual planes. Page 304 Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self apart from ...
... Overcoming Adverse Movements I cannot believe that the soul in you can be broken to pieces and, so long as that is there, it is always possible to recover. It must be something in the surface consciousness that is feeling like that. But from that it is perfectly possible to arise, even though it may seem difficult or impossible at the time. Nor can I see why there should be this devastating sense ...
... belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinct action and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. It is quite possible and even usual during a time shorter or ...
... parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. Sri Aurobindo Letters ...
... the consciousness is not transformed - there has to be a period of assimilation. When the being is unconscious, the assimilation goes on behind the veil or below the surface and meanwhile the surface consciousness sees only dullness and loss of what it had got; but when one is conscious, then one can see the assimilation going on and one sees that nothing is lost, it is only a quiet settling in of what ...
... There are not many such. Or else it comes and then gets veiled; suddenly one has a flash and then it gets clouded over. And so the questions I put are always in order to know the state of this surface consciousness, which for me is something quite unreal, something that is not true. There is such a contradiction between the brutal fact of your daily way of life and the picture I have before myself of ...
... conscious contact with the psychic usually develops only through sadhana, by learning to turn the consciousness within and learning to live within instead of being absorbed in the ordinary surface consciousness. At first and for a long time the contact is only occasional and momentary, followed by lapses into the ordinary consciousness. With the growth of consciousness, the contacts with the psychic ...
... But all that is just what should be said! Then the first necessity is to go into their depths a little. Because even if you say "the Divine" to them, what does it mean in their surface consciousness? Yes.... For him, for that boy, it has a meaning, but for most of the others... Yes, it has no meaning. So we should put, "The first condition is the inner discovery.. ...
... for poetic health. According to Read, the emotional being was wil-fully ignored and hypocritically covered over and its conflict sub-merged, in order to achieve some sort of harmony in the surface consciousness: the submerged conflict took its revenge by drying up the fountains of poetry. This theory is psychoanalytic. Psychoanalysis is the investigation into one's suppressed impulses and the ...
... could not be possible unless the soul in a new birth, in the present body was immortal. He sums it up by concluding that the external world does play a role of stimulus to the awakening of our surface consciousness, and on comparing the knowledge by sense organs with the inherent knowledge pre-existent in our souls one discovers that the soul must have had a prior existence because ideas cannot pre-exist ...
... presence of the Divine. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I find that most people have difficulty in understanding this. Those weaknesses are very hard to get rid of. They may not always manifest in the surface consciousness but that doesn't mean they are not there. They can be there even if you live in a higher consciousness; the dynamic presence of the Divine is needed. Or else, if without the dynamic realisation ...
... enough, about two years later when I met him again I found that he had completely changed to what I had seen in my vision! These things are thrown out in this way from the subtle world to the surface consciousness. Take another instance. I was in the past a great tea-addict; I could not do any work without my cup of tea. Now, the management of the tea was in the hands of my brother-in-law. He used ...
... traits of these four statuses? The Waking State : Our waking consciousness, the consciousness that we normally possess and that is dominated by the physical mind, is a limping surface consciousness shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. We are ordinarily aware only of our surface selves and quite ignorant of all that functions behind ...
... individual on to his divine destination. Now every individual's nature is shot through and through with a legion of weaknesses, of which only a few are barely known to the individual's surface consciousness but most of them remain submerged below and act in a stealthy subterranean fashion to damage the growth of the being. Now with the inexorable evolutionary progression of the sadhaka' ...
... subliminal and the subconscient have thrown up on the surface, just a wave of their secret surge. The normal man's waking consciousness is a limping Page 49 surface consciousness shut up in the body's limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. One is ordinarily aware only of his surface self and quite ignorant of all that functions behind ...
... education amount to? Discover of Soul and God and His Power and Attributes: These are not to be manufactured; but they are to be discovered, and manifested in our surface consciousness of the mind, life and body. * * * The child does not have mental capacity to think about them. but the child has a remarkable sensitivity to feel the Soul and God. ...
... operation Page 79 of the fixed modes of nature. But just as the psychic being, at a suitable stage of human evolution, begins to come forward more openly and sovereignly on the surface consciousness and takes recourse to the path of knowledge, divine work and divine love, even so, it brings out more and more effectively its own divine nature, swabhava, and stamps it more and more visibly ...
... which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself. Its presence with the sadhak is not dependent on his consciousness of it. If everything were dependent on the surface consciousness of the sadhak, there would be no possibility of the divine action anywhere; the human worm would remain the human worm and the human ass, the human ass, for ever and ever. For if the Divine ...
... have stopped; this is because what he has already received is being consolidated in him. But even then, if he is sufficiently conscious and watchful, he will find that it is only from the surface consciousness that they are withdrawn. The inner Page 292 being still has them in the deeper regions of the consciousness. For, if he is fully aware of his true self with a ceaseless ...
... supra-mental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised, — for they are all spiritual planes. Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only on the surface consciousness — the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self of it from ...
... in those of concentrative nature where the attention gets divided. It is because people live in the surface mind and are identified with it. When one lives more inwardly, it is only the surface consciousness that is occupied and one stands behind it in another which is silent and self-offered. What is meant exactly by "opening oneself'? Calling you, praying to you, remembering you, etc.? ...
... that even if we succeed in chasing it out from the upper reaches of our consciousness, we shall find to our agonised surprise that it is stealthily lying in wait behind the opaque veils of our surface consciousness. In the words of the Mother: "Even if the inner being is enlightened enough to be above all fear, the fear still remains hidden in the cells of the body, obscure, spontaneous, beyond ...
... all that is just what should be said! Then the first necessity is to go into their depths a little. Because even if you say "the Divine” to them, what does it mean in their surface consciousness? Yes.... For him, for that boy, it has a meaning, but for most of the others... Yes, it has no meaning. So we should put, "The first condition is the inner discovery..." ...
... used to signify either the Psycqic Being, which is the delegate of the Supreme Self, or the Supreme Self Itself – "Know Thyself". In modern times 'self' signifies something exoteric, the surface consciousness acting through the brain and nerves. The moderns hold that the essence of art and artistic creation consists in complete expression of one's own self, but like the Virochana of the Upanishad ...
... orthodox way of life had definitely fallen off from me as do the withered leaves from trees. Something else more important had begun to take shape in me imperceptibly. It was not visible to my surface consciousness. Because it was working behind the scenes my wrong conduct, mithyācāra —the false way of life—continued yet for a few years. I should live firmly in the truth, express the truth in āā ...
... of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come."¹ " The subconscient ...
... of thought and dream". Man is now able to take his stand on the mind and gaze above; "He calls the Godhead into his mortal life". Savitri's inmost soul had achieved all this behind her surface consciousness and she found that she came to mankind to discover or create "a new world". "Earth must transform herself, and equal Heaven" or "Heaven descend into earth's mortal state". That is the destiny ...
... presence acts as a catalytic agent, so I myself do not know the cause nor what is the joke. Sri Aurobindo : That is how the subliminal self acts, without your knowledge, while your surface consciousness is ignorant about it. Disciple : But to return to N's question. If one takes the standpoint of reason and wants to decide about the validity of spiritual experience he will find the ...
... etc. Who gets Nirvana or who passes away into the Absolute'? 'The Jivatman. It is the Jivatman.' Article by K. C. Vardachari. Answer to Malkani. By 'Chit' in Ramanuja is it meant the surface consciousness? The Narayan is indissolubly connected with manifestation. You can't know him even if he has an existence independent of his manifestation. Sri Aurobindo : I would agree with him ...
... in the man's mind has already accepted the conclusions unknown to .the man and it is by his reasoning that he sets them out. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, perhaps something unknown to the surface-consciousness. There, again, the human ego comes in. It is so limited that it thinks that the contribution it brings to human thought is the only truth, and all others that differ or conflict with it are ...
... the subjective expression, is not regarded great or successful. The answer is that the nature of the trend is in the right direction. Europe is trying hard to get away from its extroverted surface consciousness to something behind, something deeper. It has not yet found the true inner source of creation. There is possible, as I said already, a true and a false subjectivism. There is 'ego' and true ...
... following him! Thus, on 16 October, Pavitra told Sri Aurobindo that what he got in his meditations with the Mother was "invaluable", and he realised that much more had been received than his surface consciousness was prepared to admit. Next day Pavitra had another session with the Mother: Mother: I felt you very close all the day. Pavitra: But this puts me to sleep. Mother: There is ...
... the sense-mind should be controlled and enlightened from above by the buddhi, and not left to be wire-pulled by the primitive citta , or obscured and bedevilled by the accretions in the surface consciousness. Delivered from the past samskāras and the habitual reactions, it will proceed in the developing light of the buddhi and help in the organic advance of the whole nature towards Truth. In ...
... personal salvation or self-annihilation in the infinite, immutable existence is accentuated, if not superinduced, by the force of crystallised traditions in the subliminal as well as in the surface consciousness of the individual and the race, and it takes nothing short of a revolution in will and thought and aspiration to break these hard crystals and clear the passage for the full efflorescence ...
... sustains and surrounds and surpasses it. Its individual idiosyncrasies have been studied with as much thoroughness as its collective traits, and their origins below the threshold of the surface consciousness have been investigated with a marvellous penetration and precision. Life, it has been held, cannot be rightly lived if its source is not discovered and its sense and significance are not ...
... summer vacation. "This return, after three months of absence, to the house which is consecrated to Thee, O Lord, has been an occasion for two experiences. The first is that in my outer being, my surface consciousness, I have no longer any feeling that I am in my own house or the owner of anything at all... . "In the second place, the whole atmosphere of the house is charged with a religious gravity; ...
... has developed, supports and governs this partial and fragmentary, this incomplete and unsatisfying consciousness and activity of the mind, life and senses. To rise out of this external and surface consciousness towards and into that superconscient is our progress, our goal, our destiny of completeness and satisfaction. The Upanishad does not assert the unreality, but only the incompleteness and ...
... created first. But by "interference" he degenerated into the present man in his surface mental and vital consciousness. And this same spirit of a self-contradictory hostile nature created in his surface consciousness the exclusive Avidya (vide Bible, Book of Genesis). I am not aware of it—not on this earth at any rate. If he was a God-man, why did he allow the interference and degeneration in himself ...
... attention will get divided and the work will not be properly done. It is because people live in the surface mind and are identified with it. When one lives more inwardly, it is only the surface consciousness that is occupied and one stands behind it in another which is silent and self-offered. 4 May 1933 Does this consciousness [mentioned in the preceding letter] come only by aspiration or ...
... 1913 This return after an absence of three months to the house which is consecrated to Thee, O Lord, has been the occasion of two experiences. The first is that in my outer being, my surface consciousness, I no longer have the least feeling of being in my own home and the owner of anything there: I am a stranger in a strange land, much more of a stranger here than in the open countryside among ...
... other than what she has got or can get from the Mother. The only thing she can do now is to prepare herself, going on with what she has received and trying to assimilate it and bring it to her surface consciousness; Page 569 especially, she has to cultivate calm, balance, simple sincerity and a quiet and firm aspiration. 25 December 1929 You can write to X answering his questions ...
... upon us, but take them as formations of our own life and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them and strives not to be mastered: but when we go inwards away from the restricted surface consciousness and develop a subtler sense and deeper awareness, we begin to get an intimation of the origin of these movements and are able to watch their action and process, to accept or reject or modify ...
... is what is below the mind and conscious life just as the subliminal is what is behind the outer consciousness. Whereas the subliminal is an inner and larger consciousness compared to the surface consciousness, the subconscious is a nether and inferior, diminished consciousness. "[The subconscient] covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised ...
... consciousness of this vision from above, we can see how this vibration emitted was exactly the vibration emitted by the Supreme, but instead of obtaining the immediate result expected by the surface consciousness, it was meant to set off a Page 175 whole series of vibrations and to achieve another, more distant and more complete result. I am not speaking of great things or of actions on a ...
... activities are so different in their nature and scope. All six of you have come to a similar conclusion in spite of the success that has crowned your efforts. For you have been living in the surface consciousness, seeing only the appearance of things and unaware of the true reality of the universe. You represent the élite of mankind, each one of you has achieved in his own sphere the utmost of what ...
... the consciousness is not transformed—there has to be a period of assimilation. When the being is unconscious, the assimilation goes on behind the veil or below the surface and meanwhile the surface consciousness sees only dullness and loss of what it had got; but when one is conscious, then one can see the assimilation going on and one sees that nothing is lost, it is only a quiet settling in of what ...
... then his consciousness is suspended; he is temporarily unconscious. How far is this scientific-superficial view correct or maintainable? For it raises two fundamental questions—is the waking surface consciousness the only form of consciousness possible? and again, is the consciousness synonymous with mind, is all consciousness mental or are other forms of it, supramental or submental, possible? Outer ...
... obscurity or non-understanding will go. The separate existence of the vital and physical comes to be known of itself usually in the progress of the Yoga. So long as one lives mainly in the surface consciousness one can only know them by their results—one can see that this or that is or must be a movement of the vital etc.; but the direct concrete experience comes only when one begins to live deeper ...
... of energy going up from the awakened Kundalini. This movement as it proceeds opens up the six centres of the subtle nervous system and by the opening one escapes from the limitations of the surface consciousness bound to the gross body, and great ranges of experience proper to the larger subliminal self, mental, vital, subtle-physical, are shown to the sadhaka. When the Kundalini meets the higher c ...
... the self; when identified with the universal self, all is in you. Also, the microcosm reproduces the macrocosm—so all is present in each, though all is not expressed (and cannot be) in the surface consciousness. There is the experience of the microcosm (the universe in oneself) in which all that is in the macrocosm (the larger universe) is present. All these things are for experience, for knowledge ...
... appearance, nor your vital to act upon them. There is a place in the inner being where one can always remain calm and from there look with poise and judgment on the perturbations of the surface consciousness and act upon it to change it. If you can learn to live in that calm of the inner being, you will have found your stable basis. If the imperfection is there, one has to see it. The thing ...
... becoming aware of sleep and dream and observing them—but as yet nothing farther—unless there is something in the nature of your dreams that has escaped you. But it is sufficiently awake for the surface consciousness to remember this state, that is to say, to receive and keep the report of it even in the transition from the sleep to the waking state which usually abolishes by oblivion all but fragments of ...
... which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself. Its presence with the sadhak is not dependent on his consciousness of it. If everything were dependent on the surface consciousness of the sadhak, there would be no possibility of the divine action anywhere; the human worm would remain the human worm Page 180 and the human ass the human ass for ever and ever ...
... and significance of his natural or his spiritual activity: but it can be replied that this demand for a permanent personal significance, for a personal eternity, is an error of our ignorant surface consciousness; the individual is a temporary becoming of the Being, and that is a quite sufficient value and significance. It may be added that in a pure or an absolute Existence there can be no values and ...
... essence and figure of the Page 517 supreme omnipresent Reality. It is from this interpretation of existence that we have started, but to verify it we must observe the structure of our surface consciousness and its relation to what is within it and above and below it; for so best we can distinguish the nature and scope of the Ignorance. In that process there will appear the nature and scope also ...
... and it is not therefore limited to one poise or one form of action. We, human beings, are phenomenally a particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation, one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge; ...
... and, though in this matter life and mind have developed their own energies, yet they are limited and bound up in the action of the lower material, which is to the ignorance of his practical surface consciousness his original principle. Mind in him, though he is an embodied mental being, has to bear the control of the body and the physical life and can only by some more or less considerable effort of ...
... what they need to be told! Page 223 So the first necessity is to go deep down into themselves, a little. Because even if you tell them "the Divine," what does it mean to their surface consciousness? Yes.... For him, this boy, it has a meaning, but for most others... Yes. it doesn't mean anything. So we should put: "The first condition is the inner discovery...." In the ...
... folds of our mentality, the broad sense is obvious as soon as he talks of the subliminal in contrast to the Mind of our ordinary possession. The latter he generally names the waking or surface consciousness, but he sometimes names it the "corporeal mentality" and even the designation, "physical mind", is not always absent. Thus, while discussing Mind and Supermind in Chapter XVIII of The ...
... due to insufficient knowledge and insufficient power. When conscious man is liable to such a lot of error and incapacity, what should we not expect of phenomena in which Nature has no surface consciousness at all or at best a very restricted one? On looking at "evil" as a component of world reality, Sri Aurobindo is not standing on a universal or transcendent height which corrects our ...
... beyond. Or it is contact with depths within, heights Page 327 above, vastnesses beyond us, an opening to their greater influences, beings, movements or a reception of them into our surface consciousness and being so that the outer [is] altered, enveloped, governed by what is not our ordinary self. For the Reality which we are seeking does not lie on our surface or, if it is there, it is concealed ...
... shadows. I have heard formulas to call spirits "from the vasty deep" but none so genuine as this — a most dangerous hail to the powers and principalities that lurk beyond the surface Page 95 consciousness. It is a snatch of black magic establishing a real contact with occult beings: that we do not get possessed is due to the absence of Macbethan circumstances — no man contemplating ...
... unconscious are related to the subliminal. 13 The subliminal is often mistaken for the spiritual because of the failure to distinguish between the inner consciousness, which is behind the surface consciousness, and the higher consciousness which is above the normal consciousness. The 11. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part Four, SABCL, Vol. 24, pp. 1164-65. 12. Sri Aurobindo ...
... under the stress of Krishna consciousness. All these are symbols of what is going on in the inner being, in the consciousness behind and the results well up from time to time in the external or surface consciousness in such feelings as the awareness of a softening and opening... devotion, joy, peace, Ananda, etc. When the opening is complete, there is likely to be a more direct consciousness of the working ...
... Mother, but this consciousness too is already composite. Deep within there is the Unity-Consciousness, the reason why the cell is able to vibrate on the rhythms and movements of the whole. Its surface-consciousness, on the contrary, is its evolutionary consciousness, gradually increased by each evolutionary saltus, which each time is experienced as a calamity. (The supramental turn about will perhaps also ...
... the traversed areas for consolidation and assurance of the hold on the occupied country and assimilation of its people.” 57 “All Yoga is in its very nature a means of passing out of our surface consciousness of limitation and ignorance into a larger and deeper Reality of ourselves and the world and some supreme or total Existence now veiled to us by this surface. There is a Reality which underlies ...
... there is a great difference in the growth of each and in manifestation of the reality lying within. The seed and the tree cannot be absolutely the same. The ordinary human being lives in the surface consciousness and, separated as he is, by his egoistic individual consciousness, is whirled in the darkness of ignorance and struggles in the storm of desire. He cannot in any way become equal to the seer ...
... al knowledge which does not end with the surface of things but looks at these hidden movements — it is impossible to deal with things for the purpose of Yoga if we confine ourselves to the surface consciousness only. It is also according to the rule of these reactions that your despondence should have come immediately after considerable progress in bhakti and the will to surrender in the inner being ...
... motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of Which the origin is obscure to us". 1 Now what happens ordinarily is that during the state of our body's sleep the surface physical ...
... consciousness participates during this period in new inner activities of which, alas, only an insignificant portion — the portion actually occurring or getting recorded in the threshold of our surface consciousness — we somehow remember as imperfect and interpretative dreams of our night. Now, as we have indicated in an earlier section of our essay [vide Part Three, Chapter III], only a very ...
... to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we ...
... very humble confession. Since 1911 I have denied the sex-instinct in me, refused to accept it. There was a very strong will in me which simply controlled it, crushed it, pushed it out from the surface consciousness. Yet for all the negation it was there, acting in some form or other. My dear Mother, my being now accepts its past silliness and in all humbleness it opens itself to You. May this ...
... forgets the cause of the injury? A question of memory. It is not because one forgets that the saying is true, for then it would be meant for men who are completely ordinary and live in their surface consciousness. But what is true is that the whole world is in perpetual transformation; everything changes at every moment, and for those who aspire and are supple, time is the great remedy because with time ...
... no need to speak to them or pay any attention to them. 21 July 1936 O Mother, I want to become aware that You are watching over me at every moment. Take one step back from the surface consciousness, enter just a little inside yourself, and you will become aware of it. 24 July 1936 Does the universal Justice prevent us from rising above the universe when we want to? To a certain ...
... effect to someone not used to it.... You know, when you want to draw your consciousness within—what people call "concentrating"—for meditation, for instance, or japa, well, to the sharp-edged surface consciousness the movement of interiorization is like entering something... not exactly "smoky," because it isn't dark, but woolly: the feeling of something with no angles, no precise demarcations. Don't ...
... parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organized, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. Page 162 "As for ...
... identified myself with that pulsation of Love that creates the world, for many days I refused to resume entirely the ordinary, habitual consciousness (to which I was just referring: that sort of surface consciousness which is like bark), I no longer wanted it. That's why I was outwardly so helpless; in other words, I refused to make any decisions ( Mother laughs ), the others had to decide and do things ...
... of a habit of living: ) I've had a very interesting experience (not personal). Did you know Benjamin 3 ?... His psychic being had left him quite some time ago and, as a result, to the surface consciousness he seemed a bit deranged—he wasn't deranged but diminished. And he lived, as I said, out of habit. The physical consciousness still held a minimum of vital and mind and he lived out of habit ...
... etc.] myself as a rule — they are the psychological phraseology of the old yoga. Letters on Yoga, p. 331 The terms Manas, etc. belong to the ordinary psychology applied to the surface consciousness. In our yoga we adopt a different classification — based on the yogic experience. What answers to this movement of the Manas there would be two separate things — a part of the physical mind ...
... distinction, however, made by Sri Aurobindo is between what he terms the subconscient - that which lies below the level of consciousness - and the subliminal -that which lies behind the surface consciousness. Regarding such a distinction, Sri Aurobindo states: "The real subconscious is a nether diminished consciousness close to the Inconscient*; the subliminal is a consciousness larger than ...
... orthodox way of life had definitely fallen off from me as do the withered leaves from trees. Something else more important had begun to take shape in me imperceptibly. It was not visible to my surface consciousness. Because it was working behind the scenes my wrong conduct, mithydcara — the false way of life —continued yet for a few years. I should live firmly in the truth, express the truth in each ...
... way of life had definitely fallen off from me as do the withered leaves from trees. Something else more important had begun to take shape in me imperceptibly. It was not visible to my surface consciousness. Because it was working behind the scenes my wrong conduct, mithyācāra — the false way of life —continued yet for a few years. I should live firmly in the truth, express the truth ...
... This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, — and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a c ...
... which lies below the surface. However, yoga psychology is based on a vastly more comprehensive view of consciousness, distinguishing various levels of consciousness which, in relation to the surface consciousness, are below it (the subconscient and the inconscient), behind it (the subliminal), around it (the circumconscient) and above it (the superconscient). 10 From the standpoint of yoga ...
... to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures. 10 ...mind and vital... are not the same. The thinking ...
... teṣamahaṁ samuddhart ā jn ā nadipena bh ā swat ā . And this miracle happens in the depths and the heights of the being far removed from the daylight wakeful awareness, in the night of the surface consciousness, y ā ni śā sarvabh ū t ā n āṁ tasy āṁ j ā garti saṁyamī. The Page 84 immobile silence of Nirvana in which all the instruments have been steeped has stopped their finitising ...
... you have for me and the Mother may not, as you say, be part of the bhakti itself, but they could not be there were not the bhakti deep inside. It is its coming out in full force into the surface consciousness that is to be brought about and it seems to me that Page 88 it is inevitable that it should come as the outer coverings fall off. What is within must surely make its way to ...
... al knowledge which does not end with the surface of things but looks at these hidden movements. It is impossible to deal with things for the purposes of Yoga if we confine ourselves to the surface consciousness only. Each of the points you have touched in your letter need a long handling to be properly understood—so I have no time for the rest tonight. Tomorrow I shall try to write about Ramakrishna's ...
... farther deepened by the self-identification with the body. In our depths, our being knows itself as more than the body and is capable of a less materialized action. But, externally, the surface consciousness can see things only as they present themselves to it from outside or else as they rise up to its view from its separate temporal and spatial consciousness; it is not conscious of its other selves ...
... levels with altogether different contents and constitution, so is the case with the exploration of our consciousness. There are many many levels intervening between the normally functioning surface consciousness and our deepest and truest being, the psychic centre. Now all these levels have different types of subjective movements, creasing in their subtlety and complexity as we move farther and farther ...
... desire-self, the heart, the body — has each, as it were, its own complex individuality independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others. As a result the habitual surface consciousness of a sadhaka acts as a discordant heterogeneous mixture, not a single harmonious and homogeneous whole. And "this is the reason why there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members ...
... motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and, returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us..." (The Life Divine, p. 559) Here are some Savitri verses concerning the Subconscient: ...
... already been pointed out, even now the psychic being of the sadhaka, in the Page 263 midst of his functioning ignorance, has been sending its influences and indications to the surface consciousness of the seeker from its secret dwelling place within; but, because of the constant agitation created by the preferences of the mind, heart and body, much of this psychic influence and inspiration ...
... ..." (The Life Divine, pp. 1034,1035,1054) And is this not what we meet with at times in our Ashram? And it cannot but be so. For most of us, the inmates of the Ashram, are in our surface consciousness, bound to separation of consciousness from others and wear the fetters of the ego. Our very pose of selflessness hides behind it more often than not a subtle form of selfishness. To build up ...
... Page 126 By the first movement of inward penetration, we seek to break asunder the wall separating our subliminal self from our present surface existence, leave the surface consciousness and live entirely in the realm of our inner mind, inner life, inner subtle-physical and finally in the inmost soul of our being. This inmost soul or the psychic being is the Purusha in the ...
... the question is: is it possible to possess the spiritual consciousness while still remaining embedded in the ordinary mental functionings? In other words, can the normal unregenerate surface consciousness and the spiritual one be concomitant and simultaneously operative? Seekers in all ages and climes, who have the necessary credentials to pronounce on this point, are universally agreed to ...
... It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing—or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware. I don't see any vestige of a yogi in me. It will be three years in February, since I have come here, and I haven't seen even three signs! It is your letters ...
... es to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case, surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream-Consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we see ...
... part of the working of the Divine Force in you and you feel it is that and it exists in the joy of that working. This condition you had of the inner being and its silence—separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings—is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is a fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the Yogic ...
... say, in the constitution of the individual man of today. This region of the unconscious (or the inconscient) is a veritable field of force: it lies at the root of all surface dynamisms. The surface consciousness, jag-rat, is a very small portion of the whole, it is only the tip of the pyramid or an iceberg, Page 42 the major portion lies submerged beyond our normal view. In reflex ...
... say, in the constitution of the individual man of today. This region of the unconscious (or the inconscient) is a veritable field of force: it lies at the root of all surface dynamisms. The surface consciousness, jagrat, is a very small portion of the whole, it is only the tip of the pyramid or an iceberg, the major portion lies submerged beyond our normal view. In reflex movements, in sudden unthinking ...
... Indian Brahmin features. But curiously enough, exactly after two years I saw that man had changed to what I had seen of him in vision. These things are thrown out from the subtle world to the surface consciousness. There is another instance; I was a great tea addict and could not do any work without a cup of tea. The management of tea was in charge of my brother-in-law. He used to bring the tea at any ...
... them. without first establishing the quietude, but it is very difficult. NIRODBARAN: Is there a veil in the heart also? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, a veil or wall of the vital being with its surface consciousness and emotional disturbances. One has to break through that to what is behind the heart. In some people the Force works behind the veil because it would meet with many obstacles and resistances ...
... man's mind has already accepted the conclusions, unknown to the man himself, and it is by his reasoning that he seems to arrive at them. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is something unknown to the surface consciousness of course! Then, again, the human ego comes in. It is so limited that it thinks the contribution it brings to human thought is the only truth and all who differ or conflict with it are wrong ...
... she asked why, if Kowma had finished her meal, she was not coming to sit with her; sometimes, why was Kowma still reading in the next room and not coming to talk to her. In other words her surface consciousness had begun to slip down into the past, but it was far from getting trapped there, for every time we clarified that Kowma had not written about coming but should we call her, she would ‘climb ...
... until we confront the old knot and untie it. Such is the law of inner progress. Generally, however, the memory of actual physical circumstances does not remain, because, although our small surface consciousness makes much of them, they are, after all, of little significance. There is even a spontaneous mechanism that erases the profusion of useless past memories, just as those of the present life soon ...
... silent Brahman in January 1908, he seemed to move about like one almost in a trance of transcendence, and his political activities - writing, speeches, campaigning - seemed to take place on the surface consciousness, leaving the inner calm wholly unruffled. The year of incarceration at the Alipur jail, as we saw earlier, was really a session of sadhana and when, after his acquittal in May 1909, he launched ...
... October 1913, two enriching experiences: This return ... to the house which is consecrated to Thee, O Lord, has been the occasion of two experiences. The first is that in my outer being, my surface consciousness, I no longer have the least feeling of being in my own home and the owner of anything there .... I am a visitor here as elsewhere, as everywhere, Thy messenger and Thy servant upon earth ...
... but it is very difficult. Disciple : It is said that there is also a veil in the heart, is it true? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, a veil or a wall, if you like. The vital with its surface consciousness, the emotional with its disturbances and veils and one has to break through these and get to what is behind them. There, one finds the heart. In some people the higher force works behind the ...
... the attention of our mind, but have been the object of our outer senses, are snapped by the citta. These impressions form a chaotic jumble in the citta, from which they surge up into our surface consciousness, in waking, and often in sleep, in various fantastic combinations. This action of the citta is automatic and unpredictable. The active and formative part of the citta is responsible for ...
... Aswapathy's address to her that Savitri became outwardly conscious of her divine mission. Its action on her was like that of a Mantra that sinks into consciousness slowly and then comes back to die surface consciousness. The aspirant then "feels a Wideness and becomes a Power". From that day Savitri became free from "accustomed scenes" because to her they were now "an ended play". She felt that "the secrets ...
... December 1931 This is the true reply. To remain within, above, and untouched, full of inner consciousness and the inner experience, — listening, when need be, to X or another with the surface consciousness, but with even that undisturbed, not either pulled outwards or invaded, that is the perfect condition for the sadhana. (8.12.31) ...
... Experiences of Cosmic Consciousness My Pilgrimage to the Spirit March 11, 1932 The cosmic consciousness does not belong to overmind in especial; it covers all the planes. Man is shut up at present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses and by interpreting the... the contacts with the world. By yoga there can open in him a consciousness which becomes one with that of the world; he becomes directly aware of a universal being, universal states, universal force and forces; universal mind, life, matter and lives in conscious relations with these things. He is then said to have the cosmic consciousness. Sri Aurobindo ...
... Subconscient is above the Inconscient and just below our surface physical consciousness, below the threshold, as it is called. It is, to quote Sri Aurobindo, "the extreme border of our inner existence where it meets the Inconscient; it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half-consciousness; the surface physical consciousness also, when it sinks back from the working level and... obscurity, so as to make it he born into consciousness. Passion itself is preferable to inconscience. We must, therefore, constantly march to the conquest of this universal bedrock of inconscience, and making our organism the instrument, transform it little by little into luminous consciousness. ,”¹ The transformation of inconscience into luminous consciousness is, therefore, the main business of... from another viewpoint, this nether part of us may be described as the antechamber of the Inconscient through which its formations rise into our waking or our subliminal being. When we sleep and the surface physical part of us, which is in its first origin here an output from the Inconscient, relapses towards the originating inconscience, it enters into this subconscious element, antechamber or sub-stratum ...
... but rather a complete "sub"-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body. It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert strands of Matter and form by a constant... the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface, — a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality. This and much more lives concealed in the subconscience. The Life Divine, pp. 733-34 The ... birth, is what we usually call ourselves. A good deal of this is in habitual movement and use in our known conscious parts on the surface, a great deal more is concealed in the other unknown three which are below or behind the surface. But what we are on the surface is being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of the general Nature coming in on us either directly ...
... probabilities and certainties that one can begin to live and experience what lies behind the surface waking consciousness. One comes to discover the astonishing phenomena of the subliminal consciousness in which complexities of the subtle physical consciousness, inner vital consciousness and inner mental consciousness can be experienced and studied. One even comes to acknowledge that there are inner treasures... supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our... of the human consciousness which has evolved from the Inconscience but much more luminously as the human consciousness crosses the boundaries of ignorance and enters and masters the various domains of what may be called the Integral Knowledge. Just as the inconscience is a dark veil behind which the supermind is at work, even so, Ignorance as perceived at work in the human consciousness is an evolutionary ...
... spiritual and moral capacity to utilize and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. This new fullness of the means of life might be, by its power for a release from... could insist only on a credal adherence, a formal acceptance of its ethical standards and a conformity to institution, ceremony and ritual. Religion so conceived can give a religio ethical colour or surface tinge,-sometimes, if it maintains a strong kernel of inner experience, it can generalize to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency; but it does not transform the race, it cannot create a new... movement of the collectivity is a largely subconscious mass movement; it has to formulate and express itself through the individuals to become conscious: its general mass consciousness is always less evolved than the consciousness of its most developed individuals, and it progresses in so far as it accepts their impress or develops What they develop. The individual does not owe his ultimate allegiance ...
... sleep is that our consciousness withdraws from the field of its waking experiences; it is supposed to be resting, suspended or in abeyance, but that is a superficial view of the matter. What is in abeyance is the waking activities, what is at Page 232 rest is the surface mind and the normal conscious action of the bodily part of us; but the inner consciousness is not suspended, it... recorded in something of us that is near to the surface, we remember. There is maintained in sleep, thus near the surface, an obscure subconscious element which is a receptacle or passage for our dream experiences and itself also a dream-builder; but behind it is the depth and mass of the subliminal, the totality of our concealed inner being and consciousness which is of quite another order. Normally... subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence where it meets the Inconscient, it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half consciousness; the surface physical consciousness also, when it sinks back from the waking level and retrogresses towards the Inconscient, retires into this intermediate subconscience. Or, from another viewpoint, this Page ...
... sense—the composition being different. The Nature of the Cosmic Consciousness Man is shut up at present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses and by interpreting their contacts with the world. By Yoga there can open in him a consciousness which becomes one with that of the world; he becomes directly aware... Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Cosmic Consciousness Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I The Universal or Cosmic Consciousness The Terms "Universal" and "Cosmic" There is no difference between the terms "universal" and "cosmic" except... cosmic Consciousness is a normal part of Yoga. The Cosmic Consciousness and the Overmind The cosmic consciousness does not belong to overmind in especial; it covers all the planes. The overmind is the basis of the total cosmic consciousness, but the cosmic consciousness itself can be felt on any plane, not only above mind, but in mind, life, matter. The Cosmic Consciousness and the ...
... would become a powerful complement to what lies in consciousness behind the commonly accepted religious qualities of faith and unquestioning acceptance of dogmatic teachings and injunctions. For spirituality always looks behind the form to essence and to the living consciousness; and in doing Page 25 so, it brings to the surface that which lies behind, and its action is therefore... spiritual and moral capacity to utilize and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it... . A greater whole-being, whole- knowledge, wholepower is needed to weld all into... touch spirituality and may prepare the change of consciousness, but spirituality not only aims at the total change of consciousness, but even its method is that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an exploration of consciousness through progressive change of consciousness. In the spiritual consciousness, and in the knowledge that it delivers, there ...
... knew long ago. People's ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that a dreamless sleep; but it is only a state in which the surface sleep consciousness which is a subtle prolongation of the outer still left active in sleep itself is unable to record the dreams and transmit them to... ordinary waking consciousness and the ordinary sleep consciousness as they work in men whether sadhaks or not sadhaks—and it has nothing to do with the true self or psychic being. Sleep and waking are determined not by the true self or psychic being, but by the mind's waking condition or activity or its cessation—when it ceases for a time, then it is the subconscious that is there on the surface and there... one's consciousness has gone down. It is no use getting distressed by that; one has to remain quiet and call back the higher consciousness. The consciousness in the night almost always descends below the level of what one has gained by sadhana in the waking consciousness—unless there are special experiences of an uplifting character in the time of sleep or unless the Yogic consciousness acquired ...
... expression. When it does express itself as love, it is something wide and universal, untroubled and firm even when it is intense. This is in the basic cosmic oneness. There is also the surface cosmic consciousness which is an awareness of the play of cosmic forces—here anything may rise, sex also. It is this part that needs the perfect psychisation, otherwise one cannot even hold, contain and deal... turn away from all other ties. But besides that a new consciousness must be created in it—first a consciousness of pure and purifying Divine Peace from above which must take hold of all down to the most physical—then in that peace an increasing inner strength pure and unegoistic—then the Divine Light and Knowledge transforming all the consciousness and movements. When this has been done, then the human... only thing possible to you. But that is not so at all, for it contradicts your own deepest experiences. Always what your inner being has asked is Love, Bhakti, Ananda and whenever it comes to the surface it is, even if only in a first elementary form, the divine love which it brings with it. A basis of deep and intense calm and stillness, a great intensity of emotion and Bhakti, an inrush of Ananda ...
... continuity, supported and held together by an active surface memory and a passive underlying consciousness in its flow from moment to moment of time, organised and interpreted by our reason and our witnessing and participating intelligence. Behind it is an occult existence and energy of our secret being without which the superficial consciousness and activity could not have existed or acted. In Matter... enter into these inner and higher parts of ourselves by an inward plunge or disciplined penetration and bring back with us to the surface their secrets. Or, achieving a still more radical change of our consciousness, we must learn to live within and no longer on the surface and be and act from the inner depths and from a soul that has become sovereign over the nature. That part of us which we can... something in the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface,—a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality. This and much more lives concealed in the subconscience. A descent into the subconscient would not help us ...
... spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic full ness of life a condition that exceed it.''* Unity of life, unity of humanity, a world union has become a necessity; but this unity must not be uniformity;... when a certain level of consciousness has effected an ascent to the next level of conscious ness, integrated the powers and activities of the lower conscious ness into those of the higher level of consciousness, when the integrated powers have achieved acute subtilisation and refinement, — then the moment arrives for taking a leap into the still higher level of consciousness. If at that moment there... has laboured intensely for five centuries and acknowledged its inability. Corresponding to the unity of life, there must be unity of consciousness, unity of knowledge. There must, therefore, be a push towards the next stage of evolution where new powers of consciousness can manifest. This is the central issue. And this is where we need to turn to the new orientations that we require in the field ...
... spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. “This new fullness of the means of life might be, by its power for a release... whatever they are, are of different values and come from different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g. thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there... self-consciousness and places him with unbandaged eyes on that wide threshold where a more luminous Angel has to take him by the hand.” 40 “Mind is not a separate entity”, writes Sri Aurobindo also, “but has all Supermind behind it and it is Supermind that creates with Mind only as its final individualising operation.” 41 It is Supermind – the Truth-Consciousness, the Unity-Consciousness – that ...
... seeing, living and active consciousness. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 498 (d) Cosmic Consciousness Man is shut up at present in his surface individual consciousness and knows the world (or rather the surface of it) only through his outward mind and senses and by interpreting their contacts with the world. By yoga there can open in him a consciousness which becomes one with that... (b) Normal (Ordinary) and Higher (Spiritual) Consciousness ...briefly... there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial... has been established in the whole inner consciousness, then the outer touches of the lower nature can't come in or overpower. Page 222 This is the advantage of Self-realisation preceding the cosmic consciousness and supporting it. Letters on Yoga, pp. 1073-74 Now about the cosmic consciousness and Nirvana. Cosmic consciousness is a complex matter. To begin with, there ...
... self-limited in the name and form of Shakespeare, dwells deepest in him invisible to consciousness, as the unmanifest world of that something more elemental than thought (may it not be causal, elemental Will?), in which Shakespeare's imaginations lie as yet unformed and undifferentiated; then he comes to a surface of consciousness visible to Shakespeare as the inwardly manifest world of subtle matter or thought... thought in which those imaginations take subtle thought-shapes Page 388 & throng; finally, he rises to a surface of consciousness visible to others besides Shakespeare as the outwardly manifest world, manifest in sound, in which a select number of these imaginations are revealed to universal view. These mighty images live immortally in our minds because Parabrahman in Shakespeare is the same... The workings of imagination are often totally dissociated, on the material plane at least, from any intelligible purpose and though it is quite possible that the latent part of our consciousness which works below the surface, may have sometimes a purpose of which the superficial part is not aware, yet in the most ordinary workings of Imagination, an absolute purposelessness is surely evident. Certainly ...
... predetermined by some dynamic truth of Self within and only manifested on the mind surface. To know that we would have to touch or to enter into a cosmic state of being and consciousness to which the totality of things and their integral principle would be better manifest than to our limited mind experience. Overmind consciousness is such a state or principle beyond individual mind, beyond even universal... The Overmind keeps still the sense of this underlying Unity; that is for it the secure base of the independent experience. In Mind the knowledge of the unity of all aspects is lost on the surface, the consciousness is plunged into engrossing, exclusive separate affirmations; but there too, even in the Mind's ignorance, the total reality still remains behind the exclusive absorption and can be recovered... to the Reality from which all things hold their truth, to the Consciousness of which all consciousnesses are entities, to the Power from which all get what force of being they have within them, to the Delight of which all delights are partial figures. This limitation of consciousness and this awakening to the integrality of consciousness are also a process of self-manifestation, are a self-determination ...
... kind of dream or sleep—that the surface mental consciousness normally passes out of the perception of objective things into the inner subliminal and the superior supramental or overmental status. In that inner condition it sees the supraphysical realities in transcribing figures of dream or vision or, in the superior status, it loses itself in a massed consciousness of which it can receive no thought... Infinite. This conception, this sense are pragmatically necessary for the operations of the surface individuality and are effective and justified by their effects; they are therefore real to its finite reason and finite self-experience: but once we step back from the finite consciousness into the consciousness of the essential and infinite, from the apparent to the true Person, the finite or the individual... s of Time: its forms must therefore be temporary in their appearance on the surface, but they are eternal in their essential power of Page 482 manifestation; for they are held always implicit and potential in the essence of things and in the essential consciousness from which they emerge: timeless consciousness can always turn their abiding potentiality into terms of time actuality. The ...
... and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it.... Man has harmonised life in the past by organised ideation and limitation; he... It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only purification, enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these... unresponsive, labouring hard for breath suddenly becomes quiet; a consciousness enters the body, He is awake and normal. He finishes the drink, then, as the consciousness withdraws, the body lapses back into the grip of agony. Sri Aurobindo was suffering from uraemia, and he was having this peculiar coma, a coma controlled by yogic consciousness! On the 4th December, Mother said: 'He's withdrawing ...
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