The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it. When the heart opens it will be the end for the ego-self. Therefore; Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment. Enlightment crosses the ego, so it creates a world and reality that constantly feeding the ego of man, and at same time keeping mankind tuned into low vibrational frequencies of fear. This keeping Humankind in a suppressed state within the Matrix
Man is a mental and a transitional being. His evolution has taken place only up to the mental stage and as such he is imperfect in every way. He is not satisfied with his present condition. He aspires to ascend to a higher state of consciousness.
While a guru is a canon unto himself in the form of his words and deeds , and as such is the arbiter of scripture and tradition , the canon is not unto itself a guru … Therefore the Master is said to be even greater than both scripture and the Lord.
Elucidating the concept of Man further Sri Aurobindo writes,
“This Man is the Manu, the thinker, the Manomaya Purusha, mental person or soul in mind of the ancient sages. No mere superior mammal is he, but a conceptive soul basing uselion the animal body in Matter. He is conscious Name or Numen accepting and utilizing form as a medium through which Person can deal with substance. The animal lift emerging out of Matter is only the interior term of his existence. The life of thought. feeling, will, conscious impulsion, that which we name in its totality Mind, that which strives to seize upon Matter and its vital energies and subject them to the law of its own progressive transformation, is the middle term in which he takes his effectual station. But there is equally a supreme term which Mind in man searches after so that having found he may affirm it in his mental and bodily existence. This practical affirmation of something essentially supe-rior to his present self is the basis of the divine life in the human being.”
In other words this would mean that Nature has worked out man in the living laboratory of the animal. It would, therefore, be proper to presume that man shall be the thinking and living laboratory out of which Nature would work out the Superman or God.
Man, no doubt, in the evolutionary process, has ascended to the mental level. He is inquisitive to know all about matter, lift and mind in order to become master over them. He seeks to know himself and tries to be the sovereign master of himself and the world because the Existence—Conscious-Force, the secret will of Sachchidananda always compels him to strive beyond mental existence. Thus Sri Aurobindo writes, “Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.”
As we have already discussed Sri Aurobindo’s concept of man is based upon the following facts:
Man is a mental and a transitional being. His evolution has taken place only up to the mental stage and as such he is imperfect in every way. He is not satisfied with his present condition. He aspires to ascend to a higher state of consciousness. Sachchidananda or the Divine is seated within the heart of man. Existence, Divine Will, Conscious-Force compel him to rise in perfection which ultimately aims at Divine Life.
The mental consciousness through intermediary stages of higher consciousness rises to the Supermind which opens the gates to the Supreme Reality.
According to Sri Aurobindo, man’s consciousness is presently evolved up to the mental level. He faces certain problems in rising higher in his consciousness.
Firstly, man is conscious of only a small part of his being. He is aware of his surface personality, his physical, vital and mental life. He is not conscious of his subconscious and subliminal mind which constitute a large portion of his being. Man, due to egoism, imagines himself to be the doer of all works. He is oblivious of the fact that Nature, which is the creative force behind everything, determines all his actions.
Secondly, man is separated from the universal being. He is merely unified with other beings on the ground of sympathy, fellow-feeling etc. He fails to identify himself consciously with other beings. He can completely identify himself with the other beings when he is capable of ascending to the overmind level.
The third difficulty arises due to the division of force and consciousness in the evolutionary existence. The Absolute through evolutionary process expresses itself in triple formation of Matter, Life and Mind. These triple members of mind, life and body are constantly at conflict with each other.
The physical body wants to get nourishment from the life-force that courses through it and goes on assimilacing, eating up the life force. The life-force in its turn eats up the physical substance and this leads to a certain imbalance depending upon which is the stronger. The mind is above the both, it supports the physical body at times against the life-force, or adds its weight to the life-force in its tyranny over the physical body; the life-force drives the physical body at times which the physical body is unable to resist and the mind supports the life-force. At times the mind itself misguides both the life-force and the body, so this continuous conflict between the mind, the life-force and the body is one more feature.’
The conflict in man is not confined to his different elements —mind, life-force and body — it extends and continues in the different elements themselves as they are divided within themselves, for there is a division between the physical body and the physical pursulta, the outer life-force and the life-soul, between the mental energies and the mind-soul. Thus there is a constant conflict within each member, conflict between different members of the human being.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE ETERNAL
Man the transitional being consciously or unconsciously proceeds towards the Divine. The omnipresent Reality descends into the material inconscience and is immanent in each individual. A fundamental question arises in our mind — what is exactly the relation between the individual man and the Eternal and whether the individual exists after he attains liberation by achieving the unity of knowledge.
We ordinarily identify the individual self with the ego. The individual exists by limiting and excluding from other beings. So we Oink ourselves separate from others, but as soon as the ego sense of the individual disappears or transforms, the existence of the individual is abolished. But what is the true nature of the individual self? Sri Aurobindo points out,
Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualization of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualized being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is, therefore, necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.’
According to Sri Aurobindo, the individual self which lives in the world is the becoming of the transcendental Self. The Cosmos and the world are also the becomings of that Transcendental Reality. The World-Being includes the individual being and they are related to each other. When the individual Self is liberated, he realises the world within him. He experiences the world is in him, he in the world, all is in him and he in all. The individual not only identifies himself with the world being, he also becomes aware of God in him. The individual is aware of the fact that he is not only in the world, and the world in him, but God is in him and he is in God. But from this statement it does not follow that God for his existence depends upon the individual.
Sri Aurobindo points out, ‘The individual exists in the Transcendent, but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the individual. Further I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience. I, the liberated individual, can enjoy the Divine in His transcendence, unified with Him, and enjoy at the same time the Divine in other individuals and in His cosmic being.’
Man by his reasoning power is incapable of establishing the relationship of his individual self with the transcendental Self or the Absolute. He considers one and many, the immutable and the mutable as irreconcilable and contradictory to each other. So he regards the Absolute to be void of multiplicity as it is one. The individual self, according to him, realises the transcendental Absolute only by ceasing all his individuality and completely merging himself in the Transcendental. In such a state his relationship with the Eternal appears to be absurd because the individual loses all his separate and individualistic status.
It is the evolutionary energy, per se, the energy of consciousness itself. This is now being born in mankind on a scale hitherto unknown. It is this which is bringing mankind as a whole towards the gates of Initiation, into Initiate consciousness, which is divine … They are human beings who have revealed Their innate , essential , divine consciousness . They … It has become focused in Him in an altogether new and more potent manner, temporarily, for the period of this human crisis.
Because only a spiritually enlightened person fully knows what he or she is doing and why, when a person becomes fully conscious that person becomes a spiritual master. To be fully conscious, one has to be aware of the double thread—actively aware of one’s divine being in relationship …
It is certainly easy to see why there is so much confusion surrounding the words “conscious mind, subconscious mind, superconscious mind, and consciousness.” All of these words relate to each other in one way or another, but all have different meanings; all are used objectively one minute and subjectively the next, as nouns one minute and adjectives the next. On top of that, with the advent of psychology and its desire to be accepted as an empirical mental science, words relating to consciousness have taken on a specific, clinical, and limited, if not limiting, meaning.
Webster’s Dictionary points out that the word, “conscious,” comes from the Latin word “conscire” meaning “to know,” and primarily relates being conscious with being aware. So the conscious mind is the aware mind, and to be fully conscious is to be fully aware. Because only a spiritually enlightened person fully knows what he or she is doing and why, when a person becomes fully conscious that person becomes a spiritual master. To be fully conscious, one has to be aware of the double thread—actively aware of one’s divine being in relationship to the earth and at the same time aware of one’s self and other beings at their physical, mental, and spiritual levels inclusively. Being fully conscious means having the capacity to be simultaneously aware of physical appearances without losing sight of one’s spiritual significance and one’s relationship to the whole of life.
But as consciousness develops, as the light of its own being emerges from the inert darkness of the involutionary sleep, the individual existence becomes dimly aware of the power in it and seeks first nervously and then mentally to master
We do not really know Life whether in its nature or its process unless and until we are aware and grow conscious of that Conscious-Force working in it of which it is only the external aspect and instrumentation.
Then only can we perceive and execute with knowledge, as individual soul-forms and mental and bodily instruments of the Divine, the will of God in Life; then only can Life and Mind proceed in paths and movements of an ever-increasing straightness of the truth in ourselves and things by a constant diminishing of the crooked perversions of the Ignorance.
Just as Mind has to unite itself consciously with the Supermind from which it is separated by the action of Avidya, so Life has to become aware of the Conscious-Force which operates in it for ends and with a meaning of which the life in us, because it is absorbed in the mere process of living as our mind is absorbed in the mere process of mentalising life and matter, is unconscious in its darkened action so that it serves them blindly and ignorantly and not, as it must and will in its liberation and fulfilment, luminously or with a self-fulfilling knowledge, power and bliss.
In fact, our Life, because it is subservient to the darkened and dividing operation of Mind, is itself darkened and divided and undergoes all that subjection to death, limitation, weakness, suffering, ignorant functioning of which the bound and limited creature-Mind is the parent and cause.
The universal life in us, obeying this direction of the soul imprisoned in mind, itself becomes imprisoned in an individual action. It exists and acts as a separate life with a limited insufficient capacity undergoing and not freely embracing the shock and pressure of all the cosmic life around it.
Thrown into the constant cosmic interchange of Force in the universe as a poor, limited, individual existence, Life at first helplessly suffers and obeys the giant interplay with only a mechanical reaction upon all that attacks, devours, enjoys, uses, drives it. But as consciousness develops, as the light of its own being emerges from the inert darkness of the involutionary sleep, the individual existence becomes dimly aware of the power in it and seeks first nervously and then mentally to master, use and enjoy the play.
This awakening to the Power in it is the gradual awakening to self. For Life is Force and Force is Power and Power is Will and Will is the working of the Master-consciousness. Life in the individual becomes more and more aware in its depths that it too is the Will-Force which is master of the universe and it aspires itself to be individually master of its own world. To realise its own power and to master as well as to know its world is therefore the increasing impulse of all individual life; that impulse is an essential feature of the growing self-manifestation of the Divine in cosmic existence.
If the balance between these two operations is imperfect or is disturbed or if the ordered play of the different currents of life-force is thrown out of gear, then disease and decay intervene and commence the process of disintegration.
And the very struggle for conscious mastery and even the growth of mind make the maintenance of the life more difficult. For there is an increasing demand of the life-energy on the form, a demand which is in excess of the original system of supply and disturbs the original balance of supply and demand, and before a new balance can be established, many disorders are introduced inimical to the harmony and to the length of maintenance of the life; in addition the attempt at mastery creates always a corresponding reaction in the environment which is full of forces that also desire fulfilment and are therefore intolerant of, revolt against and attack the existence which seeks to master them.
There too a balance is disturbed, a more intense struggle is generated; however strong the mastering life, unless either it is unlimited or else succeeds in establishing a new harmony with its environment, it cannot always resist and triumph but must one day be overcome and disintegrated.
But, apart from all these necessities, there is the one fundamental necessity of the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite experience on a finite basis; and since the form, the basis by its very organisation limits the possibility of experience, this can only be done by dissolving it and seeking new forms.
For the soul, having once limited itself by concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time.
The aspirant becomes aware of bis Soul and no longer identifies himself with his mental or vital being . The descent of the Higher consciousness becomes safer and easier through the opening of the heart centre. When the psychic is in front …
But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger, deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature.
To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head.
The concentradon in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above.
It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which Is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning ; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre.
This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind.
After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature.
To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is impor-tant, however, to remember that the concentration of the conscious-ness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above ; otherwise one may get shut up in one’s own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there.
For some the mental concentration is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre ; some are capable of doing both alternately — but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being.
Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one’s nature by a Higher Power.
If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty — there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also.
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