(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

Book II

The Knowledge and the Ignorance-The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 11

The Boundaries of Ignorance

Part I

This chapter reviews the Ignorance or separative knowledge progressing towards identical knowledge. It consists of waves and forces that press from outside and rise from within. It becomes the stuff of our consciousness in Time and Space. By immediate awareness, the mental being in Time lives in the present, by memory a certain part of the experience is saved and by thought, will and action one utilizes it for the present and the future. All this partial knowledge is coordinated by perception, memory, intelligence and will by aligning around an ego-sense in the life-stuff which is referred to an artificial centre of mental consciousness -the ego-idea. The ego-sense and the ego-idea construct a symbol of self -the separative ego that substitutes for the hidden real self, the spirit. (CWSA, pg.574) The surface personality is thus ego-centric and even its altruism is an enlargement of the ego; "the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature". (Ibid) The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is emergence of the true self or spiritual being "which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference". (Ibid, pg.575)

But our usual self-experience is a small part of our waking consciousness. We fasten only on a little of the mental sensations and perceptions that come to the surface being, of these memory stores a scanty part and of those stored material, intelligence uses a tiny part for coordinated knowledge and the will utilizes a tiny part for action. "A narrow selection, a large rejection or reservation, a miserly-spendthrift system of waste material and unemployment of resources and a scanty and disorderly modicum of useful spending and utilisable balance seems to be the method of Nature in our conscious becoming even as it is in the field of the material universe." (Ibid) A great part is quietly used by Nature to form us and is responsible for that large mass of our growth, becoming and action for which our conscious memory, will and intelligence are not responsible. A still greater part is used by Nature for the subconscious store from which material is drawn though we have forgotten the origin. We are often deceived in thinking we are creative when actually Nature has combined results out of that which has been forgotten by us. "We are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence." (Ibid, pg.576)

We find that the greatest part of our individual being and becoming is beyond our purview because it lies in the Inconscience. We are surprised to find how vast is the Inconscient and subconscient which is a concealed consciousness and how fragmentary is our normal waking consciousness. Proceeding deeper we find that we have an inner being or subliminal self and the outer being is a superimposition upon this subliminal self which has a vaster capacity of experience. It seems that "our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the great body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters." (Ibid)

This inner being is our real being and the outer being is "a part and a phenomenon, a selective formation for a surface use". (Ibid) We perceive only a small part of whatever touches us, the inner being perceives everything so that "nothing escapes its view". (Ibid) We remember only a small selection of whatever we perceive and we keep a greater part of that in a storeroom from where very often we cannot retrieve effectively. The inner being retains everything from where it is ready to hand if we know the technique to receive them. In the outer being, we have to memorize our perceptions but the intelligence of the inner being does not need any training, preserves perceptions and memories and can grasp immediately their significance. And unlike in the outer being where our perceptions have restricted connotations, the inner being can extend their workings to what we call extra-sensory perceptions like telepathy. Though technically whatever lies beyond our surface consciousness is called subconscious, there is a difference between the inner or subliminal being and what is usually regarded as the subconscious. "To know our inner being is the first step towards a real self-knowledge" (Ibid); it is the essence of Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought.

Our inner being or subliminal self is more real than the outer being. In fact, selections and formulations of what is there in the subliminal self contribute to compose the outer being. Our perceptions, memories, will and intelligence are selections from their counterparts in the inner being. Even our ego is a minor formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience. "It is, as it were, the urgent sea out of which our conscious becoming arise". (Ibid, pg.577) The inner or subliminal being has a much wider, more luminous consciousness than that on the surface.

Below it sinks into the subconscious which is the inferior, lowest province of our nature which is less in possession of itself. Finally the subconscious sinks into the Inconscience which is no longer individual but terrestrial in nature. Above it arises into the Superconscience in what we discover as our highest self -the higher occult part of our nature which is no longer individual but merges with the cosmic consciousness and finally with the transcendent consciousness.

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu