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Subliminal being
We have an inner or subliminal being behind our outer being or surface personality. This subliminal being extends to the Superconscious above, to the cosmic consciousness around and sinks to the subconscious below. Yet the subliminal is different from the subconscious. It is by drawing back to the subconscious realm or by ascending into the Superconscious that one can become aware of the subconscious secrets. Otherwise a plain descent into the subconscious plunges us into incoherence and torpor while a mental scrutiny gives us some indirect idea of it. The control of the subconscious from the subliminal is of cardinal importance. The subconscious is responsible for all that clings and refuses to change and for the rigidities and fixities of the character-structure. "For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements....The animal in us, -- the infernal also, --has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature." (Ibid, pg.734-735)
That part of our being characterized as intraconscient (the subliminal) and the circumconscient is a more potent part carrying an inner mind, an inner vital and an inner or subtle physical which are not brought into the front. But our waking self consists of a selection from these hidden realms, "an exteriorized and much mutilated and vulguraised edition of our real, hidden being...Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient". (Ibid, pg.735) Our personality has been formed by an interaction with Nature by our intraconscient inner being that is supported by the inmost psychic being in the fourth dimension. The larger planes of Life and Mind which contribute to the making of the subliminal being are formed by an involutionary descent of consciousness.
The inner or subliminal being extends to the cosmic consciousness all around and receives influences from the universal Mind, universal Life and universal subtle-Matter forces. This interaction is outside the purview of the outer being. There is a kind of wall that separates the outer from the inner beings which if penetrated would allow access to the subliminal secrets which actually control our surface mental, life and bodily energies. If we go inwards to start living within, we can be fully self-aware of our inner Mind, inner Life and inmost soul and coupled with this inward movement, a rising to a higher plane of mind following an evolution of the cognitive consciousness would greatly reveal the secrets of inner living.
Superconscience
The superconscience is at present beyond our beckoning. It contains the supra-cognitive planes of consciousness as well as the "native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being". (Ibid, pg.736) Though they are beyond our awareness, an upward evolution could elevate our consciousness to receive inspiration from these higher ranges. We could open to the revelatory, inspirational and intuitive forces and we could, in rarity, touch the direct power of the Spirit or get an initial touch of the Supermind and our lower being could be remoulded with that influence. "Afterwards, by the force of that remoulded consciousness, the course of our evolution could rise by a sublime ascent and get beyond the mental into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature". (Ibid)
However, even without reaching the heights of consciousness, one could still profit to some extent by being receptive to the higher influences. One could then get over the psychological and constitutional ignorance. But this would still be a preliminary stage.
We have to ascend beyond our normal mind to reach an integral self-knowledge. At present this is possible in the poise of an absorbed superconscience when one gets influenced by the Great Void, by Nirvana or the all-pervasive Brahman. But Sri Aurobindo opines to bring the highest spiritual being and its Light into our ordinary waking life and not merely into the concentrated Samadhi-poise of the Yogi. There must be a conscious heightening and widening of our consciousness to bring in a new consciousness that would transmute our ordinary values into divine values. This would then transfigure our human existence. "For wherever a radical transition has to be made, there is always this triple movement, --ascent, widening of field and base, integration, --in Nature's method of self-transcendence". (Ibid, pg.737)
Temporal Ignorance
For such an evolutionary change we must arise from our limited notion of time that seems to exist only from moment to moment between life and death. We can't go back to live in our past or have a positive inkling of the future. We seem to be bound in a temporal ignorance. This limitation of our temporal consciousness arises because of our preoccupation with the material plane and life; "this limitation is not a law of the spirit but a temporary provision for an intended first working of our manifested nature". (Ibid)
If we get over this preoccupation and obsession with our material life and open into our subliminal and superconscient ranges, we could realise "our persistent existence in time as well as our eternal existence beyond it". (Ibid, pg.738) For consciousness outlives the life-span of an individual -consciousness, unlike the body is immortal. "A belief in immortality is made so vital a point in most religions because it is a self-evident necessity if we are to rise above the identity with the body and its preoccupation with the material level." (Ibid) We not only have to believe in immortality but we must learn to live in the consciousness of immortality.
Immortality
Indian mystics did not consider immortality to mean survival of the body after death. It meant that we are immortal due to the eternity of consciousness or our self-existence -"the spirit's timeless existence is the true immortality." (Ibid)
This experience of immortality in timelessness is obtained by an identification with the Spirit as the Jivatman in the Non-birth and Non-becoming which is therefore beyond the manifestation and thus beyond life and death. But the Jivatman projects the psychic being in the evolutionary scheme and thus there is a secondary meaning to immortality signifying a perpetual soul-continuity through different births, different lives This is a consequence of timelessness expressing itself as a perpetuity in eternal Time! By the first realisation of the Jivatman, we become free from the cycle of life and death. By the second realisation of the psychic being, we experience the Spirit in its poise of soul-continuity in successions of time-eternity. Each of the two realisations represent one side of the Divine Truth with the common message that to live consciously in eternity and not in hours or moments is the main thing -this is the first condition of divine life. The second condition is to live in the inner eternity and from there determine the becoming. "For the heightening of our consciousness into its spiritual principle is effectuated by an ascent and a stepping back inward, --both these movements are essential ....but with it there comes also a widening of our range of consciousness and field of action in time and a taking up and a higher use of our mental, our vital, our corporeal existence". (Ibid, pg.739) We are therefore a spiritual entity capable of a continuous soul-life through successive physical existences; not as slaves of Karma but as its masters, subject only to the Divine within us.
Egoistic Ignorance
Once we get out of the temporal ignorance, we have to be free from egoistic ignorance. The ego is a temporary construction that balances, albeit precariously, the mental, vital and physical planes and needs to be replaced by a more harmonious principle -the ego-surpassing fourth dimensional principle of the psychic being or Chaitya Purusha. The ego limits our identification with this life, mind and body and cuts us from the cosmic consciousness around us-the immensity from which we derive ourselves as well as from the spiritual heights of the Transcendence which is our real source. The ego "exists by its limits and perishes by the loss of its limits." (Ibid, pg.740) The ego collapses or falls into nothingness and is replaced by a "new impersonal-personal seeing". (Ibid) The ego disappears but the true individuality is not lost but confirmed by the presence of the Chaitya Purusha.
Cosmic Ignorance
Once we get rid of the egoistic ignorance we are ready to be free from the cosmic ignorance. We discover our poise as the timeless immutable self in the cosmos and beyond the cosmos. Once we extend to the cosmic consciousness and identify with it we can reconcile the one and the many, the unity and the multiplicity, the soul and God, materialism and spirituality. We can possess the world in ourselves in a conscious way and identify with the Absolute.
Practical Ignorance
We have a practical ignorance that expresses itself as "life's confusions and discords" through "wrong-doing, suffering, falsehood, error". (Ibid, pg.741) These will now recede "before the divine values of the true Consciousness-Force and Ananda". (Ibid) We have to start living within whereby the source of all thought and action are no longer determined by the "mind of Ignorance" but are formed within outwards as "a free luminous automatic process of its knowledge". (Ibid)
Separative Ignorance
We would now witness a transformation from a life of Ignorance into the divine life as we expand out of the sevenfold separative Ignorance into the sevenfold knowledge through a "conscious spiritual evolution". (Ibid)This process of transformation will continue till the Supermind manifests and transforms the cosmic and individual existence on the lower planes into a conscious manifestation of the Spirit. "The true individual, the spiritual being, emerges, individual yet universal, universal yet self-transcendent: life no longer appears as a formation of things and an action of being created by the separative Ignorance". (Ibid)
Date of Update:
28-Feb-26
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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