Supermind in Integral Yoga - Problem of Ignorance Bondage, Liberation and Perfection - Part Four

PART FOUR

Journey of Evolutionary Ignorance towards Knowledge: Journey of Yoga

The human ignorant journey that turns inwards is a reversal of the involutionary movement of Ignorance which was a downward looking movement of consciousness speedily separating itself from the integral consciousness of unity and differentiations resulting in ignoring all that is behind that movement and in exclusive concentration on the workings of energy up to such an acute point that the consciousness becomes totally identified with the workings of energy. In contrast, this inward-looking (antarmukha) concentration recovers increasingly the distinction between the workings of energy in work, on the one hand, and those workings of energy in consciousness, on the other, that can stand apart and observe and even intelligently master the energy in work. This is the starting-point of a genuine yogic movement which, when pursued thoroughly, has immense consequences for the attainment of true knowledge of the totality, universality, unity and oneness, and even for eventual invasion on all the products of Ignorance and elimination of their errors and illusions for purposes of what may be called integral transformation of the workings of the consciousness and energy of the world of our ordinary and ignorant experience.

Discoveries of the Yogic Science: Order of the Worlds and Order of States of Consciousness

As one moves more and more inwards, one discovers, according to yogic science, that the physical universe and our terrestrial world is only one of several layers of the world in which one can come to live simultaneously. The knowledge of the supra-physical worlds and their order can be found recorded in the Veda and the Upanishad. Hence, the Katha Upanishad states: "They who dwell in the ignorance, within it, wise in their own wit and deeming themselves very learned, men bewildered are they who wander about stumbling round and round helplessly like blind men led by the blind. The childish wit bewildered and drunken with the illusion of riches cannot open its eyes to see the passage to heaven: for he that thinks that this world is and there is no other, comes again and again into Death's thraldom"²⁸. According to the yogic science, there exist the subtle physical world and the vital world and the mental world and even higher worlds, the world of the Overmind, the world of the Supermind, and still the worlds of Sachchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss). One also discovers that, as one begins to live more and more inwardly, one can attain to higher and higher states of consciousness, and one can enter and dwell in the higher supra-physical worlds.

Description of Four states of Consciousness in the Mandukya Upanishad: Yogic Terms of States of Ignorance and Knowledge²⁹

Mandukya Upanishad speaks of the surface waking consciousness in which we ordinarily live as the state of wakefulness (jāgarita), where one feels and enjoys gross

objects of our physical world. This state is distinguished from the state of inward consciousness, the state of yogic dream (swapna), where one feels and enjoys subtle objects. There is a third state, the state of sleep (supta). That dream consciousness and this sleep consciousness are not states of ordinary dream and sleep, but of increasingly inner yogic states of consciousness. The dream consciousness that is spoken of here opens up subtle faculties of consciousness by which subtle objects of the subtle worlds are experienced and enjoyed. The dream consciousness opens up doors of what Sri Aurobindo calls the worlds of subliminal consciousness. There is a complete difference between dream-state of yoga and the physical-state of dream. The ordinary dream-state belongs to the physical mind; in the dream-state of yoga the mind proper and inner mind are at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. In the yogic dream-state, the mind is in a clear position of itself, and stands in contrast with the incoherent jumble of the dreams of the physical mind; there is coherence in the yogic dream-state. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or coordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind

is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind.

"...It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body;....

"The experiences of the dream-state are infinitely various. ...it is able to establish connection with all the worlds to which it has natural access or to which it chooses to acquire access, from the physical to the higher mental worlds. ...It is able first to take cognizance of all things whether in the material world or upon other planes by aid of perceptible images, not only images of things visible, but of sounds, touch, smell, taste, movement, action, of all that makes itself sensible to the mind and its organs. For the mind in Samadhi has access to the inner space called sometimes the cidākāśa, to depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe, and all things sensible, whether in the material world or any other, create reconstituting vibrations, sensible echoes, reproductions, recurrent images of themselves which that subtler ether receives and retains.

"It is this which explains many of the phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc;.. .But the powers of the dream-state do not end here. It can by a sort of projection of ourselves, in a subtle form of the mental or vital body, actually enter into other planes and worlds or into distant places and scenes of this world, move among them with a sort of bodily presence and bring back the direct experience of their scenes and truths and occurrences. It may even project actually the mental or vital body for the same purpose and travel in it, leaving the physical body in a profoundest trance without sign of life until its return."³⁰

Our subliminal being to which we can have access more readily in the yogic dream-state, is not, like our surface being, an outcome of the evolutionary energy of the Inconscient. It is a meeting place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. Hence, there is a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface-being maintains with the universe with the sense-mind and the senses.

As Sri Aurobindo explains: "The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when

they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance."³¹

According to the Mandukya Upanishad, there is, apart from the waking and dream-state, the sleep-state. The description of this state makes it clear that it is not the sleep-state of the physical mind but the yogic sleep-state. The Upanishad states: "When one sleeps and yearns not with any desire, nor sees any dream, that is the perfect slumber. He whose place is the' perfect slumber, who has become Oneness, who is wisdom gathered into itself, who is made of mere delight, who enjoys delight unrelated, to whom conscious mind is the door, Prajna, the Lord of Wisdom, He is a third. This is the Almighty, this is the Omniscient, this is the Inner Soul, this is the Womb of the Universe, this is the Birth and Destruction of creatures."³²

It is significant that the sleep-state is described as Prajna, the Master of Wisdom and Knowledge, Self of the Gnosis, and as Ishwara, the Lord of being. As Sri Aurobindo explains, the words dream and sleep used in Upanishads are nothing but an image drawn from the experience of the normal physical mind with regard to planes in which it is not at home. To the normal mind all that exceeds its normal experience but still comes into its scope, seems as dream; but at the point where it borders on things quite beyond its scope, it can no longer see truth even as in a dream, but passes into blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber.

Subliminal consciousness opens itself up to larger worlds of the subtle-physical, vital and mental worlds, but the experiences of these worlds are similar to the experiences which come under the scope of our ordinary physical, vital,

mental consciousness. Hence, the experiences of subliminal consciousness can be said to be experiences of yogic dream-state. Just as in ordinary dream-state, objects are cognized, not through sense organs, but by direct contact, even so the objects of the subliminal consciousness in yogic dream-state are also cognized by direct contact or intimate direct contact. The experiences of the subliminal consciousness can aid the seeker in developing a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion and ever deeper vision and identification. These experiences, therefore, could be a great prelude to entry into superconscience where one can experience increasingly the powers and manifestations of the diversity behind which unity becomes more and more prominent. And, if by Knowledge, we mean the knowledge of diversity as rooted in unity and in the ultimate Oneness, then one can say that the yogic dream-state can become a prelude to yogic sleep-state and even of still transcendental state (turiya). Thus, while the ordinary waking state, where only multiplicity or part of multiplicity is seen and experienced, is a state of Ignorance, the subliminal consciousness or the yogic dream-state can be regarded as a state of Knowledge-Ignorance, and the experiences of the yogic sleep-state and of still higher state, which the Upanishad describes as turiya, can be considered to be experience of Knowledge. In that light, one can gradually pass or evolve from Ignorance to Knowledge, and one can see in that passage how one can pass into Knowledge proper.

And yet this is an incomplete account of Ignorance, since we still need to add one extremely important factor, namely, that of the phenomenon of identification, which is central to the evolutionary processes of Ignorance.

Ignorance and Identification: Analysis of Ego-Sense: Surface Consciousness, Subconscious and Subliminal³³

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. This identification becomes more and more visible with the growth of individuality during the course of the process of evolution starting from the inconscience. The material existence has only a physical, not a mental, individuality. It is only when evolution proceeds to develop forms of life and forms of mind that individuality begins to appear. This individuality takes the form of the mental, vital and physical ego-sense. Developing from inconscience to self-conscience, from nescience of self and things to knowledge of self and things, the Mind arrives thus far that it is aware of all its superficially conscious becoming as related to a sense of "I". That "I" partly identifies itself with the conscious becoming, partly thinks of it as something other than the becoming and superior to it, even perhaps eternal and unchanging. In the last resort, by the aid of its reason which distinguishes, in order to coordinate, it may fix its self-experience on the becoming only, on the constantly changing self and reject the idea of something other than it as a fiction of the mind; or it may fix its self-experience into a direct consciousness of its own eternal being and reject the becoming, even when it is compelled to be aware of it, as a fiction of the mind and the senses or the vanity of a temporary inferior existence.

Psychologically, however, there is in mental being a growing sense of "I" which continues to identify itself with what can be called non-self. That state of identification with the non-self is not something fixed and unalterable; it

fluctuates; in itself the "I" or the ego-sense is a finite knot in the movement of evolving Prakriti which performs the function of coordination, but it is so engaged in its task of coordination that it is only from time to time that it can draw back from its coordinating activity and wonder about itself as to what it really is. It really does not know that it is only a coordinating sense operating as a cog in the huge machine of evolving universal Prakriti; watching its own activity of coordination it feels itself to be superior to the movements that it happens to coordinate, and observing itself superficially and finding itself all alone in the domain in which it is coordinating whatever comes within the purview of its observation, it begins to regard itself as independent of all the rest and even begins to behave and act as if it is a sovereign and independent free self. The ego-sense is felt to be identified with that operation of coordinating activity over which it appears to be the sovereign master. In reality, however, there is no such thing as a finite which is truly independent of all the rest. This sense of independence or ego-sense is only a sense, resulting from a state of ignorance, — a result of the finite knot of universal Prakriti looking at itself within a limited field in which it sees nothing else than itself as a sole coordinating agency of all that it surveys and observes. As a result, as the limited field in which the ego-sense is operating becomes more and more expanded, its own boundaries of its sovereignty begin to fluctuate and fade away; but then it begins to identify itself with a new and larger field, and this process of identification continues almost indefinitely. The ego identifying itself with the not-self, the ego viewing itself as independent and free, and the ego gradually expanding its fields of identification — all these are movements of errors born of ego's ignorance of

what it truly is. In a sense, the ego-sense lives in a state of self-contradiction: it constantly shrinks from others and yet it constantly aims at expanding itself and enlarging its identification with larger fields of not-self.

A point is reached in the evolutionary process when one begins to realize that our waking mind and ego are only a superimposition upon a submerged, and subliminal self or inner being, which has a much vaster capacity of experience. This impels a journey of self-discovery in which we begin to enlarge our knowledge of the subliminal self, corresponding to yogic dream-state, and, at first, we conceive it as something that includes in it what is our lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends. It is only when our self-discovery becomes more and more precise that we begin to distinguish between the subliminal proper and sub-conscience. And if we ask as to what exactly is our sub-conscience, we may note, first of all, that it is principally our awareness of our body and our awareness that we have of our physical existence. To begin with, we find ourselves largely identified with our body, and yet we find that most of the operations of our own body are really subconscious to our mental being. Similarly, even though we may find ourselves identified with vitality working in our body, we are only partly aware of its operations. We find that our mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality. But we can discover that life and body have a consciousness of their own, which is obscure, limited and automatic. That awareness is submental; but we can also travel below the vital or physical substratum; it is there that we find the true subconscious; this subconscious is not identical with inconscience, but it is the inconscience

vibrating on the borders of consciousness, "sending up its 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, physical perturbations and upheavals, in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature."³⁴

This description of subconscious shows how the subliminal is clearly distinct from the subconscious. In contrast to the subconscious, the subliminal self is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, and a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selective intelligent will, self-consciousness; but even though of the same kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign. It is only subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself to the surface; it works behind the veil unless the veil is removed by power of yogic concentration. The subliminal may actually be described more accurately as a secret intraconscient and circumconscient rather than subconscient.