Most people respond to life as it comes to them and react according to the energy that they are able to receive and process in some form or another. They remain immersed in the external personality. They become the fear, the anger, the hunger, the thirst, the craving, the pleasure, the pain, the joy, the sorrow, etc. They are attached to the impressions and sensations and how their internal awareness feels about them.
The spiritual seeker, on the other hand, eventually works to become ‘non-attached’ to these external happenings, in whatever form they take. They work to establish a separate inner witness consciousness which is able to observe and appreciate the reactions of the external nature, but remain nevertheless distant from them, as if they are watching their external personality in a motion picture.
Especially during the transition from the one standpoint to the other, there come periods where the seeker is clearly in the position of the observer and not reacting in his deepest self to whatever happens outside; while there are also times when he slips back into the habitual way of receiving, responding and reacting that have been human nature generally since time immemorial. This implies that there are times he is carried away by the energy that is active in those lower parts of the being and this creates obstacles, distractions and difficulties for the seeker.
As the witness awareness gets stabilised, the seeker is able to observe the forces that are trying to move his response and through his non-attachment, his understanding, his mental will and his aspiration and consecration, he is able to more eaisly manage, control and direct those forces toward the higher fulfillment he is seeking.
Sri Aurobindo writes: “If you go down into your lower parts or ranges of nature, you must be always careful to keep a vigilant connection with the higher already regenerated levels of the consciousness and to bring down the Light and Purity through them into these nether still unregenerated regions. If there is not this vigilance, one gets absorbed in the unregenerated movement of the inferior layers and there is obscuration and trouble.”
“The safest way is to remain in the higher part of the consciousness and put a pressure from it on the lower to change. It can be done in this way, only must get the knack and the habit of it. If you achieve the power to do that, it makes the progress much easier, smoother and less painful.”
Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 92-93
Sri Aurobindo Studies 