Becoming Conscious of Oneself

A devotee residing at Sri Aurobindo Ashram some years ago tried an experiment which he reported. For a specific time period he determined not to speak. He did not do this in an indiscriminate way, however. He implemented this experiment by avoiding all social speech whatsoever, but agreed to speak as necessary for the work role he had been assigned. He carried a pad of paper and pen with him to let those who addressed him know about the discipline he was undertaking during that time. He reported that he was able to observe the impulse to speech, and that it arose spontaneously without any serious thought process or planning involved, seemingly as a responsive vibration to the vibrations he was receiving.

Additionally, he noted that he was able to remain inwardly concentrated for longer periods and his attention did not get dispersed as easily as when he engaged in everyday random social interactions.

There is a rationale, based in experience, as to why yogis, religious aspirants and spiritual seekers have traditionally resorted to spending periods of time (sometimes extended periods of time) alone or in very small groups in the forest, the mountains or the deserts. While mental and vital vibrations travel all over the world, the intensity and the confused garble of those vibrations in a dense urban environment is considerably higher than in less populated and remote regions, thus, allowing the seeker to focus more easily and observe the thoughts and feelings more clearly. While this is not a panacea for spiritual realisation, it is clear that at times it has been a useful process, particularly early in the development process while the power of inward concentration and observation is still in its infancy.

Sensitive individuals frequently note a sense of discomfort when they are in crowded circumstances specifically because the thoughts and feelings pile in upon them with an immediacy and power that they find hard to manage.

While it is not essential to isolate oneself entirely from social interaction in order to progress spiritually, there is no doubt that for many there can be an advantage, for some period of time, if the isolation is utilized as an opportunity to follow this internalizing process and is not turned into an avoidance of the larger issue of how to maintain the poise in the midst of all the calls of life.

The Mother notes: “To be individualised in a collectivity, one must be absolutely conscious of oneself. And of which self? — the Self which is above all intermixture, that is, what I call the Truth of your being. And as long as you are not conscious of the Truth of your being, you are moved by all kinds of things, without taking any note of it at all. Collective thought, collective suggestions are a formidable influence which act constantly on individual thought. And what is extraordinary is that one does not notice it. One believes that one thinks ‘like that’, but in truth it is the collectivity which thinks ‘like that’. The mass is always inferior to the individual. Take individuals with similar qualities, of similar categories, well, when they are alone these individuals are at least two degrees better than people of the same category in a crowd. There is a mixture of obscurities, a mixture of unconsciousness, and inevitably you slip into this unconsciousness. To escape this there is but one means: to become conscious of oneself, more and more conscious and more and more attentive.”

“Try this little exercise: at the beginning of the day, say: ‘I won’t speak without thinking of what I say.’ You believe, don’t you, that you think all that you say! It is not at all true, you will see that so many times the word you do not want to say is ready to come out, and that you are compelled to make a conscious effort to stop it from coming out.”

“I have known people who were very scrupulous about not telling lies, but all of a sudden, when together in a group, instead of speaking the truth they would spontaneously tell a lie; they did not have the intention of doing so, they did not think of it a minute before doing it, but it came ‘like that’, Why? — because they were in the company of liars; there was an atmosphere of falsehood and they had quite simply caught the malady!”

“It is thus that gradually, slowly, with perseverance, first of all with great care and much attention, one becomes conscious, learns to know oneself and then to become master of oneself.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 183-184

The Time Needed for the Transition of the Ego-Consciousness to Become a Conscious Instrument of the Divine

When the seeker becomes aware of the need for consecration and the aspiration awakens within him, he can become very impatient with the obstacles put up by the ego as it works to maintain and enhance its position. After all, the ego has developed over long periods of time as a stage toward individuation, and it does not recognise that it is now the obstruction standing in the way of the next stage of development. The transition toward the surrender of the ego to the Divine, however, is not something under the control or subject to the time-sense of the individual seeker. It is not something that happens ‘on demand’ simply because there is a desire, even an intense desire.

The evolution of consciousness, the development and manifestation of stages of consciousness of successively greater subtlety and power, is something that takes place over many millennia. The individual soul, as it goes through lifetime after lifetime of development and builds the maturity of the psychic being, has various times when the psychic comes forward with the deep aspiration to become an instrument wholly dedicated to the Divine and the divine intention in the creation. Yet the being may not be fully ready, and just as a fruit needs time to ripen before it is ready to be picked, so the individual similarly may go through long periods of preparation, even multiple lifetimes, before the Divine chooses to pluck the soul!

There is a story of the divine singer Narad who was wandering one day on earth and came across a yogi who was practicing intense austerities under a tree. The yogi took the opportunity to ask the sage when he would achieve enlightenment. Narad replied ‘in 4 lifetimes”. The yogi was upset that it would take so long!

Narad continued along the way and came across a devotee singing and dancing in an ecstatic manner under another tree. This devotee asked Narad the same question. Narad answered that as many leaves as there are on this tree, so many lifetimes will you have to go through to achieve your enlightenment. The devotee wept with tears of joy, saying that he was gratified that he would achieve his aspiration in so short a time! He was granted immediate liberation….

A disciple asks: “Sweet Mother, when does the ego become an instrument?”

The Mother writes: “When it is ready to become it.”

The disciple follows up: “How does that happen?”

The Mother continues: “How does it happen?… In each one, I believe, it happens in a different way. It may happen suddenly, in the space of a moment, by a kind of inner reversal; it may take years; it may take centuries; it may take several lives. For each one there is a moment when it happens: when he is ready.”

“And I think he is ready when he is completely formed. The purpose of existence of the ego is the formation of the individual. When the individual is ready the ego can disappear. But before that it does not disappear because it has still some work to do.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 3, Becoming an Individual, pp. 113-114

The Role and Benefit of the Physical Body

Spiritual aspirants frequently complain about the obstructions provided by the physical body. There is a need to eat, a need to sleep, the constant pressure of physical existence, the wear and tear of the aging process, the potential for illness or injury, and the eventual breakdown and dissolution of the body and the attendant needs of caring for and addressing the circumstances of the body. As they focus on the vital, mental and spiritual aspects of their existence, seekers frequently begrudge the role the body plays and the need to address its requirements. This has led seekers to try to starve, torture and discipline the body with extreme means in some cases, as the perceived obstructions of the body to the spiritual practice have caused them to find ways to minimize, or even remove, the bodily limitations.

If we shift our focus, instead, to the role and advantages provided by having a physical body, we can see that there is a real, and substantial, purpose in the creation for such a development to have occurred. In order to create a node, or nexus, of action, a focus for the flow of consciousness and the creation of multiple separate viewpoints, a physical form is helpful. The fluidity found in the mental and vital planes is not conducive to this type of fixity, and thus, has its difficulties in terms of a systematic development through time, of a particular focused line of development.

The physical body also provides a form of protection from attack by forces of the vital plane. The very existence of the physical level implies that change has to follow a process and takes time and effort, and thus slows down, disrupts or even in many cases prevents vital forces from intervening and destroying the focus of the life.

The Mother writes: “If your body were not made in the rigid form it is — for it is terribly rigid, isn’t it? — well, if all that were not so fixed, if you had no skin, here, like this, solid, if externally you were the reflection of what you are in the vital and mental fields, it would be worse than being a jelly-fish! Everything would fuse into everything else, like this…. Oh, what a mess it would be! That is why it was at first necessary to give a very rigid form. Afterwards we complain about it. We say, ‘The physical is fixed, it is a nuisance; it lacks plasticity, it lacks suppleness, it hasn’t that fluidity which can enable us to merge into the Divine.’ But this was absolutely necessary, for without this… if you simply went out of your body (most of you can’t do it because the vital being is hardly more individualised than the physical), if you came out of your body and went into the vital world, you would see that all things there intermingle, they are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another, take possession of each other, absorb each other, throw each other out… and so it goes on! But it is very difficult to find a real personality in all this. These are forces, movements, desires, vibrations.”

“There are individualities, there are personalities! But these are powers. People who are individualised in that world are either heroes or devils!”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 3, Becoming an Individual, pp. 110-111

To Become Conscious of the Source of Our Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions

As we are primarily based in our ego-consciousness, we tend to accept that ideas we have, feelings we have, emotions we express, needs and desires we seek after, are all what make up ourselves, our personality, our persistent individuality. We identify with a specific religion, political movement, philosophy, or way of life and we think that we somehow are independent and created this for ourselves.

It is an interesting (and highly illuminating) practice to step back from all of these things, and try to trace back the sources from which these things arose. Does some of this come from human instinctive behaviour passed on through millennia? Does some come from prenatal impressions? Is another portion of this based on the upbringing we have and relations with parents, siblings, relatives and friends? Does education, social media, passed on prejudice from others create the responses and reactions we have? Are there thoughts, feelings and pressures that are acting generally in the environment that are impinging upon us and pressuring a response? If we carry out this exercise with care, we can see that basically all of the surface actions and reactions are not actually our own, in terms of arising as a self-directed, self-sufficient development, but are basically things that come to us from somewhere else, and get cobbled together into what we then identify as our own set of beliefs, actions and reactions, likes and dislikes.

The Mother takes up the topic of what drives our normal human responses and actions and our basic ignorance of the sources. Once we become conscious of this dynamic, we can start to look at how to become a true individual, not just an amalgam of ideas, emotions, feelings, desires and reactions that have been built up within us from all of the various source directions.

A disciple asks: “Sweet Mother, why are we so attached to our ego?”

The Mother replies: “As I said just now, probably because you still need it very much, isn’t that so? In order to become a conscious, individualised being, one needs his ego; that is why it is there. It is only when one has realised his own individuality sufficiently, has become a conscious, independent being with its own reality, that he no longer needs the ego. And at that time one can make an effort to get rid of it. Unfortunately most people, as soon as they become real individuals, have such a sense of their importance and their ability that they no longer even think at all of getting rid of their ego. But that of course is something else.”

“Here I don’t let you go to sleep. I remind you from time to time of the true thing. But you are all very young, you see, and a certain number of years are needed, years of intensive inner formation, to become a being who thinks for himself, is conscious of his own will, and conscious of his own nature, his purpose of existence, independent of the human mass. A certain time is necessary. Some children begin when they are very small. If one begins very early, when one is twenty he can be quite formed. But you must begin when very small, and consciously, very consciously; you must begin with a sense of observation of all the movements in yourself, of their relation with others, of — precisely, of your degree of independence, real individuality, of knowing where impulses come from, where other movements come from: whether it is contagion from outside or something that arises from within yourself. A very profound study of all the movements in oneself is necessary in order to succeed simply in crystallising a being who is a little conscious, a little conscious. But when you live fluidly, so to say, when you don’t even know what goes on inside you, have some sort of vague impressions, if you question yourself, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you ask yourself, ‘Why did I think like that?’ ‘Why did I feel like that?’, even ‘Why did I do that?’, then the reply is almost always the same: ‘I don’t know. It came like that, that’s all.’ That is to say, one is not at all conscious.”

“Are you able to know, when you are with others, what comes from you and what from the others? To what extent their way of being, their particular vibrations act upon you? You are not aware of this at all. You live in a kind of ‘approximate’ consciousness, half-awake, half-asleep, in something very vague, where you have to grope like this in order to catch things. But do you have a precise, clear, exact notion of what goes on in you, why it goes on in you? And then, this: the vibrations which come to you from outside and those which come from within you? And then, again, what can come from others, changing all this, giving another orientation? You live in a kind of hazy fluidity, certain small things suddenly crystallise in your consciousness, you have just caught them for a moment; and it is just clear enough like that, as though there was a projector, just something passing on the screen and becoming clear for a second: the next minute everything has become vague, imprecise, but you are not aware of this because you have not even asked yourself the question, because you live in this way. It stops here, begins here, ends here. That’s all. You do from day to day, minute to minute, things which you do, like that…. it happens to be like that.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 3, Becoming an Individual, pp. 105-107