{"id":2136,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2136"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:41","slug":"41-the-boundaries-of-the-ignorance-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/21-22-the-life-divine\/41-the-boundaries-of-the-ignorance-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-41_The Boundaries of the Ignorance.html"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100%\" valign=\"top\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b>Chapter<br \/>\n XI  <\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"4\">The Boundaries of the Ignorance <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">One who thinks there is this world and no other.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Katha Upanishad.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">1<\/font><\/sup>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">Extended within the Infinite, . . . headless and footless, concealing his two ends.<sup><font size=\"2\">2<\/font><\/sup><br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Rig Veda.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">3<\/font><\/sup>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">He who has the knowledge &#8220;I am Brahman&#8221; becomes all this  that is; but whoever worships another divinity than the One  Self and thinks, &#8220;Other is he and I am other&#8221;, he knows not.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">4<\/font><\/sup>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This Self is fourfold&nbsp; \u2014 the Self of Waking who has the outer  intelligence and enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self  of Dream who has the inner intelligence and enjoys things  subtle, is its second part; the Self of Sleep, unified, a massed  intelligence, blissful and enjoying bliss, is the third part . . .  the lord of all, the omniscient, the inner Control. That which  is unseen, indefinable, self-evident in its one selfhood, is the  fourth part: this is the Self, this is that which has to be known.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Mandukya Upanishad.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">5<\/font><\/sup>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">A conscious being, no larger than a man&#8217;s thumb, stands in the  centre of our self; he is master of the past and the present; . . .<br \/>\nhe is today and he is tomorrow.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Katha Upanishad.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">6<\/font><\/sup><br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"5\">I<\/font>T IS<\/b> now possible to review in its larger lines this Ignorance,  or this separative knowledge labouring towards identical  knowledge, which constitutes our human mentality and, in  an obscurer form, all consciousness that has evolved below our<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">1 I. 2. 6.  <\/font><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">2<br \/>\nHead and feet, the superconscient and the inconscient.  <\/font><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">3<br \/>\nIV. I. 7, 11.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4 I. 4. 10.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5 Verses 2-7.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 6<br \/>\nII. 1. 12, 13.  &nbsp; <\/font>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 573<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">level. We see that in us it consists of a succession of waves of  being and force, pressing from outside and rising from within,  which become stuff of consciousness and formulate in a mental  cognition and mentalised sensation of self and things in Time and  Space. Time presents itself to us as a flow of dynamic movement,  Space as an objective field of contents for the experience of this  imperfect and developing awareness. By immediate awareness  the mental being mobile in Time lives perpetually in the present;  by memory he saves a certain part of his experience of self and  things from streaming away from him entirely into the past; by  thought and will and action, by mind energy, life energy, body  energy he utilises it for what he becomes in the present and is yet  to become hereafter; the force of being in him that has made him  what he is works to prolong, develop and amplify his becoming  in the future. All this insecurely held material of self-expression  and experience of things, this partial knowledge accumulated in  the succession of Time, is co-ordinated for him by perception,  memory, intelligence and will to be utilised for an ever-new or  ever-repeated becoming and for the mental, vital, physical action  which helps him to grow into what he is to be and to express<br \/>\n\twhat he already is. The present totality of all this experience of<br \/>\n\tconsciousness and output of energy is co-ordinated for relation to his being, gathered into consistency around an ego-sense  which formulates the habit of response of self-experience to the  contacts of Nature in a persistent limited field of conscious being.  It is this ego-sense that gives a first basis of coherence to what  otherwise might be a string or mass of floating impressions: all  that is so sensed is referred to a corresponding artificial centre  of mental consciousness in the understanding, the ego-idea. This  ego-sense in the life stuff and this ego-idea in the mind maintain  a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does  duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being. The surface  mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even  its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: the ego is the lynch-pin  invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The  necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is  no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there  &nbsp;<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 574<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once  wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre<br \/>\n\tand the circumference. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But the moment we study ourselves, we find that the<br \/>\n\tself experience which we thus co-ordinate and consciously utilise for  life, is a small part even of our waking individual consciousness.  We fasten only upon a very limited number of the mental sensations and perceptions of self and things which come up into our  surface consciousness in our continual present: of these again  memory saves up only a scanty part from the oblivious gulf  of the past; of the storings of memory our intelligence utilises  only a small portion for co-ordinated knowledge, will utilises a  still smaller percentage for action. A narrow selection, a large  rejection or reservation, a miserly-spendthrift system of waste  of 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. But this is  only in appearance, for it would be a wholly untrue account to  say that all that is not thus saved up and utilised is destroyed,  becomes null and has passed away ineffectually and in vain. A  great part of it has been quietly used by Nature herself to form  us and actuates that sufficiently large mass of our growth and  becoming and action for which our conscious memory, will and  intelligence are not responsible. A still greater part is used by  her as a store from which she draws and which she utilises,  while we ourselves have utterly forgotten the origin and provenance of this material which we find ourselves employing with  a deceptive sense of creation; for we imagine we are creating  this new material of our work, when we are only combining  results out of that which we have forgotten but Nature in us has  remembered. If we admit rebirth as part of her system, we shall  realise that all experience has its use; for all experience counts  in this prolonged building and nothing is rejected except what  has exhausted its utility and would be a burden on the future.  A judgment from what appears now in our conscious surface is  fallacious: for when we study and understand, we perceive that  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 575<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">only a little of her action and growth in us is conscious; the bulk  of it is carried on subconsciously as in the rest of her material  life. 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.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">A superficial observation of our waking consciousness  shows us that of a great part of our individual being and  becoming we are quite ignorant; it is to us the Inconscient, just  as much as the life of the plant, the metal, the earth, the elements.  But if we carry our knowledge farther, pushing psychological  experiment and observation beyond their normal bounds, we  find how vast is the sphere of this supposed Inconscient or  this subconscient in our total existence,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 the subconscient,  so seeming and so called by us because it is a concealed  consciousness,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 and what a small and fragmentary portion  of our being is covered by our waking self-awareness. We arrive  at the knowledge that our waking mind and ego are only a  superimposition upon a submerged, a subliminal self,&nbsp; \u2014 for so  that self appears to us,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 or, more accurately, an inner being,  with a much vaster capacity of experience; 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.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This concealed self and consciousness is our real or whole  being, of which the outer is a part and a phenomenon, a selective  formation for a surface use. We perceive only a small number of  the contacts of things which impinge upon us; the inner being  perceives all that enters or touches us and our environment. We  perceive only a part of the workings of our life and being; the  inner being perceives so much that we might almost suppose that  nothing escapes its view. We remember only a small selection  from our perceptions, and of these even we keep a great part  in a store-room where we cannot always lay our hand upon  what we need; the inner being retains everything that it has  ever received and has it always ready to hand. We can form into  co-ordinated understanding and knowledge only so much of our  perceptions and memories as our trained intelligence and mental  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 576<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">capacity can grasp in their sense and appreciate in their relations: the intelligence of the inner being needs no training, but  preserves the accurate form and relations of all its perceptions  and memories and,&nbsp; \u2014 though this is a proposition which may be<br \/>\n\tconsidered doubtful or difficult to concede in its fullness,&nbsp; \u2014 can<br \/>\n\tgrasp immediately, when it does not possess already, their significance. And its perceptions are not confined, as are ordinarily  those of the waking mind, to the scanty gleanings of the physical  senses, but extend far beyond and use, as telepathic phenomena  of many kinds bear witness, a subtle sense the limits of which  are too wide to be easily fixed. The relations between the surface  will or impulsion and the subliminal urge, mistakenly described  as unconscious or subconscious, have not been properly studied  except in regard to unusual and unorganised manifestations and  to certain morbidly abnormal phenomena of the diseased human  mind; but if we pursue our observation far enough, we shall find  that the cognition and will or impulsive force of the inner being  really stand behind the whole conscious becoming; the latter  represents only that part of its secret endeavour and achievement  which rises successfully to the surface of our life. To know our<br \/>\n\tinner being is the first step towards a real self-knowledge. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">If we<br \/>\n\tundertake this self-discovery and enlarge our knowledge of the subliminal self, so conceiving it as to include in it  our lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends, we shall  discover that it is really this which provides the whole material  of our apparent being and that our perceptions, our memories,  our effectuations of will and intelligence are only a selection  from its perceptions, memories, activities and relations of will  and intelligence; our very ego is only a minor and superficial  formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience. It is,  as it were, the urgent sea out of which the waves of our conscious becoming arise. But what are its limits? how far does it  extend? what is its fundamental nature? Ordinarily, we speak  of a subconscious existence and include in this term all that is  not on the waking surface. But the whole or the greater part  of the inner or subliminal self can hardly be characterised by  that epithet; for when we say subconscious, we think readily  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 577<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">of an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness or else a  submerged consciousness below and in a way inferior to and<br \/>\n\tless than our organised waking awareness or, at least, less in possession of<br \/>\n\titself. But we find, when we go within, that some where in our subliminal part,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 though not co-extensive with  it since it has also obscure and ignorant regions,&nbsp; \u2014 there is a  consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession  of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and  is the percipient of our daily hours; that is our inner being, and  it is this which we must regard as our subliminal self and set  apart the subconscient as an inferior, a lowest occult province  of our nature. In the same way there is a superconscient part  of our total existence in which there is what we discover to be  our highest self, and this too we can set apart as a higher occult  province of our nature.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But what then is the subconscient and where does it begin  and how is it related to our surface being or to the subliminal  of which it would seem more properly to be a province? We are  aware of our body and know that we have a physical existence,  even very largely identify ourselves with it, and yet most of its  operations are really subconscious to our mental being; not only  does the mind take no part in them but, as we suppose, our most  physical being has no awareness of its own hidden operations  or, by itself, of its own existence; it knows or rather feels only  so much of itself as is enlightened by mind-sense and observable  by intelligence. We are aware of a vitality working in this bodily  form and structure as in the plant or lower animal, a vital existence which is also for the most part subconscious to us, for we  only observe some of its movements and reactions. We are partly  aware of its operations, but not by any means of all or most of  them, and rather of those which are abnormal than those which  are normal; its wants impress themselves more forcibly upon us  than its satisfactions, its diseases and disorders than its health  and its regular rhythm, its death is more poignant to us than  its life is vivid: we know as much of it as we can consciously  observe and use or as much as forces itself upon us by pain  and pleasure and other sensations or as a cause of nervous or  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 578<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">physical reaction and disturbance, but no more. Accordingly, we  suppose that this vital-physical part of us also is not conscious  of its own operations or has only a suppressed consciousness  or no-consciousness like the plant or an inchoate consciousness  like the incipient animal; it becomes conscious only so far as it  is enlightened by mind and observable by intelligence.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This is an exaggeration and a confusion due to our identification of consciousness with mentality and mental awareness.<br \/>\n\tMind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to<br \/>\n\tphysical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if  we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these  parts of us, we can discover that life and body&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 even the most  physical parts of life&nbsp; \u2014 have a consciousness of their own, a  consciousness proper to an obscurer vital and to a bodily being,  even such an elemental awareness as primitive animal forms  may have, but in us partly taken up by the mind and to that  extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the  mental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind  involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there  is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action  and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary  activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility and pleasure. Although thus inferior, it has this awareness  obscure, limited and automatic; but since it is less in possession  of itself, void of what to us is the stamp of mentality, we may  justly call it the submental, but not so justly the subconscious  part of our being. For when we stand back from it, when we can  separate our mind from its sensations, we perceive that this is  a nervous and sensational and automatically dynamic mode of  consciousness, a gradation of awareness different from the mind:  it has its own separate reactions to contacts and is sensitive to  them in its own power of feeling; it does not depend for that  on the mind&#8217;s perception and response. The true subconscious is  other than this vital or physical substratum; it is the Inconscient  vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions  to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 579<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">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<br \/>\n\tautomatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But the subliminal<br \/>\n\tself has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, 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 selecting intelligence,  will, self-consciousness; but even though the same in kind, they  are wider, more developed, more sovereign. And it has other  capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a  power of direct awareness of the being, whether acting in itself or  turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge,  more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at understanding  and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true  mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the  body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and  the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality  superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and  physical organs although it is aware of them and their works  and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only  subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself  to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a  secret intraconscient and circumconscient than a subconscient;  for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature.  This description is no doubt truest of the deeper parts of the  subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a  more ignorant action and those who, penetrating within, pause  in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man&#8217;s-land between  the subliminal and the surface, may fall into much delusion and  confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of  the subconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has  no kinship to the Inconscience.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 580<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient  which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the  material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the  subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety  of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic  entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which  the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a  wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate  account of what we are; for there is not only something deep  within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also  high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental  personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country  of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the  inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance, luminous,  powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of  our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense  of our being, not its ultimate mystery. We become aware, in  a certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all  these three, aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality  sustaining and exceeding them all, which humanity speaks of  vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from these superconscient  ranges we have visitations and in our highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit. There is then in our total<br \/>\n\trange of existence a superconscience as well as a subconscience and<br \/>\n\tinconscience, overarching and perhaps enveloping our subliminal and our waking selves, but unknown to us, seemingly  unattainable and incommunicable.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what  this spirit or oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest  vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in  ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the<br \/>\n\tpower of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious,<br \/>\n\tinfinite. That is the real Being, Lord and Creator, who, as the Cosmic Self veiled in Mind and Life and Matter, has<br \/>\n\tdescended into that which we call the Inconscient and constitutes and directs its subconscient existence by His supramental  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 581<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">will and knowledge, has ascended out of the Inconscient and  dwells in the inner being constituting and directing its subliminal<br \/>\n\texistence by the same will and knowledge, has cast up out of the subliminal<br \/>\n\tour surface existence and dwells secretly in it over seeing with the same supreme light and mastery its stumbling  and groping movements. If the subliminal and subconscient may  be compared to a sea which throws up the waves of our surface  mental existence, the superconscience may be compared to an  ether which constitutes, contains, overroofs, inhabits and determines the movements of the sea and its waves. It is there in this  higher ether that we are inherently and intrinsically conscious of  our self and spirit, not as here below by a reflection in silent mind  or by acquisition of the knowledge of a hidden Being within us;  it is through it, through that ether of superconscience, that we  can pass to a supreme status, knowledge, experience. Of this  superconscient existence through which we can arrive at the  highest status of our real, our supreme Self, we are normally  even more ignorant than of the rest of our being; yet is it into the  knowledge of it that our being emerging out of the involution  in Inconscience is struggling to evolve. This limitation to our  surface existence, this unconsciousness of our highest as of our  inmost self, is our first, our capital ignorance.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">We exist superficially by a becoming in Time; but here again  out of that becoming in Time the surface mind, which we call  ourselves, is ignorant of all the long past and the long future,  aware only of the little life which it remembers and not of all<br \/>\n\teven of that; for much of it is lost to its observation, much to its memory.<br \/>\n\tWe readily believe,&nbsp; \u2014 for the simple and compelling but insufficient reason that we do not remember, have  not perceived, are not informed of anything else,&nbsp; \u2014 that we came  into existence first by our physical birth into this life and shall  cease to exist by the death of this body and the cessation of  this brief physical activity. But while this is true of our physical  mentality and physical vitality, our corporeal sheath, for they  have been constituted at our birth and are dissolved by death,  it is not true of our real becoming in Time. For our real self in  the cosmos is the Superconscient which becomes the subliminal  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 582<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">self and throws up this apparent surface self to act out the brief  and limited part assigned to it between birth and death as a  present living and conscious self-formation of the being in the  stuff of a world of inconscient Nature. The true being which  we are no more dies by the cessation of one life than the actor  ceases to exist when he has finished one of his parts or the  poet when he has poured out something of himself in one of  his poems; our mortal personality is only such a role or such a  creative self-expression. Whether or no we accept the theory of  many births of the same soul or psychic being in various human  bodies upon this earth, certain it is that our becoming in Time  goes far back into the past and continues far on into the future.  For neither the superconscient nor the subliminal can be limited  by a few moments of Time: the one is eternal and Time is only  one of its modes; to the other, to the subliminal, it is an infinite  field of various experience and the very existence of the being  presupposes all the past for its own and equally all the future.  Yet of this past which alone explains our present being, our mind  knows, if knowledge it can be called, only this actual physical  existence and its memories: of the future which alone explains  the constant trend of our becoming, it knows nothing. So fixed  are we in the experience of our ignorance that we even insist that  the one can be known only by its vestiges and the other cannot  be known, because the future is not yet and the past is no longer  in existence; yet are they both here in us, the past involved and  active, the future ready to evolve in the continuity of the secret  spirit. This is another limiting and frustrating ignorance.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But even here the self-ignorance of man does not end; for not  only is he ignorant of his superconscient Self, of his subliminal  self, of his subconscient self, he is ignorant of his world in which  he presently lives, which constantly acts on and through him  and on which and by which he has to act. And the stamp of his  ignorance is this, that he regards it as something quite separate  from him, as not-self because it is other than his individual  nature-formation and his ego. So too when he confronts his  superconscient Self, he thinks of it first as something quite other  than he, an external, even extracosmic God; when he confronts  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 583<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">and becomes aware of his subliminal self, it seems to him at  first another greater person or another consciousness than his  own which can support and guide him. Of the world he regards  only one little foam-bubble, his life and body, as himself. But  when we get into our subliminal consciousness, we find it extending itself to be commensurate with its world; when we get  into our superconscient Self, we find that the world is only its  manifestation and that all in it is the One, all in it is our self.  We see that there is one indivisible Matter of which our body  is a knot, one indivisible Life of which our life is an eddy, one  indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording,  forming or translating and transmitting station, one indivisible  Spirit of which our soul and individual being are a portion or  a manifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division  and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power  to maintain the strong though always permeable walls it has  created to be its own prison. Ego is the most formidable of the  knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">As we are ignorant of our existence in Time except the  small hour which we remember, so we are ignorant of ourselves  in Space except the small span of which we are mentally and  sensationally conscious, the single body that moves there and  the mind and life which are identified with it, and we regard  the environment as a not-self we have to deal with and use: it  is this identification and this conception that form the life of  the ego. Space according to one view is only the coexistence of  things or of souls; the Sankhya affirms the plurality of souls and  their independent existence, and their coexistence is then only  possible by the unity of Nature-force, their field of experience,  Prakriti: but, even granting this, the coexistence is there and it is  in the end coexistence in one Being. Space is the self-conceptive  extension of that one Being; it is the one spiritual Existence  displaying the field of movement of its Conscious-Force in its  own self as Space. Because that Conscious-Force concentrates  in manifold bodies, lives, minds and the soul presides over one  of them, therefore our mentality is concentrated in this and  regards this as itself and all the rest as not-self, just as it regards  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 584<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">its one life on which it concentrates by a similar ignorance as  its whole term of existence cut off from the past and the future.  Yet we cannot really know our own mentality without knowing  the one Mind, our own vitality without knowing the one Life,  our own body without knowing the one Matter; for not only is  their nature determined by the nature of that, but by that their  activities are at every moment being influenced and determined.  But, with all this sea of being flowing in on us, we do not  participate in its consciousness, but know of it only so much as  can be brought into the surface of our minds and co-ordinated  there. The world lives in us, thinks in us, forms itself in us; but  we imagine that it is we who live, think, become separately by  ourselves and for ourselves. As we are ignorant of our timeless,  of our superconscient, of our subliminal and subconscient selves,  so are we ignorant of our universal self. This alone saves us that  ours is an ignorance which is full of the impulse and strives  irresistibly, eternally, by the very law of its being towards the  realisation of self-possession and self-knowledge. A many-sided  Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the  definition of the consciousness of man the mental being,&nbsp; \u2014 or,  looking at it from another side, we may say equally that it is  a limited separative awareness of things striving to become an  integral consciousness and an integral Knowledge.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 585<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapter XI &nbsp; The Boundaries of the Ignorance &nbsp; One who thinks there is this world and no other. Katha Upanishad.1 &nbsp; Extended within the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-22-the-life-divine","wpcat-45-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}