{"id":619,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=619"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:16","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:16","slug":"38-memory-ego-and-self-experience-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/18-the-life-divine-volume-18\/38-memory-ego-and-self-experience-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-38_Memory, Ego and Self-Experience .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> IX <\/font>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 
\n\t\t
\n\t\tMemory, Ego and Self-Experience <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

                                    <\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

   
\n           
\n                    H<\/b>ere this God, the Mind, in its dream experiences again and
\nagain
\n                                   
\nwhat once was experienced, what has been seen and what has not
\n                                     been seen, what has been heard and what has  not been heard; what
\n                                     has been experienced and what has
\nnot been experienced, what is
\n                                     and what is not, all it sees, it is all and sees.
\n
                                                                                                                           
\nPrasna Upanishad. 1<\/sup> <\/font><\/p>\n

                                     To dwell in our true being is liberation; the sense of ego is a fall
\nfrom the
\n                                      truth of our being.
\n
                                                                                                                                   Mahopanishad. 2<\/sup> <\/font><\/p>\n

                                       One in many births, a single ocean holder of all streams of movement,
\n                                        sees our hearts.
\n
                                                                                                                                              
\nRig Veda. 3<\/sup> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     T<\/b><\/font>HE<\/font>
\ndirect self-consciousness of the mental being, that by which it becomes
\naware of its own nameless and formless
\nexistence behind the flow of a differentiated self-experience, of its
\neternal soul-substance behind the mental formations of
\nthat substance, of its self behind the ego, goes behind mentality to
\nthe timelessness of an eternal present; it is that in it which
\nis ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction of past,
\npresent and future. It is also unaffected by the distinctions
\nof space or of circumstance; for if the mental being ordinarily says of
\nitself, “I am in the body, I am here, I am there, I shall
\nbe elsewhere”, yet when it learns to fix itself in this direct
\nself-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this is the language
\nof its changing self-experience which only expresses the relations of
\nits surface consciousness to the environment and to
\nexternalities. Distinguishing these, detaching itself from these, it
\nperceives that the self of which it is directly conscious does
\nnot in any way change by these outward changes, but is always the same,
\nunaffected by the mutations of the body or of the
\nmentality or of the field in which these move and act. It is in its
\nessence featureless, relationless, without any other
\ncharacter than that of pure conscious existence self-sufficient and
\neternally satisfied with pure\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

         1<\/sup>  IV. 5.       
\n2<\/sup>  V. 2           
\n3<\/sup>  X. 5. 1.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage 511<\/p>\n

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\n

being, self-blissful. Thus we become aware of the stable Self, the eternal “Am”, or rather the immutable “Is” without any
\ncategory of personality or Time. <\/p>\n

    
\nBut this consciousness of Self, as it is timeless, so is capable also
\nof freely regarding Time as a thing reflected in it and
\nas either the cause or the subjective field of a changing experience.
\nIt is then the eternal “I am”, the unchanging
\nconsciousness on whose surface changes of conscious experience occur in
\nthe process of Time. The surface consciousness
\nis constantly adding to its experience or rejecting from its
\nexperience, and by every addition it is modified and by every
\nrejection also it is modified; although that deeper self which supports
\nand contains this mutation remains unmodified, the
\nouter or superficial self is constantly developing its experience so
\nthat it can never say of itself absolutely, “I am the same
\nthat I was a moment ago.” Those who live in this surface Time-self and
\nhave not the habit of drawing back inward towards
\nthe immutable or the capacity of dwelling in it, are even incapable of
\nthinking of themselves apart from this ever
\nself-modifying mental experience. That is for them their self and it is
\neasy for them, if they look with detachment at its
\nhappenings, to agree with the conclusion of the Buddhist Nihilists that
\nthis self is in fact nothing but a stream of idea and
\nexperience and mental action, the persistent flame which is yet never
\nthe same flame, and to conclude that there is no such
\nthing as a real self, but only a flow of experience and behind it
\nNihil: there is experience of knowledge without a Knower, experience of
\nbeing without an Existent; there are simply a number of elements, parts
\nof a flux without a real whole, which combine to create the illusion of
\na Knower and Knowledge and the Known, the illusion of an Existent and
\nexistence and the experience of existence. Or they can conclude that
\nTime is the only real existence and they themselves are its creatures.
\nThis conclusion of an illusory existent in a real or unreal world is as
\ninevitable to this kind of withdrawal as is the opposite conclusion of
\na real Existence but an illusory world to the thinker who, dwelling on
\nthe immobile self, observes everything else as a mutable not-self; he
\ncomes eventually to regard the latter as the result of a deluding trick
\nof consciousness. <\/p>\n


\nPage 512<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

      But let us look
\na little at this surface consciousness without theorising, studying it
\nonly in its facts. We see it first as a
\npurely subjective phenomenon. There is a constant rapid shifting of
\nTime-point which it is impossible to arrest for a moment.
\nThere is a constant changing, even when there is no shifting of
\nSpace-circumstance, a change both in the body or form of
\nitself which the consciousness directly inhabits and the environing
\nbody or form of things in which it less directly lives. It is
\nequally affected by both, though more vividly, because directly, by the
\nsmaller than by the larger habitation, by its own body
\nthan by the body of the world, because only of the changes in its own
\nbody is it directly conscious and of the body of the
\nworld only indirectly through the senses and the effects of the
\nmacrocosm on the microcosm. This change of the body and
\nthe surroundings is not so insistently obvious or not so obviously
\nrapid as the swift mutation of Time; yet it is equally real
\nfrom moment to moment and equally impossible to arrest. But we see that
\nthe mental being only regards all this mutation so
\nfar as it produces effects upon its own mental consciousness, generates
\nimpressions and changes in its mental experience
\nand mental body, because only through the mind can it be aware of its
\nchanging physical habitation and its changing
\nworld-experience. Therefore there is, as well as a shifting or change
\nof Time-point and Space-field, a constant modifying
\nchange of the sum of circumstances experienced in Time and Space and as
\nthe result a constant modification of the mental
\npersonality which is the form of our superficial or apparent self. All
\nthis change of circumstance is summed up in
\nphilosophical language as causality; for in this stream of the cosmic
\nmovement the antecedent state seems to be the cause
\nof a subsequent state, or else this subsequent state seems to be the
\nresult of a previous action of persons, objects or forces:
\nyet in fact what we call cause may very well be only circumstance. Thus
\nthe mind has over and above its direct
\nself-consciousness a more or less indirect mutable self-experience
\nwhich it divides into two parts, its subjective experience
\nof the ever-modified mental states of its personality and its objective
\nexperience of the ever-changing environment which
\nseems partly or wholly to cause and is yet at the same time itself
\naffected by the workings\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 513<\/p>\n

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\n

of that personality. But all this experience is at bottom subjective; for even the objective and external is only known to mind
\nin the form of subjective impressions. <\/p>\n

   
\nHere the part played by Memory increases greatly in importance; for
\nwhile all that it can do for the mind with regard to
\nits direct self-consciousness is to remind it that it existed and was
\nthe same in the past as in the present, it becomes in our
\ndifferentiated or surface self-experience an important power linking
\ntogether past and present experiences, past and present
\npersonality, preventing chaos and dissociation and assuring the
\ncontinuity of the stream in the surface mind. Still even here
\nwe must not exaggerate the function of memory or ascribe to it that
\npart of the operations of consciousness which really
\nbelongs to the activity of other power-aspects of the mental being. It
\nis not the memory alone which constitutes the
\nego-sense; memory is only a mediator between the sense-mind and the
\nco-ordinating intelligence: it offers to the intelligence
\nthe past data of experience which the mind holds somewhere within but
\ncannot carry with it in its running from moment to
\nmoment on the surface. <\/p>\n

   
\nA little analysis will make this apparent. We have in all functionings
\nof the mentality four elements, the object of mental
\nconsciousness, the act of mental consciousness, the occasion and the
\nsubject. In the self-experience of the self-observing
\ninner being, the object is always some state or movement or wave of the
\nconscious being, anger, grief or other emotion,
\nhunger or other vital craving, impulse or inner life-reaction or some
\nform of sensation, perception or thought activity. The act
\nis some kind of mental observation and conceptual valuation of this
\nmovement or wave or else a mental sensation of it in
\nwhich observation and valuation may be involved and even lost,—so that
\nin this act the mental person may either separate
\nthe act and the object by a distinguishing perception or confuse them
\ntogether indistinguishably. That is to say, he may either
\nsimply become a movement, let us put it, of angry consciousness, not at
\nall standing back from that activity, not reflecting or
\nobserving himself, not controlling the feeling or the accompanying
\naction, or he may observe what he becomes and reflect
\non it, with this seeing or perception in his mind “I am angry”. In the
\nformer\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 514<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

case the subject or mental person, the act of
\nconscious self-experience and the substantial angry becoming of the
\nmind
\nwhich is the object of the self-experience, are all rolled up into one
\nwave of conscious-force in movement; but in the latter
\nthere is a certain rapid analysis of its constituents and the act of
\nself-experience partly detaches itself from the object. Thus
\nby this act of partial detachment we are able not only to experience
\nourselves dynamically in the becoming, in the process of
\nmovement of conscious-force itself, but to stand back, perceive and
\nobserve ourselves and, if the detachment is sufficient, to
\ncontrol our feeling and action, control to some extent our
\nbecoming. <\/p>\n

    
\nHowever, there is usually a defect even in this act of
\nself-observation; for there is indeed a partial detachment of the
\nact from the object, but not of the mental person from the mental act:
\nthe mental person and the mental action are involved
\nor rolled up in each other; nor is the mental person sufficiently
\ndetached or separated either from the emotional becoming. I
\nam aware of myself in an angry becoming of my conscious stuff of being
\nand in a thought-perception of this becoming: but
\nall thought-perception also is a becoming and not myself, and this I do
\nnot yet sufficiently realise; I am identified with my
\nmental activities or involved in them, not free and separate. I do not
\nyet directly become aware of myself apart from my
\nbecomings and my perception of them, apart from the forms of active
\nconsciousness which I assume in the waves of the
\nsea of conscious force which is the stuff of my mental and life nature.
\nIt is when I entirely detach the mental person from
\nhis act of self-experience that I become fully aware first, of the
\nsheer ego and, in the end, of the witness self or the thinking
\nmental Person, the something or someone who becomes angry and observes
\nit but is not limited or determined in his being
\nby the anger or the perception. He is, on the contrary, a constant
\nfactor aware of an unlimited succession of conscious
\nmovements and conscious experiences of movements and aware of his own
\nbeing in that succession; but he can be aware
\nof it also behind that succession, supporting it, containing it, always
\nthe same in fact of being and force of being beyond the
\nchanging forms or arrangements of his conscious force. He is thus the
\nSelf that is\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 515<\/p>\n

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\n

immutably and at the same time the Self that becomes eternally in the succession of Time. <\/p>\n

   
\nIt is evident that there are not really two selves, but one conscious
\nbeing which throws itself up in the waves of
\nconscious force so as to experience itself in a succession of changing
\nmovements of itself, by which it is not really changed,
\nincreased or diminished, — any more than the original stuff of Matter
\nor Energy in the material world is increased or
\ndiminished by the constantly changing combinations of the elements, —
\nalthough it seems to be changed to the experiencing
\nconsciousness so long as it lives only in the knowledge of the
\nphenomenon and does not get back to the knowledge of the
\noriginal being, substance or Force. When it does get back to that
\ndeeper knowledge, it does not condemn the observed
\nphenomenon as unreal, but it perceives an immutable being, energy or
\nreal substance not phenomenal, not subject in itself to
\nthe senses; it sees at the same time a becoming or real phenomenon of
\nthat being, energy or substance. This becoming we
\ncall phenomenon because, actually, as things are with us now, it
\nmanifests itself to the consciousness under the conditions of
\nsense-perception and sense-relation and not directly to the
\nconsciousness itself in its pure and unconditioned embracing and
\ntotally comprehending knowledge. So with the Self, — it is, immutably,
\nto our direct self-consciousness; it manifests itself
\nmutably in various becomings to the mind-sense and the mental
\nexperience — therefore, as things are with us now, not
\ndirectly to the pure unconditioned knowledge of the consciousness, but
\nto it under the conditions of our mentality. <\/p>\n

   It is this succession of experiences and it is this fact of an indirect or secondary action of the experiencing
\nconsciousness under the conditions of our mentality that bring in the device of Memory. For a primary condition of our
\nmentality is division by the moments of Time; there is an inability to get its experience or to hold its experiences together
\nexcept under the conditions of this self-division by the moments of Time. In the immediate mental experience of a wave of
\nbecoming, a conscious movement of being, there is no action or need of memory; I become angry, — it is an act of sensation,
\nnot of memory; I<\/p>\n


\nPage 516<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

observe that I am angry, — it is an act of
\nperception, not of memory. Memory only comes in when I begin to relate
\nmy
\nexperience to the successions of Time, when I divide my becoming into
\npast, present and future, when I say, “I was angry a
\nmoment ago”, or “I have become angry and am still in anger”, or “I was
\nangry once and will be again if there is the same
\noccasion”. Memory may indeed come immediately and directly into the
\nbecoming, if the occasion of the movement of
\nconsciousness is itself wholly or partly a thing of the past, — for
\nexample, if there is a recurrence of emotion, such as grief or
\nanger, caused by memory of past wrong or suffering and not by any
\nimmediate occasion in the present or else caused by an
\nimmediate occasion reviving the memory of a past occasion. Because we
\ncannot keep the past in us on the surface of the
\nconsciousness, — though it is always there behind, within, subliminally
\npresent and often even active, — therefore we have to
\nrecover it as something that is lost or is no longer existent, and this
\nwe do by that repetitive and linking action of the
\nthought-mind which we call memory, — just as we summon things which are
\nnot within the actual field of our limited
\nsuperficial mind-experience by the action of the thought-mind which we
\ncall imagination, that greater power in us and high summoner of all
\npossibilities realisable or unrealisable into the field of our
\nignorance. <\/p>\n

    
\nMemory is not the essence of persistent or continuous experience even
\nin the succession of Time and would not be
\nnecessary at all if our consciousness were of an undivided movement, if
\nit had not to run from moment to moment with a
\nloss of direct grasp on the last and an entire ignorance or
\nnon-possession of the next. All experience or substance of
\nbecoming in Time is a flowing stream or sea not divided in itself, but
\nonly divided in the observing consciousness by the
\nlimited movement of the Ignorance which has to leap from moment to
\nmoment like a dragon-fly darting about on the surface
\nof the stream: so too all substance of being in Space is a flowing sea
\nnot divided in itself, but only divided in the observing
\nconsciousness because our sense-faculty is limited in its grasp, can
\nsee only a part and is therefore bound to observe forms
\nof substance as if they were separate things in themselves, independent
\nof the one substance.\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 517<\/p>\n

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\n

There is indeed an arrangement of things in Space and Time, but no gap or division except to our ignorance, and it is to
\nbridge the gaps and connect the divisions created by the ignorance of Mind that we call in the aid of various devices of the
\nmind-consciousness, of which memory is only one device. <\/p>\n

   
\nThere is then in me this flowing stream of the world-sea, and anger or
\ngrief or any other inner movement can occur as
\na long-continued wave of the continuous stream. This continuity is not
\nconstituted by force of memory, although memory
\nmay help to prolong or repeat the wave when by itself it would have
\ndied away into the stream; the wave simply occurs and
\ncontinues as a movement of conscious-force of my being carried forward
\nby its own original impulsion of disturbance.
\nMemory comes in to prolong the disturbance by a recurrence of the
\nthinking mind to the occasion of anger or of the feeling
\nmind to the first impulse of anger by which it justifies itself in a
\nrepetition of the disturbance; otherwise the perturbation
\nwould spend itself and only recur when the occasion itself was actually
\nrepeated. The natural recurrence of the wave, the
\nsame or a similar occasion causing the same disturbance, is not any
\nmore than its isolated occurrence a result of memory,
\nalthough memory may help to fortify it and make the mind more subject
\nto it. There is rather the same relation of repeated
\noccasion and repeated result and movement in the more fluid energy and
\nvariable substance of mind as that we see
\npresented mechanically by the repetition of the same cause and effect
\nin the less variable operations of the energy and
\nsubstance of the material world. We may say, if we like, that there is
\na subconscious memory in all energy of Nature which
\nrepeats invariably the same relation of energy and result; but then we
\nenlarge illimitably the connotation of the word. In
\nreality, we can only state a law of repetition in the action of the
\nwaves of conscious-force by which it regularises these
\nmovements of its own substance. Memory, properly speaking, is merely
\nthe device by which the witnessing Mind helps itself
\nto link together these movements and their occurrence and recurrences
\nin the successions of Time for Time-experience, for
\nincreasing use by a more and more co-ordinating will and for a
\nconstantly developing valuation by a more and\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 518<\/p>\n

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\n

more co-ordinating reason. It is a great, an indispensable but not the only factor in the process by which the Inconscience
\nfrom which we start develops full self-consciousness, and by which the Ignorance of the mental being develops conscious
\nknowledge of itself in its becomings. This development continues until the co-ordinating mind of knowledge and mind of will
\nare fully able to possess and use all the material of self-experience. Such at least is the process of evolution as we see it
\ngoverning the development of Mind out of the self-absorbed and apparently mindless energy in the material world. <\/p>\n

    
\nThe ego-sense is another device of mental Ignorance by which the mental
\nbeing becomes aware of himself, — not only
\nof the objects, occasions and acts of his activity, but of that which
\nexperiences them. At first it might seem as if the
\nego-sense were actually constituted by memory, as if it were memory
\nthat told us, “It is the same I who was angry some
\ntime ago and am again or still angry now.” But, in reality, all that
\nthe memory can tell us by its own power is that it is the
\nsame limited field of conscious activity in which the same phenomenon
\nhas occurred. What happens is that there is a
\nrepetition of the mental phenomenon, of that wave of becoming in the
\nmind-substance of which the mind-sense is
\nimmediately aware; memory comes in to link these repetitions together
\nand enables the mind-sense to realise that it is the
\nsame mind-substance which is taking the same dynamic form and the same
\nmind-sense which is experiencing it. The
\nego-sense is not a result of memory or built by memory, but already and
\nalways there as a point of reference or as
\nsomething in which the mind-sense concentrates itself so as to have a
\nco-ordinant centre instead of sprawling incoherently
\nall over the field of experience; ego-memory reinforces this
\nconcentration and helps to maintain it, but does not constitute it.
\nPossibly, in the lower animal the sense of ego, the sense of
\nindividuality would not, if analysed, go much farther than a
\nsensational imprecise or less precise realisation of continuity and
\nidentity and separateness from others in the moments of
\nTime. But in man there is in addition a co-ordinating mind of knowledge
\nwhich, basing itself on the united action of the
\nmind-sense and the memory, arrives at the distinct idea, — while it
\nretains also the\n<\/p>\n


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\n

first constant intuitive perception, — of an ego which senses, feels, remembers, thinks, and which is the same whether it
\nremembers or does not remember. This conscious mind-substance, it says, is always that of one and the same conscious
\nperson who feels, ceases to feel, remembers, forgets, is superficially conscious, sinks back from superficial consciousness
\ninto sleep; he is the same before the organisation of memory and after it, in the infant and in the dotard, in sleep and in
\nwaking, in apparent consciousness and apparent unconsciousness; he and no other did the acts which he forgets as well as
\nthe acts which he remembers; he is persistently the same behind all changes of his becoming or his personality. This action
\nof knowledge in man, this co-ordinating intelligence, this formulation of self-consciousness and self-experience is higher than
\nthe memory-ego and sense-ego of the animal and therefore, we may suppose, nearer to real self-knowledge. We may even
\ncome to realise, if we study the veiled as well as the uncovered action of Nature, that all ego-sense, all ego-memory has at
\nits back, is in fact a pragmatic contrivance of a secret co-ordinating power or mind of knowledge, present in the universal
\nconscious-force, of which the reason in man is the overt form at which our evolution arrives, — a form still limited and
\nimperfect in its modes of action and constituting principle. There is a subconscious knowledge even in the Inconscient, a
\ngreater intrinsic Reason in things which impose co-ordination, that is to say, a certain rationality, upon the wildest
\nmovements of the universal becoming. <\/p>\n

  The importance of Memory becomes apparent in the well-observed phenomenon of double personality or dissociation of
\npersonality in which the same man has two successive or alternating states of his mind and in each remembers and
\nco-ordinates perfectly only what he was or did in that state of mind and not what he was or did in the other. This can be
\nassociated with an organised idea of different personality, for he thinks in one state that he is one person and in the other
\nthat he is quite another with a different name, life and feelings. Here it would seem that memory is the whole substance of
\npersonality. But, on the other side, we must see that dissociation of memory occurs also<\/p>\n


\nPage 520<\/p>\n

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\n

without dissociation of personality, as when a man
\nin the state of hypnosis takes up a range of memories and experiences
\nto
\nwhich his waking mind is a stranger but does not therefore think
\nhimself another person, or as when one who has forgotten
\nthe past events of his life and perhaps even his name, still does not
\nchange his ego-sense and personality. And there is
\npossible too a state of consciousness in which, although there is no
\ngap of memory, yet by a rapid development the whole
\nbeing feels itself changed in every mental circumstance and the man
\nfeels born into a new personality, so that, if it were not
\nfor the co-ordinating mind, he would not at all accept his past as
\nbelonging to the person he now is, although he remembers
\nperfectly well that it was in the same form of body and same field of
\nmind-substance that it occurred. Mind-sense is the
\nbasis, memory the thread on which experiences are strung by the
\nself-experiencing mind: but it is the co-ordinating faculty
\nof mind which, relating together all the material that memory provides
\nand all its linkings of past, present and future, relates
\nthem also to an “I” who is the same in all the moments of Time and in
\nspite of all the changes of experience and personality. <\/p>\n

   
\nThe ego-sense is only a preparatory device and a first basis for the
\ndevelopment of real self-knowledge in the mental
\nbeing. Developing from inconscience to self-conscience, from nescience
\nof self and things to knowledge of self and things,
\nthe Mind in forms arrives thus far that it is aware of all its
\nsuperficially conscious becoming as related to an “I” which it
\nalways is. That “I” it partly identifies with the conscious becoming,
\npartly thinks of it as something other than the becoming
\nand superior to it, even perhaps eternal and unchanging. In the last
\nresort, by the aid of its reason which distinguishes in
\norder to co-ordinate, it may fix its self-experience on the becoming
\nonly, on the constantly changing self and reject the idea
\nof something other than it as a fiction of the mind; there is then no
\nbeing, only becoming. Or it may fix its self-experience
\ninto a direct consciousness of its own eternal being and reject the
\nbecoming, even when it is compelled to be aware of it, as
\na fiction of the mind and the senses or the vanity of a temporary
\ninferior existence. <\/p>\n

     But it is evident that a self-knowledge based on the <\/p>\n


\nPage 521 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

separative ego-sense is imperfect and that no
\nknowledge founded upon it alone or primarily or on a reaction against
\nit can be
\nsecure or assured of completeness. First, it is a knowledge of our
\nsuperficial mental activity and its experiences and, with
\nregard to all the large rest of our becoming that is behind, it is an
\nIgnorance. Secondly, it is a knowledge only of being and
\nbecoming as limited to the individual self and its experiences; all the
\nrest of the world is to it not-self, something, that is to
\nsay, which it does not realise as part of its own being but as some
\noutside existence presented to its separate consciousness.
\nThis happens because it has no direct conscious knowledge of this
\nlarger existence and nature such as the individual has of
\nhis own being and becoming. Here too there is a limited knowledge
\nasserting itself in the midst of a vast Ignorance. Thirdly,
\nthe true relation between the being and the becoming has not been
\nworked out on the basis of perfect self-knowledge but
\nrather by the Ignorance, by a partial knowledge. As a consequence the
\nmind in its impetus towards an ultimate knowledge
\nattempts through the co-ordinating and dissociating will and reason on
\nthe basis of our present experience and possibilities to
\ndrive at a trenchant conclusion which cuts away one side of existence.
\nAll that has been established is that the mental being
\ncan on one side absorb himself in direct self-consciousness to the
\napparent exclusion of all becoming and can on the other
\nside absorb himself in the becoming to the apparent exclusion of all
\nstable self-consciousness. Both sides of the mind,
\nseparating as antagonists, condemn what they reject as unreal or else
\nas only a play of the conscious mind; to one or the
\nother, either the Divine, the Self, or the world is only relatively
\nreal so long as the mind persists in creating them, the world
\nan effective dream of Self, or God and Self a mental construction or an
\neffective hallucination. The true relation has not
\nbeen seized, because these two sides of existence must always appear
\ndiscordant and unreconciled to our intelligence so
\nlong as there is only a partial knowledge. An integral knowledge is the
\naim of the conscious evolution; a clean cut of the
\nconsciousness shearing apart one side and leaving the other cannot be
\nthe whole truth of self and things. For if some
\nimmobile Self were all, there could be no possibility of
\nworld-existence; if mobile\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 522<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

Nature were all, there might be a cycle of universal becoming, but no spiritual foundation for the evolution of the Conscient
\nout of the Inconscient and for the persistent aspiration of our partial Consciousness or Ignorance to exceed itself and arrive
\nat the whole conscious Truth of its being and the integral conscious knowledge of all Being. <\/p>\n

  
\n  Our surface existence is only a surface and it is there that
\nthere is the full reign of the Ignorance; to know we have to
\ngo within ourselves and see with an inner knowledge. All that is
\nformulated on the surface is a small and diminished
\nrepresentation of our secret greater existence. The immobile self in us
\nis found only when the outer mental and vital
\nactivities are quieted; for since it is seated deep within and is
\nrepresented on the surface only by the intuitive sense of
\nself-existence and misrepresented by the mental, vital, physical
\nego-sense, its truth has to be experienced in the mind’s
\nsilence. But also the dynamic parts of our surface being are similarly
\ndiminished figures of greater things that are there in
\nthe depths of our secret nature. The surface memory itself is a
\nfragmentary and ineffective action pulling out details from an
\ninner subliminal memory which receives and records all our
\nworld-experience, receives and records even what the mind has
\nnot observed, understood or noticed. Our surface imagination is a
\nselection from a vaster more creative and effective
\nsubliminal image-building power of consciousness. A mind with
\nimmeasurably wider and more subtle perceptions, a
\nlife-energy with a greater dynamism, a subtle-physical substance with a
\nlarger and finer receptivity are building out of
\nthemselves our surface evolution. A psychic entity is there behind
\nthese occult activities which is the true support of our
\nindividualisation; the ego is only an outward false substitute: for it
\nis this secret soul that supports and holds together our
\nself-experience and world-experience; the mental, vital, physical,
\nexternal ego is a superficial construction of Nature. It is only when
\nwe have seen both our self and our nature as a whole, in the depths as
\nwell as on the surface, that we can acquire a true basis of knowledge. <\/p>\n


\nPage 523<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER IX   Memory, Ego and Self-Experience                                                                            Here this God, the Mind, in its dream…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","wpcat-13-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","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=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}