{"id":633,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=633"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","slug":"37-memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance-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\/37-memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-37_Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\t\tC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> VIII<\/p>\n

\nMemory, Self-Consciousness and
\nthe Ignorance<\/p>\n

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

                <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

   
\n           
\n    Some speak of the self-nature of things, others say
\nthat it is Time.
\n
                                                                                           
\nSwetaswatara Upanishad.1<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

\n                   
\nTwo are the forms of Brahman, Time and the Timeless.
\n
                                                                                                
\nMaitrayani Upanishad.2<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                   
\nNight was born and from Night the flowing ocean of being and on
\n                   
\nthe ocean Time was born to whom is subjected
\nevery seeing creature.
\n                                                                                                                           
\nRig Veda.3<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                   
\nMemory is greater: without memory men could think and know nothing….
\n                   
\nAs far as goes the movement of Memory,
\nthere he ranges at will.
\n                                                                                               
\nChhandogya Upanishad.4<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                   
\nThis is he who is that which sees, touches, hears, smells, tastes,
\nthinks,
\n                   
\nunderstands, acts in us, a conscious being, a self
\nof knowledge.
\n                                                                                                           
\nPrasna Upanishad.5<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     I<\/b><\/font>N<\/font> any survey of the dual character of our consciousness we have first to look at the Ignorance, — for Ignorance trying to
\nturn into Knowledge is our normal status. To begin with, it is necessary to consider some of the essential movements of this
\npartial awareness of self and things which works in us as a mediator between the complete self-knowledge and
\nall-knowledge and the complete Inconscience, and, from that starting-point, find its relation to the greater Consciousness
\nbelow our surface. There is a line of thought in which great stress is laid upon the action of memory: it has even been said
\nthat Memory is the man,—it is memory that constitutes our personality and holds cemented the foundation of our
\npsychological being; for it links together our experiences and relates them to one and the same individual entity. This is an
\nidea which takes its stand on our existence in the succession of Time and accepts process as the key to essential Truth,
\neven when it does\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VI. 1.         
\nVI. 15.         X. 190. 1, 2.        
\nVII. 13. 1, 2.        
\nIV. 9.<\/p>\n

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


\nPage 501<\/p>\n

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

\n

not regard the whole of existence as process or as
\ncause and effect in the development of some kind of self-regulating
\nEnergy, as Karma. But process is merely a utility; it is a habitual
\nadoption of certain effective relations which might in the
\ninfinite possibility of things have been arranged otherwise, for the
\nproduction of effects which might equally have been quite
\ndifferent. The real truth of things lies not in their process, but
\nbehind it, in whatever determines, effects or governs the
\nprocess; not in effectuation so much as in the Will or Power that
\neffects, and not so much in Will or Power as in the
\nConsciousness of which Will is the dynamic form and in the Being of
\nwhich Power is the dynamic value. But memory is
\nonly a process of consciousness, a utility; it cannot be the substance
\nof being or the whole of our personality: it is simply one
\nof the workings of consciousness as radiation is one of the workings of
\nLight. It is Self that is the man: or, if we regard only
\nour normal surface existence, Mind is the man, — for man is the mental
\nbeing. Memory is only one of the many powers and
\nprocesses of the Mind, which is at present the chief action of
\nConsciousness-Force in our dealings with self, world and
\nNature. <\/p>\n

    Nevertheless, it is as well to begin
\nwith this phenomenon of memory when we consider the nature of the Ignorance in
\nwhich we dwell; for it may give the key to certain important aspects of our
\nconscious existence. We see that there are two applications which the mind makes
\nof its faculty or process of memory, memory of self, memory of experience.
\nFirst, radically, it applies memory to the fact of our conscious-being and
\nrelates that to Time. It says, “I am now, I was in the past, I shall therefore
\nbe in the future, it is the same I in all the three ever unstable divisions of
\nTime.” Thus it tries to render to itself in the terms of Time an account of that
\nwhich it feels to be the fact, but cannot know or prove to be true, the eternity
\nof the conscious being. By memory Mind can only know of itself in the past, by
\ndirect self-awareness only in the moment of the present, and it is only by
\nextension of and inference from this self-awareness and from the memory which
\ntells us that for some time awareness has been continuously existent that mind
\ncan conceive of itself in the future. The extent of the past and <\/p>\n


\nPage 502<\/p>\n

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

\n

the future it cannot fix; it can only carry back the
\npast to the limit of its memory and infer from the evidence of others
\nand
\nthe facts of life it observes around it that the conscious being
\nalready was in times which it can no longer remember. It
\nknows that it existed in an infant unreasoning state of the mind to
\nwhich memory has lost its link; whether it existed before
\nphysical birth, the mortal mind owing to the gap of memory cannot
\ndetermine. Of the future it knows nothing at all; of its
\nexisting in the next moment it can only have a moral certainty which
\nsome happening of that moment can prove to be an
\nerror because what it saw was no more than a dominant probability; much
\nless can it know whether or no physical
\ndissolution is the end of the conscious being. Yet it has this sense of
\na persistent continuity which easily extends itself into a
\nconviction of eternity. <\/p>\n

    
\nThis conviction may be either the reflection in the mind of an endless
\npast which it has forgotten but of which something
\nin it retains the formless impression, or it may be the shadow of a
\nself-knowledge which comes to the mind from a higher or
\na deeper plane of our being where we are really aware of our eternal
\nself-existence. Or, conceivably, it might be a
\nhallucination; just as we cannot sense or realise in our foreseeing
\nconsciousness the fact of death and can only live in the
\nfeeling of continued existence, cessation being to us an intellectual
\nconception we can hold with certainty, even imagine with
\nvividness, but never actually realise because we live only in the
\npresent, yet death, cessation or interruption at least of our
\nactual mode of being is a fact and the sense or prevision of continued
\nexistence in the future in the physical body becomes
\nbeyond a point we cannot now fix a hallucination, a false extension or
\na misapplication of our present mental impression of
\nconscious being, — so conceivably it might be with this mental idea or
\nimpression of conscious eternity. Or it might be a false
\ntransference to ourselves of the perception of a real eternity
\nconscient or inconscient other than ourselves, the eternity of
\nthe universe or of something which exceeds the universe. The mind
\nseizing this fact of eternity may falsely transfer it to our
\nown conscious being which may be nothing more than a transient
\nphenomenon of that only true eternal.\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 503 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

These questions our surface mind by itself has no
\nmeans of solving; it can only speculate upon them endlessly and
\narrive at more or less well-reasoned opinions. The belief in our
\nimmortality is only a faith, the belief in our mortality is only a
\nfaith. It is impossible for the materialist to prove that our
\nconsciousness ends with the death of the body; for he may indeed
\nshow that there is as yet no convincing proof that anything in us
\nconsciously survives, but equally there is and there can be
\nin the nature of things no proof that our conscious self does not
\noutlast the physical dissolution. Survival of the body by the
\nhuman personality may hereafter be proved even to the satisfaction of
\nthe sceptic; but even then what will be established
\nwill only be a greater continuity and not the eternity of the conscious
\nbeing. <\/p>\n

   
\nIn fact, if we look at the mind’s concept of this eternity, we see that
\nit comes only to a continuous succession of
\nmoments of being in an eternal Time. Therefore it is Time that is
\neternal and not the continuously momentary conscious
\nbeing. But, on the other hand, there is nothing in mind-evidence to
\nshow that eternal Time really exists or that Time itself is
\nanything more than the conscious being’s way of looking at some
\nuninterrupted continuity or, it may be, eternity of existence
\nas an indivisible flow which it conceptually measures by the
\nsuccessions and simultaneities of the experiences through which
\nalone that existence is represented to it. If there is an eternal
\nExistence which is a conscious being, it must be beyond Time
\nwhich it contains, timeless as we say; it must be the Eternal of the
\nVedanta who, we may then conjecture, uses Time only
\nas a conceptual perspective for His view of His self-manifestation. But
\nthe timeless self-knowledge of this Eternal is beyond
\nmind; it is a supramental knowledge superconscient to us and only to be
\nacquired by the stilling or transcending of the
\ntemporal activity of our conscious mind, by an entry into Silence or a
\npassage through Silence into the consciousness of
\neternity. <\/p>\n

     From
\nall this the one great fact emerges that the very nature of our mind is
\nIgnorance; not an absolute nescience, but a
\nlimited and conditioned knowledge of being, limited by a realisation of
\nits present, a memory of its past, an inference of its
\nfuture,\n<\/p>\n

\nPage 504<\/p>\n

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

\n

conditioned therefore by a temporal and successive
\nview of itself and its experiences. If real existence is a temporal
\neternity, then the mind has not the knowledge of real being: for even
\nits own past it loses in the vague of oblivion except for
\nthe little that memory holds; it has no possession of its future which
\nis withheld from it in a great blank of ignorance; it has
\nonly a knowledge of its present changing from moment to moment in a
\nhelpless succession of names, forms, happenings, the
\nmarch or flux of a cosmic kinesis which is too vast for its control or
\nits comprehension. On the other hand, if real existence
\nis a time-transcending eternity, the mind is still more ignorant of it;
\nfor it only knows the little of it that it can itself seize from
\nmoment to moment by fragmentary experience of its surface
\nself-manifestation in Time and Space. <\/p>\n

    
\nIf, then, mind is all or if the apparent mind in us is the index of the
\nnature of our being, we can never be anything more
\nthan an Ignorance fleeting through Time and catching at knowledge in a
\nmost scanty and fragmentary fashion. But if there
\nis a power of self-knowledge beyond mind which is timeless in essence
\nand can look on Time, perhaps with a simultaneous
\nall-relating view of past, present and future, but in any case as a
\ncircumstance of its own timeless being, then we have two
\npowers of consciousness, Knowledge and Ignorance, the Vedantic Vidya
\nand Avidya. These two must be, then, either
\ndifferent and unconnected powers, separately born as well as diverse in
\ntheir action, separately self-existent in an eternal
\ndualism, or else, if there is a connection between them, it must be
\nthis that consciousness as Knowledge knows its timeless
\nself and sees Time within itself, while consciousness as Ignorance is a
\npartial and superficial action of the same Knowledge
\nwhich sees rather itself in Time, veiling itself in its own conception
\nof temporal being, and can only by the removal of the veil
\nreturn to eternal self-knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\nFor it would be irrational to suppose that the superconscient Knowledge
\nis so aloof and separate as to be incapable of
\nknowing Time and Space and Causality and their works; for then it would
\nbe only another kind of Ignorance, the blindness
\nof the absolute being answering to the blindness of the temporal being
\nas positive pole and negative pole of a conscious
\nexistence which\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 505<\/p>\n

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

\n

is incapable of knowing all itself, but either knows
\nonly itself and does not know its works or knows only its works and
\ndoes
\nnot know itself,—an absurdly symmetrical equipollence in mutual
\nrejection. From the larger point of view, the ancient Vedantic, we must
\nconceive of ourselves not as a dual being, but as one conscious
\nexistence with a double phase of
\nconsciousness: one of them is conscient or partly conscient in our
\nmind, the other superconscient to mind; one, a knowledge
\nsituated in Time, works under its conditions and for that purpose puts
\nits self-knowledge behind it, the other, timeless, works
\nout with mastery and knowledge its own self-determined conditions of
\nTime; one knows itself only by its growth in
\nTime-experience, the other knows its timeless self and consciously
\nmanifests itself in Time-experience. <\/p>\n

   
\nWe realise now what the Upanishad meant when it spoke of Brahman as
\nbeing both the Knowledge and the Ignorance
\nand of the simultaneous knowledge of Brahman in both as the way to
\nimmortality. Knowledge is the inherent power of
\nconsciousness of the timeless, spaceless, unconditioned Self which
\nshows itself in its essence as a unity of being; it is this
\nconsciousness that alone is real and complete knowledge because it is
\nan eternal transcendence which is not only
\nself-aware but holds in itself, manifests, originates, determines,
\nknows the temporally eternal successions of the universe.
\nIgnorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time,
\ndivided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment,
\ndivided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of
\nSpace and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in
\nthe multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because
\nit has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that
\nvery fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the
\nworld, either the transcendent or the universal reality.
\nLiving within the Ignorance, from moment to moment, from field to
\nfield, from relation to relation, the conscious soul
\nstumbles on in the error of a fragmentary knowledge.1<\/sup> It is not a nescience, but a view and experience of the<\/p>\n

avidyayam antare vartamanah…. janghanyamanah pariyanti mudha,h andhenaiva
\nniyamanah yathandhah<\/font><\/i>. “Living and moving within the Ignorance,… they go round and round stumbling and battered, men
\ndeluded, like the blind led by one who is blind.”
\n—Mundaka Upanishad, I. 2. 8.
\n<\/font>
\n <\/p>\n


\nPage 506<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

reality which is partly true and partly false, as all knowledge must be which ignores the essence and sees only fugitive parts
\nof the phenomenon. On the other hand, to be shut up in a featureless consciousness of unity, ignorant of the manifest
\nBrahman, is described as itself also a blind darkness. In truth, neither is precisely darkness, but one is the dazzling by a
\nconcentrated Light, the other the illusive proportions of things seen in a dispersed, hazy and broken light, half mist, half
\nseeing. The divine consciousness is not shut up in either, but holds the immutable One and the mutable Many in one eternal
\nall-relating, all-uniting self-knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\nMemory, in the dividing consciousness, is a crutch upon which mind
\nsupports itself as it stumbles on driven helplessly,
\nwithout possibility of stay or pause, in the rushing speed of Time.
\nMemory is a poverty-stricken substitute for an integral
\ndirect abiding consciousness of self and a direct integral or global
\nperception of things. Mind can only have the direct
\nconsciousness of self in the moment of its present being; it can only
\nhave some half-direct perception of things as they are
\noffered to it in the present moment of time and the immediate field of
\nspace and seized by the senses. It makes up for its
\ndeficiency by memory, imagination, thought, idea-symbols of various
\nkinds. Its senses are devices by which it lays hold on
\nthe appearances of things in the present moment and in the immediate
\nspace; memory, imagination, thought are devices by
\nwhich it represents to itself, still less directly, the appearances of
\nthings beyond the present moment and the immediate
\nspace. The one thing which is not a device is its direct
\nself-consciousness in the present moment. Therefore through that it
\ncan most easily lay hold on the fact of eternal being, on the reality;
\nall the rest it is tempted, when it considers things
\nnarrowly, to look on not merely as phenomenon, but as, possibly, error,
\nignorance, illusion, because they no longer appear to
\nit directly real. So the Illusionist considers them; the only thing he
\nholds to be truly real is that eternal self which lies behind
\nthe mind’s direct present self-consciousness. Or else, like the
\nBuddhist, one comes to regard even that eternal self as an
\nillusion, a representation, a subjective image, a mere imagination or
\nfalse sensation and false idea of being. Mind\n<\/p>\n

\n

Page 507<\/p>\n

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

\n

becomes to its own view a fantastic magician, its works and itself at once strangely existent and non-existent, a persistent
\nreality and yet a fleeting error which it accounts for or does not account for, but in any case is determined to slay and get
\ndone with both itself and its works so that it may rest, may cease in the timeless repose of the Eternal from the vain
\nrepresentation of appearances. <\/p>\n

  
\nBut, in truth, our sharp distinctions made between the without and the
\nwithin, the present and the past
\nself-consciousness are tricks of the limited unstable action of mind.
\nBehind the mind and using it as its own surface activity
\nthere is a stable consciousness in which there is no binding conceptual
\ndivision between itself in the present and itself in the
\npast and future; and yet it knows itself in Time, in the present, past
\nand future, but at once, with an undivided view which
\nembraces all the mobile experiences of the Time-self and holds them on
\nthe foundation of the immobile timeless self. This
\nconsciousness we can become aware of when we draw back from the mind
\nand its activities or when these fall silent. But
\nwe see first its immobile status, and if we regard only the immobility
\nof the self, we may say of it that it is not only timeless,
\nbut actionless, without movement of idea, thought, imagination, memory,
\nwill, self-sufficient, self-absorbed and therefore void
\nof all action of the universe. That then becomes alone real to us and
\nthe rest a vain symbolising in non-existent forms, — or
\nforms corresponding to nothing truly existent, — and therefore a dream.
\nBut this self-absorption is only an act and resultant
\nstate of our consciousness, just as much as was the self-dispersion in
\nthought and memory and will. The real self is the
\neternal who is obviously capable of both the mobility in Time and the
\nimmobility basing Time, — simultaneously, otherwise
\nthey could not both exist; nor, even, could one exist and the other
\ncreate seemings. This is the supreme Soul, Self and
\nBeing 1 <\/sup>of the Gita who upholds both the immobile and the mobile being as the self and lord of all existence. <\/p>\n

    So far we arrive by considering mind and memory mainly in regard to the primary phenomenon of mental
\nself-consciousness\n<\/p>\n

1 <\/font><\/sup>para purusa, paramatman, parabrahman.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage 508<\/p>\n

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

\n

in Time. But if we consider them with regard to self-experience as well as consciousness and other-experience as well as
\nself-experience, we shall find that we arrive at the same result with richer contents and a still clearer light on the nature of
\nthe Ignorance. At present, let us thus express what we have seen, — an eternal conscious being who supports the mobile
\naction of mind on a stable immobile self-consciousness free from the action of Time and who, while with a knowledge
\nsuperior to mind he embraces all the movement of Time, dwells by the action of mind in that movement. As the surface
\nmental entity moving from moment to moment, not observing his essential self but only his relation to his experiences of the
\nTime-movement, in that movement keeping the future from himself in what appears to be a blank of Ignorance and
\nnon-existence but is an unrealised fullness, grasping knowledge and experience of being in the present, putting it away in the
\npast which again appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence partly lighted, partly saved and stored up by
\nmemory, he puts on the aspect of a thing fleeting and uncertain seizing without stability upon things fleeting and uncertain.
\nBut in reality, we shall find, he is always the same Eternal who is for ever stable and self-possessed in His supramental
\nknowledge and what he seizes on is also for ever stable and eternal; for it is himself that he is mentally experiencing in the
\nsuccession of Time. <\/p>\n

   
\nTime is the great bank of conscious existence turned into values of
\nexperience and action: the surface mental being
\ndraws upon the past (and the future also) and coins it continually into
\nthe present; he accounts for and stores up the gains he
\nhas gathered in what we call the past, not knowing how ever-present is
\nthe past in us; he uses as much of it as he needs as
\ncoin of knowledge and realised being and pays it out as coin of mental,
\nvital and physical action in the commerce of the
\npresent which creates to his view the new wealth of the future.
\nIgnorance is a utilisation of the Being’s self-knowledge in
\nsuch a way as to make it valuable for Time-experience and valid for
\nTime-activity; what we do not know is what we have
\nnot yet taken up, coined and used in our mental experience or have
\nceased to coin or use. Behind, all is known and all is
\nready for use according to the\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 509<\/p>\n

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

\n

will of the Self in its dealings with Time and Space and Causality. One might almost say that our surface being is only the
\ndeeper eternal Self in us throwing itself out as the adventurer in Time, a gambler and speculator in infinite possibilities,
\nlimiting itself to the succession of moments so that it may have all the surprise and delight of the adventure, keeping back its
\nself-knowledge and complete self-being so that it may win again what it seems to have lost, reconquering all itself through
\nthe chequered joy and pain of an aeonic passion and seeking and endeavour. <\/p>\n


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