{"id":634,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=634"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:22","slug":"40-the-boundaries-of-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\/40-the-boundaries-of-the-ignorance-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-40_The Boundaries of the Ignorance .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> XI<\/p>\n

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


\nThe Boundaries of the Ignorance<\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

   
\n           
\n           
\n            One who thinks there is
\n\t\tthis world and no other…
\n
                                                                                                                                                 
\nKatha Upanishad<\/i>.1<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                                       
\nExtended within the Infinite… headless and footless, concealing
\n                                       
\nhis two ends.2<\/sup>
\n                                                                                                                                                                 
\nRig Veda.<\/i>3<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                                       
\nHe who has the knowledge \u201cI am Brahman\u201d becomes all this that is;
\n                                       
\nbut whoever worships another divinity than the One Self and thinks,
\n                                       
\n\u201cOther is he and I am other\u201d, he knows not.
\n
                                                                                                                                  
\nBrihadaranyaka Upanishad.<\/i>4<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                                       
\nThis Self is fourfold,\u2014the Self of Waking who has the outer intelligence
\n                                       
\nand enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self of Dream who has the
\n                                       
\ninner intelligence and enjoys things subtle, is its second part; the Self of
\n                                       
\nSleep, unified, a massed intelligence, blissful and enjoying bliss, is the third
\n                                       
\npart… the lord of all, the omniscient, the inner Control. That which is
\nunseen,
\n                                       
\nindefinable, self-evident in its one selfhood, is the fourth part: this is the
\nSelf,
\n                                       
\nthis is that which has to be known.
\n                                                                                                                                             
\nMandukya Upanishad<\/i>.5<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                                       
\nA conscious being, no larger than a man’s thumb, stands in the centre of our
\nself;
\n                                       
\nhe is master of the past and the present… he is today and he is tomorrow.
\n                                                                                                                                                      
\n Katha Upanishad<\/i>.6<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    I<\/b><\/font>T<\/font> is now possible to review in its larger lines this Ignorance, or this separative knowledge labouring towards identical
\nknowledge, which constitutes our human mentality and, in an obscurer form, all consciousness that has evolved below our
\nlevel. We see that in us it consists of a succession of waves of being and force, pressing from outside and rising from within,
\nwhich become stuff of consciousness and formulate in a mental cognition and mentalised sensation of self and things in
\nTime and Space. Time presents itself to us as a flow of dynamic movement, Space as an objective field of contents for the
\nexperience of this imperfect and developing awareness. By immediate\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup> I. 2. 6.       
\n2<\/sup> Head and feet, the superconscient and the inconscient.            
\n3<\/sup> IV. I. 7, 11.        
\n4<\/sup> I. 4. 10.         5<\/sup>
\nVerses 2-7.        6<\/sup> II. 1. 12,
\n13. <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage 553<\/p>\n

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

\n

awareness the mental being mobile in Time lives
\nperpetually in the present; by memory he saves a certain part of his
\nexperience of self and things from streaming away from him entirely
\ninto the past; by thought and will and action, by mind
\nenergy, life energy, body energy he utilises it for what he becomes in
\nthe present and is yet to become hereafter; the force
\nof being in him that has made him what he is works to prolong, develop
\nand amplify his becoming in the future. All this
\ninsecurely held material of self-expression and experience of things,
\nthis partial knowledge accumulated in the succession of
\nTime, is co-ordinated for him by perception, memory, intelligence and
\nwill to be utilised for an ever-new or ever-repeated
\nbecoming and for the mental, vital, physical action which helps him to
\ngrow into what he is to be and to express what he
\nalready is. The present totality of all this experience of
\nconsciousness and output of energy is co-ordinated for relation to his
\nbeing, gathered into consistency around an ego-sense which formulates
\nthe habit of response of self-experience to the
\ncontacts of Nature in a persistent limited field of conscious being. It
\nis this ego-sense that gives a first basis of coherence to
\nwhat otherwise might be a string or mass of floating impressions: all
\nthat is so sensed is referred to a corresponding artificial
\ncentre of mental consciousness in the understanding, the ego-idea. This
\nego-sense in the life stuff and this ego-idea in the
\nmind maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which
\ndoes duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true
\nbeing. The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always
\nego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego:
\nthe ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our
\nwheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around
\nthe ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or
\ncontrivance because there has emerged the true self,
\nthe spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which
\nholds all together, the centre and the circumference. <\/p>\n

   
\nBut the moment we study ourselves, we find that the self-experience
\nwhich we thus co-ordinate and consciously utilise
\nfor life, is a small part even of our waking individual consciousness.
\nWe fasten only upon a very limited number of the
\nmental sensations and perceptions of self and things which come up into
\nour\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 554<\/p>\n

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

\n

surface consciousness in our continual present: of
\nthese again memory saves up only a scanty part from the oblivious gulf
\nof
\nthe past; of the storings of memory our intelligence utilises only a
\nsmall portion for co-ordinated knowledge, our will utilises a
\nsmaller percentage for action. A narrow selection, a large rejection or
\nreservation, a miserly-spendthrift system of waste of
\nmaterial and unemployment of resources and a scanty and disorderly
\nmodicum of useful spending and utilisable balance
\nseems to be the method of Nature in our conscious becoming even as it
\nis in the field of the material universe. But this is
\nonly in appearance, for it would be a wholly untrue account to say that
\nall that is not thus saved up and utilised is destroyed,
\nbecomes null and has passed away ineffectually and in vain. A great
\npart of it has been quietly used by Nature herself to
\nform us and actuates that sufficiently large mass of our growth and
\nbecoming and action for which our conscious memory,
\nwill and intelligence are not responsible. A still greater part is used
\nby her as a store from which she draws and which she
\nutilises, while we ourselves have utterly forgotten the origin and
\nprovenance of this material which we find ourselves
\nemploying with a deceptive sense of creation; for we imagine we are
\ncreating this new material of our work, when we are
\nonly combining results out of that which we have forgotten but Nature
\nin us has remembered. If we admit rebirth as part of
\nher system, we shall realise that all experience has its use; for all
\nexperience counts in this prolonged building and nothing is
\nrejected except what has exhausted its utility and would be a burden on
\nthe future. A judgment from what appears now in
\nour conscious surface is fallacious: for when we study and understand,
\nwe perceive that only a little of her action and
\ngrowth in us is conscious; the bulk of it is carried on subconsciously
\nas in the rest of her material life. We are not only what
\nwe know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our
\nmomentary personality is only a bubble on the
\nocean of our existence. <\/p>\n

   
\nA superficial observation of our waking consciousness shows us that of
\na great part of our individual being and
\nbecoming we are quite ignorant; it is to us the Inconscient, just as
\nmuch as the life of the plant, the metal, the earth, the
\nelements. But if we\n<\/p>\n

\nPage 555<\/p>\n

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

\n

carry our knowledge farther, pushing psychological experiment and observation beyond their normal bounds, we find how
\nvast is the sphere of this supposed Inconscient or this subconscient in our total existence, — the subconscient, so seeming and
\nso called by us because it is a concealed consciousness, — and what a small and fragmentary portion of our being is covered
\nby our waking self-awareness. We arrive at the knowledge that our waking mind and ego are only a superimposition upon a
\nsubmerged, a subliminal self, — for so that self appears to us, — or, more accurately, an inner being, with a much vaster
\ncapacity of experience; our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the
\ngreat body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters. <\/p>\n

    
\nThis concealed self and consciousness is our real or whole being, of
\nwhich the outer is a part and a phenomenon, a
\nselective formation for a surface use. We perceive only a small number
\nof the contacts of things which impinge upon us; the
\ninner being perceives all that enters or touches us and our
\nenvironment. We perceive only a part of the workings of our life
\nand being; the inner being perceives so much that we might almost
\nsuppose that nothing escapes its view. We remember
\nonly a small selection from our perceptions, and of these even we keep
\na great part in a store-room where we cannot
\nalways lay our hand upon what we need; the inner being retains
\neverything that it has ever received and has it always ready
\nto hand. We can form into co-ordinated understanding and knowledge only
\nso much of our perceptions and memories as our
\ntrained intelligence and mental capacity can grasp in their sense and
\nappreciate in their relations: the intelligence of the inner
\nbeing needs no training, but preserves the accurate form and relations
\nof all its perceptions and memories and, — though this
\nis a proposition which may be considered doubtful or difficult to
\nconcede in its fullness, — can grasp immediately, when it does not
\npossess already, their significance. And its perceptions are not
\nconfined, as are ordinarily those of the waking mind, to the scanty
\ngleanings of the physical senses, but extend far beyond and use, as
\ntelepathic phenomena of many kinds bear witness, a subtle sense the
\nlimits of which are too wide to be easily fixed. The relations between
\nthe surface will or\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 556<\/font><\/i> <\/p>\n

\n

impulsion and the subliminal urge, mistakenly described as unconscious or subconscious, have not been properly studied
\nexcept in regard to unusual and unorganised manifestations and to certain morbidly abnormal phenomena of the diseased
\nhuman mind; but if we pursue our observation far enough, we shall find that the cognition and will or impulsive force of the
\ninner being really stand behind the whole conscious becoming; the latter represents only that part of its secret endeavour
\nand achievement which rises successfully to the surface of our life. To know our inner being is the first step towards a real
\nself-knowledge. <\/p>\n

    
\nIf we undertake this self-discovery and enlarge our knowledge of the
\nsubliminal self, so conceiving it as to include in it
\nour lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends, we shall discover
\nthat it is really this which provides the whole
\nmaterial of our apparent being and that our perceptions, our memories,
\nour effectuations of will and intelligence are only a
\nselection from its perceptions, memories, activities and relations of
\nwill and intelligence; our very ego is only a minor and
\nsuperficial formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience.
\nIt is, as it were, the urgent sea out of which the waves
\nof our conscious becoming arise. But what are its limits? how far does
\nit extend? what is its fundamental nature? Ordinarily,
\nwe speak of a subconscious existence and include in this term all that
\nis not on the waking surface. But the whole or the
\ngreater part of the inner or subliminal self can hardly be
\ncharacterised by that epithet; for when we say subconscious, we
\nthink readily of an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness or
\nelse a submerged consciousness below and in a way
\ninferior to and less than our organised waking awareness or, at least,
\nless in possession of itself. But we find, when we go
\nwithin, that somewhere in our subliminal part, — though not
\nco-extensive with it since it has also obscure and ignorant
\nregions, — there is a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in
\npossession of itself and things than that which
\nwakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours; that
\nis our inner being, and it is this which we must regard
\nas our subliminal self and set apart the subconscient as an inferior, a
\nlowest occult province of our nature. In the same way
\nthere is a superconscient part of our total existence in which <\/p>\n


\nPage 557 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

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. <\/p>\n

    But what then is the subconscient and
\nwhere does it begin and how is it related to our surface being or to the
\nsubliminal of which it would seem more properly to be a province? We are aware
\nof our body and know that we have a physical existence, even very largely
\nidentify ourselves with it, and yet most of its operations are really
\nsubconscious to our mental being; not only does the mind take no part in them
\nbut, as we suppose, our most physical being has no awareness of its own hidden
\noperations or, by itself, of its own existence; it knows or rather feels only so
\nmuch of itself as is enlightened by mind-sense and observable by intelligence.
\nWe are aware of a vitality working in this bodily form and structure as in the
\nplant or lower animal, a vital existence which is also for the most part
\nsubconscious to us, for we only observe some of its movements and reactions. We
\nare partly aware of its operations, but not by any means of all or most of them,
\nand rather of those which are abnormal than those which are normal; its wants
\nimpress themselves more forcibly upon us than its satisfactions, its diseases
\nand disorders than its health and its regular rhythm, its death is more poignant
\nto us than its life is vivid; we know as much of it as we can consciously
\nobserve and use or as much as forces itself upon us by pain and pleasure and
\nother sensations or as a cause of nervous or physical reaction and disturbance,
\nbut no more. Accordingly, we suppose that this vital-physical part of us also is
\nnot conscious of its own operations or has only a suppressed consciousness or
\nno-consciousness like the plant or an inchoate consciousness like the incipient
\nanimal; it becomes conscious only so far as it is enlightened by mind and
\nobservable by intelligence. <\/p>\n

    This is an exaggeration and a confusion due to our
\nidentification of consciousness with mentality and mental awareness. Mind
\nidentifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life
\nand body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to
\nus to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from
\nthese parts of us, we can discover that life and body, — even the most physical
\nparts of life, —have a consciousness of their own, a <\/p>\n


\nPage 558 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

consciousness proper to an obscurer vital and to a bodily being, even such an elemental awareness as primitive animal forms
\nmay have, but in us partly taken up by the mind and to that extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the
\nmental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life:
\nthere is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need,
\nnecessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility and pleasure. Although thus inferior, it has this
\nawareness obscure, limited and automatic; but since it is less in possession of itself, void of what to us is the stamp of
\nmentality, we may justly call it the submental, but not so justly the subconscious part of our being. For when we stand back
\nfrom it, when we can separate our mind from its sensations, we perceive that this is a nervous and sensational and
\nautomatically dynamic mode of consciousness, a gradation of awareness different from the mind: it has its own separate
\nreactions to contacts and is sensitive to them in its own power of feeling; it does not depend for that on the mind’s
\nperception and response. The true subconscious is other than this vital or physical substratum; it is the Inconscient vibrating
\non the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths
\nimpressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the
\nsurface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which
\nthe origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds,
\nin untraceable impulsions and motives, in mental, vital, physical perturbations
\nand upheavals, in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature. <\/p>\n

     But the subliminal self has not at
\nall this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a
\nlife-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities
\nas our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended
\nmemory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; but
\neven though the same in kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign.
\nAnd it has other <\/p>\n


\nPage 559 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a power of direct awareness of the being, whether acting in
\nitself or turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge, more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at
\nunderstanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered,
\nconditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the
\nsubliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it
\nis aware of them and their works and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only subconscious in the sense
\nof not bringing all or most of itself to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a secret intraconscient and
\ncircumconscient than a subconscient; for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature. This description is no
\ndoubt truest of the deeper parts of the subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a more ignorant action
\nand those who, penetrating within, pause in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man’s-land between the subliminal
\nand the surface, may fall into much delusion and confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of the
\nsubconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has no kinship to the Inconscience. <\/p>\n

  
\nWe might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our
\nbeing: there is the submental and the subconscient
\nwhich appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material
\nbasis and a good part of our life and body; there is the
\nsubliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of
\ninner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or
\npsychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness
\nwhich the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a
\nwave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of
\nwhat we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our
\nnormal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is
\nourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside
\nour true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal
\nproper is no more than the inner being on the level of the
\nKnowledge-Ignorance <\/p>\n


\nPage 560 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the
\npoor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the
\nwhole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery. We become aware, in
\na certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all these
\nthree, aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality sustaining and
\nexceeding them all,
\nwhich humanity speaks of vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from
\nthese superconscient ranges we have visitations and in
\nour highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit.
\nThere is then in our total range of existence a
\nsuperconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience,
\noverarching and perhaps enveloping our subliminal and our
\nwaking selves, but unknown to us, seemingly unattainable and
\nincommunicable. <\/p>\n

   
\nBut with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this Spirit or
\nOversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest
\ndeepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in
\nourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world
\nby the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental,
\ntruth-conscious, infinite. That is the real Being, Lord and
\nCreator, who, as the Cosmic Self veiled in Mind and Life and Matter,
\nhas descended into that which we call the Inconscient
\nand constitutes and directs its subconscient existence by His
\nsupramental will and knowledge, has ascended out of the
\nInconscient and dwells in the inner being constituting and directing
\nits subliminal existence by the same will and knowledge,
\nhas cast up out of the subliminal our surface existence and dwells
\nsecretly in it overseeing with the same supreme light and
\nmastery its stumbling and groping movements. If the subliminal and
\nsubconscient may be compared to a sea which throws
\nup the waves of our surface mental existence, the superconscience may
\nbe compared to an ether which constitutes,
\ncontains, overroofs, inhabits and determines the movements of the sea
\nand its waves. It is there in this higher ether that we
\nare inherently and intrinsically conscious of our self and spirit, not
\nas here below by a reflection in silent mind or by
\nacquisition of the knowledge of a hidden Being within us; it is through
\nit, through that ether of superconscience, that we can
\npass to a supreme status, knowledge, experience. Of this superconscient
\nexistence through <\/p>\n


\nPage 561 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

which we can arrive at the highest status of our real, our supreme Self, we are normally even more ignorant than of the rest
\nof our being; yet is it into the knowledge of it that our being emerging out of the involution in Inconscience is struggling to
\nevolve. This limitation to our surface existence, this unconsciousness of our highest as of our inmost self, is our first, our
\ncapital ignorance. <\/p>\n

    
\nWe exist superficially by a becoming in Time; but here again out of
\nthat becoming in Time the surface mind, which we
\ncall ourselves, is ignorant of all the long past and the long future,
\naware only of the little life which it remembers and not of
\nall even of that; for much of it is lost to its observation, much to
\nits memory. We readily believe, — for the simple and
\ncompelling but insufficient reason that we do not remember, have not
\nperceived, are not informed of anything else, — that we
\ncame into existence first by our physical birth into this life and
\nshall cease to exist by the death of this body and the
\ncessation of this brief physical activity. But while this is true of
\nour physical mentality and physical vitality, our corporeal
\nsheath, for they have been constituted at our birth and are dissolved
\nby death, it is not true of our real becoming in Time. For
\nour real self in the cosmos is the Superconscient which becomes the
\nsubliminal self and throws up this apparent surface self
\nto act out the brief and limited part assigned to it between birth and
\ndeath as a present living and conscious self-formation of
\nthe being in the stuff of a world of inconscient Nature. The true being
\nwhich we are no more dies by the cessation of one
\nlife than the actor ceases to exist when he has finished one of his
\nparts or the poet when he has poured out something of
\nhimself in one of his poems; our mortal personality is only such a role
\nor such a creative self-expression. Whether or no we
\naccept the theory of many births of the same soul or psychic being in
\nvarious human bodies upon this earth, certain it is that
\nour becoming in Time goes far back into the past and continues far on
\ninto the future. For neither the superconscient nor the subliminal can
\nbe limited by a few moments of Time: the one is eternal and Time is
\nonly one of its modes; to the other, to the subliminal, it is an
\ninfinite field of various experience and the very existence of the
\nbeing <\/p>\n


\nPage 562 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

presupposes all the past for its own and equally all
\nthe future. Yet of this past which alone explains our present being,
\nour
\nmind knows, if knowledge it can be called, only this actual physical
\nexistence and its memories: of the future which alone
\nexplains the constant trend of our becoming, it knows nothing. So fixed
\nare we in the experience of our ignorance that we
\neven insist that the one can be known only by its vestiges and the
\nother cannot be known, because the future is not yet and
\nthe past is no longer in existence; yet are they both here in us, the
\npast involved and active, the future ready to evolve in the
\ncontinuity of the secret spirit. This is another limiting and
\nfrustrating ignorance. <\/p>\n

   
\n But even here the self-ignorance of man does not end; for not
\nonly is he ignorant of his superconscient Self, of his
\nsubliminal self, of his subconscient self, he is ignorant of his world
\nin which he presently lives, which constantly acts on and
\nthrough him and on which and by which he has to act. And the stamp of
\nhis ignorance is this, that he regards it as something
\nquite separate from him, as not-self because it is other than his
\nindividual nature-formation and his ego. So too when he
\nconfronts his superconscient Self, he thinks of it first as something
\nquite other than he, an external, even extracosmic God;
\nwhen he confronts and becomes aware of his subliminal self, it seems to
\nhim at first another greater person or another
\nconsciousness than his own which can support and guide him. Of the
\nworld he regards only one little foam-bubble, his life
\nand body, as himself. But when we get into our subliminal
\nconsciousness, we find it extending itself to be commensurate
\nwith its world; when we get into our superconscient Self, we find that
\nthe world is only its manifestation and that all in it is the One, all
\nin it is our self. We see that there is one indivisible Matter of which
\nour body is a knot, one indivisible Life of which our life is an eddy,
\none indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording,
\nforming or translating and transmitting station, one indivisible Spirit
\nof which our soul and individual being are a portion or a
\nmanifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in
\nwhich the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain
\nthe strong though always <\/p>\n


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\n

permeable walls it has created to be its own prison. Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the
\nIgnorance. <\/p>\n

   
\nAs we are ignorant of our existence in Time except the small hour which
\nwe remember, so we are ignorant of
\nourselves in Space except the small span of which we are mentally and
\nsensationally conscious, the single body that moves
\nthere and the mind and life which are identified with it, and we regard
\nthe environment as a not-self we have to deal with
\nand use: it is this identification and this conception that form the
\nlife of the ego. Space according to one view is only the
\nco-existence of things or of souls; the Sankhya affirms the plurality
\nof souls and their independent existence, and their
\nco-existence is then only possible by the unity of Nature-force, their
\nfield of experience, Prakriti: but, even granting this, the
\nco-existence is there and it is in the end co-existence in one Being.
\nSpace is the self-conceptive extension of that one Being;
\nit is the one spiritual Existence displaying the field of movement of
\nits Conscious-Force in its own self as Space. Because
\nthat Conscious-Force concentrates in manifold bodies, lives, minds and
\nthe soul presides over one of them, therefore our
\nmentality is concentrated in this and regards this as itself and all
\nthe rest as not-self, just as it regards its one life on which it
\nconcentrates by a similar ignorance as its whole term of existence cut
\noff from the past and the future. Yet we cannot
\nreally know our own mentality without knowing the one Mind, our own
\nvitality without knowing the one Life, our own body
\nwithout knowing the one Matter; for not only is their nature determined
\nby the nature of that, but by that their activities are
\nat every moment being influenced and determined. But, with all this sea
\nof being flowing in on us, we do not participate in its
\nconsciousness, but know of it only so much as can be brought into the
\nsurface of our minds and co-ordinated there. The
\nworld lives in us, thinks in us, forms itself in us; but we imagine
\nthat it is we who live, think, become separately by ourselves
\nand for ourselves. As we are ignorant of our timeless, of our
\nsuperconscient, of our subliminal and subconscient selves, so are we
\nignorant of our universal self. This alone saves us that ours is an
\nignorance which is full of the impulse and strives irresistibly,
\neternally, by the very law of its being <\/p>\n


\nPage 564 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

towards the realisation of self-possession and self-knowledge. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing
\nKnowledge is the definition of the consciousness of man the mental being, — or, looking at it from another side, we may say
\nequally that it is a limited separative awareness of things striving to become
\nan integral consciousness and an integral Knowledge. <\/p>\n


\nPage 565<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XI The Boundaries of the Ignorance                                                                                    One who thinks there is this…<\/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-634","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\/634","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=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}