Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

10. Transformation of the Subconscient and the Inconscient

Fragment ID: 3740

Sri Aurobindo was unable up till now to answer your letter... but these answers, given below point by point, are still sent as he thinks they may be of use to you for your future sadhana:

1. “Ugly scenes” etc. –

This must be something rising up from the subconscient in which there are many strange things of the kind – or else it is formations thrown on the lower vital consciousness from the corresponding plane in universal Nature where there are forces which take delight in dirt and ugliness and all kinds of perversities. In either case a steady detached rejection is the reaction required.

2. There is no objection to using one’s bed as āsana.

3. Sex trouble –

This is a quite usual phenomenon when one stops sexual activity and rejects it in the conscious mind and vital. It takes refuge in the subconscient where the mind has no direct control and comes up in the form of dreams causing emission. That lasts so long as the subconscient itself is not cleared. This can sometimes be done by putting a strong will or, if possible, a concrete current of Force on the sex-centre before sleeping against this thing happening. The success is not always immediate, but if effectively done it tends first to reduce frequency and finally stop it.

These things (accumulation of urine, hot stimulating food etc.) are all predisposing or auxiliary causes or can be so. There is often as described a rhythm in this subconscient urge – it happens at a particular time in the month or else after a fixed period of time (week, fortnight, month, six months).

4. Classifications of Samadhi in Vedanta –

For this yoga these divisions are not so important.

5. Experience of Samadhi –

It is not indispensable at this stage; but if it comes of itself, it can be allowed to develop. But experience in the waking state is more important for this yoga. Samadhi is a help for reaching the inner depths of the consciousness. One is able to go more easily by it inward below the surface being to get into direct contact with other supraphysical planes of experience, to pass into other worlds and return, to contact happenings distant in space and time, to see what is in the supraconscient and to enter into what is supraconscient to our mental status.

6. The cosmic Consciousness; the psychic –

These things cannot be sufficiently dealt with in a short compass. The ordinary consciousness of man is confined to his own individuality – he can enter into the consciousness of others and of the universe only by indirect means or a superficial and incomplete apprehension, by sense experience, contacts of emotional sympathy, mental concepts, analogy with his own movements, inference. In yoga at a certain point this limitation breaks down, the consciousness enlarges itself, becomes directly aware of the Cosmic Self and knows the individual self to be one with it; of the Cosmic Energy and meets directly the action of the cosmic forces; of the cosmic mind, life, matter and feels first a contact of its individual mind, life, body with them, then a unity in which one’s own individual mentality, vitality, physicality is felt as only a part of the universal, a wave of the ocean, a dynamo receiving and formulating the universal forces. Finally, the individual melts into the cosmic Consciousness, the whole world is felt in oneself and oneself suffused through the world – it is the cosmic Consciousness, Mind, Life, material Energy that works through the individual function. The separate ego either does not exist or is only a convenience for the universal Spirit and its action. This is the complete consummation of the cosmic Consciousness, but in its fullness it is not common, belonging properly to what we may call the overmind realisation; but a constant partial and growing experience of it or an increasing contact with the cosmic Consciousness is a normal part of yoga.

What is meant in the terminology of the yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature.