|
CHAPTER X
Knowledge by Identity and Separative
Knowledge
They see the
Self in the Self by the Self.
Gita.
Where there is duality, there other sees other, other hears, touches,
thinks of, knows other. But when one sees all as the
Self, by what shall
one know it? it is by the Self that one knows all this that is.... All
betrays
him who sees all
elsewhere than in the Self; for all this that is is the Brahman,
all beings and all this that is are this Self.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
The Self-Existent has pierced the doors of sense outward, therefore one sees
things outwardly and sees not in one's
inner being. Rarely a sage desiring
immortality, his sight turned inward, sees the Self face to face.
Katha Upanishad.
There is no annihilation of the seeing of the seer, the speaking of the speaker...
the hearing of the hearer... the knowing
of the knower, for they are indestructible;
but it is not a second or other than and separate from himself that he
sees,
speaks
to, hears, knows.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
OUR
surface cognition, our limited and restricted mental way of looking at
our self, at our inner movements and at the world
outside us and its objects and happenings, is so constituted that it
derives in different degrees from a fourfold order of
knowledge. The original and fundamental way of knowing, native to the
occult self in things, is a knowledge by identity; the
second, derivative, is a knowledge by direct contact associated at its
roots with a secret knowledge by identity or starting
from it, but actually separated from its source and therefore powerful
but incomplete in its cognition; the third is a
knowledge by separation from the object of observation, but still with
a direct contact as its support or even a partial identity;
the fourth is a completely separative knowledge which relies on a
machinery of
VI.
20. IV. 5. 15,
7. II. 1.
1. IV. 3. 23-30.
Page 524
indirect contact, a knowledge by acquisition which is yet, without being conscious of it, a rendering or bringing up of the
contents of a pre-existent inner awareness and knowledge. A knowledge by identity, a knowledge by intimate direct contact,
a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact are the four cognitive methods
of Nature.
The first way of knowing in its purest form is illustrated in the
surface mind only by our direct awareness of our own
essential existence: it is a knowledge empty of any other content than
the pure fact of self and being; of nothing else in the
world has our surface mind the same kind of awareness. But in the
knowledge of the structure and movements of our
subjective consciousness some element of awareness by identity does
enter; for we can project ourselves with a certain
identification into these movements. It has already been noted how this
can happen in the case of an uprush of wrath which
swallows us up so that for the moment our whole consciousness seems to
be a wave of anger: other passions, love, grief,
joy have the same power to seize and occupy us; thought also absorbs
and occupies, we lose sight of the thinker and
become the thought and the thinking. But very ordinarily there is a
double movement; a part of our selves becomes the
thought or the passion, another part of us either accompanies it with a
certain adherence or follows it closely and knows it
by an intimate direct contact which falls short of identification or
entire self-oblivion in the movement.
This identification is possible, and also this simultaneous separation
and partial identification, because these things are becomings of our
being, determinations of our mind stuff and mind energy, of our life
stuff and life energy; but, since they
are only a small part of us, we are not bound to be identified and
occupied, — we can detach ourselves, separate the being
from its temporary becoming, observe it, control it, sanction or
prevent its manifestation: we can, in this way, by an inner
detachment, a mental or spiritual separateness, partially or even
fundamentally liberate ourselves from the control of mind
nature or vital nature over the being and assume the position of the
witness, knower and ruler. Thus we have a double
knowledge of the subjective movement: there is an intimate knowledge,
by
Page 525
identity, of its stuff and its force of action, more
intimate than we could have by any entirely separative and objective
knowledge such as we get of things outside us, things that are to us
altogether not-self; there is at the same time a
knowledge by detached observation, detached but with a power of direct
contact, which frees us from engrossment by the
Nature-energy and enables us to relate the movement to the rest of our
own existence and world existence. If we are
without this detachment, we lose our self of being and mastering
knowledge in the nature self of becoming and movement
and action and, though we know intimately the movement, we do not know
it dominatingly and fully. This would not be the
case if we carried into our identification with the movement our
identity with the rest of our subjective existence, — if, that is
to say, we could plunge wholly into the wave of becoming and at the
same time be in the very absorption of the state or act
the mental witness, observer, controller; but this we cannot easily do,
because we live in a divided consciousness in which
the vital part of us, — our life nature of force and desire and passion
and action, — tends to control or swallow up the mind,
and the mind has to avoid this subjection and control the vital, but
can only succeed in the effort by keeping itself separate;
for if it identifies itself, it is lost and hurried away in the life
movement. Nevertheless a kind of balanced double identity by
division is possible, though it is not easy to keep the balance; there
is a self of thought which observes and permits the
passion for the sake of the experience, — or is obliged by some
life-stress to permit it, — and there is a self of life which
allows itself to be carried along in the movement of Nature. Here,
then, in our subjective experience, we have a field of the
action of consciousness in which three movements of cognition can meet
together, a certain kind of knowledge by identity, a
knowledge by direct contact and, dependent upon them, a separative
knowledge.
In thought separation of the thinker and the thinking is more
difficult. The thinker is plunged and lost in the thought or
carried in the thought current, identified with it; it is not usually
at the time of or in the very act of thinking that he can
observe or review his thoughts, — he has to do that in retrospect and
with the aid of memory or by a critical pause of
corrective
Page 526
judgment before he proceeds further: but still a
simultaneity of thinking and conscious direction of the mind's action
can be
achieved partially when the thought does not engross, entirely when the
thinker acquires the faculty of stepping back into the
mental self and standing apart there from the mental energy. Instead of
being absorbed in the thought with at most a vague
feeling of the process of thinking, we can see the process by a mental
vision, watch our thoughts in their origination and
movement and, partly by a silent insight, partly by a process of
thought upon thought, judge and evaluate them. But whatever
the kind of identification, it is to be noted that the knowledge of our
internal movements is of a double nature, separation and
direct contact: for even when we detach ourselves, this close contact
is maintained; our knowledge is always based on a
direct touch, on a cognition by direct awareness carrying in it a
certain element of identity. The more separative attitude is
ordinarily the method of our reason in observing and knowing our inner
movements; the more intimate is the method of our
dynamic part of mind associating itself with our sensations, feelings
and desires: but in this association too the thinking mind
can intervene and exercise a separative dissociated observation and
control over both the dynamic self-associating part of
mind and the vital or physical movement. All the observable movements
of our physical being also are known and controlled
by us in both these ways, the separative and the intimate; we feel the
body and what it is doing intimately as part of us, but
the mind is separate from it and can exercise a detached control over
its movements. This gives to our normal knowledge of
our subjective being and nature, incomplete and largely superficial
though it still is, yet, so far as it goes, a certain intimacy,
immediacy and directness. That is absent in our knowledge of the world
outside us and its movements and objects: for there,
since the thing seen or experienced is not-self, not experienced as
part of us, no entirely direct contact of consciousness
with the object is possible; an instrumentation of sense has to be used
which offers us, not immediate intimate knowledge of
it, but a figure of it as a first datum for knowledge.
In the cognition of external things, our knowledge has an
Page 527
entirely separative basis; its whole machinery and
process are of the nature of an indirect perception. We do not identify
ourselves with external objects, not even with other men though they
are beings of our own nature; we cannot enter into
their existence as if it were our own, we cannot know them and their
movements with the directness, immediateness,
intimacy with which we know, — even though incompletely, — ourselves
and our movements. But not only identification lacks,
direct contact also is absent; there is no direct touch between our
consciousness and their consciousness, our substance and
their substance, our self of being and their self-being. The only
seemingly direct contact with them or direct evidence we
have of them is through the senses; sight, hearing, touch seem to
initiate some kind of a direct intimacy with the object of
knowledge: but this is not so really, not a real directness, a real
intimacy, for what we get by our sense is not the inner or
intimate touch of the thing itself, but an image of it or a vibration
or nerve message in ourselves through which we have to
learn to know it. These means are so ineffective, so exiguous in their
poverty that, if that were the whole machinery, we
could know little or nothing or only achieve a great blur of confusion.
But there intervenes a sense-mind intuition which
seizes the suggestion of the image or vibration and equates it with the
object, a vital intuition which seizes the energy or
figure of power of the object through another kind of vibration created
by the sense contact, and an intuition of the
perceptive mind which at once forms a right idea of the object from all
this evidence. Whatever is deficient in the
interpretation of the image thus constructed is filled up by the
intervention of the reason or the total understanding
intelligence. If the first composite intuition were the result of a
direct contact or if it summarised the action of a total intuitive
mentality master of its perceptions, there would be no need for the
intervention of the reason except as a discoverer or
organiser of knowledge not conveyed by the sense and its suggestions:
it is, on the contrary, an intuition working on an
image, a sense document, an indirect evidence, not working upon a
direct contact of consciousness with the object. But
since the image or vibration is a defective and summary documentation
and the intuition itself
Page 528
limited and communicated through an obscure medium,
acting in a blind light, the accuracy of our intuitional interpretative
construction of the object is open to question or at least likely to be
incomplete. Man has had perforce to develop his reason
in order to make up for the deficiencies of his sense instrumentation,
the fallibility of his physical mind's perceptions and the
paucity of its interpretation of its data.
Our world-knowledge is therefore a difficult structure made up
of the imperfect documentation of the sense-image, an
intuitional interpretation of it by perceptive mind, life-mind and
sense-mind, and a supplementary filling up, correction,
addition of supplementary knowledge, co-ordination, by the reason. Even
so our knowledge of the world we live in is narrow
and imperfect, our interpretations of its significances doubtful:
imagination, speculation, reflection, impartial weighing and
reasoning, inference, measurement, testing, a further correction and
amplification of sense evidence by Science,—all this
apparatus had to be called in to complete the incompleteness. After all
that the result still remains a half-certain,
half-dubious accumulation of acquired indirect knowledge, a mass of
significant images and ideative representations,
abstract thought-counters, hypotheses, theories, generalisations, but
also with all that a mass of doubts and a never-ending
debate and inquiry. Power has come with knowledge, but our imperfection
of knowledge leaves us without any idea of the
true use of the power, even of the aim towards which our utilisation of
knowledge and power should be turned and made
effective. This is worsened by the imperfection of our self-knowledge
which, such as it is, meagre and pitifully insufficient,
is of our surface only, of our apparent phenomenal self and nature and
not of our true self and the true meaning of our
existence. Self-knowledge and self-mastery are wanting in the user,
wisdom and right will in his use of world-power and
world-knowledge.
It is evident that our state on the surface is indeed a state of
knowledge, so far as it goes, but a limited knowledge
enveloped and invaded by ignorance and, to a very large extent, by
reason of its limitation, itself a kind of ignorance, at best
a mixed knowledge-ignorance. It could not be otherwise since our
Page 529
awareness of the world is born of a separative and surface observation with only an indirect means of cognition at its
disposal; our knowledge of ourselves, though more direct, is stultified by its restriction to the surface of our being, by an
ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the true motive-forces of our action. It is quite evident that we
know ourselves with only a superficial knowledge, — the sources of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true
nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the significance of our life
and its activities are a mystery: this could not be if we had a real self-knowledge and a real world-knowledge.
If we look for the reason of this limitation and imperfection, we shall
find first that it is because we are concentrated on
our surface; the depths of self, the secrets of our total nature are
shut away from us behind a wall created by our externalising
consciousness, — or created for it so that it can pursue its activity
of egocentric individualisation of the mind, life
and body uninvaded by the deeper and wider truth of our larger
existence: through this wall we can look into our inner self
and reality only through crevices and portholes and we see little there
but a mysterious dimness. At the same time our
consciousness has to defend its ego-centric individualisation, not only
against its own deeper self of oneness and infinity, but
against the cosmic infinite; it builds up a wall of division here also
and shuts out all that is not centred round its ego, excludes
it as the not-self. But since it has to live with this not-self, — for
it belongs to it, depends upon it, is an inhabitant within it, — it
must maintain some means of communication; it has too to make
excursions out of its wall of ego and wall of self-restriction within
the body in order to cater for those needs which the not-self can
supply to it: it must learn to know in some way all that surrounds it
so as to be able to master it and make it as far as possible a servant
to the individual and collective human life and ego. The body provides
our consciousness with the gates of the senses through which it can
establish the necessary communication and means of observation and
action upon the world, upon the not-self outside it; the mind uses
these means and invents others that supplement
Page 530
them and it succeeds in establishing some construction, some system of knowledge which serves its immediate purpose or
its general will to master partially and use this huge alien environmental existence or deal with it where it cannot master it.
But the knowledge it gains is objective; it is mainly a knowledge of the surface of things or of what is just below the surface,
pragmatic, limited and insecure. Its defence against the invasion of the cosmic energy is equally insecure and partial: in spite
of its notice of no entry without permission, it is subtly and invisibly invaded by the world, enveloped by the not-self and
moulded by it; its thought, its will, its emotional and its life energy are penetrated by waves and currents of thought, will,
passion, vital impacts, forces of all kinds from others and from universal Nature. Its wall of defence becomes a wall of
obscuration which prevents it from knowing all this interaction; it knows only what comes through the gates of sense or
through mental perceptions of which it cannot be sure or through what it can infer or build up from its gathered sense-data;
all the rest is to it a blank of nescience.
It is, then, this double wall of self-imprisonment, this
self-fortification in the bounds of a surface ego, that is the cause of
our limited knowledge or ignorance, and if this self-imprisonment were
the whole character of our existence, the ignorance
would be irremediable. But, in fact, this constant outer ego-building
is only a provisional device of the Consciousness-Force
in things so that the secret individual, the spirit within, may
establish a representative and instrumental formation of itself in
physical nature, a provisional individualisation in the nature of the
Ignorance, which is all that can at first be done in a world
emerging out of a universal Inconscience. Our self-ignorance and our
world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and
integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its
half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and
consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the
not-self outside it also as self, — on one side a Nature constituent of
our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless
continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of
ego-consciousness
Page 531
which it has created, it has to extend itself beyond its body and inhabit the body of the universe. In place of its knowledge by
indirect contact, or in addition to it, it must arrive at a knowledge by direct contact and proceed to a knowledge by identity.
Its limited finite of self has to become a boundless finite and an infinite.
But the first of these two movements, the awakening to our inner
realities, imposes itself as the prior necessity because
it is by this inward self-finding that the second, — the cosmic
self-finding, — can become entirely possible: we have to go into
our inner being and learn to live in it and from it; the outer mind and
life and body must become for us only an antechamber.
All that we are on the outside is indeed conditioned by what is within,
occult, in our inner depths and recesses; it is thence
that come the secret initiatives, the self-effective formations; our
inspirations, our intuitions, our life-motives, our mind's
preferences, our will's selections are actuated from there, — in so far
as they are not shaped or influenced by an insistence,
equally hidden, of a surge of cosmic impacts: but the use we make of
these emergent powers and these influences is
conditioned, largely determined and, above all, very much limited by
our outermost nature. It is then the knowledge of this
inner initiating self coupled with the accurate perception of the outer
instrumental self and the part played by both of them in
our building that we have to discover.
On the surface we know only so much
of our self as is formulated there and of even this only a portion; for we see
our total surface being in a general vagueness dotted and sectioned by points or
figures of precision: even what we discover by a mental introspection is only a
sum of sections; the entire figure and sense of our personal formation escapes
our notice. But there is also a distorting action which obscures and disfigures
even this limited self-knowledge; our self-view is vitiated by the constant
impact and intrusion of our outer life-self, our vital being, which seeks always
to make the thinking mind its tool and servant: for our vital being is not
concerned with self-knowledge but with self-affirmation, desire, ego. It is
therefore constantly acting on mind to build for it a mental structure of
apparent
Page 532
self that will serve these purposes; our mind is persuaded to present to us and to others a partly fictitious representative
figure of ourselves which supports our self-affirmation, justifies our desires and actions, nourishes our ego. This vital
intervention is not indeed always in the direction of self-justification and assertion; it turns sometimes towards
self-depreciation and a morbid and exaggerated self-criticism: but this too is an ego-structure, a reverse or negative egoism,
a poise or pose of the vital ego. For
in this vital ego there is frequently a mixture of the charlatan and
mountebank, the poser
and actor; it is constantly taking up a role and playing it to itself
and to others as its public. An organised self-deception is
thus added to an organised self-ignorance; it is only by going within
and seeing these things at their source that we can get
out of this obscurity and tangle.
For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner
vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other
than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or
becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe
the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and motives of
our action, the operative energies that build up our
surface personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that
secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being
that secretly feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical
being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts
of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought,
feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions
from within and impacts from outside us; our reason, our organising
intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order:
but here within we find the separate sources of our mental, our vital
and our physical energisms and can see clearly the pure
operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and
their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. We find that
the contradictions and the struggles of our surface consciousness are
largely due to the contrary or mutually discordant
tendencies of our mental, vital and physical parts opposing and
unreconciled with each other and these again to the discord of many
different inner possibilities of our being and even of different
personalities on each level in us which are behind the intermixed
disposition
Page 533
and differing tendencies of our surface nature. But
while on the surface their action is mixed together, confused and
conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in
their independent and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of
them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body,1
— or, better, by the central psychic entity, — is not so difficult,
provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour:
for if it is with the vital-ego motive that we make the entry into the
subliminal being, it may result in serious
dangers and disaster or at the least an exaggeration of ego,
self-affirmation and desire, an enlarged and more powerful
ignorance instead of an enlarged and more powerful knowledge. Moreover,
we find in this inner or subliminal being the
means of directly distinguishing between what rises from within and
what comes to us from outside, from others or from
universal Nature, and it becomes possible to exercise a control, a
choice, a power of willed reception, rejection and
selection, a clear power of self-building and harmonisation which we do
not possess or can operate very imperfectly in our
composed surface personality but which is the prerogative of our inner
Person. For by this entry into the depths the inner
being, no longer quite veiled, no longer obliged to exercise a
fragmentary influence on its outer instrumental consciousness, is
able to formulate itself more luminously in our life in the physical
universe.
In its essence the inner being's
knowledge has the same elements as the outer mind's surface knowledge,
but there is
between them the difference between a half blindness and a greater
clarity of consciousness and vision due to a more direct
and powerful instrumentation and a better arrangement of the elements
of knowledge. Knowledge by identity, on the
surface a vague inherent sense of our self-existence and a partial
identification with our inner movements, can here deepen
and enlarge itself from that indistinct essential perception and
limited sensation to a clear and direct intrinsic awareness of
the whole entity within: we can enter into possession of our whole
conscious mental being and life being and arrive at a
close intimacy of direct penetrating and enveloping contact with the
total
1 manomayah pranasariraneta — Mundaka
Upanishad, 2. 2. 7.
Page 534
movements of our mental and vital energy; we meet clearly and closely and are, — but more freely and understandingly, — all
the becomings of ourself, the whole self-expression of the Purusha on the present levels of our nature. But also there is or
can be along with this intimacy of knowledge a detached observation of the actions of the nature by the Purusha and a great
possibility, through this double status of knowledge, of a complete control and understanding. All the movements of the
surface being can be seen with a complete detachment, but also with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the
self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision, a clearer and
more accurate mental feeling of our subjective becoming, a vision which at once knows, commands and controls the whole
nature. If the psychic and mental parts in us are strong, the vital comes under mastery and direction to an extent hardly
possible to the surface mentality; even the body and the physical energies can be taken up by the inner mind and will and
turned into a more plastic instrumentation of the soul, the psychic being. On the other hand, if the mental and psychic parts
are weak and the vital strong and unruly, power is increased by entry into the inner vital, but discrimination and detached
vision are deficient; the knowledge, even if increased in force and range, remains turbid and misleading; intelligent
self-control may give place to a vast undisciplined impetus or a rigidly disciplined but misguided egoistic action. For the
subliminal is still a movement of the Knowledge-Ignorance; it has in it a greater knowledge, but the possibility also of a
greater because more self-affirming ignorance. This is because, though an increased self-knowledge is normal here, it is not
at once an integral knowledge: an awareness by direct contact, which is the principal power of the subliminal, is not
sufficient for that; for it may be contact with greater becomings and powers of Knowledge, but also with greater becomings
and powers of the Ignorance.
But the subliminal being has also a
larger direct contact with the world; it is not confined like the surface Mind
to the interpretation of sense-images and sense-vibrations supplemented by the
mental and vital intuition and the reason. There is indeed an inner sense in the
subliminal nature, a subtle sense of vision,
Page 535
hearing, touch, smell and taste; but these are not confined to the creation of images of things belonging to the physical
environment, — they can present to the consciousness visual, auditory, tactual and other images and vibrations of things
beyond the restricted range of the physical senses or belonging to other planes or spheres of existence. This inner sense can
create or present images, scenes, sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation,
suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature;
there is nothing that it cannot image or visualise or turn into sensory formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the
outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose
occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing
labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being. It should be noted, however, that
owing to this complexity the action of the subliminal sense can be confusing or misleading, especially if it is interpreted by
the outer mind to which the secret of its operations is unknown and its principles of sign-construction and symbolic
figure-languages foreign; a greater inner power of intuition, tact, discrimination is needed to judge and interpret rightly its
images and experiences. It is still the fact that they add immensely to our possible scope of knowledge and widen the
narrow limits in which our sense-bound outer physical consciousness is circumscribed and imprisoned.
But more important is the power of
the subliminal to enter into a direct contact of consciousness with other
consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an
essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a
direct feeling of things, even by a close envelopment and intimate penetration
and a return with the contents of what is enveloped or penetrated, by a direct
intimation or impact on the substance of mind itself, not through outward signs
or figures, — a revealing intimation or a self-communicating impact of thoughts,
feelings, forces. It is by these means that the inner being achieves an
immediate, intimate and accurate spontaneous
Page 536
knowledge of persons, of objects, of the occult and
to us intangible energies of world-Nature that surround us and impinge
upon our own personality, physicality, mind-force and life-force. In
our surface mentality we are sometimes aware of a
consciousness that can feel or know the thoughts and inner reactions of
others or become aware of objects or happenings
without any observable sense-intervention or otherwise exercise powers
supernormal to our ordinary capacity; but these
capacities are occasional, rudimentary, vague. Their possession is
proper to our concealed subliminal self and, when they
emerge, it is by a coming to the surface of its powers or operations.
These emergent operations of the subliminal being or
some of them are now fragmentarily studied under the name of psychic
phenomena, — although they have ordinarily nothing
to do with the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with
the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts
of our subliminal being; but the results cannot be conclusive or
sufficiently ample because they are sought for by methods of
inquiry and experiment and standards of proof proper to the surface
mind and its system of knowledge by indirect contact.
Under these conditions they can be investigated only in so far as they
are able to manifest in that mind to which they are
exceptional, abnormal or supernormal, and therefore comparatively rare,
difficult, incomplete in their occurrence. It is only if
we can open up the wall between the outer mind and the inner
consciousness to which such phenomena are normal, or if
we can enter freely within or dwell there, that this realm of knowledge
can be truly explained and annexed to our total
consciousness and included in the field of operation of our awakened
force of nature.
In our surface mind we have no direct
means of knowing even other men who are of our own kind and have a similar
mentality and are vitally and physically built on the same model. We can acquire
a general knowledge of the human mind and the human body and apply it to them
with the aid of the many constant and habitual outer signs of the human inner
movements with which we are familiar; these summary judgments can be farther
eked out by our experience of personal character and habits, by instinctive
application of what self-knowledge we have
Page 537
to our understanding and judgment of others, by
inference from speech and conduct, by insight of observation and
insight of
sympathy. But the results are always incomplete and very frequently
deceptive: our inferences are as often as not
erroneous constructions, our interpretation of the outward signs a
mistaken guess-work, our application of general
knowledge or our self-knowledge baffled by elusive factors of personal
difference, our very insight uncertain and unreliable.
Human beings therefore live as strangers to each other, at best tied by
a very partial sympathy and mutual experience; we
do not know enough, do not know as well as we know ourselves, — and
that itself is little, — even those nearest to us. But in
the subliminal inner consciousness it is possible to become directly
aware of the thoughts and feelings around us, to feel their
impact, to see their movements; to read a mind and a heart becomes less
difficult, a less uncertain venture. There is a
constant mental, vital, subtle-physical interchange going on between
all who meet or live together, of which they are
themselves unaware except in so far as its impacts and
interpenetrations touch them as sensible results of speech and action
and outer contact: for the most part it is subtly and invisibly that
this interchange takes place; for it acts indirectly, touching
the subliminal parts and through them the outer nature. But when we
grow conscious in these subliminal parts, that brings
consciousness also of all this interaction and subjective interchange
and intermingling, with the result that we need no longer
be involuntary subjects of their impact and consequence, but can accept
or reject, defend ourselves or isolate. At the same
time, our action on others need no longer be ignorant or involuntary
and often unintentionally harmful; it can be a conscious
help, a luminous interchange and a fruitful accommodation, an approach
towards an inner understanding or union, not as
now a separative association with only a limited intimacy or unity,
restricted by much non-understanding and often burdened
or endangered by a mass of misunderstanding, of mutual
misinterpretation and error.
Equally important would be the change
in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. These
we know only by their results, by the little that we can seize of their
Page 538
visible action and consequence. Among them it is
mostly the physical world-forces of which we have some knowledge, but
we live constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mind-forces and
life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even
aware of their existence. To all this unseen movement and action the
subliminal inner consciousness can open our
awareness, for it has a knowledge of it by direct contact, by inner
vision, by a psychic sensitiveness; but at present it can
only enlighten our obtuse superficiality and outwardness by unexplained
warnings, premonitions, attractions and repulsions,
ideas, suggestions, obscure intuitions, the little it can get through
imperfectly to the surface. The inner being not only
contacts directly and concretely the immediate motive and movement of
these universal forces and feels the results of their
present action, but it can to a certain extent forecast or see ahead
their farther action; there is a greater power in our
subliminal parts to overcome the time barrier, to have the sense or
feel the vibration of coming events, of distant happenings,
even to look into the future. It is true that this knowledge proper to
the subliminal being is not complete; for it is a mixture of
knowledge and ignorance and it is capable of erroneous as well as of
true perception, since it works not by knowledge by
identity, but by a knowledge through direct contact and this is also a
separative knowledge, though more intimate even in separation than
anything that is commanded by our surface nature. But the mixed
capacity of the inner mental and vital nature for a greater ignorance
as well as a greater knowledge can be cured by going still deeper
behind it to the psychic entity which supports our individual life and
body. There is indeed a soul-personality, representative of this
entity, already built up within us, which puts forward a fine psychic
element in our natural being: but this finer factor in our normal
make-up is not yet dominant and has only a limited action. Our soul is
not the overt guide and master of our thought and acts; it has to rely
on the mental, vital, physical instruments for self-expression and is
constantly overpowered by our mind and life-force: but if once it can
succeed in remaining in constant communion with its own larger occult
reality, — and this can only happen when we go deep into our subliminal
parts, — it is no longer
Page 539
dependent, it can become powerful and sovereign, armed with an intrinsic spiritual perception of the truth of things and a
spontaneous discernment which separates that truth from the falsehood of the Ignorance and Inconscience, distinguishes the
divine and the undivine in the manifestation and so can be the luminous leader of our other parts of nature. It is indeed when
this happens that there can be the turning-point towards an integral transformation and an integral knowledge.
These are the dynamic functionings and pragmatic values of the
subliminal cognition; but what concerns us in our
present inquiry is to learn from its way of action the exact character
of this deeper and larger cognition and how it is related
to true knowledge. Its main character is a knowledge by the direct
contact of consciousness with its object or of
consciousness with other consciousness; but in the end we discover that
this power is an outcome of a secret knowledge by
identity, a translation of it into a separative awareness of things.
For as in the indirect contact proper to our normal
consciousness and surface cognition it is the meeting or friction of
the living being with the existence outside it that awakens
the spark of conscious knowledge, so here it is some contact that sets
in action a pre-existent secret knowledge and brings it
to the surface. For consciousness is one in the subject and the object,
and in the contact of existence with existence this
identity brings to light or awakens in the self the dormant knowledge
of this other self outside it. But while this pre-existent
knowledge comes up in the surface mind as a knowledge acquired, it
arises in the subliminal as a thing seen, caught from
within, remembered as it were, or, when it is fully intuitive,
self-evident to the inner awareness; or it is taken in from the
object contacted but with an immediate response as to something
intimately recognisable. In the surface consciousness knowledge
represents itself as a truth seen from outside, thrown on us from the
object, or as a response to its touch on the sense, a perceptive
reproduction of its objective actuality. Our surface mind is obliged to
give to itself this account of its knowledge, because the wall between
itself and the outside world is pierced by the gates of sense and it
can catch through these gates the surface of outward objects though not
what is within them, but
Page 540
there is no such ready-made opening between itself and its own inner being: since it is unable to see what is within its
deeper self or observe the process of the knowledge coming from within, it has no choice but to accept what it does see, the
external object, as the cause of its knowledge. Thus all our mental knowing of things represents itself to us as objective, a
truth imposed on us from outside; our knowledge is a reflection or responsive construction reproducing in us a figure or
picture or a mental scheme of something that is not in our own being. In fact, it is a hidden deeper response to the contact, a
response coming from within that throws up from there an inner knowledge of the object, the object being itself part of our
larger self; but owing to the double veil, the veil between our inner self and our ignorant surface self and the veil between
that surface self and the object contacted, it is only an imperfect figure or representation of the inner knowledge that is
formed on the surface.
This affiliation, this concealed method of our knowledge, obscure and
non-evident to our present mentality, becomes
clear and evident when the subliminal inner being breaks its boundaries
of individuality and, carrying our surface mind with
it, enters into the cosmic consciousness. The subliminal is separated
from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler
sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just
as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature
by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall
around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a
fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which
projects itself beyond all these sheaths and forms a circumconscient,
an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of
the world and can become aware of
them and deal with them before they enter. The subliminal is able to
widen indefinitely this circumconscient envelope and more and more
enlarge its self-projection into the cosmic existence around it. A
point comes where it can break through the separation altogether,
unite, identify itself with cosmic being, feel itself universal, one
with all existence. In this freedom of entry into cosmic self and
cosmic nature there is a great liberation of the individual being; it
puts on a cosmic consciousness, becomes the universal
Page 541
individual. Its first result, when it is complete,
is the realisation of the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the
universe, and
this union may even bring about a disappearance of the sense of
individuality, a merger of the ego into the world-being.
Another common result is an entire openness to the universal Energy so
that it is felt acting through the mind and life and
body and the sense of individual action ceases. But more usually there
are results of less amplitude; there is a direct
awareness of universal being and nature, there is a greater openness of
the mind to the cosmic Mind and its energies, to the
cosmic Life and its energies, to cosmic Matter and its energies. A
certain sense of unity of the individual with the cosmic, a
perception of the world held within one's consciousness as well as of
one's own intimate inclusion in the world
consciousness can become frequent or constant in this opening; a
greater feeling of unity with other beings is its natural
consequence. It is then that the existence of the cosmic Being becomes
a certitude and a reality and is no longer an ideative
perception.
But
the cosmic consciousness of things is founded upon knowledge by
identity; for the universal Spirit knows itself as
the Self of all, knows all as itself and in itself, knows all nature as
part of its nature. It is one with all that it contains and
knows it by that identity and by a containing nearness; for there is at
the same time an identity and an exceeding, and, while
from the point of view of the identification there is a oneness and
complete knowledge, so from the point of view of the
exceeding there is an inclusion and a penetration, an enveloping
cognition of each thing and all things, a penetrating sense
and vision of each thing and all things. For the cosmic Spirit inhabits
each and all, but is more than all; there is therefore in its
self-view and world-view a separative power which prevents the cosmic
consciousness from being imprisoned in the objects
and beings in which it dwells: it dwells within them as an
all-pervading spirit and power; whatever individualisation takes
place is proper to the person or object, but is not binding on the
cosmic Being. It becomes each thing without ceasing from
its own larger all-containing existence. Here then is a large universal
identity containing smaller identities; for whatever
separative cognition
Page 542
exists in or enters into the cosmic consciousness
must stand on this double identity and does not contradict it. If there
is any
need of a drawing back and a knowledge by separation plus contact, it
is yet a separateness in identity, a contact in identity;
for the object contained is part of the self of that which contains it.
It is only when a more drastic separativeness intervenes,
that the identity veils itself and throws up a lesser knowledge, direct
or indirect, which is unaware of its source; yet is it
always the sea of identity which throws up to the surface the waves or
the spray of a direct or an indirect knowledge.
This is on the side of consciousness; on the side of action, of the
cosmic energies, it is seen that they move in masses,
waves, currents constantly constituting and reconstituting beings and
objects, movements and happenings, entering into them,
passing through them, forming themselves in them, throwing themselves
out from them on other beings and objects. Each
natural individual is a receptacle of these cosmic forces and a dynamo
for their propagation; there passes from each to each
a constant stream of mental and vital energies, and these run too in
cosmic waves and currents no less than the forces of
physical Nature. All this action is veiled from our surface mind's
direct sense and knowledge, but it is known and felt by the
inner being, though only through a direct contact; when the being
enters into the cosmic consciousness, it is still more widely,
inclusively, intimately aware of this play of cosmic forces. But
although the knowledge is then more complete, the dynamisation of this
knowledge can only be partial; for while a fundamental or static
unification with the cosmic self is
possible, the active dynamic unification with cosmic Nature must be
incomplete. On the level of mind and life, even with the
loss of the sense of a separate self-existence, the energisms must be
in their very nature a selection through
individualisation; the action is that of the cosmic Energy, but the
individual formation of it in the living dynamo remains the
method of its working. For the very use of the dynamo of individuality
is to select, to concentrate and formulate selected
energies and throw them out in formed and canalised currents: the flow
of a total energy would mean that this dynamo had no further use, could
be abolished or put
Page 543
out of action; instead of an activity of individual
mind, life, body there would be only an individual but impersonal
centre or
channel through which the universal forces would flow unimpeded and
unselective. This can happen, but it would imply a
higher spiritualisation far exceeding the normal mental level. In the
static seizure of the cosmic knowledge by identity, the
subliminal universalised may feel itself one with the cosmic self and
the secret self of all others: but the dynamisation of that
knowledge would not go farther than a translation of this sense of
identity into a greater power and intimacy of direct
contact of consciousness with all, a greater, more intimate, more
powerful and efficient impact of the force of
consciousness on things and persons, a capacity too of an effective
inclusion and penetration, of a dynamised intimate vision
and feeling and other powers of cognition and action proper to this
larger nature.
In the subliminal, therefore, even enlarged into the cosmic
consciousness, we get a greater knowledge but not the
complete and original knowledge. To go farther and see what the
knowledge by identity is in its purity and in what way and
to what extent it originates, admits or uses the other powers of
knowledge, we have to go beyond the inner mind and life and
subtle-physical to the two other ends of the subliminal, interrogate
the subconscient and contact or enter into the
superconscient. But in the subconscient all is blind, an obscure
universalism such as is seen in the mass consciousness, an
obscure individualism either abnormal to us or ill-formed and
instinctive: here, in the subconscient, a dark knowledge by
identity, such as we find already in the Inconscience, is the basis,
but it does not reveal itself and its secret. The superior
superconscient ranges are based upon the spiritual consciousness free
and luminous, and it is there that we can trace the
original power of knowledge and perceive the origin and difference of
the two distinct orders, knowledge by identity and
separative knowledge.
In the supreme timeless Existence, as
far as we know it by reflection in spiritual experience, existence and
consciousness are one. We are accustomed to identify consciousness with certain
operations of mentality and sense and, where these are absent or quiescent, we
speak of that state of being as
Page 544
unconscious. But consciousness can exist where there
are no overt operations, no signs revealing it, even where it is
withdrawn from objects and absorbed in pure existence or involved in
the appearance of non-existence. It is intrinsic in
being, self-existent, not abolished by quiescence, by inaction, by
veiling or covering, by inert absorption or involution; it is
there in the being, even when its state seems to be dreamless sleep or
a blind trance or an annulment of awareness or an
absence. In the supreme timeless status where consciousness is one with
being and immobile, it is not a separate reality, but
simply and purely the self-awareness inherent in existence. There is no
need of knowledge nor is there any operation of
knowledge. Being is self-evident to itself: it does not need to look at
itself in order to know itself or learn that it is. But if this
is evidently true of pure existence, it is also true of the primal
All-Existence; for just as spiritual Self-existence is intrinsically
aware of its self, so it is intrinsically aware of all that is in its
being: this is not by an act of knowledge formulated in a
self-regard, a self-observation, but by the same inherent awareness; it
is intrinsically all-conscious of all that is by the very
fact that all is itself. Thus conscious of its timeless self-existence,
the Spirit, the Being is aware in the same
way, — intrinsically, absolutely, totally, without any need of a look
or act of knowledge, because it is all, — of Time-Existence
and of all that is in Time. This is the essential awareness by
identity; if applied to cosmic existence, it would mean an
essential self-evident automatic consciousness of universe by the
Spirit because it is everything and everything is its being.
But there is another status of
spiritual awareness which seems to us to be a development from this state and
power of pure self-consciousness, perhaps even a first departure, but is in fact
normal and intimate to it; for the awareness by identity is always the very
stuff of all the Spirit's self-knowledge, but it admits within itself, without
changing or modifying its own eternal nature, a subordinate and simultaneous
awareness by inclusion and by indwelling. The Being, the Self-existent sees all
existences in its one existence; it contains them all and knows them as being of
its being, consciousness of its consciousness, power of its power, bliss of its
bliss; it is at the same time, necessarily, the
Page 545
Self in them and knows all in them by its
pervadingly indwelling selfness: but still all this awareness exists
intrinsically,
self-evidently, automatically, without the need of any act, regard or
operation of knowledge; for knowledge here is not an
act, but a state pure, perpetual and inherent. At the base of all
spiritual knowledge is this consciousness of identity and by
identity, which knows or is simply aware of all as itself. Translated
into our way of consciousness this becomes the triple
knowledge thus formulated in the Upanishad, “He who sees all existences
in the Self”, “He who sees the Self in all
existences”, “He in whom the Self has become all existences”, —
inclusion, indwelling and identity: but in the fundamental
consciousness this seeing is a spiritual self-sense, a seeing that is
self-light of being, not a separative regard or a regard upon
self turning that self into object. But in this fundamental
self-experience a regard of consciousness can manifest which,
though inherently possible, an inevitably self-contained power of
spirit, is not a first active element of the absorbed intrinsic
self-luminousness and self-evidence of the supreme consciousness. This
regard belongs to or brings in another status of the
supreme spiritual consciousness, a status in which knowledge as we know
it begins; there is a state of consciousness and in
it, intimate to it there is an act of knowing: the Spirit regards
itself, it becomes the knower and the known, in a way the
subject and object, — or rather the subject-object in one, — of its own
self-knowledge. But this regard, this knowledge is still
intrinsic, still self-evident, an act of identity; there is no
beginning of what we experience as separative knowledge.
But when the subject draws a little
back from itself as object, then certain tertiary powers of spiritual knowledge,
of knowledge by identity, take their first origin. There is a spiritual intimate
vision, a spiritual pervasive entry and penetration, a spiritual feeling in
which one sees all as oneself, feels all as oneself, contacts all as oneself.
There is a power of spiritual perception of the object and all that it contains
or is, perceived in an enveloping and pervading identity, the identity itself
constituting the perception. There is a spiritual conception that is the
original substance of thought, not the thought that discovers the unknown, but
that which brings out the intrinsically known from oneself
Page 546
and places it in self-space, in an extended being of
self-awareness, as an object of conceptual self-knowledge. There is a
spiritual emotion, a spiritual sense, there is an intermingling of
oneness with oneness, of being with being, of consciousness
with consciousness, of delight of being with delight of being. There is
a joy of intimate separateness in identity, of relations
of love joined with love in a supreme unity, a delight of the many
powers, truths, beings of the eternal oneness, of the forms
of the Formless; all the play of the becoming in the being founds its
self-expression upon these powers of the consciousness
of the Spirit. But in their spiritual origin all these powers are
essential, not instrumental, not organised, devised or created;
they are the luminous self-aware substance of the spiritual Identical
made active on itself and in itself, spirit made sight,
spirit vibrant as feeling, spirit self-luminous as perception and
conception. All is in fact the knowledge by identity,
self-powered, self-moving in its multitudinous selfhood of
one-awareness. The Spirit's infinite self-experience moves
between sheer identity and a multiple identity, a delight of intimately
differentiated oneness and an absorbed self-rapture.
A separative knowledge arises when the sense of differentiation
overpowers the sense of identity; the self still cognises
its identity with the object but pushes to its extreme the play of
intimate separateness. At first there is not a sense of self
and not-self, but only of self and other-self. A certain knowledge of
identity and by identity is still there, but it tends to be
first overstructured, then submerged, then so replaced by knowledge
through interchange and contact that it figures as a secondary
awareness, as if it were a result and no longer the cause of the mutual
contact, the still pervasive and enveloping touch, the interpenetrating
intimacy of the separate selves. Finally, identity disappears behind
the veil and there is the play of being with other beings,
consciousness with other consciousness: an underlying identity is still
there, but it is not experienced; its place is taken by a direct
seizing and penetrating contact, intermingling, interchange. It is by
this interaction that a more or less intimate knowledge, mutual
awareness or awareness of the object remains possible. There is no
feeling of self meeting self, but there is a
Page 547
mutuality; there is not yet an entire separateness, a complete otherness and ignorance. This is a diminished consciousness,
but it retains some power of the original knowledge curtailed by division, by the loss of its primal and essential completeness,
operating by division, effecting closeness but not oneness. The power of inclusion of the object in the consciousness, of an
enveloping awareness and knowledge is there; but it is the inclusion of a now externalised existence which has to be made
an element of our self by an attained or recovered knowledge, by a dwelling of consciousness upon the object, a
concentration, a taking possession of it as part of the existence. The power of penetration is there, but it has no natural
pervasiveness and does not lead to identity; it gathers what it can, takes what is thus acquired and carries the contents of
the object of knowledge to the subject. There can still be a direct and penetrating contact of consciousness with
consciousness creating a vivid and intimate knowledge, but it is confined to the points or to the extent of the contact. There
is still a direct sense, consciousness-sight, consciousness-feeling which can see and feel what is within the object as well as
its outside and surface. There is still a mutual penetration and interchange between being and being, between consciousness
and consciousness, waves of thought, of feeling, of energy of all kinds which may be a movement of sympathy and union or
of opposition and struggle. There can be an attempt at unification by possession of others or through one's own acceptance
of possession by other consciousness or other being; or there can be a push towards union by reciprocal inclusion, pervasion,
mutual possession. Of all this action and interaction the knower by direct contact is aware and it is on this basis that he
arranges his relations with the world around him. This is the origin of knowledge by direct contact of consciousness with its
object, which is normal to our inner being but foreign or only imperfectly known to our surface nature.
This first separative ignorance is evidently still a play of knowledge but of a limited separative
knowledge, a play of divided being working upon a reality of underlying unity
and arriving only at an imperfect result or outcome of the concealed oneness.
The complete intrinsic awareness of identity and the act
Page 548
of knowledge by identity belong to the higher
hemisphere of existence: this knowledge by direct contact is the main
character of the highest supraphysical mental planes of consciousness,
those to which our surface being is closed in by a
wall of ignorance; in a diminished and more separative form it is a
property of the lesser supraphysical planes of mind; it is
or can be an element in all that is supraphysical. It is the main
instrumentation of our subliminal self, its central means of
awareness; for the subliminal self or inner being is a projection from
these higher planes to meet the subconscience and it
inherits the character of consciousness of its planes of origin with
which it is intimately associated and in touch by kinship. In
our outer being we are children of the Inconscience; our inner being
makes us inheritors of the higher heights of mind and
life and spirit: the more we open inwards, go inwards, live inwards,
receive from within, the more we draw away from
subjection to our inconscient origin and move towards all which is now
superconscient to our ignorance.
Ignorance
becomes complete with the entire separation of being from being: the
direct contact of consciousness with
consciousness is then entirely veiled or heavily overlaid, even though
it still goes on within our subliminal parts, just as there
is also, though wholly concealed and not directly operative, the
underlying secret identity and oneness. There is on the
surface a complete separateness, a division into self and not-self;
there is the necessity of dealing with the not-self, but no
direct means of knowing it or mastering it. Nature then creates
indirect means, a contact by physical organs of sense, a
penetration of outside impacts through the nerve currents, a reaction
of mind and its co-ordinations acting as an aid and
supplement to the activity of the physical organs, — all of them
methods of an indirect knowledge; for the consciousness is
forced to rely on these instruments and cannot act directly on the
object. To these means is added a reason, intelligence and
intuition which seize on the communications thus indirectly brought to
them, put all in order and utilise their data to get as much knowledge
and mastery and possession of the not-self or as much partial unity
with it as the original division allows to the separated being.
Page 549
These means are obviously insufficient and often
inefficient, and the indirect basis of the mind's operations afflicts
knowledge with a fundamental incertitude; but this initial
insufficiency is inherent in the very nature of our material existence
and of all still undelivered existence that emerges from the
Inconscience.
The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme
superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and
automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in
itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a
luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution
in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig
Veda, tama asit tamasa gudham, which makes it look like
Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness
there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion,
inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved
consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it
the awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its
dark infinite and, when it acts and creates, — but it acts first as
Energy and not as Consciousness, — everything is arranged
with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all
material things reside a mute and involved Real-Idea, a
substantial and self-effective intuition, an eyeless exact perception,
an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed
and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb
infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in
insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this
state and action of the Inconscient corresponds very
evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience,
but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of
the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers
are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute
subconscience.
We can, in this knowledge, understand
more clearly the stages of the emergence of consciousness from involution to its
evolved appearance, of which we have already attempted some general conception.
The material existence has only a physical, not a mental individuality, but
there is a subliminal Presence in it, the one Conscious in unconscious things,
that determines the operation of its indwelling energies. If, as has been
affirmed, a
Page 550
material object receives and retains the impression
of the contacts of things around it and energies emanate from it, so
that
an occult knowledge can become aware of its past, can make us conscious
of these emanating influences, the intrinsic unorganised Awareness
pervading the form but not yet enlightening it must be the cause of
this receptivity and these
capacities. What we see from outside is that material objects like
plants and minerals have their powers, properties and
inherent influences, but as there is no faculty or means of
communication, it is only by being brought into contact with person
or object or by a conscious utilisation by living beings that their
influences can become active, — such a utilisation is the
practical side of more than one human science. But still these powers
and influences are attributes of Being, not of mere
indeterminate substance, they are forces of the Spirit emerging by
Energy from its self-absorbed Inconscience. This first
crude mechanical action of an inherent absorbed conscious energy opens
in the primary forms of life into submental
life-vibrations that imply an involved sensation; there is a seeking
for growth, light, air, life-room, a blind feeling out, which is
still internal and confined within the immobile being, unable to
formulate its instincts, to communicate, to externalise itself.
An immobility not organised to establish living relations, it endures
and absorbs contacts, involuntarily inflicts but cannot
voluntarily impose them; the inconscience is still dominant, still
works out everything by the secret involved knowledge by
identity, it has not yet developed the surface contactual means of a
conscious knowledge. This further development begins
with overtly conscious life; what we see in it is the imprisoned
consciousness struggling out to the surface: it is under the
compulsion of this struggle that the separated living being strives,
however blindly at first and within narrow limits, to enter
into conscious relations with the rest of the world-being outside it.
It is by the growing amount of contacts that it can receive
and respond to and by the growing amount of contacts that it can put
out from itself or impose in order to satisfy its needs
and impulsions that the being of living matter develops its
consciousness, grows from inconscience or subconscience into a
limited separative knowledge.
Page 551
We see then all the powers inherent in the original self-existent spiritual Awareness slowly brought out and manifested
in this growing separative consciousness; they are activities suppressed but native to the secret and involved knowledge by
identity and they now emerge by degrees in a form strangely diminished and tentative. First, there emerges a crude or veiled
sense which develops into precise sensations aided by a vital instinct or concealed intuition; then a life-mind perception
manifests and at its back an obscure consciousness-sight and feeling of things; emotion vibrates out and seeks an
interchange with others; last arises to the surface conception, thought, reason comprehending and apprehending the object,
combining its data of knowledge. But all are incomplete, still maimed by the separative ignorance and the first obscuring
inconscience; all are dependent on the outward means, not empowered to act in their own right: consciousness cannot act
directly on consciousness; there is a constructive envelopment and penetration of things by the mind consciousness, but not
a real possession; there is no knowledge by identity. Only when the subliminal is able to force upon the frontal mind and
sense some of its secret activities pure and untranslated into the ordinary forms of mental intelligence, does a rudimentary
action of the deeper methods lift itself to the surface; but such emergences are still an exception, they strike across the
normality of our acquired and learned knowledge with a savour of the abnormal and the supernormal. It is only by an
opening to our inner being or an entry into it that a direct intimate awareness can be added to the outer indirect awareness.
It is only by our awakening to our inmost soul or superconscient self that there
can be a beginning of the spiritual knowledge with identity as its basis, its
constituent power, its intrinsic substance.
Page 552
HOME
|