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The mental consciousness tends to look at things with a linear perspective. It expects things to systematically roll out in a continuous, directed stream. It becomes upset and disoriented when what appears to be a settled result gets suddenly disrupted or upset by new circumstances, forces or events.
For the individual who has a spiritual experience, one of the most notable characteristics is the absolute and incontrovertible ‘reality’ of the experience. Yet, people who live primarily in the surface consciousness tend to treat such experiences, when related, as somehow less real or even unreal, compared to the experience of the outer world. Terms such as dream, hallucination, or delusion frequently are used, and in many cases, the person having such inner experiences is lumped in with those who require some form of counseling or mental health support.
Spiritual aspirants tend to have periods of concentration, intense experiences, positive forward movement centered around our deepest aspirations, only to find that after some time the energy withdraws, or they sink back into old habits or comfortable patterns of the past. They may look for activities that do not take serious concentration and they act as distractions or which dissipate the energy. In today’s world, scrolling social media or watching mindless video reels can be added to traditional forms of distraction.
When we respond to a vibration, either at the physical level, the vital level or the mental level, we open a pathway for that vibration to impact us in some way, and, having once been accepted for admittance, it creates a propensity for us to admit it the next time it comes our way. In this way, a habit of response is built up. This idea is validated by scientists who track neural pathways, and who indicate that a repeated experience builds up ‘grooves’ in the pathways of the brain which allow impulses to traverse them more quickly and easily.
The Upanishads describe 4 states of consciousness, the waking, the dream, the sleep and the state beyond these 3. Sri Aurobindo points out that these are meant to symbolically represent the state of awareness in the outer world (waking), the state of awareness in the subliminal world (dream), the state of awareness in the superconscient world (sleep) and the 4th state, is the one transcendent Reality.
“Seeing is believing” has been a proverb for humanity since time immemorial. Yet, as we delve deeper into the way the world functions, we come to understand that what we see is not always an accurate reflection of the underlying reality. We see the sun rise in the East and set in the West on a daily basis, and for ages, we believed that this meant that the sun rotated around the earth. Today in the age of the internet and digital manipulation of information and images, we understand that not everything we see is actually true and accurate.
There is in Nature, a conservative force that resists change. There is a benefit inasmuch as it ensures that life does not devolve into chaos, and there is a further benefit that it forces the change-process to become much more solid and effective in order to eventually bring out the intended evolutionary result. The physical mind is that part of the mental aspect of the being which embodies this conservative force. It is rooted in the palpable, solid and visible exte al world and does not recognise, or accept easily, the reality of vital worlds, mental worlds or spiritual worlds and powers.
It is much easier to see and criticise others for their ideas, behaviour or habits, than to see in oneself potentially those same issues. Jesus raised this issue in his Sermon on the Mount: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
We start from the ego-consciousness and we treat ourselves, from that standpoint, as independent, separate and “walled off” from all other beings, interacting with them from our insulated status. When we then turn to spiritual growth and development from this standpoint, we start by looking at it as something that the individual can “accomplish” regardless of the status of the rest of humanity or the world as a whole.
We live in the world without fully appreciating or understanding it. This is not something new that we are experiencing, but a statement of what we may call the ‘human condition’. The Rishis of the Rig Veda faced these same issues. In the Hymn of Creation, Mandala X, Sukta 129, Verses 6 and 7 (as translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta) they expressed their yearning for knowledge and their frustration with the seemingly impenetrable nature of the manifestation of which we are part, when they say: “Who knows in truth, Who would tell us here below, From where was it born, Whence this Surging Creation?
Humanity has struggled with the idea of an individual changing his character and becoming something more, or different, than what he was before. Numerous methods have been tried, and at the end of the day, almost everyone agrees that human nature and the individual character that expresses that human nature is bound and cannot be modified by any power that the human being possesses.
Before we can deal with thoughts, we need to have at least a basic understanding of what they are and where they come from, what they consist of, and what the purpose of thought is. Yet, we rarely if ever examine these questions and simply take thought for granted as something necessary and permanent and a part of our own being.
In his book The Mother, Sri Aurobindo outlines the personal effort to be made by the seeker of the Divine. This consists of the movements of aspiration, rejection and surrender. Aspiration means the inner focus and dedication to achieving the divine consciousness and living in that consciousness. Rejection means to root out the thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, habits, cravings and physical weaknesses that distract the individual from the focus needed, and which are based in the ego-consciousness rather than in the divine standpoint.
The practitioner of the integral yoga has set before himself the change of what we consider to be basic human nature, the established workings and principles of action of the body, the life-force and the mind. These elements have developed over countless millennia as part of the evolutionary process of Nature. Many of them have been considered foundational principles of the physical body and the life energy. Effectuating any change therefore requires a process and a force that goes beyond our mental will.
The development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of freedom rather than from participation in a larger universal purpose.
Exte al impressions, sensations, impulsions, events all traverse the nervous pathways from the sense organs to the mind, which tends to react to these sensations and thereby remains in a constant state of disturbance. In the modern world, with our addiction to social media, mobile phones, television and radio, and the constant bombardment of stimulation from the exte al world, we generally find it hard to stay focused and concentrate on a specific thought, or project or even just to sit quietly and be receptive in a state of meditative awareness.
There is a vast difference between the goals of the ordinary human individual and those who have chosen to take up spiritual sadhana. This difference defines the way they respectively look at things, including the various normal and natural functions of human life. For the ordinary individual, it turns out that their lives are very much defined by their interests, their careers, their relationships and the various forms of enjoyment they seek.
For the most part, we live within a framework set for us by our parents, community, society, education and the individual choices we make as a result of these things. To some extent these things determine where we will concentrate our focus, what capacities we will practice and develop, and where we will direct our lives going forward. Once we get onto a specific road in life, we tend to stay on that road, for better or worse.
As long as we identify ourselves with our exte al personality, the body-life-mind complex we inhabit and project into the world, we are subject to the responses, reactions and motivations that they express, based on the developments of the entire past evolutionary history of consciousness on the planet and specifically closely associated with the socialization we receive through family, friends, school, and the society at large. We internalize these things to such a degree that we believe we ARE these things!
Sri Aurobindo provided advice to an individual who was trying to sort out the direction for his life and how to face the difficulties that confronted him, particularly with respect to certain vital weaknesses to which he was prone. Sri Aurobindo analyzed the condition of this individual in great detail and provided both general and specific advice for addressing the situation. The general advice is here:
There is a deeply embedded aspiration wtihin humanity to discover some purpoe or significance to our lives, and to the very existence of the creation within which we live and act. Our training and education, from our earliest childhood, is fixated on achieving our standing within the exte al reality of the society within which we live. We are asked to learn a trade, have a career, marry and raise a family. We are then told that we should seek for enjoyment and we search for happiness through exte al actions and material gratifications.
Spiritual progress is an ongoing process that requires patience, persistence, endurance and strength of purpose, along with the focus of energy needed to achieve any substantial realisations. Some people believe that spirituality is something weak and ineffective, that leads people to abandon the life of the world, in many cases out of fear or exhaustion, or lack of will. But in reality, spirituality requires more energy, not less, to be gathered and focused as it involves overcoming the inertia of the habitual patterns of life.
When we rely on our surface impressions, which are very much based on and influenced by our background, family, society and the values inculcated into us by those relationships, we only are able to truly understand a fraction of what is actually occurring, and generally this is conditioned by our desires, wishes and preconceived ideas based on our ego-consciousness. It is thus, necessarily, not truly possible to get a real sense of the larger perspective that encompasses our growth, and the developmental trend that is working itself out within us and in our environs.
Once we acknowledge the idea that forces, beings or entities from the vital planes can act upon and through human individuals, the question then arises as to how we can identify this action and distinguish it from what we might call normal actions of a human being under the impulsion of the action of the gunas and the attempt to achieve certain objectives either presented to him by desire, or created in him through fear.
It is a constant complaint that we have to take on boring, distasteful, mechanical or otherwise unpleasant jobs in order to survive. Then we create a bifurcation in our minds between “work time” and “personal time” or “sadhana” (if we happen to be practicing any form of yoga). We thus spend a large portion of our lives having separated our lives into the duality of what we “have to do” to survive, versus what our real aspiration or calling is.
The mental consciousness believes, first of all, that the particular viewpoint held by an individual is ‘correct’ and that other viewpoints are ‘wrong’. The vital nature wants to assert itself and gain dominance. The limited and linear framework of the normal human consciousness ensures that there will be disagreement, dispute and eventually a state of gridlock where opposing ideas contend with each other and no one is willing or able to ‘compromise’ because they hold their own view to be the correct one. We see this dynamic everywhere.
We generally experience ourselves as our body, life and mind. When we injure our body, we say that we have hurt ourselves. When there are hunger pangs, we say that we are hungry. When we experience an emotion, we say that we have become angry, or are in love, or are feeling lonely or depressed. Rene Descartes famously stated “I think, therefore I am”, showing his sense that he was identified with his mental consciousness. When the body dies, we believe that we die.
Today’s world provides people with both an obstacle and an opportunity when they try to follow their chosen or cherished path in life. The obstacle is based on societal requirement that individuals take up a productive form of work in the world to earn enough money to support their needs for basic necessities of life. In many cases, the skill set and education or training simply is not available to them for the jobs that are accessible to them, or else, to obtain the necessary skills and certifications, the time and cost of acquisition are beyond their means.
When we live on the surface of our being, we are highly reactive and tend to act without reflection, jumping at events or circumstances and responding to the slightest provocations. Even something as frequent as someone driving too slowly or too close triggers anger and in some cases, what is known as ‘road rage’. We have no peace when we live on the surface in our exte al nature. This surface being is under the control of the three gunas, which are constantly in motion. In order to escape this reactive state, it is necessary to find a place where peace reigns in our being.
The experience and descent of a higher consciousness is not a matter of philosophical argument but one of psycho-physical effects seen and noted by the individual, as well as palpable impacts in the basis of knowledge, action and implementation in the outer world. The seeker actually can feel the force entering and permeating his being. He can experience the widening of his awareness from a place above the mind. He begins to see and understand things from a new viewpoint which provides in some cases radically new insights and ways of doing things.
With our standpoint based in the mental consciousness we tend to believe that if we think something, it is ‘real’. This viewpoint fails to account for the different parts of the being, and their different modes of response. For example, we may hold a mental conception to not fear something, and yet, when confronted with it, despite the mind’s best efforts, we find our vital being reacting with fear and we feel palpitations or weakness in the body itself, symptoms of a visceral fear that we are experiencing despite the mind’s effort to overcome the fear.
The recognition of the separation of the Purusha, the inner witness consciousness and the Prakriti, the active nature that operates in the mind, life and body, is an important step in the practice of yoga, whether for total abandonment of the outer world and liberation of the being, or as an essential phase in the eventual transformation of the nature to take up and manifest the divine intention without the distortions caused by the ego-consciousness.
The Bhagavad Gita places considerable emphasis on the need to understand the play of the Gunas, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas, in all things. Yogic practice is not exempted from this play. Each of the Gunas has a specific set of characteristics, and they are not stable. The Gunas are always in motion. Doubt, fear, darkness, lack of effort, despondency or depression, all are signs of the predominance of Tamas. Ambition, energetic action, desire, grasping are all signs of the action of Rajas. Light, balance, harmony and understanding, steady, calm effort are the signs of Sattwa.
What is the will of the Divine, and how can we know it? The usual answer is some prescription from one religion or another with a doctrine supported by that religious persuasion as being the correct interpretation. In some cases, the Divine Will seems thereby to be in conflict from one religion to another, and we thus set up the battles that have led to more death and suffering in the world than virtually any other cause. The Crusades, the Holy Inquisition are a few examples of men interpreting the Divine Will to support their own ideology.
The normal human individual lives primarily in a state of consciousness that is immersed in the outer life, including the inner reactions to that life, and the functions of the body, life-energy and mind. This is true whether the person considers himself to be an extrovert or an introvert. The introvert simply focuses more on the inner reactive states of the being in relation to that exte al reality, but the focus remains essentially the same as the extrovert.
The normal process of mental reception brings in numerous thought-forms, based on the receptivity of the individual and the wideness of his sources of information and mental energy. For those who have not systematically developed a process for organising the mind, these thought-froms have no particular sequencing and are not necessarily reviewed for consistency as a result of serious reflection. This leads to a confused mental approach that can actually apply ideas in what area that are absolutely contradicted by the way they respond in another area.
We do not generally recognise that it is virtually impossible to hold one thought, one idea, one form of concentration, one energetic status for long periods of time. As time goes on, the balance of the Gunas changes and we lose the intensity, shift our focus to something else, and we find that the fear, the anger, the desire, the despair, or the concentration or aspiration we held earlier has attenuated or disappeared for the time being.
The mental consciousness evolved subsequent to the emergence of the physical consciousness and the vital consciousness. It appears in rudimentary forms in various animals, and advances to a much higher state of activity and power in the higher primates, including human beings, as well as ocean-going mammals such as dolphins and whales.
The Western mind-set, based in analysis and categorization, works to fragment and divide everything into discreet and distinct classifications and categories. Therefore, when it sees any element of Nature, or any being in existence, it wants to treat it as a separate and separated existence. It is a case of “not seeing the forest for the trees”. The Eastern mind-set recognises the oneness and integrated nature of all that exists, and thus,, while it is able to identify the ‘parts’, it also sees that they are not independent and that they are elements of the ‘whole’.
When one steps back and begins to observe the mind’s action and what Swami Vivekananda calls the ‘mind-stuff’, chitta, a number of different statuses can be seen. The normal human mind is usually constantly active and it jumps from one thing to another in response to impulses, impressions, sensations, vital or physical drives or emotional or mental preoccupations or focus. There are other states as well.
If we observe the trajectory of human development, we can see a very clear direction taking shape. As we have become more conscious of the stages of life, and the processes that accompany those stages, including the increasing weakening and deterioration of the body and the life energy, and the eventual breakdown and thus, the movement toward the death of the body, we also have taken steps to learn how to increase health, wellness and longevity.
The opening and activation of the subtle energy centres described in the Tantras and known generally as Kundalini Yoga, differs from the practices of integral Yoga as to process, but not necessarily as to the end result. In both cases, the subtle centres, or chakras, are opened and energy is flowing.
We treat free will and determinism as opposite and irreconcilable concepts, and there are adherents ready to argue one position or the other and provide irrefutable proofs of their position. It is clear from the strength of each position that there is a truth that underpins each of these concepts. How can we then reconcile the innate sense we maintain of having free will with the apparent determinism of the law of cause and effect, the chain of causality?
We recognise nowadays that actions of the mother impact the fetus in the womb. Certain things impact the physical development, including certain drugs or alcohol. Some drugs may cause physical deformities; others may impact the brain and nervous system. What is less frequently acknowledged, however, is the psychological impact of the mother’s experiences, thoughts and surroundings on the development of the unbo child.
When a seeker has an unusual experience, when the consciousness shifts to a different standpoint, when new forms of understanding, inspiration, and response suddenly arise, there can be a feeling of intense disorientation, concern, fear or anxiety. ‘What is happening to me?’ Given the predominant mindset of the modern world, there may be conce ed about whether one is having some kind of psychological breakdown, an outbreak of madness of some sort. Family and friends may observe one acting in a new and strange way, and may even suggest psychological help or counseling.
Under the influence of the gnostic consciousness, the entire framework of the mental organisation of life, which we accept as assumed and given, would necessarily be modified. The very basis of viewing and understanding things would have to shift from one of division and separation to one of unity and oneness. This will have profound effects all spheres of human endeavor.
For the most part, Western psychology is focused on treating what is considered ‘abnormal’ in order to help an individual fit into society and act ‘normally’. Much focus is put on exte al causes of various forms of disturbance and how the individual can adjust, adapt or respond to those disturbances. The approach leads to a constant need for ‘therapy sessions’ as there are countless causes of disturbance, looked at from an exte al standpoint, all the time in everyone’s life.
Seeking visions has been a part of what has been called a “spiritual journey” by countless individuals around the world throughout history and in all religious and spiritual traditions. The “vision quest” is a well known and accepted activity among seekers. Christian mystics, for instance, chose to go out to the desert or into a monastic order to focus on their religious life and seek for a vision. Native Americans would go out to a sacred spot for a vision, to discover one’s totem animal and path forward.
Sri Ramana Maharshi famously inquired into the question ‘who am I?’. Through constant self-examination with this question, the seeker begins to separate himself from the idea that he is the body, or the particular life-energy formation or mental sense that make up his exte al, surface personality and being. For most people, we look to the physical body as being ‘who we are’. When we bury someone in a graveyard, we go to visit our family, friend or relative and lay flowers on the grave and recount that we went to see that individual, even though the body has likely long since disintegrated!
The vital desire-soul animates the exte al being. When it enters the physical frame, we say that there is life in the body. When it departs, we say that the person has died. This is distinguishable from the true soul, the psychic being, which is not dependent on either the life or death of a particular body, which transcends and survives the life of the body, and which takes on new forms as needed to carry out its role in the universal manifestation.