Getting in Touch with the Inner, Subliminal Mind, Life and Physical Consciousness

In his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo describes the experience of the awareness moving inwards away from the surface consciousness fixated on external perceptions. “In moments when the inner lamps are lit And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs. A wider consciousness opens then its doors; Invading from spiritual silences A ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile To commune still with our seized illumined clay And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.” (Savitri, Book I, Canto IV, pp. 47-48)

As long as we are caught up in responding to the external impressions, our awareness is pushed and dragged in an arena that only sees the surface of things and cannot truly know or understand the deeper reality and meaning of either our individual existence, nor the universal manifestation. When we withdraw our attention from this external fixation, we find several things open up within us. First, we can become aware of the universal nature of mind, life and physical existence, and thus, we begin to see the larger forces at work to shape both the world we are responding to, and our own response to it. Second, we can become aware of the soul-essence within us, the psychic being, and this helps us stay in touch with the true mind, life and physical consciousness that are guided by the psychic being.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “If you understand and experience this truth, then only you will be able to realise what is meant by the inner mental, the inner vital, the inner physical consciousness. But it must be noted that this term ‘inner’ is used in two different senses. Sometimes it denotes the consciousness behind the veil of the outer being, the mental or vital or physical within, which is in direct touch with the universal mind, the universal life-forces, the universal physical forces. Sometimes, on the other hand, we mean an inmost mental, vital, physical, more specifically called the true mind, the true vital, the true physical consciousness which is nearer to the soul and can most easily and directly respond to the Divine Light and Power. There is no real yoga possible, still less any integral yoga, if we do not go back from the outer self and become aware of all this inner being and inner nature. For then alone can we break the limitations of the ignorant external self which receives consciously only the outer touches and knows things indirectly through the outer mind and senses, and become directly aware of the universal consciousness and the universal forces that play through us and around us. And then only too can we hope to be directly aware of the Divine in us and directly in touch with the Divine Light and the Divine Force. Otherwise we can feel the Divine only through external signs and external results and that is a difficult and uncertain way and very occasional and inconstant, and it leads only to belief and not to knowledge, not to the direct consciousness and awareness of the constant presence.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 62-63