People frequently confuse consciousness with mental awareness and concentration with some kind of mental effort or focus; yet, consciousness is not limited to mental awareness and concentration is not restricted to mental activity. We are all familiar with mental concentration. We focus on some specific subject and direct our attention, exclusively if possible, to that subject for a specified period of time. Taking a mathematics exam or concentrating on learning a song, or any other activity that requires highly focused attention is our usual way of understanding concentration, and this is indeed mind-based focus.
It is possible however to distinguish mental consciousness from other forms of consciousness. Some individuals undertake a form of relaxation exercise where they lie down quietly and start paying attention to their toes, then move their awareness up the body and at each step they relax that part of the body. They are in fact practicing a form of moving the consciousness out of the mind and if they pay close attention they will begin to feel that the seat of awareness is not in the mind, but elsewhere in the body. Similarly, when there is a deep state of consecration, aspiration or devotion, we frequently experience the awareness in the heart region (actually behind the heart), and some people work to shift their attention to this region consistently or even on a constant basis. There is no thought involved; rather, it is a sense of centralised awareness from which radiates the intensity of the feeling or emotion that is generated by that mood or experience.
Others practice the technique of shifting the awareness out of the body entirely. Some individuals who have returned to the body after a ‘near death experience’ report the awareness of their being sitting up above and looking down on the body and the efforts of others to revive or care for the body from that external position. We see here a clear separation between the consciousness, per se, and the normal mental awareness linked to the physical body.
Still others consciously practice ‘out of body’ experiences where they put the body into a state of immobility and travel with their awareness to other places before returning and re-awakening the body.
Even the state of dream leads to the thought that there is no conscious active mental awareness but somehow we are experiencing things in a different world or under different circumstances than in our normal waking consciousness. Who is doing the experiencing? It is not the mind, but a state of consciousness that is separated from mind.
The idea of concentrating the awareness elsewhere than in the mind is therefore one that can be experienced and learned, and the consciousness can be shifted to these other locations without intervention by the mind.
A disciple asks: “Sweet Mother, when you say ‘Concentrate in the heart’, does it mean concentrate with the mind?”
The Mother writes: “The consciousness, not the mind, the consciousness!”
“I don’t say think in the heart, I say concentrate, concentrate the energy, concentrate the consciousness, concentrate the aspiration, concentrate the will. Concentrate. One can have an extremely intense concentration without a single thought, and in fact it is usually much more intense when one doesn’t think. (Silence) It’s one of the most indispensable things to do if one wants to succeed in having self-control and even a limited self-knowledge: to be able to localise one’s consciousness and move it about in the different parts of one’s being, in such a way as to distinguish between one’s consciousness and one’s thought, feelings, impulses, become aware of what the consciousness is in itself. And in this way one can learn how to shift it: one can put one’s consciousness in the body, put it in the vital, put it in the psychic (that’s the best place to put it in); one can put one’s consciousness in the mind, can raise it above the mind, and with one’s consciousness one can go into all the regions of the universe.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 162-163
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 19 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.
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