The Continuum of Consciousness and the Interactions of the Various Wave-Forms

We recognise the electro-magnetic spectrum, the color spectrum, the sound wave spectrum and others, each as representing a continuum of wave forms with varying characteristics. There are shorter, more intense waves and longer wave frequencies. Some conduct tremendous amounts of physical heat, such as infrared frequencies, while others, such as ultraviolet have longer wave forms. There is a range within each spectrum that we can perceive with our senses, and there are ranges both below and above the vibratory levels we can pick up, that represent extensions of those spectra. Some beings respond to ranges different from those that the human being can respond to, which includes dogs who can perceive sounds in far higher ranges than we find audible.

Simlarly, there is a continuum of consciousness. The range of consciousness within which we respond and act as human beings is not the entirety of the range. There are levels below and above those we can experience normally. In some cases we can become aware of extended ranges below or above, but in many cases, we only become aware of the effects they produce without direct perception of the wave-forms of the consciousness themselves. At a certain point we can recognise that even what appears to be inanimate Matter has an involved consciousness.

As we understand from the study of physics, when varying waves interact with one another they can either accentuate the action or disrupt the action to a greater or lesser degree. Thus, as different levels of consciousness generate their characteristic wave-forms, we find that in some cases there is an enhanced power of understanding and coordinated action, while in other cases, things can be confused or chaotic.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many ‘inanimate’ forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical Nature is compared with Chit, a lower and therefore a limited form, mode and movement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of inferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our subconscious being an action which is precisely that of the ‘inanimate’ physical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being, another whish is that of plant-life, and another which is that of the lower animal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by the thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real awareness of these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these parts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values of the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an animal in us as well as that which is characteristically human, — something which is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not reflective or rational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its experience, meets it from above with the light and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and modifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being; below it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts by an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn behind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth the subvital. When we advance in that ultra-normal self-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that the body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses, instincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of our being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the struggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of these varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result of an evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the merely physical and subvital conscious being to the mental creature which at the top he is.”

“But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 13-14