The Separate Ego-Consciousness and the Universal Divine Consciousness

The concept of maya is frequently described as the world being an illusion that mystifies our senses and our minds, such that we take it for real, when it is not the truth of existence. We are then asked to cut through the illusion to find the actual reality, the Absolute, the consciousness that is coincident with all existence, and which is not bound by any of the forms taken by this external, illusory, reality. The Mayavadins have indeed captured a partial truth of existence. .The reality of the creation is not to be denied, but our perception of it, and our interpretation of its meaning, constitute the real illusion.

In the fourth chapter of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo works out the harmonising synthesis between those who hold the world as real and spiritual endeavour to be illusory, and those who hold the world as illusory and the spiritual endeavour as real; he defines this as ‘reality omnipresent’. The entire universal creation is a manifestation of the Divine and its reality is based in the reality of the Divine Existence.

If we look at our normal standpoint, we are rooted in the ego and we naturally experience the ego-consciousness as a separate, independent, self-standing reality facing the world and other independent actors in the world as being able to make free and independent choices and either harmonise, or conflict, with others. The alternative viewpoint is one that treats the individual as a nexus or point of expression of the universal consciousness. An example may help us grasp this concept. We see the vast ocean before us. Someone captures some seawater in a container. The water in the ocean, and the water in the container are the same, the difference between them being simply that some of that water is now within a container. Now if we conceive of the container as a permeable membrane that allows impacts (motion, heat, cooling, salinity, etc.) from the wider ocean to affect the ‘contained’ water, and similarly the water inside to migrate out under various conditions, we can get some sense of how the universal consciousness both cordons itself off into these separate standpoints and how it at the same time manifests its intention through them.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “… what is this divine supreme Will and how can it be recognised by our deluded instruments and our blind prisoned intelligence?”

“Ordinarily, we conceive of ourselves as a separate ‘I’ in the universe that governs a separate body and mental and moral nature, chooses in full liberty its own self-determined actions and is independent and therefore sole master of its works and responsible. It is not easy for the ordinary mind, the mind that has not thought nor looked deeply into its own constitution and constituents, it is difficult even for minds that have thought but have no spiritual vision and experience, to imagine how there can be anything else in us truer, deeper and more powerful than this apparent ‘I’ and its empire. But the very first step towards self-knowledge as towards the true knowledge of phenomena is to get behind the apparent truth of things and find the real but masked, essential and dynamic truth which their appearances cover.”

“This ego or ‘I’ is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought-centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficially are and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical ‘I’ that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is in him and all things and creatures the one and only worker.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 1 Life Through the Eyes of the Yogin, pp. 23-24