Reading As a Method of Entering into a Wider and Deeper Consciousness

A teenager was observed as she was deeply absorbed in reading the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. This novel spans some 1000 pages and encompasses themes of deep and abiding interest, but does so in a captivating story line. It so happened that this teenager was reading the book during an extended road trip across the USA including visits to national parks and the Hopi Reservation of the First Nations’ people. She was so absorbed in her reading that she noticed nothing at all for days at a time, and even when she exited the vehicle, she carried the book in front of her and read it while walking! She entered deeply into the spirit of the story and came away with a deeper understanding of the forces that drive human life, in a way that aided her in her adult life and way of seeing and looking at the world.

The method of entering into the spirit of the written word is not restricted to reading of novels. Many people have engrossed themselves deeply in reading and becoming receptive to the writings of Sri Aurobindo. Reading in his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol has been known to evoke spiritual experiences of visual and auditory phenomena and to transport the individual into another domain of conscious awareness.

We tend to read with a somewhat voracious mental appetite and we read quickly and superficially. We look at ‘how much’ we have read, not how deeply we have understood what we have read. We feed the mind, but do not take the time, nor create the receptive focus, to truly enter into the spirit of what is written and engage directly with the consciousness of the writer. Those who undertake to do this are rewarded with an entirely new understanding and viewpoint.

An experiment was reported which actually started some years ago to read Sri Aurobindo’s writings in a much deeper and more reflective manner, to read ‘slowly’, approximately one page per day, and to let it sink in, let it ‘marinate’ in the being, and thereby allow it to actually begin to transform the understanding. Starting with The Life Divine, this process systematically moved through all the major writings of Sri Aurobindo in a span of time of more than 15 years, day by day. During that time, the individual observed within himself changes of his ways of looking at his life, his relationships, his interactions, along with a widening of his understanding of things. In some cases his reflections and the insights that arose actually preceded an explanation provided by Sri Aurobindo in the pages following the daily passage. In other instances, he had a distinct impression of some inner experience which was later described by Sri Aurobindo in a succeeding section. This particularly was the case in his reading of Savitri.

If we read with the mind, we obtain mental knowledge, formulaic linear thoughts that we can repeat and regurgitate on demand. We gain ‘facts’ but we do not gain the essential ‘insight’ behind the ‘facts’. But if we read with the soul, deeply, reflectively, receptively, we gain something potentially much more valuable, an access point to an entirely new aspect of consciousness. We make the knowledge part of ourselves rather than something we can simply parrot back without understanding the deeper sense. This process is progressive, and the more sincerely one undertakes it, and the longer one works with it, the more transformative action can be observed in the being.

The Mother observes: “For instance, when you are reading a book that interests you very much, a wonderful novel full of exciting adventures, when you are completely absorbed in the story, at times you forget your class-hour or even dinner-time or your bed-time. You are completely absorbed in what you are reading. Well, this is a phenomenon of self-identification. And if you do it with a certain perfection, you succeed in understanding ahead what is going to happen. There is a moment when, being fully absorbed in the story, you come to know (without trying to look for it) towards what end the author is leading you, how he is going to unfold his story and come to his conclusion. For you have identified yourself with the creative thought of the author. You do it more or less perfectly, without knowing that you are doing it, but these are phenomena of self-identification.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIII Power of Identification, pp. 107-108