The Subconscient Basis of Our Individual Being, Part 4

As the individual works to understand the wellsprings of the motives, impulses and forces that rise up through his being in the subconscient and push him into action, a subtler understanding begins to develop. The need to distinguish between the inherited habits and embedded atavistic movements, the influence of the society and those who interact with one, and then distinguishing those impulses which arise due to the influence of vital beings attempting to gain some control or result from the individual drives this subtle understanding. The first distinguishing factor, for those who work through all the subtle energies to gain this understanding, is that the impulses that arise between and among individuals tend to be relatively similar, as we all share a common human heritage and background. Those impulses that arise from the vital beings can in many cases take forms that could only be considered foreign or strange in some way to the individual, uncharacteristic and not something normally experienced in day to day interactions. Thus, the influence of vital forces can be found out through this process of patient sifting of the energies and their impacts on the being.

Regardless of the source, when the individual takes up the process of yoga and determines to undertake the radical transformation of human nature, the process of patient observation, aspiration, and persistent efforts represents the way forward.

The Mother writes: “There it is a little easier to recognise the influence, for, if you are the least bit attentive, you become aware of something that has suddenly awakened within you. For example, those who are in the habit of losing their temper, if they have attempted ever so little to control their anger, they will find something coming from outside or rising from below which actually takes hold of their consciousness and arouses anger in them. I don’t mean that everybody is capable of this discernment; I am speaking of those who have tried to understand their being and control it. These adverse suggestions are easier to distinguish than, for instance, your response to the will or desire of a being who is of the same nature as yourself, another human being, who consequently acts on you without this giving you a clear impression of something coming from outside: the vibrations are too alike, too similar in their nature, and you have to be much more attentive and have a much sharper discernment to realise that these movements which seem to come out from you are not really yours but come from outside. But with the adverse forces, if you are in the least sincere and observe yourself attentively, you become aware that it is something in the being which is responding to an influence, an impulse, a suggestion, even something at times very concrete, which enters and produces similar vibrations in the being. … There now. That is the problem.”

“The remedy?… It is always the same: goodwill, sincerity, insight, patience — oh! an untiring patience and a perseverance which assures you that what you have not succeeded in doing today, you will succeed in doing another time, and makes you go on trying until you do succeed. … And this brings us back to Sri Aurobindo’s sentence if this control seems to you quite impossible today, well, that means that not only will it be possible, but that it will be realised later.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Disturbances of the Subconscient, Collective Subconscious Influences, pp. 111-118