If we focus on the experience of our normal, daily lives, we will find that it can be characterised by a specific feeling or quality that we know as our usual experience. While each individual may have a different characterisation of this experience, some happy, some sad, some joyful, some filled with pain, the preoccupation with the external body, life-energy and mind, the perceptions of the senses, the relationships we have with others and our experience of the environment within which we live, are the primary factors for virtually everyone.
There are times when we may have an experience which we recognise is not part of our usual daily routine. We tend to try to minimise or dismiss these experiences as something abnormal or unimportant, yet they may have a subtle impact that stays with us. The tendency to dismiss them comes from our lack of familiarity or comfort with such experiences, or our inability to understand what they are and what significance they may hold.
An example is provided by Dr. Dalal when he describes the difference between ordinary dreams and those that may hold some deeper sense to them. When we wake from a dream that holds some real meaning, we know, intuitively, that it is not something usual or ordinary and we tend to dwell on the dream, try to understand it, explain it, or seek help in understanding it. Yet it is not just in a dream state that we can experience something different. How many times do we enter a place that suddenly makes us feel reverence, or a deep sense of peace, or a prayerful feeling. We do not necessarily know how or why such an experience arises in that place or time, but we sense it nevertheless. If we are embedded deeply into our external consciousness, we try to explain it away with some superficial sense of its meaning. But if we are receptive we begin to appreciate that this is the influence of the deeper inner being, the soul, beginning to make itself known and provide us with an opening to our greater possibilities beyond what we experience day to day.
It is said that the experience of the sage is the opposite of what we normally understand to be the nature of our experience. There is a reversal of day and night, such that what is day, or an awakened state for the sage, is dark and closed to our ordinary consciousness, while what is day, or an awakened state for our normal external being, is like night to the sage. the difference is the predominant standpoint of living either in the surface being, or living in the inner being.
Dr. Dalal writes: “In the normal state of consciousness, in which we are identified with the outer being — the body, impulses and feelings, and the mind — we are almost totally unconscious of the inner being and of its constant action on the surface consciousness. We sometimes awaken into the consciousness of the inner being during the sleep of the body, and occasionally bring back to the normal waking consciousness some of our experiences of the inner consciousness during sleep in the form of lucid, symbolic or premonitory dreams, though most of our dreams, which are confused or incoherent, pertain not to the inner consciousness but to the subconscient. (The subconscient is called the unconscious in modern psychology.) We also get glimpses of the inner consciousness through certain images, perceived either spontaneously or during the practice of visualisation, and, in rare cases, through visions or inner voices. In the state of meditation, too, we sometimes become aware of the inner being as a detached, calm and observing consciousness. Apart from these occasional, momentary and fragmentary experiences, the inner being is shut out from the outer by the thick wall or veil of the normal, surface consciousness. The process of inner growth consists in the gradual breaking down of the wall or the lifting of the veil, and awakening to the consciousness of the inner being.”
As Sri Aurobindo writes: “There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Introduction, pp.xii-xiii.
Posted on November 7, 2022
If we focus on the experience of our normal, daily lives, we will find that it can be characterised by a specific feeling or quality that we know as our usual experience. While each individual may have a different characterisation of this experience, some happy, some sad, some joyful, some filled with pain, the preoccupation with the external body, life-energy and mind, the perceptions of the senses, the relationships we have with others and our experience of the environment within which we live, are the primary factors for virtually everyone.
There are times when we may have an experience which we recognise is not part of our usual daily routine. We tend to try to minimise or dismiss these experiences as something abnormal or unimportant, yet they may have a subtle impact that stays with us. The tendency to dismiss them comes from our lack of familiarity or comfort with such experiences, or our inability to understand what they are and what significance they may hold.
An example is provided by Dr. Dalal when he describes the difference between ordinary dreams and those that may hold some deeper sense to them. When we wake from a dream that holds some real meaning, we know, intuitively, that it is not something usual or ordinary and we tend to dwell on the dream, try to understand it, explain it, or seek help in understanding it. Yet it is not just in a dream state that we can experience something different. How many times do we enter a place that suddenly makes us feel reverence, or a deep sense of peace, or a prayerful feeling. We do not necessarily know how or why such an experience arises in that place or time, but we sense it nevertheless. If we are embedded deeply into our external consciousness, we try to explain it away with some superficial sense of its meaning. But if we are receptive we begin to appreciate that this is the influence of the deeper inner being, the soul, beginning to make itself known and provide us with an opening to our greater possibilities beyond what we experience day to day.
It is said that the experience of the sage is the opposite of what we normally understand to be the nature of our experience. There is a reversal of day and night, such that what is day, or an awakened state for the sage, is dark and closed to our ordinary consciousness, while what is day, or an awakened state for our normal external being, is like night to the sage. the difference is the predominant standpoint of living either in the surface being, or living in the inner being.
Dr. Dalal writes: “In the normal state of consciousness, in which we are identified with the outer being — the body, impulses and feelings, and the mind — we are almost totally unconscious of the inner being and of its constant action on the surface consciousness. We sometimes awaken into the consciousness of the inner being during the sleep of the body, and occasionally bring back to the normal waking consciousness some of our experiences of the inner consciousness during sleep in the form of lucid, symbolic or premonitory dreams, though most of our dreams, which are confused or incoherent, pertain not to the inner consciousness but to the subconscient. (The subconscient is called the unconscious in modern psychology.) We also get glimpses of the inner consciousness through certain images, perceived either spontaneously or during the practice of visualisation, and, in rare cases, through visions or inner voices. In the state of meditation, too, we sometimes become aware of the inner being as a detached, calm and observing consciousness. Apart from these occasional, momentary and fragmentary experiences, the inner being is shut out from the outer by the thick wall or veil of the normal, surface consciousness. The process of inner growth consists in the gradual breaking down of the wall or the lifting of the veil, and awakening to the consciousness of the inner being.”
As Sri Aurobindo writes: “There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Introduction, pp.xii-xiii
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 17 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.