Sri Aurobindo’s SECRET: Battle of Super-conscious vs. sub-conscious vs. human

Note: The “discovery” by Sri Aurobindo of struggle between different dimensions bears similarity to the Taoist notions of 3 Heavens in which all the forces of Yin-Yang Qi are engaged in a dialectic of either harmony or dis-harmony, which drives evolution. He was far in advance of later modern movements to “embrace one’s shadow side” and far more multi-dimensional. The challenge in peneetrating the super-conscious is always one of having sufficient grounding to hold it; this is where the Taoists excel above all other paths I’ve explored. That, and having a clear cosmology of how the universal medium of Qi flows between the 3 levels.  – Michael

“We can try to say something of this Secret, though keeping in mind that the experience is in progress. Sri Aurobindo began; he found the Secret in Chandernagore in 1910 and worked on it for forty years; he gave up his life to it. And so did Mother.

Sri Aurobindo has never told us the circumstances of his discovery. He was always extraordinarily silent about himself, not out of reserve but simply because the “I” did not exist. “One felt,” his Chandernagore host reports with naive surprise, “one felt when he spoke as if somebody else were speaking through him. I placed the plate of food before him, – he simply gazed at it, then ate a little, just mechanically! He appeared to be inwardly absorbed even when he was eating; he used to meditate with open eyes.” It was only later, from his writings and some fragments of conversations, that his experience could be pieced together. The first clue came from a chance remark made to one of his students. It shows that from Alipore onward he was on the trail: “I was mentally subjected to all sorts of torture for fifteen days. I had to look upon pictures of all sorts of suffering.”

We must remember that in those worlds, seeing is synonymous with experiencing. Thus, as Sri Aurobindo ascended toward the overmind, his consciousness was descending into what we are used to calling hell. This is also one of the first phenomena the seeker experiences, in varying degrees. “This is not a yoga for the weak”, as the Mother says, and it is true. For if the first tangible result of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is to bring out new poetic and artistic faculties, the second, perhaps even the immediate consequence, is to shine a merciless spotlight on all the undersides of the consciousness, first individual, then universal. This close, and puzzling, linkage between superconscient and subconscient was certainly the starting point of Sri Aurobindo’s breakthrough.

The “subconscious” of modern psychology is only the outer fringe of a world almost as vast as the Superconscient, with many levels, forces, beings (or being-forces [entities], if we prefer). It is our immediate as well as distant evolutionary past, with all the impressions of our present life and all those of our past lives, just as the Superconscient is our evolutionary future. All the residues and forces that have presided over our evolutionary ascent from inanimate matter to animal to man are not only stored there, but continue to live and to influence us. If indeed we are more divine than we think by virtue of the superconscious future that is drawing us ahead, we are also more beast-like than we imagine thanks to the subconscious and unconscious past we drag behind us. This double mystery holds the key to the total Secret. As Sri Aurobindo remarked: “None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.”

The goal of this yoga is not to lose consciousness, any more below than above, and in particular not to close our eyes to the conditions below. The integral seeker is meant neither for total darkness nor for blinding light. Everywhere he goes, he must see. This is the foremost condition of mastery. Indeed, we do not seek to move on to a better existence but to transform this one.

Just as there are several gradations in the superconscient, there are also several layers or worlds in the subconscient, several “dark caves,” as the Rig Veda calls them. In fact, there is a subconscient behind each level of our being – a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, and a physical subconscient, opening onto the material Inconscient. There we will find, respectively, all the elementary and crude mental forms or forces that first appeared in the world of Matter and Life; all the aggressive impulses of the beginnings of Life, its reflexes of fear and suffering; and finally the forces of illness and disintegration, and Death, which subconsciously preside over our physical life.

It becomes obvious, therefore, that no real life on earth is possible so long as all these worlds remain in control of our physical destiny. We are ourselves the battlefield: all these worlds, from the highest to the lowest, meet within us. So we must not run away, holding our noses or crossing ourselves, but squarely enter the battlefield and conquer.”

– Satprem, “Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness”