Physical
Consciousness—Subconscient—Sleep and Dreams—Illness
Page-3
Your
practice of psycho-analysis was a mistake. It has for the
time at least, made the work of purification more complicated,
not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing
that one should associate with Yoga. It takes up a certain
part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part
of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates
some of its more morbid phenomena and attributes to it and
them an action out of all proportion to its true role in
the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once
rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the
universal habit of the human mind—to take a partial
or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain
a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms—runs riot
here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed
sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have
a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more
and not les fundamentally impure than before.
It
is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of
his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms
which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital
subconscious which is all that this psychoanalysis of Freud
seems to know—and even of that it knows only a few
ill-lit corners,—is no more than a restricted and very
inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal
self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man;
it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the
surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the
surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness
behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens
to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower
subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform
the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which
one must open and raise to them and change by them both
the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be
done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher
guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise
the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure
and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the
lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul
or obscure in it, is to go out of one's way to invite trouble.
First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong
and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards
one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with
more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.
The
system of getting rid of things by anubhava can also
be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become
more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method
has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One,
the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some
cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong
a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got ride of by
vicära or by the process of rejection and the
substitution of the true movement in its place; when that
happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back
to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true
experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then
return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated
or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive
indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable.
It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the
being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a
strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairägya,
and the will towards perfection can be carried down into
the recalcitrant part of the nature.
The
other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability;
for in order to reject anything from the being one has first
to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience
of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings
of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it,
if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it
if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement.
It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely
and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge
in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of the raising
up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness
in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there
can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed
only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work
to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency
that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava,
not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with
their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications
for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with
it, indulging its return, eternizing it; afterwards when
they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that
they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible
struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate
them. Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others
out of sheer ignorance; but in Yoga, as in life, ignorance
is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger
is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts
of nature, but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more
unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital
subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely
or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the
conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus
poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always
therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative
experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature,
calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the
parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only
when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm
positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious
adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them
by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge.
Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising
up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava
as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then,
they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a
higher internal guidance.
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Sri Aurobindo
I
find it difficult to take these psychoanalysts at all seriously
when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the
flicker of their torch-lights,—yet perhaps one ought
to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a
great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth.
This new psychology looks to me very much like children
learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting
in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious
underground super-ego together and imagining that their
first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree)
is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from
down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities;
but the foundation of these things is above and not below,
upari budhna esäm. The superconscient, not the
subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance
of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets
of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be
found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms
for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these
psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must
know the whole before you can know the part and the highest
before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the
promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before
which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.
-
Sri Aurobindo
