Consciousness is much broader than the ego-consciousness

Mystical Consciousness in a Process Perspective

by Ernest L. Simmons, Jr.

Ernest L. Simmons, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religion at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. The following article appeared in Process Studies, pp. 1-10, Vol. 14, Number 1, Spring, 1984. Process Studies is published quarterly by the Center for Process Studies, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711.

What Aurobindo had realized in the Nirvana experience was the cessation of the ego-consciousness in the all-pervading peace of the silent Brahman. The sudden disappearance of the ego is what gives the sense of the unreality of the external world, but for Aurobindo this experience lasted only a short while, being replaced by more integral experiences of an "immense Divine Reality" behind, above, and within everything that had at first appeared to be illusory (OH 102). Through these experiences the "That" was realized as pure, transcendent, unqualified Consciousness, such that Aurobindo could conclude that, "Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence -- it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it -- not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself" (LY 236). Consciousness is then the fundamental reality in the universe of which all existence is a manifestation yet which itself is beyond any final qualification. "Consciousness" for Whitehead has a more restricted use applying to the subjective form of particular types of intellectual feelings; thus something much broader in Whitehead’s conceptuality must be found...

For Aurobindo consciousness is much broader than the ego-consciousness, whereas Whitehead uses consciousness" to refer only to that type of consciousness. The term "consciousness" is restricted in Whitehead’s philosophy to the description of the subjective form of particular types of intellectual feelings, namely those that experience the affirmation-negation contrast. Thus, a conception which is much broader than "consciousness" is needed to compare with Aurobindo’s use, but one which also categorizes individual experience. Creativity understood as universal subjectivity is such a category. Creativity, however, cannot be found through analysis, for analysis abstracts from the concreteness of the occasion and creativity is the concreteness. Thus, for Whitehead, "the sole appeal is to intuition (PR 22/32). It is only through the faculty of intuition that this universal subjectivity can be grasped, and it is this faculty which is heightened through yogic meditation.

With the removal of symbolic reference and its concomitant abstract analysis, there may be a direct experiencing or envisioning through heightened intuition. Through intuitive perception in the pure modes of presentational immediacy and causal efficacy this universal subjectivity could be experienced, the very heart of reality itself. It could be experienced as the inherent dynamism, the "energy" or "motion" of the universe, and yet it is also unified, for it is the process of this diversity in unity. The direct realization of creativity would be possible because one’s true actuality in each moment is creativity or universal subjectivity. The realization of’ oneself as universal subjectivity might very well be an experience of light, because it could possibly be the realization of the pure energy of becoming. This would not be an outward physical light but could be the inner light of awareness as such constituting one sown subjectivity.

Notes

1Aurobindo understands Nirvana, in the literal Sanskrit meaning as nir-va-na, meaning extinction, "blowing out," the blowing out of the vital flame. He does not, however, equate this with the total annihilation of being. In The Life Divine he defines Nirvana as "Extinction, not necessarily of all being, but of being as we know it; extinction of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality" (LD Glossary 22). He thus differs in some respects from the Buddhist use of this word, particularly as it was developed by Nagarjuna. See Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness, Study in Religious Meaning (New York: Abingdon Press, 1967), especially Chapter 5. See also Arthur Anthony Macdonell, A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 143.

2 Arabinda Basu is Director of the Sri Aurobindo Research Academy and Professor of Philosophy at the Sri Aurobindo, International Centre of Education in Pondicherry, India. He is one of the leading expositors of Aurobindo’s thought to the West.