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Article Conciousness
Article Conciousness
Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the
human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than
human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations
of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible.
So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which
the normal human [consciousness] has no contact and they seem to it unconscious....
Our physical organism no more causes or explains thought and consciousness than
the construction of an engine causes or explains the motive-power of steam or
electricity. The force is anterior, not the physical instrument.
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 86.
Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a
dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from
reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.
Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti, awareness but also conscious force.
... the knowledge we have to arrive at is not truth of the intellect; it is not right belief,
right opinions, right information about oneself and things, that is only the surface
mind's idea of knowledge. To arrive at some mental conception about God and
ourselves and the world is an object good for the intellect but not large enough for the
Spirit; it will not make us the conscious sons of Infinity. Ancient Indian thought meant
by knowledge a consciousness which possesses the highest Truth in a direct
perception and in self-experience; to become, to be the Highest that we know is the
sign that we really have the knowledge..... For the individual to arrive at the divine
universality and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express
that one in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient
seers of the Veda meant by the Knowledge.