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What
Consciousness Is
Consciousness is a reality inherent in existence.
It is there even when it is not active on the surface,
but silent and immobile; it is there even when it
is invisible on the surface, not reacting on outward
things or sensible to them, but withdrawn and either
active or inactive within; it is there even when it
seems to us to be quite absent and the being to our
view unconscious and inanimate.
SABCL
Vol 22 page 234
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. For instance, when consciousness in its movement
or rather a certain stress of movement forgets itself
in the action it becomes an apparently "unconscious"
energy; when it forgets itself in the form it becomes
the electron, the atom, the material object. In reality
it is still consciousness that works in the energy
and determines the form and the evolution of form.
When it wants to liberate itself, slowly, evolutionarily,
out of Matter, but still in the form, it emerges as
life, as animal, as man and it can go on evolving
itself still farther out of its involution and become
something more than mere man.
SABCL
Vol 22 236-37
Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first
obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such
as is
possessed by the human being during the major part
of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned
or otherwise deprived of his physical and superfical
methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough
that consciousness is the exception and not the rule
in the order of the material universe. We ourselves
do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow
idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still
colours our ordinary thought and associations, must
now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking.
For we know that there is something in us which is
conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged
or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states
of our physical being Necessarily, in such a view,
the word consciousness changes its meaning. It is
no longer synonymous with mentality but indicates
a self-aware force of existence of which mentality
is a middle term; below mentality it sinks into vital
and material movements which are for us subconscient;
above, it rises into the supramental which is for
us the superconscient. But in all it is one and the
same thing organising itself differently. This is
...the Indian conception of Chit which, as energy
, creates the worlds.
SABCL
Vol 18 page 85-88
Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self
and things, it is or has also adynamic 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.
SABCL
Vol 22 page 234
...the
origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate
reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune
principle of transcendent and infinite Existence,
Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine
being. Consciousness has two aspects, illuminating
and effective, state and power of self-awareness and
state and power of self- force, by which being possesses
itself whether in its static condition or in its dynamic
movement; for in its creative action it knows by omnipotent
self-consciousness all that is latent within it and
produces and governs the universe of its potentialities
by an omniscient self-energy .
SABCL
Vol 18 page 262
...to the Infinite Consciousness both the static and
the dynamic are possible; these are two of its statuses
and both can be present simultaneously in the universal
awareness, the one witnessing the other and supporting
it or not looking at it and yet automatically supporting
it; or the silence and status may be there penetrating
the activity or throwing it up like an ocean immobile
below throwing up a mobility of waves on its surface.
This is also the reason why it is possible for us
in certain conditions of our being to be aware of
several different states of consciousness at the same
time. There is a state of being experienced in Yoga
in which we become a double consciousness, one on
the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts
and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions,
the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the
surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence
or, it may be, acting upon its agitation to quiet,
enlarge, transform it.
SABCL
Vol 18
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