Becoming Conscious of Oneself

A devotee residing at Sri Aurobindo Ashram some years ago tried an experiment which he reported. For a specific time period he determined not to speak. He did not do this in an indiscriminate way, however. He implemented this experiment by avoiding all social speech whatsoever, but agreed to speak as necessary for the work role he had been assigned. He carried a pad of paper and pen with him to let those who addressed him know about the discipline he was undertaking during that time. He reported that he was able to observe the impulse to speech, and that it arose spontaneously without any serious thought process or planning involved, seemingly as a responsive vibration to the vibrations he was receiving.

Additionally, he noted that he was able to remain inwardly concentrated for longer periods and his attention did not get dispersed as easily as when he engaged in everyday random social interactions.

There is a rationale, based in experience, as to why yogis, religious aspirants and spiritual seekers have traditionally resorted to spending periods of time (sometimes extended periods of time) alone or in very small groups in the forest, the mountains or the deserts. While mental and vital vibrations travel all over the world, the intensity and the confused garble of those vibrations in a dense urban environment is considerably higher than in less populated and remote regions, thus, allowing the seeker to focus more easily and observe the thoughts and feelings more clearly. While this is not a panacea for spiritual realisation, it is clear that at times it has been a useful process, particularly early in the development process while the power of inward concentration and observation is still in its infancy.

Sensitive individuals frequently note a sense of discomfort when they are in crowded circumstances specifically because the thoughts and feelings pile in upon them with an immediacy and power that they find hard to manage.

While it is not essential to isolate oneself entirely from social interaction in order to progress spiritually, there is no doubt that for many there can be an advantage, for some period of time, if the isolation is utilized as an opportunity to follow this internalizing process and is not turned into an avoidance of the larger issue of how to maintain the poise in the midst of all the calls of life.

The Mother notes: “To be individualised in a collectivity, one must be absolutely conscious of oneself. And of which self? — the Self which is above all intermixture, that is, what I call the Truth of your being. And as long as you are not conscious of the Truth of your being, you are moved by all kinds of things, without taking any note of it at all. Collective thought, collective suggestions are a formidable influence which act constantly on individual thought. And what is extraordinary is that one does not notice it. One believes that one thinks ‘like that’, but in truth it is the collectivity which thinks ‘like that’. The mass is always inferior to the individual. Take individuals with similar qualities, of similar categories, well, when they are alone these individuals are at least two degrees better than people of the same category in a crowd. There is a mixture of obscurities, a mixture of unconsciousness, and inevitably you slip into this unconsciousness. To escape this there is but one means: to become conscious of oneself, more and more conscious and more and more attentive.”

“Try this little exercise: at the beginning of the day, say: ‘I won’t speak without thinking of what I say.’ You believe, don’t you, that you think all that you say! It is not at all true, you will see that so many times the word you do not want to say is ready to come out, and that you are compelled to make a conscious effort to stop it from coming out.”

“I have known people who were very scrupulous about not telling lies, but all of a sudden, when together in a group, instead of speaking the truth they would spontaneously tell a lie; they did not have the intention of doing so, they did not think of it a minute before doing it, but it came ‘like that’, Why? — because they were in the company of liars; there was an atmosphere of falsehood and they had quite simply caught the malady!”

“It is thus that gradually, slowly, with perseverance, first of all with great care and much attention, one becomes conscious, learns to know oneself and then to become master of oneself.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 183-184