Part Three. Writings from the Arya (1914 – 1921
Arguments to The Life Divine
Chapter XXX. Memory, Ego
and Self-Experience[[Chapter XXX of The Life Divine as published in
the Arya was revised in 1939 – 40, becoming the present Book Two, Part I,
Chapter IX.]]
ARGUMENT
Consciousness of Self has two different aspects, the
awareness of a stable, immutable and timeless Self beyond mentality and the
awareness of a various self-experience in the process of Time and the field of
Space. There is a constant shifting of the point of Time, a constant though less
obvious changing of the habitation and the environment and in these a constant
subjective modifying of the experience of the states of personality and the
experience of the environment. – Memory here is an indispensable factor in the
linking of past and present experience and is necessary to secure its continuity
and coherence. Still Memory is not all; it is only a mediator between the
mind-sense and the coordinating mind. – It is the mind-sense which shapes the
object of experience as a wave of the conscious being into a movement of
emotion, vitality, sensation or thought-perception. There is also an act of
mental observation and valuation of this wave in the sense-mind. There is also
the subject or mental being who thus modifies his mental becoming and observes
and values it by an act of mind. It is when the mental being stands back from
the mental becoming and even from the mental act that he begins to perceive
himself as something different from all becoming, mutable in that, but immutable
beyond it. He is not two selves, one that is and one that becomes, but one
immutable who sees changing phenomena of his being, the immutability evident to
a direct and pure self-consciousness, the mutable evident indirectly through a
conditional and secondary mental consciousness. – It is the character of this
indirect mental consciousness which can experience only by succession of Time
that brings in the device of Memory. Memory is
not the essence of mental experience of becoming, nor of its continuity, nor of
the recurrence of the same experience or the same cause and effect in Time.
These are circumstances of the movement of the stuff of conscious being and
conscious force of being, a movement which is really undivided though only seen
by mind in artificial divisions. Memory is a device by which the experiences of
the mind-sense are linked together and these artificial divisions in Time
bridged over so that the coordinating mind and will may better and better use
the material of experience and impose order on its conscious knowledge of its
self and its conscious action in its environment. It is an aid to our ignorance
of self developing, in the evolution of mind out of inconscient force, knowledge
of self by experience. – The ego-sense is a mental device by which the mental
being develops towards knowledge of that which experiences as well as of that
which is experienced. Memory only tells us that the successive experiences have
happened in the same field of conscious being; it is the coordinating and
distinguishing mind which tells us that it is the same mental being who
experiences. – Mind-substance suffers the changes of becoming; mind-sense
experiences them; memory assures the mind-sense of its continuity of experience;
the coordinating mind of knowledge relates them together and relates them also
to the ego or being who, it says, is the same in past and present whether he
forgets or remembers. In the animal this may be little more than a coordination
in the sense-mind by a discernment largely involved in the sensations and the
memories, but in man it becomes a coordinating reason superior to sense and
memory. It is by this development that the ego-sense becomes distinct and
disengaged from its aids. – But it is itself only a device and basis for
self-development of true self-knowledge; it is a stage in the evolution from
nescience to partial knowledge and from partial knowledge to true
self-consciousness. The evolving Mind becomes by it aware of an “I” that becomes
and then of a self superior to the becoming. It may fix on either to the
rejection of the other, but in doing so it acts on an imperfect self-knowledge.
It is as yet ignorant of all even of the individual
becoming which is not superficial; ignorant of the universal becoming except
indirectly, as a not-self exterior to it. Its attempt to find the true relation
of the self and its becomings is based therefore on an Ignorance; that can only
be truly known by an attempt to live out the relation in an integral development
of self-knowledge. That is the natural goal of our evolution which is the
movement of the Ignorance to exceed itself and arrive at the conscious Truth of
its being and conscious knowledge of all being.
of Memory. Memory is
not the essence of mental experience of becoming, nor of its continuity, nor of
the recurrence of the same experience or the same cause and effect in Time.
These are circumstances of the movement of the stuff of conscious being and
conscious force of being, a movement which is really undivided though only seen
by mind in artificial divisions. Memory is a device by which the experiences of
the mind-sense are linked together and these artificial divisions in Time
bridged over so that the coordinating mind and will may better and better use
the material of experience and impose order on its conscious knowledge of its
self and its conscious action in its environment. It is an aid to our ignorance
of self developing, in the evolution of mind out of inconscient force, knowledge
of self by experience. – The ego-sense is a mental device by which the mental
being develops towards knowledge of that which experiences as well as of that
which is experienced. Memory only tells us that the successive experiences have
happened in the same field of conscious being; it is the coordinating and
distinguishing mind which tells us that it is the same mental being who
experiences. – Mind-substance suffers the changes of becoming; mind-sense
experiences them; memory assures the mind-sense of its continuity of experience;
the coordinating mind of knowledge relates them together and relates them also
to the ego or being who, it says, is the same in past and present whether he
forgets or remembers. In the animal this may be little more than a coordination
in the sense-mind by a discernment largely involved in the sensations and the
memories, but in man it becomes a coordinating reason superior to sense and
memory. It is by this development that the ego-sense becomes distinct and
disengaged from its aids. – But it is itself only a device and basis for
self-development of true self-knowledge; it is a stage in the evolution from
nescience to partial knowledge and from partial knowledge to true
self-consciousness. The evolving Mind becomes by it aware of an “I” that becomes
and then of a self superior to the becoming. It may fix on either to the
rejection of the other, but in doing so it acts on an imperfect self-knowledge.
It is as yet ignorant of all even of the individual