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Memory, Ego and Self-Experience 
(Book 2 Chapter IX)

 

Introduction
In this chapter Sri Aurobindo describes a timelessness that exists beyond time that can be experience in the becoming of our lives; i.e. in time. He then explains the role of memory as a limited attempt to resolve our relationships with time. If we really want to experience the timeless in time we need to reorient our consciousness inward. An outer orientation of sense-mind and of ego will not enable us to have the experience of timelessness in the life becoming of time. It is a state of Ignorance. It is only when we connect most deeply in the psychic entity, i.e. True Self, the evolving soul within. It is an experience of the True, Integral Knowledge.

 

[DETAILS]

MOVING TO TIMELESSNESS IN TIME

-We can go behind our mentality to the timelessness of an eternal present; unaffected by the distinctions of past, present, and future.

-We can fix ourselves in the direct self-consciousness, of the stable Self, the immobile "Is," without any category of personality or Time.

-The self consciousness of Self is timeless, but is also capable of freely regarding Time as a thing reflected in it. It is the unchanging consciousness on whose surface changes of conscious experience occur in the process of Time.

-In the surface consciousness there is a constant rapid shifting of Time-point which it is impossible to arrest for a moment. There is also a shifting of space field, and of circumstance.

-The mind has the subjective experience of change in personality, and objective change in circumstance.

-Memory serves to link our past and present experiences and personality, preventing chaos and discontinuity.

 

THE ROLE OF MEMORY IN THE EXPERIENCE OF TIME

-Memory is a mediator between sense mind, and the coordinating intelligence.

-Memory offers the intelligence the past data of experience.

 

MOVING TO THE DEPTHS TO EXPERINCE TIMELESSNESS IN TIME

-By detachment we stand back -- perceiving and observing ourselves; experiencing ourselves dynamically in the becoming, and control over our feeling and action. We thus have control over our becoming.

-It is when we entirely detach the mental person from the act of self-experience that I become fully aware of a number(?) of aspects.

-He becomes the self that is immutable, and the Self that becomes eternally in the succession of Time.

-All experience, or substance of becoming in Time is a flowing stream or sea not divided in itself, but only divided in the observing consciousness by the limited movement of the Ignorance.

-There is an arrangement of things in Space and Time, but no gap or division, except to our Ignorance. To bridge the gap, we call in various devices, including memory.

 

GOING BEYOND THE LIMITES OF SURFACE SENSE-MIND AND EGO

-The ego-sense, like memory, is another devise of metal Ignorance by which the mental being becomes aware of himself.

-The ego-sense is a prepatory devise and a first basis for eh development of real-self knowledge.

-A self-knowledge based on the seperative ego-sense is imperfect.

-In the surface existence there is the full reign of Ignorance.

-We thus have to go within and see with a full knowledge.

-We can only find this immobile self when the outer mental and vital activities are quieted; its truth experienced in mind's Silence.

-A psychic entity is the true support behind our individualization. [It is in fact the basis of the "Spiritual Individual."]