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"Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge"

(Book 2 Chapter XIX)

 

We must find our way our of the Sevenfold Ignorance to the Sevenfold Knowledge.

Here's how we do this: The first step is to move beyond the sense-based mind and its preoccupation with material existence experienced through the senses, which is the cause of our Ignorance. To move beyond the focus on the desires of the body and the vital. We break out of ego, separateness, open to the cosmic forces, consciousness, and open finally to the transcendent Absolute.

In this process we also break out of lower mind into the higher spiritual domains of mind. We enable a greater power and light, the revelatory, the inspirational, the intuitive. On these mental heights we would receive the something of the direct power of the Spirit, something even of the Supermind as a first expression. After this our evolution could rise by a subliminal ascent and get beyond the mental into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature.

As a result: "The true individual, the spiritual being, emerges, individual yet universal, universal yet self-transcendent; life no longer appears as a formation of things and an action of being created by the seperative Ignorance."

 

[DETAILS]

• The evolutionary process: "All evolution is in essence a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest, from matter into life, from life into mind, from the mind into the spirit. It is this that must be the method of our growth from a mental into a spiritual and supramental manifestation, out of a still half-animal humanity into a divine being and a divine living."

• Our aim is to perfect ourselves in mind, vitality, and body, as well as to go to the higher plane where we bring spirit into life. Bringing spirit into the physical, vital, and mental gives them a much wider and fuller play.

• The first step is to move beyond the sense-based mind and its preoccupation with material existence experienced through the senses, which is the cause of our Ignorance. To move beyond the focus on the desires of the body and the vital.

• As we rise to a higher scale of mind, beyond sense-mind, we enable a subtler, higher and wider existence, consciousness, force, happiness, and delight of being; more vision and power, subtlety, and plasticity. As we rise to mind beyond sense mind, we gain more control over vital and physical movements. They become instruments of reason and obedient to an enlightened will. In this movement we become more truly mental beings.

• The Subconscient: The subconscient is called thus because it is below the level of mind and conscious life. It is not sensed by us; it operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It includes the lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind. It remains submerged and obscurely at work below our conscious nature. Its effects on the mind and body are automatic, uncalled for and involuntary; we have no knowledge and control of it. It is that which clings to us and refuses to change. It supports our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feelings, sensation, impulse, propensities, and fixities of character. There is an absolute necessity for the transformation of this subconscious; to bring in light control is indefensible for a higher life, for an integral transformation.

• The Subliminal: The subliminal is still more potent and valuable element in our being. It includes the action of the inner intelligence and sense-mind, the inner vital, even an inner subtle physical. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help. Our surface responses to physical existence has the support of the activity of these veiled parts. Our surface responses are often responses from the subliminal, which is modified by the rendering of our surface mind. But it also throws up influences to our mentality and vitality not connected to the outside world, but that which lives for itself. It extends into an enveloping consciousness which receives power from universal Mind, Life, and Matter-forces, which secretly affect our existence.

• It is only by living within behind the veil of superficial mind that we can be fully self-aware.

• Spiritual Mind and Beyond: The first indispensable step to reaching the superconscient beyond our present level of awareness is to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher planes of Mind; those that enable a greater power and light, the revelatory, the inspirational, the intuitive. On these mental heights we would receive the something of the direct power of the Spirit, something even of the Supermind as a first expression. After this our evolution could rise by a sublimer ascent and get beyond the mental into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature.

• Time, Timelessness; Simultaneity: We need to awaken to a concrete sense of our perpetual being in Time and of our timeless existence. The realization of the timeless immortality comes by the knowledge of the self in the Non-birth, Non-becoming. The realization of time-immortality comes by the knowledge of self in the birth and the Becoming; it is timelessness translated into Time manifestation. [We need more development of this idea here (p.738).]

• Going inward into our inner being and ascending upward beyond mind proper, we break out of ego, separateness, open to the cosmic forces, consciousness, and open finally to the transcendent Absolute.

• "The true individual, the spiritual being, emerges, individual yet universal, universal yet self-transcendent; life no longer appears as a formation of things and an action of being created by the seperative Ignorance."