These are words of Sri Aurobindo on this subject:
“Consciousness is not, to my experience, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of personality to the forces of Nature and amounting to no more than a seeing or interpretation of these reactions. If that were so, then when the personality becomes silent and immobile and gives no reactions, as there would be no seeing or interpretative action, there would therefore be no consciousness. That contradicts some of the fundamental experiences of yoga, e.g., a silent and immobile consciousness infinitely spread out, not dependent on the personality but impersonal and universal,… persistent in itself even when no reactions take place…
“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…it is there even when it seems to us to be quite absent and the being to our view unconscious and inanimate.
“Consciousness is not only power of aware-ness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can deter-mine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Conscious-ness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
“Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, — supramental or overmental and submental ranges.”
[Letters on Yoga]
