Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
Fragment ID: 22048
Psychological Maxims
Body1, brain, nervous system are instruments of consciousness, they are not its causes. Consciousness is its own cause, a producer of objects and images and not their product. We are blinded to this truth because when we think of consciousness, it is of the individual we think. We look at the world in the way and speak of it in the terms of individual consciousness; but it is of the universal consciousness that the world is a creation.
The individual participates subconsciently and superconsciently in the universal consciousness. But the embodied individual in his physical or waking mind does not so much participate as arrive at participation. He is not directly part of it, but reproduces it by a partial indirect action, and in reproducing selects and varies, combines, discombines, new combines and develops his selections.
In the body his waking mind receives its impressions from the outside world and reacts upon them. Body and nerves are his instrument for the impressions and the reaction; therefore all their apparent instrumentation is nervous, physical, atomically combined, a physiological apparatus for a battery of nervous energy.
Physical, nervous and sensory impressions are the means by which the individual is induced to put himself into waking relations with the physical universe. Physical, nervous and sensory reactions are his means for entering into that relation.
1 This writing of Sri Aurobindo was found among his other writings in a note-book containing what appear to be his unrevised drafts intended to be finalised later. No date is given but it seems to belong to his early Pondicherry period. It is published here for the first time.