The Body is an occult agent with countless possibilities waiting to be discovered. Science tries to discover these latent possibilities of the body in one way, mainly through rational education, physical training etc. Yoga or rather Yogic science discovers it in another way. Breaking free from the hypnosis of purely material possibilities it goes on to discover the possibilities inherent in the subtler bodies. However, these possibilities are prevented from full blossoming since the human consciousness is fixed in the frame of the past with all its limits of ‘can and cannot’ as if determined and decided by the subconscient in us.
This Subconscient is like a recording device that records faithfully everything that is seen, felt, heard, experienced. It ties us down to this past ad its habits, the atavisms that we inherit and imbibe since childhood or even before that. But here too the Light can come. Hid deep in its wells is the same Superconscient that shines Above beyond the firmaments of the Mind. The whole journey of man is a ascent out of its subconscient state into the superconscient above. Depending upon the station of consciousness taken by man in his upward ascent we have different types of humanity.
Traditional Yoga tries to find that doorway that can eventually take this evolution beyond the present state and cast it into the Superconscious regions of Light and Bliss. In Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, this experience of the higher consciousness, this ascent Beyond becomes a means for bringing down the Force and Light of the higher into the lower regions. As the lower ranges or centers of consciousness (chakras) open to the Higher these now concealed possibilities begin to be released in us creating a new limb of normalcy in us. The initial phases of this process is relatively easy but as this descent goes on lower down into the lower vital and further down into the very physical and the subconscient regions, the Force from Above meets an increasing resistance. However eventually as it proceeds in the conquest of the lower by the Higher, our mastery increases, not only over our individual nature but also over our surrounding circumstances.
The Force of Body-Consciousness: Nolini Kanta Gupta
THERE is a state of consciousness in which you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the extent ofrealising that things in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are so only in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends entirely upon the way in which we regard these things. If we take, for example, a circumstance as a gift from God, as a divine Grace, as an outcome of the total harmony, it will help us to become more conscious and truer and stronger. The same identical circumstance, if we take it differently, as a blow of Fate, as a bad force wishing us harm, becomes, on the contrary, a damper on our consciousness, it saps our strength, brings obscurity, creates disharmony. And yet in either case it is altogether the same circumstance. I would like you to have the experience and make the experiment. For your ideal is to be master of yourselves. But not that only. You should not only be master of your own selves, but master of the circumstances of your life, the circumstances, at least, that immediately surround you and concern you. You must note further that it is an experience that is not confined to the mind alone: it need not happen in your head only, it may and indeed must continue into the body. Certainly, this is a realisation needing great labour, much concentration and self-mastery: you have to force the consciousness into the body, into dense Matter. It is the attitude of the body that will in the end determine everything: shocks and contacts of the outside world will change its nature according to the way in which they are received by the body. And if you attain perfection in that line, you can become even master of accidents. Such a thing is possible, not only possible, but it is bound to happen, for it is a forward step in man’s progress. First of all, you have to realise the power in your mind to the extent that it can act upon circumstances and change their effect upon you. Then the power can descend into Matter, into the substance, the cells of your body and endow the body with this capacity of control over things outside and around you.
There is nothing impossible in the world. We ourselves put the bar: always we say, this is possible, that is impossible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow and ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they are quite otherwise.
CWNKG, Vol 5: pp. 390 – 391
