THROUGH
THE EYES OF INFINITY:
Toward an Integral Science
of Consciousness
By Don Salmon, Ph.D. and
Jan Maslow
REFLECTIONS ON SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENTARY ON THE KENA UPANISHAD
Below are some reflections on Sri Aurobindo's commentary on the Kena
Upanishad. If you have any comments, suggestions, critiques, etc.,
please send them to Don and Jan at <virtreal@jps.net>
Section VIII
[Sri Aurobindo]
The Upanishad is not satisfied with the definition of the Brahman-consciousness
as Mind of the mind. Just as it has described it as Speech of the speech,
so also it describes it as Eye of the eye, Ear of the ear. Not only
is it an absolute cognition behind the play of expression, but also an absolute
Sense behind the action of the senses. Every part of our being finds its
fulfilment in that which is beyond its present forms of functioning and not
in those forms themselves.
[D&J]
Everything about our ordinary experience (physical, vital, mental)
has its origin, its power, its source in a greater consciousness, the consciousness
of the Brahman, the Divine. Every aspect of our knowing, feeling
and willing is a reflection of, a limited expression of the greater knowing,
feeling and willing of the Divine. It is the Divine who is looking
through our eyes, hearing through our ears. Not realizing this, not
consciously aware of the greater Reality, we feel a longing the source of
which we do not know. In our ignorance, this longing take the form
of desire, and we seek fulfillment in the world outside ourselves when all
the time what we are looking for is within and beyond. This searching
will only find its fulfillment when our consciousness is rejoined with the
Infinite Consciousness of the Divine.
[Sri Aurobindo]
This conception of the all-governing supreme consciousness does not fall
in with our ordinary theories about sense and mind and the Brahman. We know
of sense only as an action of the organs through which embodied mind communicates
with external Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately developed
in the course of evolution; the senses therefore are not fundamental things,
but only subordinate conveniences and temporary physical functionings of
the embodied mind. Brahman, on the other hand, we conceive of by the elimination
of all that is not fundamental, by the elimination even of the Mind itself.
It is a sort of positive zero, an X or unknowable which corresponds to
no possible equation of physical or psychological quantities. In essence
this may or may not be true; but we have now to think not of the Unknowable
but of its highest manifestation in consciousness; and this we have described
as the outlook of the Absolute on the relative and as that which is the
cause and governing power of all that we and the universe are. There in
that governing cause there must be something essential and supreme of which
all our fundamental functionings here are a rendering in the terms of embodied
consciousness.
[D&J]
At the beginning of this paragraph, Sri Aurobindo describes the
prevailing materialistic view of the way that our senses function.
Neuroscientists believe that sensory knowledge depends on the functioning
of the brain, and it is only through the use of the sense-organs that it
is possible for us to gain direct knowledge of the external physical world.
To the extent we even grant any kind of validity to the notion of “the
Brahman”, we often think of it as the negation of our ordinary experience.
For example, the idea of “consciousness-without-an-object” – also called
the “pure consciousness event” (PCE) has gained in popularity in recent
years. Scholars tend to make an absolute distinction between this
“PCE” and the contents of consciousness, the changing play of thoughts,
feelings and sensations.
Here, however, Sri Aurobindo seems to be describing the
relationship between this “absolute” consciousness and the relative, changing
world of experience. The clue he gives us is that the functioning
of our ordinary consciousness is not at all separate or distinct from the
absolute, but in fact wholly derived from and representative of it.
[Will Moss]
And, more to the point, in attempting to describe or qualify
That, the Absolute, to see that there must be some highest Quality there
of which our limited sense mechanisms are a relative and limited form.
[Sri Aurobindo]
Sense, however, is not or does not appear to be fundamental; it is only
an instrumentation of Mind using the nervous system. It is not even a pure
mental functioning, but depends so much upon the currents of the Life-force,
upon its electric energy vibrating up and down the nerves, that in the Upanishads
the senses are called Pranas, powers or functionings of the Life-force.
It is true that Mind turns these nervous impressions when communicated to
it into mental values, but the sense-action itself seems to be rather nervous
than mental. In any case there would, at first sight, appear to be no warrant
in reason for attributing a Sense of the sense to that which is not embodied,
to a supramental consciousness which has no need of any such instrumentation.
[D&J]
Sri Aurobindo is presenting a view here that is the reverse of
the conventional scientific view. Rather than the mind being little
more than a complex working derived from sensory experience, the senses are
understood to be instruments of the mind. He introduces here another
idea quite foreign to modern psychology, that of the Life-Force, or prana.
The working of the senses, rather than being entirely dependent on the physical
nervous system, is actually dependent on the pranic force. Sri Aurobindo
seems to be telling us that what we call the action of the “senses” is actually
the mind acting on the impressions of the pranic force and turning
them into mental forms.
We’re not clear about the meaning of the last sentence; so far, the Upanishad
has talked about a Mind greater than our mind; a Life greater than our
life; here he’s asking whether we can logically extend this to assume a
greater Sense behind the workings of our senses. The problem – at
this point – seems to be if we think of the senses as nothing more than
a means for the mind to contact physical matter, then it doesn’t logically
follow that a greater consciousness – one which is not embodied – would
have any need for such an instrumentation.
[Will Moss]
Exactly! That last sentence is an example of something Sri
Aurobindo uses frequently, especially in his more philosophical writings
-- the rhetorical device [I don't know the precise term] of raising a logical
objection to his previous statement, only to resolve it or knock it down
in the following one he does here in the next para.]. The key is in
the phrase, there would, at first sight, appear to be ...
which he proceeds to resolve with the words, But this is not the last
word about sense;
[Sri Aurobindo]
But this is not the last word about sense; this is only its outward appearance
behind which we must penetrate. What , not in its functioning, but in its
essence, is the thing we call sense? In its functioning, if we analyse
that thoroughly, we see that it is the contact of the mind with an eidolon
of Matter ,—whether that eidolon be of a vibration of sound, a light-image
of form, a volley of earth-particles giving the sense of odour, an
impression of rasa or sap that gives the sense of taste, or that direct
sense of disturbance of our nervous being which we call touch. No doubt,
the contact of Matter with Matter is the original cause of these sensations;
but it is only the eidolon of Matter, as for instance the image of the form
cast upon the eye, with which the mind is directly concerned. For the mind
operates upon Matter not directly, but through the Life-force; that is its
instrument of communication and the Life-force, being in us a nervous energy
and not anything material, can seize on Matter only through nervous impressions
of form, through contactual images, as it were, which create corresponding
values in the energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana. Mind
takes these up and replies to them with corresponding mental values, mental
impressions of form, so that the thing sensed comes to us after a triple
process of translation, first the material eidolon, secondly the nervous
or energy-image, third the image reproduced in stuff of mind.
[D&J]
Now Sri Aurobindo seems to be leading us beyond a superficial
understanding of the senses. The essence, he tells us, of “sense”
is a contact of mind with an image of Matter (according to our dictionary,
“eidolon” is “an image of an ideal” [from the Greek ‘eidos” – form, shape]).
He describes the image in terms of the five senses – hearing, sight, smell,
taste and touch.
He says that the mind – at least the embodied mind, the consciousness
which characterizes our ordinary waking state – does not have direct contact
with matter, only with an image of matter. In fact, the mind is twice
separated from matter.
First, there is contact of matter with matter (light rays striking the
retina; sound waves contacting the ear); Next, that material vibration
or image is translated to a vital or pranic vibration or image; Finally,
the pranic vibration in turn is translated to a mental impression or image.
Here's one of the more pressing issues for the book:
Does anybody have any idea how what Sir Aurobindo writes here relates
to current theories of perception? Obviously, prana or life-force plays
no part in current theories of perception. The two elements are mind
and matter – in fact, brain and matter, since most psychologists don’t believe
in a mind distinct from the brain.
What is perhaps quite interesting is that most psychologists nowadays
– even the most hard-core materialists – agree that we don’t know the world
directly; most would agree that we live in a kind of “virtual reality”.
Research has shown that the perception of a rose in a dream activates the
same part of the brain that the perception of a rose in the waking state.
In some cases, it is not possible to tell by looking at the brain activity
alone whether an individual is awake or dreaming.
Regarding the way the mind “constructs” the
world there is much dispute. There is the “computational” theory –
the idea that the brain takes the sensory “information” and performs calculations
which are somehow – no one knows how – translated into conscious experience.
There is a quite different theory of “direct perception” developed by psychologist
James Gibson. Gibson says that the brain does not have to perform any complex
computations on the incoming sensory information; rather, the sensory array
carries complex information which is read “directly” by the brain.
In any case, there is virtually nothing in contemporary psychology which
gives a clue as to how the sensory information leads to conscious experience.
[Will Moss]
Not being familiar with the scientific literature, I can only add that
the last model you describe seems closer to Sri Aurobindo's model.
What is missing is the pranic energy. The key description there is
in the following phraseology: nervous impressions of form, through
contactual images, as it were, which create corresponding values in the
energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana. This, then,
is the "missing link" between body and mind -- an energic pulse in a complex
form which the sense-mind "reads" as a touch, an image, a smell etc.
And this could be the key to the curious response to dreams -- that if the
mind is recieving a pranic image of a rose, it will have no way of knowing
whether that is generated by a physical touch, or by some pranic memory
reproduced in the dream.
In Synthesis of Yoga, he describes an inner sense-mind [I forget the term]
which is what recieves the impulses of sense and converts them to mental
images. The fascinating aspect of this is that this aspect of body-mind,
ultimately, does not need the senses in order to recieve impressions.
It is able, when we can free it from its identification with the pranic senses,
to recieve impressions directly from the world around without the intervention
of the nervous system -- direct knowledge through identification.
[Sri Aurobindo]
This elaborate process is concealed from us by the lightning-like
rapidity with which it is managed,—rapidity in our impressions of Time;
for in another notation of Time by a creature differently constituted each
part of the operation might be distinctly sensible. But the triple translation
is always there, because there are really three sheaths of consciousness
in us, the material, annako\,sa, in which the physical contact and image
are received and formed, the vital and nervous, pr\=a\,nako\,sa, in which
there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental, mana\,hko\,sa, in which
there is mental contact and imaging. We dwell centred in the mental sheath
and therefore the experience of the material world has to come through the
other two sheaths before it can reach us.
[D&J]
At one of the recent Mind and Life conferences (a meeting of leading
scientists with the Dalai Lama), neuroscientist Francisco Varela discussed
recent discoveries regarding the first 200 milliseconds of a moment perception.
He claimed that Buddhist meditators, investigating the process of perception
prior to conceptualization, were able to train their attentional capacity
to such an extent that they could directly perceive the (look up Hayward
and varela)
Sri Aurobindo, in referring to the “lightning-like rapidity” of the process
of perception, seems to be referring to something similar. His next point
about a “creature differently constituted” is extremely interesting.
Animal researchers have conjectured that the experience of time for different
creatures puts them in an almost different “world” from the one we live
in. One researcher suggested that an animal with a much simpler nervous
system, able to pick out far fewer features of the environment, might experience
a day as we experience a minute. Of course, the comparison is extremely
partial, as our time-experience is inseparable from many other components
of awareness. We can only really know what it is like to be a snail
if we awaken a far more profound consciousness than that of our ordinary
waking state.
Sri Aurobindo continues, reinforcing the point he made in the previous
paragraph. Being mental beings, dwelling “centered in the mental sheath”,
we do not have direct contact with the material world, Again, this
is true only in our ordinary consciousness – having awakened to the Self,
we would know the Self residing in physical objects to be one with our Self
(question: would someone awakened in the inner consciousness have
direct contact with physical objects as well? Here’s an example –
I am awake within, in the inner realm, and walking through a park.
I look at cat walking by – I “feel” directly, the life, the prana of the
cat, I’m aware of it directly, not merely by means of the physical eye,
but by a direct knowledge, an “embracing” of the physical, vital and mental
consciousness of the cat. But it seems that there is still this “triple
translation” – I still know the physical and vital consciousness as translated
to my mental consciousness, This triple translation would only be bypassed
if I was fully awakened to the Self in all. Does this sound right?
Section IX
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