Looking for a Conscious Life

What is consciousness? Awareness? Intention? Focus? The highest instrument that an ordinary human being is aware of and can exercise some control on, is the mind. By mind we know it as the part in us that thinks, ponders, broods, reminisces, tries to recollect, plans through a series of thoughts and decides to act; also one who exercises the will to act and prods a part of the body to act; it is also the one that becomes sad when the body experiences pain or illness; it is the one that is tormented when we face deceit or hurt in a relationship and it is also the one that gathers the being after a heartbreak and urges him to move on.

But sometimes no word of the mind lands on the emotional being, the vital has taken over by running the painful memories in repeat mode and yet there is someone who suffers silently, allowing the vital energies to dry out- it is not the mind that tries to interrupt a few times to take charge, but is unable to get through. Again, when we freeze in fear and the mind is too stunned to act, there is a witness in us who is silently observing the drama play out- he does not say much.

This is the best that we can comprehend of ‘consciousness’ with our ordinary mind. And when we say ‘be conscious’, what we mean is to observe the mind focus on something and dwell in that awareness. If we are conscious of the one who is observing that may one portion of the mind observing another or that can be the consciousness; but consciousness is not only thought, it can be feeling, experience (even bodily), inkling, premonition (feeling that something might happen), imagination and much more.

What then is the significance of a conscious life? What does it mean to live a conscious life? Since we know by now that mind is our ordinary boundary, we are seldom able to cross beyond and all our life is a playing field of occurrences that accost the being- mostly the mind and reactions from the mind to those occurrences. But the mind itself in man is many layered and it is either the reasoning mind or the desire mind or the emotional mind, or the mechanical mind or one of many other layers that reacts. This reaction is mostly abrupt and neither planned nor evaluated and man typically oscillates between reaction- rumination- retribution leaving a sense of poor control or joylessness about life.

When we make a silent decision to live consciously, we challenge this loop and get a witness within us to observe our actions in an unbiased manner and with a calm hand point to a different means of externalising ourselves. When we try and fail, the witness observes and sometimes adopts a different strategy or an early warning system to ensure adherence. When the being is able to do it once, a sea of untold, unexplained joy rises and that is the gift from the Supreme Witness or Purusa of the Universe. The gift sometimes brings the urge to do it again and sometimes the pride to think the behavior has been mastered. The next course of action depends on the choice made and thence it goes on.

A conscious life is a series of such choiceful, witness driven and joy inducing actions that then invariably are not limited to the environment of the one individual being but as a result of the universal interconnectedness between being and being, the influence spreads its wings and seizes another until one more being is inspired to attempt a conscious life.

Because the being is seldom just the fiefdom of the mind, or the desires, or the emotions but really an intricate and inexplicable maze of many dynamic parts with varying prominence of now this, now that; the influence cannot grow through advice or preaching or a even a diktat or order , not even a sorry plight that clutches at our heart for a while can consciousness take charge; the influence will have to be complete, perfect and carry behind it the patient and arduous effort of all the parts of a being aligning and pouring their oblations into the fire of aspirational change and choice. Hence, the Mother reminds us that being an integral, honest and lasting example to another is the best service we can do on the path of Integral yoga. The first and last business of a sadhaka, so to say, is to focus on his own growth and ascension to the higher realms and make himself available for a silent observation by others with no pride and a kind eye when needed.

But all of this is our individual consciousness. Talking about Consciousness that operates in the world, the Mother says,” it is the objectification of an entity; when the torch of consciousness is shined upon something, it comes to life for the one who is viewing in the light of the torch!!  Science believes Creation started with the big-bang, the vedas say, Creation started with the Supreme becoming aware of himself. Both statements are only establishing the human limits of fathoming Consciousness or Creation’s beginning as far as man is concerned.

The Mother says, “What we call our consciousness is this original Consciousness reflected in a somewhat foggy mirror (sometimes very foggy, sometimes very deformed), a reflection in the individual mirror.” True Consciousness is the Consciousness of the One. When men refer to the Supreme becoming aware of Himself, the Mother says, what they mean is, the Supreme projected his consciousness, his awareness of Himself in such a way to allow for his objectification and hence changed what existed before this objectification into an active consciousness and to this extent, Consciousness is the origin of all creation, all manifestation.