The Interaction of the Individual and Universal Subconscient With the Individual

We tend to imagine that somehow the mind, the vital energy and the physical body we identify through our ego-complex as ourselves, is separate from those of everyone else. In reality, however, the physical, vital and mental substance is universal in nature and the portion we try to wall off within our ego-awareness is part of that universal Nature. It is like the idea of submerging an open-mouth jar into the ocean. The water that migrates into the jar is the same water that surrounds the jar, and the water flows back and forth between what is ‘inside’ and what is outside. In addition to the planes of consciousness that we perceive within our limited frame of reference, there are additional planes of consciousness that exist, outside our frame of reference, both below and above the range we acknowledge. The subconsicent and the superconscient planes therefore exist in universal Nature and their activities can, and do, impinge upon our lives, whether recognised or not.

There is a unique ‘personal’ component to the subconscient, inasmuch as specific experiences, sense-perceptions, etc. become part of the subconscient most immediately present to the individual. Anything present in the subconscient can erupt at any time into consciousness when triggered based on personal experience or when pressured from outside.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the Nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete ‘sub’-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body. It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert strands of Matter and form by a constant development a slowly evolving and self-formulating consciousness; it contains them not as ideas, perceptions or conscious reactions but as the fluid substance of these things. But also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient, not as precise though submerged memories but as obscure yet obstinate impressions of experience, and these can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feelings, action, etc., as ‘complexes’ exploding into action and event, etc., etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all Sanskaras of the mind, vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 54-55