The Development, Powers and Limits of the Mental Consciousness

The human being consists of multiple levels of consciousness which interact with and impact one another and which, from an evolutionary standpoint, represent a consistent trend of increasing power and subtlety of the consciousness. The consciousness of the body, the physical consciousness is the first foundation. The vital consciousness develops to provide new powers of understanding and action layered on top of the physical consciousness. When the mental consciousness develops, it adds yet additional powers of consciousness, again layered on top of the physical and vital levels. While the mental consciousness, as it develops, may take the lead role in guiding the individual, the other levels have their role and their influence in the decisions and actions. In fact, the vital consciousness is skilled at gaining the support of the mental consciousness for the fulfillment of its desires and intentions, generally.

As the mental consciousness works to gain ascendency, it may try to exercise dominant power over the other levels. This may have short-term results, but long-term may wind up backfiring as it can either cause serious imbalances in the physical, including harming the general health and well-being of the physical body, or various reactions in the vital nature which may include obstinate refusal, increased vital pressure to meet its demands “or else”, or various types of vital imbalances that may wind up harming the nerves or creating mental imbalances. The complexity of the three primary levels active here, and their necessary integration and harmony with one another to be truly effective, exceeds the capacity of the mental consciousness and thus, perhaps the best that can be hoped for us a type of truce or mutual cooperation and ‘give and take’ situation. It is only when a still higher force becomes active that it can address all of this complexity from a position of knowledge and power. Sri Aurobindo calls this next evolutionary stage the development of the supramental consciousness, essentially the level ‘beyond the mind’. In order to reach a stable basis in this new consciousness, the evolution needs to develop through several intermediate levels, such as the illumined mind, the intuitive mind, the overmind, etc. as Sri Aurobindo has described them elsewhere. This development occurs in conjunction with the coming forward of the true soul of the individual, the psychic being. The psychic being operates as the centre around which all this evolutionary development takes place and it is able to provide clear and direct guidance for the individual once it is fully active in the being.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “At a higher stage of the evolution of personality [above that of the vital self, the being of life] the being of mind may rule; there is then created the mental man who lives predominantly in the mind as the others live in the vital or the physical nature. The mental man tends to subordinate to his mental self-expression, mental aims, mental interests or to a mental idea or ideal the rest of his being: because of the difficulty of this subordination and its potent effect when achieved, it is at once more difficult for him and easier to arrive at a harmony of his nature. It is easier because the mental will once in control can convince by the power of the reasoning intelligence and at the same time dominate, compress or suppress the life and the body and their demands, arrange and harmonise them, force them to be its instruments, even reduce them to a minimum so that they shall not disturb the mental life or pull it down from its ideative or idealising movement. It is more difficult because life and body are the first powers and, if they are in the least strong, can impose themselves with an almost irresistible insistence on the mental ruler. Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is often impotent before the inconscient and subconscient which obscure its clarity and carry it away on the tide of instinct or impulse; in spite of its clarity it is fooled by the vital and emotional suggestions into giving sanction to ignorance and error, to wrong thought and to wrong action, or it is obliged to look on while the nature follows what it knows to be wrong, dangerous or evil. Even when it is strong and clear and dominant, Mind, though it imposes a certain, a considerable mentalised harmony, cannot integrate the whole being and nature. These harmonisations by an inferior control are, besides, inconclusive, because it is one part of the nature which dominates and fulfils itself while the others are coerced and denied their fullness. They can be steps on the way, but not final; therefore in most men there is no such sole dominance and effected partial harmony, but only a predominance and for the rest an unstable equilibrium of a personality half formed, half in formation, sometimes a disequilibrium or unbalance due to the lack of a central government or the disturbance of a formerly achieved partial poise. All must be transitional until a first, though not a final, true harmonisation is achieved by finding our real centre.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVIII Mind, pp. 138-139