Some thoughts on the Vedic studies and Linguistics
We can see action as a movement that scratches the stillness of the environment or any other state of the environment. This scratching movement is our concern in regard to expression, as it will be this that will reveal the self and its source.
Regarding action the question arises, whether it just turns around in circles in fields of other, themselves endlessly repeating movements or if there is behind the movement a deeper dimension.
To see what action means, what happens when we act, what it includes, we must see first how it was conceived in the thought of the Veda, what names the Rishis gave to these involved realities and how they turn into something else as we know them or rather pretend to know in everyday life.
Movement is conceived as the expression of a vast consciousness that flows through its one body it has created on different levels of its being, something like the fluids and nerves and electrical currents flowing through our body and brain on a universal scale.
We can see these movements as a flow of consciousness and energy that moves within us, as well as in the body of Nature. The physical rivers, winds and rains, the flow of the rays of the sun and so on, would be an extension of our experience on this universal scale. The Veda further deals with the involvement of all the states of consciousness within the existence thus lived by and being accessible to all conscious streams.
Our actual consciousness is turned towards the outer life and only in rare occasions we dive inward, where in the stillness of our being all the streams meet. We suffer perdition while alive. We might say that not much of humanity has the possibility or luxury to deal with this inner self, but each individual is confronted with it directly, now and then and at the time of birth and death.
Sri Aurobindo puts it in these words: The eternal question has been put which trines man's eyes away from the visible and the outward to that which is utterly within, away from the little known that he has become to the vast unknown he is behind these surfaces and must yet grow into and be because that is his Reality and out of all masquerade of phenomenon and becoming the Real Being must eventually deliver itself. The human soul once seated by this compelling direction can no longer be satisfied with looking forth at mortalities and seemings through those doors of the mind and sense which the Self-existent has made to open outward upon a world of forms: it is driven to gaze inward into a new world of realities.
It is interesting how the involvement in movement relativizes the experience of the integrity of being, how a dividing thought has its effect on our psychology and experience of reality. How an exclusive conviction determines our action and image we give to it.
Veda speaks of seven thoughts, seven distinct minds with the seven streams moving in existence, all pouring out from the two oceans: the upper ocean of light and the lower of the hidden light in darkness, the subconscient. Situated in between these two oceans is our perceptive conscious action, and between this and the upper world is antariksa, the world in between that links the divided with the united.
Evident for our consciousness in the domain of daily movement are the three rivers of the physical, vital and mind. Most of the physical movement as well as the vital actions and reactions come from the darkness of the subconscient, as disconnected, fragmented parts of a higher truth. The mind streams are mostly dealing with them and get inspired by this universal lower mind. The rhythm of the body's varied action, the glowings and outbursts of the vital and the never-ending chains of the thoughts of mind are dominating the movements of our consciousness. Nevertheless, there is progress and widening as Sri Aurobindo puts it:
Here in the world that man knows, he possesses something which, however imperfect and insecure, he yet values. For he aims at and to some extent he procures enlarged being, increasing knowledge, more and more joy and satisfaction and these things are so precious to him that for what he can get of them he is ready to pay the price of continual suffering from the shock of their opposites.Each of these parts are linked to the integrity of being, and thus to the higher consciousness, or the higher states of being, and have therefore an aspect of intuitive absorption and a hidden knowing, which however has to be ignited by the right thought or opening of the lower streams towards the higher influences.
Divine Intuition is the link between the lower and the higher states of universality and transcendence. There has to be made a distinction between the universality that does not transcend the lower minds and that which comes from the higher planes.
There is a way to distinguish these two the description of which Sri Aurobindo has given in the Secret of the Veda. He speaks of Mahi, Ila and Saraswati as the three sisters, representing Intuition. Mahi is the vast one that contains the vastness of existence and all its planes, Ila the correspondent knowledge and Saraswati the force of Intuition that induces the mind to the right thought that ignites intuition in the individual. I believe that this is the right thought that touches Pashyanti and reveals the Sphota.
On the other side, on the transcendent level of consciousness there are the three counterparts of MATER - VITAL - MIND: OVERMIND - SUPERMIND - SAT CHIT ANANDA
Overmind as Sri Aurobindo explains is a plane of consciousness beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in ignorance; carries in itself a first, direct, masterful cognition of cosmic truth. It is a creator of truth, not of illusions or falsehood. It is a principle of comic truth and a cast and endless catholicity is its very spirit.
Supermind: the supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. It contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness and is necessary for a Truth creation. It is the instrumentation of the Sachchidananda, - the Infinite consciousness higher than the mental being, It is a Self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of Self-determination inherent in that Self-awareness. Supermind keeps always and in every status and condition is the spiritual realization of the unity of all. It is the Consciousness and the creatrix of the world, a will to light and vision and also a will to power of works. It is the vastness beyond the ordinary firmament of our consciousness, vast all-comprehension, - the true, the right, the vast. Supermind is the Light one with Force, vibration of Knowledge with the rhythm of the Will. It is Truth-Consciousness.Therefore it is important how we formulate our thoughts to bring order to perception and ignite the flashes that guide it. These thoughts have to be of a nature that is aimed at universality, transparence and transcendence, a longing of the limited, for a rich harmonizing, enriching flow of all these rivers. The base of this ignition of thought lies within an inner experience of a prolific silence that senses its own truth and vastness of being and its knowledge; by action as the only means the individual gets to know himself, as it becomes the only connecting knot between the inner and the outer self, between the hidden truth and the revealing thought.
The scratches of the movements of life bear the same seven-fold reality, but without the right knowledge cannot make action the means of self-discovery and a vehicle of a vast and powerful conscious action.
The initial Greek thought has not abandoned the soul, on the contrary has elevated the thought as a means to arrive at the soul-perception, a perception that regards the eternal as the only true concept in relation to the unstable world perception of the senses. The thought as a part of the soul, the feeling as a part of the soul and the being are true. But western civilization has forgotten the aspect of the soul's eternal vision and kept the dead body of a disconnected action, relying on wondering reasoning, without the possibility to access universality and union; the soul degraded to a witness cut out of the uniting streams.
All cultures around the world faced degradation of the fundamental principles; the western world did the same, proclaiming the imperialism of the rational towards the too vast and uncertain anarchic eternal. The rational mind is a divine principle, which follows the divine's consciousness holding all movement in a direct and hypnotized gaze, but left by itself without the eternal truth-idea it can deal only in limited being.
The individual consciousness has however, even by plunging into rationality and logic the means to break free and become the vehicle of the soul. The individual consciousness can include the rational and logic into the process of becoming integral. It just needs to lift its gaze to the unlimited realities and give them names, make the eternal the alphabet of its reasoning and build action on its ground.
The Veda and the writings of Sri Aurobindo give us the possibility to go beyond the blindness and veils of our trapped consciousness as many other great thinkers and poets. Their truth is convincing, as it does not exclude any form of the action of consciousness. In limitation it sees the path to the infinite, in the calling it longs for the gods of the inner world to descend into the scratching action of life and come to the communion, thus widening and illuminating by their vast sense and truth life's growth.
Besides all this there was this experience:
Between the waking state and sleep I found myself within a space of defused light. There was perfect stillness. Gazing at reality in the waking state didn't alter this space, nothing could come in and make it move. On the contrary, everything was as if included. Then there was the perception of action calling onto this stillness, as if an outstretched hand was reaching to the periphery of this sphere. There was no intention in the silence, nor any kind of stir, only the action tool what it needed to know for its process and went on to act in the light of this silent state.
With love
Latso
commented by Vladimir on Jun 1, 2011
It is very intuitive observation:
"The individual consciousness has however, even by plunging into rationality and logic, the means to break free and become the vehicle of the soul. The individual consciousness can include the rational and logic into the process of becoming integral. It just needs to lift its gaze to the unlimited realities and give them names, make the eternal the alphabet of its reasoning and build action on its ground."
It's very true, indeed, for it is only through the individual that the integral consciousness can emerge. Logic and rationality are only the means of individualisation.