Inconscient Education
 

Integral Inconscient Education:

 

“Something that wished but knew not how to be,

Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.” Savitri-2

​

“The godheads from the dim Inconscient born” Savitri-10

​

“The poised inconscience shaken with a touch,

The intuitive Silence trembling with a name,

They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould

And in the brute forms awake divinity.” Savitri-129

​

“An inconscient Power groped towards consciousness,” Savitri-137

​

“Ferment of the soul’s creation out of mire.

A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,

A fallen ignorance in its covert night

Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,

A camouflage of the Inconscient’s need

To release the glory of God in Nature’s mud.” Savitri-138

​

“Behind all moved seeking for vessels to hold

A first raw vintage of the grapes of God,

On earth’s mud a spilth of the supernal Bliss,

Intoxicating the stupefied soul and mind

A heady wine of rapture dark and crude,

Dim, uncast yet into spiritual form,

Obscure inhabitant of the world’s blind core,

An unborn godhead’s will, a mute Desire.” Savitri-146

​

“All was dim sparkle on a foaming top:

It whirled around a drifting shadow-self

On an inconscient flood of Force in Time.” Savitri-147

​

“At the outset of this enigmatic world

Which seems at once an enormous brute machine

And a slow unmasking of the spirit in things,

In this revolving chamber without walls

In which God sits impassive everywhere

As if unknown to himself and by us unseen

In a miracle of inconscient secrecy,

Yet is all here his action and his will.” Savitri-154

​

“Then in a fatal and stupendous hour

Something that sprang from the stark Inconscient’s sleep

Unwillingly begotten by the mute Void,

Lifted its ominous head against the stars;

Overshadowing earth with its huge body of Doom

It chilled the heavens with the menace of a face.” Savitri-222-23

​

“Or stifled in the Inconscient’s hollow dusk,

He sounded the mystery dark and bottomless

Of the enormous and unmeaning deeps

Whence struggling life in a dead universe rose.” Savitri-231

​

“Then in Illusion’s occult factory

And in the Inconscient’s magic printing house

Torn were the formats of the primal Night

And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.” Savitri-231

​

“To teach the Ignorance is her difficult charge,

Her thought starts from an original nescient Void

And what she teaches she herself must learn

Arousing knowledge from its sleepy lair.” Savitri-243-44

​

“This was the imbroglio made by sovereign Mind

Looking from a gleam-ridge into the Night

In her first tamperings with Inconscience:

Its alien dusk baffles her luminous eyes;

Her rapid hands must learn a cautious zeal;

Only a slow advance the earth can bear.” Savitri-244

​

“On its unstable and enormous breast

Beings and forces, forms, ideas like waves

Jostled for figure and supremacy,

And rose and sank and rose again in Time;

And at the bottom of the sleepless stir,

A Nothingness parent of the struggling worlds,

A huge creator Death, a mystic Void,

For ever sustaining the irrational cry,

For ever excluding the supernal Word,

Motionless, refusing question and response,

Reposed beneath the voices and the march

The dim Inconscient’s dumb incertitude.” Savitri-287

​

“This darkness hides our nobler destiny.” Savitri-330

​

“Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return,

The luminous Eye approaches and retires;

Eternity speaks, none understands its word;

Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies;

The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.” Savitri-371 

​

“Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;

Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;

Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience

Which was thy body’s dumb original base;

Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:” Savitri-443

​

“By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,

The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,

Else had the Inconscient never suffered change.

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,

His slow inertia as of living stone.” Savitri-443

​

“At first appeared a dim half-neutral tide

Of being emerging out of infinite Nought:

A consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast

And pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void.

All was the deed of a blind World-Energy:” Savitri-477

​

“A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world,

Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,

An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts

Leaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.” Savitri-478

​

“A nameless god in an unapproachable fane,

 In the secret adytum of his inmost soul

He guards the being’s covered mysteries

Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates

Or shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.

The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful

Casts into the argent purity of his soul

His splendour and his greatness and the light

Of self-creation in Time’s infinity

As into a sublimely mirroring glass.” Savitri-479

​

“All then becomes subconscient, tenebrous,

Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page

Or else a mad disorder whirls the brain

Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads,

A chaos of disordered impulses

In which no light can come, no joy, no peace.” Savitri-491

​

“But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom,

A mighty movement rocked the inner space

As if a world were shaken and found its soul:

Out of the Inconscient’s soulless and mindless night” Savitri-528

​

“Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall,

Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,

Powers and divinities burst flaming forth;

Each part of the being trembling with delight

Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness

And saw her hand in every circumstance

And felt her touch in every limb and cell.” Savitri-529

​

“In the deep place where once the Serpent slept,

There came a grip on Matter’s giant powers

For large utilities in life’s little space;

A firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might.” Savitri-530

​

“Casting aside its veil of Ignorance,

Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers

It built the harmony of its human state;

Surrendered into the great World-Mother’s hands

Only she obeyed her sole supreme behest

In the enigma of the Inconscient’s world.” Savitri-530

​

“Enigma of the Inconscient’s sculptural sleep

Symbols of the approach to darkness old

And monuments of her titanic reign,

Opening to depths like dumb appalling jaws

That wait a traveller down a haunted path

Attracted to a mystery that slays (the Soul),

They watched across her road, cruel and still;

Sentinels they stood of dumb Necessity,

Mute heads of vigilant and sullen gloom,

Carved muzzle of a dim enormous world.” Savitri-580

​

“Mine (Savitri’s) is the labour of the battling gods:

Imposing on the slow reluctant years

The flaming will that reigns beyond the stars,

They lay the law of Mind on Matter’s works

And win the soul’s wish from earth’s inconscient Force.” Savitri-588

​

“In that tremendous darkness heavy and bare

She atoned for all since the first act whence sprang

The error of the consciousness of Time,

The rending of the Inconscient’s seal of sleep,” Savitri-599

​

“The Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep.” Savitri-600

​

“The inconscient world is the spirit’s self-made room,

Eternal Night shadow of eternal Day.” Savitri-601

​

“A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart;

Her dusky mindlessness began to dream;

The Inconscient conscious grew, Night felt and thought.” Savitri-601

​

“His (Supramental) consciousness dived into inconscient depths,” Savitri-621

​

“In dim mist-waters of inconscient sleep,” Savitri-632

​

“In finite things the conscious Infinite dwells:

Involved it (Inconscient Self) sleeps in Matter’s helpless trance,

It (Inconscient Self) rules the world from its sleeping senseless Void;” Savitri-658

​

“Almost it seemed as if in his symbol shape

The world’s darkness had consented to Heaven-light

And God needed no more the Inconscient’s screen.” Savitri-664

​

“Because he (Supermind) is there the Inconscient does its work,” Savitri-681

​

“Let not the inconscient gulf swallow man’s race

That through earth’s ignorance struggles towards thy Light.” Savitri-687

​

“The Immanent shall be the witness God

Watching on his many-petalled lotus-throne

His actionless being and his silent might

Ruling earth-nature by eternity’s law,

A thinker waking the Inconscient’s world,

An immobile centre of many infinitudes

In his thousand-pillared temple by Time’s sea.” Savitri-706

 

 

 

 

             Inconscient transformation becomes possible through the conscious intervention of the Incarnating Dual Power, who open God’s secret Supramental door to the most stubborn and recalcitrant darkest nether domain of existence. After the Inconscient Self opens by the pressure of the Supramental Force above the head, the Divine Force works from below the feet.

                       

            Inconscient Education begins either when the old Inconscient foundation⁷ is made conscious by inflow of Superconscient Light and awareness from above to annex it to the Spirit’s height or after the recovery of the Inconscient Self which has the power to rend the Night of Ignorance or the dark Inconscient sheath is entrenched between two rivers of light flowing from the Superconscient Self above and Inconscient Self below. The aim of integral Inconscient Education is to unfold the truth of integral Knowledge which is concealed here in the original Inconscience and brought out of it by an emerging Consciousness which rises from gradation to gradation of its hierarchies of evolutionary development until it can manifest the integral Reality and a total Self-Knowledge.

 

            A certain line of materialistic enquiry considers the Inconscient sheath as the origin and creator of this existence. It has to be accepted that an Inconscient force and an Inconscient substance are the starting point of the evolution but it is recognised that the conscious Spirit is emerging in this difficult phase of nether evolution. This apparent Inconscience of the material universe carries in itself darkly and hazily all the powers and potentialities of the eternally self-revealed luminous Superconscient and to reveal it in Time is the slow and deliberate delight of Nature and the aim of her cycle. All three lower powers of mind, life and body build upon the Inconscient sheath and seem to originate and be supported by it. The black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and in its black darkness, the whole structure of the material universe rests. Its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure murmur and intimations seem to be the starting point of consciousness and the source of all impulses of physical mind and vital mind. When the Inconscient is penetrated by higher and higher powers of Self and Consciousness, its obstruction to evolution and its circle of restrictions are slowly broken and the limitations of our material substances are diminished and transcended and a greater law of divine Consciousness possesses the mind, life and body for the transformation action.  The Mother confirms ‘that a fundamental change of character demands an almost complete mastery over the subconscient and a very rigorous disciplining of whatever comes up from the inconscient, which, in ordinary natures, expresses itself as the effects of atavism and of the environment in which one was born. Only an almost abnormal growth of consciousness and the constant help of Grace can achieve this Herculean task. That is why this task has rarely been attempted and many famous teachers have declared it to be unrealisable and chimerical. Yet it is not unrealisable. The transformation of character has in fact been realised by means of a clear-sighted discipline and a perseverance so obstinate that nothing, not even the most persistent failures, can discourage it.’¹

 

            This Book-9, Canto-1 of Savitri book is concentrated on Savitri’s entry into the Inconscient world. This world is the home of Death and only dead people can visit that unhealthy world of negation and darkness. King Aswapati travelled this world without dying and suffered multiple injuries that were slow to heal. In this Canto, the movement of Consciousness between the Supramental and Inconscient planes is observed which appears to be a long movement before Consciousness is preoccupied with Subconscient transformation (which is the message of Book-10, Canto-1 to 4).

           

            This Canto suggests that those who are established in Supramental Consciousness can alone visit the Inconscient world in deep trance and through that exercise alone Inconscient world can be illumined and transformed. Sri Aurobindo’s accident in 1938 was an attack of dark asuric force (Lord of Falsehood) while he was pursuing transformation action in the Subconscient/Inconscient Sheath.

           

            This Canto also suggests that a Sadhaka must be established in Supramental Consciousness before meeting his own death or death of kith and kin or brother Souls. Extreme adversity must be met ‘like a tree recovering from a wind.’ (Savitri-574) Savitri had the following experiences after Satyavan’s death:

​

“She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,” Savitri-571

​

“Then suddenly there came on her the change

Which in tremendous moments of our lives

Can overtake sometimes the human soul

And hold it up towards its luminous source.” Savitri-571

​

“Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear:

Her grief had passed away, her mind was still,

Her heart beat quietly with a sovereign force.

There came a freedom from the heart-strings’ clutch,

Now all her acts sprang from a godhead’s calm.” Savitri-573

           

            We find in the following passage how death can abruptly end the charm of life and it visits in our life as the last gift.

“Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.
Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe
While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass” Savitri-18

​

“Our very being seems to us questionable,

Our life a vague experiment, the soul

A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,

The earth a brute mechanic accident,

A net of death in which by chance we live.” Savitri-49-50

​

“Fate waiting on the unseen steps of men

And her evil and sorrow and last gift of death.” Savitri-204

​

“A rolling surge of silent death, it came

Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe;

 Effacing heaven with its enormous stride

It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air

And end the fable of the joy of life.” Savitri-534,

​

“Although Death walks beside us on Life’s road,

 A dim bystander at the body’s start

And a last judgment on man’s futile works,

Other is the riddle of its ambiguous face:

Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride

The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,

A grey defeat pregnant with victory,

A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.” Savitri-600-601

 

            This Book-9 Canto-1, suggests that after arriving in Supramental Consciousness, the transformation work pursued in the Subconscient and inconscient world may not be easy and may continue through many births.

​

“That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze

On life and things, inheritor of a work

Left to it unfinished from her halting past, (This line suggests that Subconscient and Inconscient transformation is a continuation of Savitri’s past birth extending over future births till she returns to earth as last Avatara.)

When yet the mind, a passionate learner, toiled

And ill-shaped instruments were crudely moved.” Savitri-573 (This line suggests mind’s infant state in transformation action.)

 

            This Canto suggests that in order to change destiny and conquer Death, one must have knowledge of past, present and future lives. This knowledge of triple time is possible by opening of the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental being.

​

“Only the spirit sees and all is known.” Savitri-571

​

“Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees” Savitri-572

​

“And live in borders of the seen and known.” Savitri-579 (One can foresee and know much before the happening of the event.)

​

Its complementary line:

“For what the spirit sees, creates a truth

And what the soul imagines is made a world.” Savitri-456

​

“I know all past and all present and future existences, O Arjuna, but Me none yet knows.”

The Gita-7.26

‘Many are My lives that are past, and thine also, O Arjuna; all of them I know, but thou knowest not…’

The Gita-4.5

​

This change of destiny is further strengthened by the following experience, as hinted in Savitri:

“Only the spirit (of Savitri) knew the spirit (of Satyavan) still,

And the heart divined the old loved heart, though changed.”   Savitri-576

​

“All was the violent ocean of a will

Where lived captive to an immense caress,

Possessed in a supreme identity,

Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.” Savitri-579

​

“Around him nameless, infinite she surged,

Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time,

As if Love’s deathless moment had been found,

A pearl within eternity’s white shell.” Savitri-579

​

            The mystery of the Inconscient world is that it is a kingdom of titans who can slay the living Soul. They are cruel, sentinels of dumb necessity, and they watch across Savitri’s path mercilessly. In this midnight’s dumb abysses Savitri rose like a ‘columned shaft of fire and light,’² ‘against fixed destiny and the grooves of’² Iron Law.

 

         This Canto-I of Book-IX proposes that before confronting death, one’s Psychic being, Spiritual being, Cosmic Self and Supramental Being must be open. If these beings are open then one will remain firm, peaceful, equal in Soul and Nature during the extreme adversity. A path will be open in subtle world for resolving the imminent problems. Supramental force gives the passport to enter Dark Inconscient world without dying and changes its laws and slays the dark entities in their own Inconscient home. This is the root solution of the problem of existence.

 

            Savitri had gone through six phases of her sadhana. They are: (1) Sunlit path, (2) golden path, (3) Journey in the abysmal night of the Inconscient plane, (4) Journey in the Subconscient plane of dream twilight, (5) Permanent rise of consciousness to Sachchidananda plane of Everlasting Day, (6) Permanent descent of Sachchidananda consciousness through Return to Earth. This Canto-II of Book-IX represents the third phase of her Sadhana in the Inconscient plane.

           

            The purpose of entry into this dark world is to bridge the gulf between her relation with Satyavan (‘But now a silent gulf between them came’¹⁰) through large-scale invasion of Divine Love. Now this action of Divine Love is still remote from the Inconscient plane or ‘Even from herself cast out, from love remote.’¹¹ Due to this gulf, ‘Her eyes had lost their luminous Satyavan’¹¹ or ‘The soul of the beloved now seen no more.’¹² After the gulf is bridged, she experienced: ‘Her husband, grew into a luminous shade.’¹² ‘I will bear with him the ancient Mother’s load I will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.’¹³ ‘For I (Savitri) who have trod with him (Satyavan) the tracts of Time,’¹³ ‘Wherever thou leadst his (Satyavan’s) soul I shall pursue.’¹³

 

            The importance of Book-9, Canto-II is the movement of Consciousness through which the gulf between the Supramental plane and the Inconscient plane is bridged. If this gulf is not bridged then Satyavan cannot be traced or discovered in the Inconscient home of Death and by this loss of contact Satyavan cannot return to earth.

​

            In other Cantos, we have marked how, through the movement of Psychic, Spiritual, and Supramental Consciousness, different planes of Consciousness or ten worlds are bridged. They are:

The gulf between Savitri and Satyavan in the Inconscient plane:

“But now a silent gulf between them came” Savitri-584

​

“Visionless she moved amid insensible gulfs,” Savitri-584

​

The gulf between Savitri and Satyavan in the Subconscient plane:

“In vain thou (Death) hast dug the dark unbridgeable gulf,” Savitri-648,

​

A similar gulf King Aswapati felt in between the Supramental Self and the Bliss Self:

“This world of bliss he saw and felt its call,

But found no way to enter into its joy;

Across the conscious gulf there was no bridge.” Savitri-128,

​

Linking the gulf between the Spiritual and Mental planes:

“A mediating ray had touched the earth (mediating ray is the Spiritual energy)

Bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s;

Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.” Savitri-353

​

The Psychic being can bridge the gulf between Spirit and Matter:

“But soon the link of soul with form grew sure” Savitri-355

​

“Unlocked were inner spirit’s trance-closed doors:” Savitri-369

​

The Spirit travelling backward in Time in order to illumine dark untransformed world in universalised Consciousness:

​

"Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time" Savitri-11

​

“A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault (of King Aswapati);

The conscious ends of being went rolling back:

The landmarks of the little person fell,

The island ego joined its continent.” Savitri-25,

​

Bridging the gulf between Bliss self and Sense mind:

​

“A consciousness of beauty and of bliss,

A knowledge which became what it perceived,

Replaced the separated sense and heart

And drew all Nature into its embrace.” Savitri-28

​

Bridging the gulf between Absolute, Alone, Real and his Fate in universalised Consciousness:

“A union of the Real with the unique,

A gaze of the Alone from every face,

The presence of the Eternal in the hours

Widening the mortal mind’s half-look on things,

Bridging the gap between man's force and Fate

Made whole the fragment-being we are here.” Savitri-35,

​

The gulf between Psychic being and Spiritual Being is bridged:

​

“In moments when the inner lamps are lit

And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, (This line suggest life’s cherished guests stand as obstacles to Spiritual experience.)

Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.

A wider consciousness opens then its doors;

Invading from spiritual silences” Savitri-47-48,

​

Our surface casual life is harmonized by bridging the gulf between surface action and inner life:

“But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf

And learn what deep necessity of the soul

Determined casual deed and consequence?” Savitri-52,

​

Supramental action and removal all gulfs in different planes:

“Because eternal eyes turned on earth's gulfs” Savitri-101

​

“She hopes by the creative act’s release

To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill,

To heal awhile the wound of severance,

Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness

And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities

In the uncertain time-field portioned here.” Savitri-177

​

“Its (Supermind) mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,

Its (Supermind) lights that combat Ignorance and Death.” Savitri-261,

​

“There was no cleavage between soul and soul,

There was no barrier between world and God.” Savitri-319

​

“There (in the Supramental) was no gulf between the thought and fact,” Savitri-327

​

“And made her joy a bridge twixt earth and heaven,” Savitri-534,

​

“To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven;” Savitri-536,

​

(Death asked) “What bridge can cross the gulf that she (Truth supreme) has left

Between her (Truth supreme) and the dream-world she (Truth supreme) has made?” Savitri-663,

​

“The two (Heaven and Earth) longing to join, yet walk apart,

Idly divided by their vain conceits; …

They gaze across the silent gulfs of sleep.” Savitri-684

               

            Bridging the gulf between Supramental/bliss Sheath and Inconscient/Subconscient Sheath (‘His consciousness dived into inconscient depths,’ Savitri-621) is the most difficult exercise of integral Yoga and hence from this point of view Book-9 and Book-10 are very important and the Mother had chosen Book-10 for translation into the French language in order to better understand and pursue Her Subconscient transformation.

 

            Inconscient Sheath is ‘an all-negating immensity’³  or ‘immense refusal of the eternal No.’⁴ In the core of it lies the Inconscient Self (‘Matter still slept empty of its Lord’ (Savitri-405)) which is the Divine’s last and the greatest Spiritual energy by whose intervention ‘a grand solution’⁵  will be witnessed in the cosmic life. So, after the discovery of the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Self, a Sadhaka’s task is to trace the Subconscient and Inconscient Selves, by whose discovery,  Supramental energy will flow into mind, life, and body from below the feet. The simultaneous flow of Supramental energy from above the head and below the feet or ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of light’⁶ is the apex Spiritual experience for transformation action.⁹ The Divine Love⁸ labours in the depths as Inconscient Self and exults on the height as the Supramental/Bliss Self and this Divine Love has the capacity to rebuild Death’s perishable world.

OM TAT SAT