The Inner Being Far Exceeds the Limits of the Surface Personality

0:02 In order to function in the outer world, we wind up filtering out most of the input that comes our way, such that only a very small percentage of what we perceive or experience actually comes into our waking awareness. The rest is captured and held somewhere in what we call the subconscious level of our being. To come forth only under circumstances that trigger the awareness, or with prodding under the influence of techniques such as hypnotism or various forms of regression therapy that take us back into circumstances and events and let the mind examine the observations of the event from a new angle.

0:45 Without such a filtering process, we would have a tremendous amount of data to process and we would be functionally paralyzed into inaction. The filtering process is one that is refined as we focus our attention on various interests or outcomes and target data that will aid us in achieving the desired result. This does not imply, however, that the rest of the input is ineffective and has no impact on the direction, response and actions we take, rather that we consciously only pay attention to certain key factors while the others influence us unseen and unnoted. While we focus our attention on the external world and our waking self, there is much more to existence and the significance of each being than just that external interaction. The inner being has a much wider range and scope of action than the limited and filtered life of the surface personality, Shriorobinda notes Quote This concealed self and consciousness is our real or whole being, of which the outer is a part and a phenomenon, A selective formation for a surface use. We perceive only a small number of the contacts of things which impinge upon us.

2:14 The inner being perceives all that enters or touches us and our environment. We perceive only a part of the workings of our life and being. The inner being perceives so much that we might almost suppose that nothing escapes its view. We remember only a small selection from our perceptions, and of these even we keep a great part in the storeroom where we cannot always lay our hand upon what we need. The inner being retains everything that it has ever received. And has it always ready to hand. We conform into coordinated understanding and knowledge. Only so much of our perceptions and memories as our trained intelligence and mental capacity can grasp in their sense and appreciate in their relations.

3:07 The intelligence of the inner being needs no training, but preserves the accurate form and relations of all its perceptions and memories. And though this is a proposition which may be considered doubtful or difficult to concede, in its fullness, can grasp immediately, when it does not possess already their significance. And its perceptions are not confined, as are ordinarily those of the waking mind, to the scanty gleanings of the physical senses, but extend far beyond, and use, as telepathic phenomena of many kinds bear witness a subtle sense, the limits of which are too wide to be easily fixed. The relations between the surface will or impulsion and the subliminal urge mistakenly described as unconscious or subconscious, have not been properly studied, except in regard to unusual and unorganized manifestations and to certain morbidly abnormal phenomena of the diseased human mind.

4:17 But if we pursue our observation far enough, we shall find that the cognition and will or impulsive force of the inner being really stand behind the whole conscious becoming. The latter represents only that part of its secret endeavor and achievement which rises successfully to the surface of our life. To know our inner being is the first step towards a real self knowledge. If we undertake this self discovery and enlarge our knowledge of the subliminal self, so conceiving it as to include in it our lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends, we shall discover that it is really this which provides the whole material of our apparent being, and that our perceptions, our memories, our effectuations of will and intelligence, are only a selection from its perceptions, memories, activities, and relations of will and intelligence. Our very ego is only a minor and superficial formulation of its self consciousness and self experience. It is as it were, the urgency out of which the waves of our conscious becoming arise.

5:40 End Quote Reference Shriorobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, chapter 2, Hidden Forces within pages 30 to 31.