Universal Forces, the Aura and the Individual Consciousness

0:01 Many people hold that the truth of existence is an either or proposition. If the universal forces create all of existence, then the individual is essentially an illusory conception. And on the other hand, if the individual is a real and separate entity, then the universal is somehow denied or disproven. It is, however, not necessary to go to either of these two extremes in our understanding of our existence in relation to the universal manifestation. Shriorobindo resolves this conflict in chapter four of The Life Divine, a chapter titled Reality Omnipresent. The universal is real, and each individual form, formation or being is also real, being constituted of, and being a Nexus of the action.

0:59 For the universal forces, the individual is not wholly separate and independent, but is part and parcel of that universal creation, dependent on it and the forces that manifest for his own existence. There is a constant interchange taking place between this Nexus in the form of an individual being or formation, and the universal forces that are acting to create the existence we experience. These larger forces act upon us and condition and drive our responses and actions. Because they are not obviously palpable to our external senses in a direct way, we tend to know them primarily through their effects.

1:47 There is, however, an intervening buffer that acts to receive the external impacts, and this is the aura or vital envelope. As a person becomes more able to experience the impacts on the aura, he is able to begin to have direct knowledge of the interchange that is taking place and thereby work to accept, modify, or reject the action of some of these forces. Sri Aurobindo writes Quote Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses.

2:35 Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, et cetera, that rise to the surface, and these he takes for his own. Really They come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, et cetera, which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness called by the Theosophists, the aura into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion, or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether, but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere, and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.

3:55 End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter 4 Cosmic and Universal Forces, page 82 to 83 A reader asks in what way are these thoughts? Feelings not our own, are they not something that shows up as ours by the way of one's life Experience Is this not memory of sorts? What we do with these ingrained etheric thought patterns after recognizing we are not our thoughts, is within one's command response.

4:39 The ego personality is a temporary construction that is created by and for the purposes of the universal consciousness as a Nexus or point of focus for the universal action. We try to identify with that ego personality and to the extent we do, we see all these thoughts and feelings as our own. When we emerge from the shadow of the ego personality, however, we can see a vast play of forces that drive what we think, what we feel and how we act. In the Bhagwad Gita, Sri Krishna responds to Arjuna who falls into confusion and declares he will not fight because he sees the ego play.

5:26 In the course of the 18 chapter, Sri Krishna reminds Arjuna that all of the warriors that he believes he will be responsible for killing are destined to die. And he shows Arjuna the vision of the time spirit in the 11th chapter, an overwhelming vision that shifts him entirely outside the ego framework. It is true that we attach ourselves to specific thoughts, ideas, memories and feelings while we inhabit a particular formation of being. We thus take the universal forces that are working and appropriate them as if they are our own. That is due to our identification with the ego personality.

6:14 When an individual shifts the standpoint away, he begins to see the play of the three gunas and the movement of energies that actually are the causative agents of the formed personality and its associations. Sri Ramana Maharshi asked the question, Who am I? At some point we can no longer accept the answer that I am a specific person in a specific body, living a specific life in specific associations and adopting specific ideas and emotional relationships. When we begin to identify with the divine element within us, then we recognize that we change bodies and lives as the body changes clothes. In the Tacteria Upanishad, the seeker goes successively through various stages of identification. Identification with the body, identification with the life energy, identification with the mind, identification with the causal plane of consciousness, and finally identification with bliss, which is an aspect of Satchidananda existence, Consciousness, Bliss.

7:31 Each level is successively more subtle and more abstract, but has a greater reality than the temporary body life mind complex we inhabit temporarily. The ego personality as a temporary bubble does indeed act as if it is the doer of works and the knower. Can we really say that this is essentially the truth of the matter?