SACCS-logo
SACCS-logo


WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The Subconscient

(Mother told a sadhak that his hatred of someone was due to a strong attraction for the person. When asked to explain, she wrote:)

I was referring to some evidently subconscient movement--but you need not worry about it nor fix your attention upon it--one day the understanding will come spontaneously.

*

These are the explanations, the excuses the mind always finds in such cases; but these mental explanations follow or at the most accompany the movements to be explained, they never precede them.

What starts the movement is an obscure impulse, instinctive, almost mechanical and unconscious in its origin, something that contradicts without knowing why. (It is this unconsciousness which repels X although it is not a legitimation for repulsion or shrinking--these being themselves movements of unconsciousness.)

April 1932

*

Has the subconscient accepted the Higher Consciousness?

If the subconscient were to accept the Consciousness, it would no longer be the subconscient, it would become consciousness. I think that you mean: has the subconscient submitted to the rule, to the law of the higher Consciousness? This is not done as a whole, for the subconscient is vast and complex; there is a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, a physical subconscient, a bodily subconscient. We have to wrest the subconscient fragment by fragment from its ignorant and inert resistance.

1 July 1935

*

These small physical inconveniences can also be made use of to hasten the progress. The seat of all these resistances is in the subconscient. We must enter there with a conscious will and establish the rule of the Divine even in semi-conscious matter.

2 February 1938

*

Your first attitude of detachment was the true one. The weakness that you are experiencing now is the result mostly of collective suggestion acting through subconscient memories of old ideas and feelings.

Our help and blessings are with you.

6 January 1939

*

Subconscient remembrance must be purified of all that is useless.

*

Power of the truth in the subconscient: it can act only when sincerity is perfect.

*

As your aspiration is sincere, whatever was in the subconscient standing in the way of the Divine Realisation has come to the surface in order to be transformed; and you must rejoice at these occasions to make a progress.

4 July 1955

*

Can one learn to control one's subconscient as one controls one's conscious thought?

It is especially during the body's sleep that one is in contact with the subconscient. In becoming conscious of one's nights, control of the subconscient becomes much easier.

The control can become total when the cells become conscious of the Divine in them and when they open themselves voluntarily to His influence. This is what the consciousness that descended on the earth last year is working for. Little by little the subconscient automatism of the body is being replaced by the consciousness of the Divine Presence governing the entire functioning of the body.

13 April 1970

*

The Divine Will acting in the subconscient: the rare moments when the Divine asserts Himself visibly.

*

About accidents: can one say that unconsciousness and disharmonious vibrations attract accidents and that the mistake is never one-sided? This is why it would be better, after an accident, to stop driving for a time, until one has made "great progress in self-mastery and in consciousness".

This should be done and it is indispensable to enlighten one's subconscient.

1971