this post provides some background info I’ll be using in the near future as I comment on Neeltje’s book: “Psychic Education: A Workbook”. I’ll be using some brain language, and it will be helpful to have some familiarity with this as you read the comments.
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In “The Synthesis of Yoga”, in the section on “The Yoga of Self-Perfection”, Sri Aurobindo speaks of 2 basic defects of our nature – the “immixture” of functions – the interference of the physical, vital and mental consciousness – and a more radical defect – the “separative ignorance” that leads us to experience ourselves as radically separate from others, from the world, from the Divine.
In our rewrite of our “brain pages” on our website (www.remember-to-breathe.org – we’re taking a few weeks to do these revisions before getting back to composing and making videos) though we’re still not using explicit yogic language, we’re using this as a template. It’s amazing to me how much the neuroscientific picture of the evolution of the brain fits in with Sri Aurobindo’s writing (and in particular – I hope to bring this out in a few years in our next site – more so with Sri Aurobindo than any other spiritual/Indian writer I’ve ever seen).
FIRST DEFECT: THE IMMIXTURE OF PARTS OF OUR NATURE: Dan Siegel describes in tremendous detail the many, many ways in which, due to the way our brains evolved, the brain stem, limbic region and cortex (physical, vital and thinking minds in IY language) constantly interfere with each other, and he has made “integration” – how to get the various parts working together harmoniously (not IY level integration, of course) the very foundation of his clinical work
SECOND DEFECT: AVIDYA: And for the radical defect, the separative ignorance, Siegel uses, at the very heart of his presentation of neuroscience, the “wheel of awareness” – pure awareness (or pure consciousness) at the center, and all we’re aware OF – whether “inner” mental/emotional states, or “outer” sensory data – on the rim. He describes it very simply – the distinction between awareness and what we’re aware of, or “knowing” and what is “known.”
The very core of his entire presentation of neuroscience is that we live stuck on the rim, identifying with passing states of mind, memories, fears, hopes, desires, and the more we develop the mid-prefrontal cortex (6th chakra correlate; physical correlate of the buddhi or intelligent will) and heart-brain (psychic influence, 4th chakra) the more the various parts of the brain and nervous system (mental/vital/physical consciousness) become integrated.
You really have, I think, everything now in modern science to cover what Sri Aurobindo writes about purification of the surface nature.
We’re still, I think, a few light years away from a science that even begins to understand the psychic being, Self, higher spiritual mind levels, etc, (and hardly anything but a primitive, superficial beginning entry into the subliminal realms) but I think it’s a good beginning (there’s here and there a few good researchers working on creativity, “wisdom”, and related matters that are getting slight hints of the higher mind levels, but it’s still very primitive).
And even with some of the things in Mother’s Agenda regarding the cells, there is enormously suggestive material in much of what biologists have discovered, and even more powerful things are starting to emerge in terms of the consciousness (affect, cognition and volition) associated with single celled organisms and other primitive organisms, up through reptiles, mammals and primates.