Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / The Subconscious Basis of Our Individual Being, Part 1
Transcript
- 0:02We tend to not only identify with the values of our family,
- 0:05our country, our religion, but we also internalized the
- 0:10standpoint taken by them so that we view situations actions and
- 0:15reactions and history through the lens of this standpoint.
- 0:21This of course can create a highly biased Viewpoint of
- 0:24Affairs such as when the Europeans brutally enslaved.
- 0:29Colin Changed and sucked out the wealth of developing countries
- 0:34and Justified it by the idea that they were bringing
- 0:37civilization to these backwards parts of the world.
- 0:41Even today, most Europeans and their American descendants
- 0:46believe this to have been the case despite massive evidence of
- 0:51the falsity of this view on many levels.
- 0:55Similarly, some religious denominations feel.
- 0:58It is their mission to convert people.
- 1:00To their religion or destroy them if they refuse to convert
- 1:05and they have undertaken extreme activities, including brutality
- 1:10ripping children away from their families and forcing them into
- 1:13boarding schools where their culture language and traditions
- 1:17were suppressed and children were hazed and beaten into
- 1:22submission. These may be some of the most
- 1:26visible and egregious types of examples.
- 1:29But they illustrate how people ordinarily can accept the
- 1:32Viewpoint they inherit with their birth into a particular
- 1:36life, no matter how visibly, brutal and inhumane that
- 1:40Viewpoint actually turns out to be much more subtle and
- 1:46therefore, much less subject to internal review are the
- 1:51innumerable ways to culture reflects on our ways of seeing
- 1:55thinking acting framing issues and ideas.
- 1:59And the types of development, we are willing to undertake this
- 2:04also includes our ways of treating other people how we
- 2:10relate to Children, how we relate to each other and may
- 2:14include subtle pressures to conform to racist sexist or
- 2:19similar viewpoints in our day-to-day lives.
- 2:23Demeaning others, bullying, or simply accepting actions that
- 2:28deny others Equal access and rights through systemic
- 2:32processes that we simply accept as being the natural order of
- 2:37things. When one sees people waving the
- 2:41flag under the idea of my country, right?
- 2:44Or wrong, or my religion is better than someone else's
- 2:47religion. It is a clear indicator of these
- 2:51subconscious influences, coloring their View.
- 2:55Each one of us carries these subconscious influences within
- 2:59ourselves and at some point to become free and able to see
- 3:03things based on an undistorted view, we must become aware of
- 3:08these subconscious forms of bias and coloration, and take steps
- 3:13to eliminate them, from our vision and our action.
- 3:18The mother writes quote, when a being is born upon Earth, he is
- 3:24inevitably born in a certain country, in a certain
- 3:26environment due to his physical parents.
- 3:29He is born in a set of social cultural National sometimes
- 3:34religious circumstances. The set of habits of thinking,
- 3:39of understanding of feeling conceiving, all sorts of
- 3:43constructions, which are at first mental, then become vital
- 3:47habits, and finally material modes of being, to put things
- 3:52more, clearly, you are born in a certain Society, our religion in
- 3:56a particular Country. And this Society has a
- 4:00collective conception of its own, and this nation has a
- 4:04collective conception of its own.
- 4:07This religion has a collective construction of its own, which
- 4:12is usually very fixed. You are born into it naturally.
- 4:17When you are very young you are altogether unaware of it but it
- 4:21acts on your formation that formation that slow formation
- 4:26through hours and hours through days and days experiences added
- 4:31to experiences which gradually builds up a consciousness.
- 4:37You are underneath it as beneath a bell glass, it is a kind of
- 4:41construction which covers and in a way protects you.
- 4:46But in other ways limits, you considerably all this you absorb
- 4:51without even being aware of it and this forms the subconscious
- 4:56basis of your own construction. This subconscious bases will act
- 5:01on you throughout your life. If you do not take care to free
- 5:05yourself from it and to free yourself from it, you must first
- 5:09of all, become aware of it and the first step is the most
- 5:13difficult for this formation was so subtle.
- 5:17It was made when you were not yet a conscious being.
- 5:21When you had just Fallen altogether days from another
- 5:24world into this one, laughing, and it all happened without
- 5:29You're participating in the least in it.
- 5:32Therefore, it does not even occur to you.
- 5:36That there could be something to know there and still less
- 5:39something you must get rid of. And it is quite remarkable that
- 5:43when for some reason or other you do become aware of the hold
- 5:47of this Collective suggestion. You realize, at the same time
- 5:52that a very assiduous and prolonged labor is necessary in
- 5:57order to get rid of it. But the problem does not end
- 6:00there. In quote, reference SRI
- 6:05aurobindo in the mother living within the yoga approached, a
- 6:09psychological health and growth. Disturbances of the subconscient
- 6:14collective subconscious influences Pages 111 to 118