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PLANES AND PARTS OF THE BEING
Higher Mind is one of the planes of the spiritual mind, the first and lowest of them; it is above the normal mental level. Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrittis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism, etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within.
Larger mind is a general term to cover the realms of mind which become our field whether by going within or widening into the cosmic consciousness.
The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental—true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance above. Higher vital usually refers to the vital mind and emotive being as opposed to the middle vital which has its seat in the navel and is dynamic, sensational and passionate and the lower which is made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions.
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The mind proper is divided into three parts— thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind—the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give). The word "physical mind" is rather ambiguous, because it can mean this externalising Mind and the mental in the physical taken together.
Vital Mind proper is a sort of a mediator between vital emotion, desire, impulsion, etc. and the mental proper. It expresses the desires, feelings, emotions, passions, ambitions, possessive and active tendencies of the vital and throws them into mental forms (the pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc. in which
men indulge are one peculiar form of the vital-mind activity). There is still a lower stage of the mental in the vital which merely expresses the vital stuff without subjecting it to any play of intelligence. It is through this mental vital that the vital passions, impulses, desires rise up and get into the Buddhi and either cloud or distort it.
As the vital Mind is limited by the vital view and feeling of things (while the dynamic Intelligence is not, for it acts by the idea and reason), so the mind in the physical or mental physical is limited by the physical view and experience of things, it mentalises the experiences brought by the contacts of outward life and things, and does not go beyond that (though it can do that much very cleverly), unlike the externalising mind which deals with them more from the reason and its higher intelligence. But in practice these two usually get mixed together. The mechanical mind is a much lower action of the mental physical which, left to itself, would only repeat customary ideas and record the natural reflexes of the physical consciousness to the contacts of outward life and things.
The lower vital as distinguished from the higher is concerned only with the small greeds,
small desires, small passions, etc. which make up the daily stuff of life for the ordinary sensational man—while the vital-physical proper is the nervous being giving vital reflexes to contacts of things with the physical consciousness.
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Most men are, like animals, driven by the forces of Nature: whatever desires come, they fulfil them, whatever emotions come they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy. We say then that the activities and feelings of men are controlled by their Prakriti, and mostly by the vital and physical nature. The body is the instrument of the Prakriti or Nature—it obeys its own nature or it obeys the vital forces of desire, passion, etc,
But man has also a mind and, as he develops, he learns to control his vital and physical nature by his reason and by his will. This control is very partial: for the reason is often deluded by vital desires and the ignorance of the physical and it puts itself on their side and tries to justify by its ideas, reasonings or arguments their mistakes and wrong movements. Even if the reason keeps free and tells the vital or the body,
"Do not do this", yet the vital and the body often follow their own movement in spite of the prohibition—man’s mental will is not strong enough to compel them.
When people do sadhana, there is a higher Nature that works within, the psychic and spiritual, and they have to put their nature under the influence of the psychic being and the higher spiritual self or of the Divine. Not only the vital and the body but the mind also has to learn the Divine Truth and obey the divine rule. But because of the lower nature and its continued hold on them, they are unable at first and for a long time to prevent their nature from following the old ways—even when they know or are told from within what to do or what not to do. It is only by persistent sadhana, by getting into the higher spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature that this difficulty can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhakas it takes a long time.
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The heart is the centre of the emotional being, the highest part of the vital. The navel is the centre of the dynamic and sensational vital.
The centre below the navel and the Muladhar commands the lower vital (physical desires, small greeds, passions, etc.). The throat centre is not the vital—it is the physical mind, the expressive externalising consciousness. What you feel may be the vital taking hold of the physical mind and moving it for expression (this is the source of pride, sense of possession, ambition, anger and other passions)—but it expresses them often enough through the heart centre.
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The inner being is the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical with the psychic behind them. The phrase ‘higher being’ is used to denote the conscious self on the planes higher than the ordinary human consciousness.
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The psychic has the position you speak of, because the psychic is in touch with the Divine in the lower nature. But the inner mind, vital and physical are a part of the universal and open to the dualities—only they are wider than the external mind, life and body, and
can receive more largely and easily the divine influence.
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Our inner being is in touch with universal mind, life and Matter; it is a part of all that, but by that very fact it cannot be in possession of liberation and peace. You are thinking probably of the Atman and confusing it with the inner being.
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In the navel is the main seat of the dynamic vital consciousness whose range is from the heart level to the centre below the navel (lower vital, sensational desire centre). These three mark the domain of the vital being. The centre of the psychic is behind the heart and it is through the purified emotions that the psychic most easily finds an outlet. All from the heart above is the domain of the mental being—with also three centres, one in the throat (the outward-going or externalising mind), one between the eyes or rather in the middle of the forehead (the centre of vision and will) and one above communicating with the brain which is called the
thousand-petalled lotus and where are centralised the thinking mind and higher intelligence communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above.
In the outer surface nature mind, psychic, vital, physical are jumbled together and it needs a strong power of introspection, self-analysis, close observation and disentanglement of the threads of thought, feeling and impulse to find out the composition of our nature and the relation and interaction of these parts upon each other. But when we go inside, we find the sources of all this surface action and there the parts of our being are quite clearly distinct from each other; it is as if we were a group-being, each member of the group with its separate place and function, and all directed by a central being who is sometimes in front above the others, sometimes behind the scenes.
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The soul and the life are two quite different powers. The soul is a spark of the Divine Spirit which supports the individual nature; mind, life, body are the instruments for the manifestation of the nature. In most men the soul is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces, good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a divine nature.
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The centres or Chakras are seven in number:—
(1) The thousand-petalled lotus on the top of the head. (2) In the middle of the forehead—the Ajna Chakra—(will, vision, dynamic thought). (3) Throat centre—externalising mind. (4) Heart-lotus—emotional centre. The psychic is behind it. (5) Navel—higher vital (proper). (6) Below navel—lower vital. (7) Muladhara—physical.
All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal chord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūksma deha, though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake.
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You are reasoning on the analogy of our own very cabined and limited sense-consciousness and its rather clumsy relations with the happenings in material space. What is space after all but an extension of conscious being in which Consciousness-Force builds its own surroundings? In the subtle physical plane there are, not one, but many layers of consciousness and each moves in its own being, that is to say, in its own space. I have said that each subtle plane is a conglomeration or series of worlds. Each space may at any point meet, penetrate or coincide with another; accordingly at one point of meeting or coincidence there might be several subtle objects occupying what we might rather arbitrarily call the same space, and yet they may not be in any actual relation with each other. If there is a relation created, it is the multiple consciousness of the seer in which the meeting-place becomes apparent that creates it.
On the other hand, there may be a relation between objects in different regions of space correlated to each other as in the case of the gross physical object and its subtle counterpart. There you can more easily reason of relations between one space and another.
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Patala is evidently here a name for the subconscient—the beings there have "no heads", that is to say, there is there no mental consciousness; men have all of them such a subconscient plane in their own being and from there rise all sorts of irrational and ignorant (headless) instincts, impulsions, memories, etc., which have an effect upon their acts and feelings without their detecting the real source. At night many incoherent dreams come from this world or plane. The world above is the superconscient plane of being—above the human consciousness—there are many worlds of that kind; these are divine worlds.
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The individual is not limited to the physical body—it is only the external consciousness which feels like that. As soon as one gets over this feeling of limitation one can feel first the inner consciousness which is connected with the body, but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes •of consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic forces and also with other beings. This last is the environmental consciousness.
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The centre of vision is between the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead. When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things and people and begins to understand things and people from within and not only from outside, develops a power of will which also acts in the inner (Yogic) way on things and people etc. Its opening is often the beginning of the Yogic as opposed to the ordinary mental consciousness.
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I never heard of two lotuses in the heart centre; but it is the seat of two powers, in front
the higher vital or emotional being, behind and concealed the soul or psychic being.
The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: —(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eyebrows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our Yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some
identified with the brain, but that is an error-— the brain, is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, śunya, either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.
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A strong vital is one that is full of life-force,, has ambition, courage, great energy, a force for action or creation, a large expansive movement, whether for generosity in giving or for possession and lead and domination, a power to fulfil and materialise—many other forms of vital strength are there also. It is often difficult for such a vital to surrender itself because of the sense of its own powers—but if it can do so, it becomes an admirable instrument for the Divine Work.
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No, a weak vital has not the strength to turn spiritually—and being weak, more easily falls under a wrong.influence and even when it wants,.
finds it difficult to accept anything beyond its own habitual nature. The strong vital, when the will is there, can do it much more easily— its own central difficulty is the pride of the ego and the attraction of its powers.
The chest has more connection with the psychic than the vital. A strong vital may have a good physical, but as often it has not—it draws too much on the physical, eats it up as it were. |