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Read Summary of '''[[Self Observation Summary|Self Observation]]'''
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= Importance of What is Self-Observation =
<div style="color:#000000;">There are four necessities of man's self-expansion if he is not to remain this being We have in all functionings of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after mentality four elements, the truth object of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections mental consciousness, the act of knowledgemental consciousness, the small limited occasion and halfthe subject. In the self-competent creature experience of the cosmic Force which he now self-observing inner being, the object is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know himself and always some state or movement or wave of the world completely he must go behind his own and its exteriorconscious being, anger, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mentalgrief or other emotion, hunger or other vitalcraving, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes impulse or inner life reaction or some form of sensation, perception or thought activity. The act is some kind of the occult Mind mental observation and Life which stand behind the material front conceptual valuation of the universe….But this knowledge must be something more than a creed movement or wave or else a mystic revelation; his thinking mind must mental sensation of it in which observation and valuation may be able to accept it, to correlate it with the principle of things involved and the observed truth of the universe: this is the work of philosophyeven lost, and —so that in this act the field of mental person may either separate the truth of act and the spirit it can only be done object by a spiritual philosophy, whether intellectual in its method distinguishing perception or intuitiveconfuse them together indistinguishably. </div><div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 18 June 1958)</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0921/18memory-ego-juneand-1958self-experience#p3p5</ref></u></div>
<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The Upanishad tells us that You may have a mental power of observation, a vital power of observation, a physical power of observation. When you observe ideas, for instance, the Self-existent has so set the doors train of ideas, the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances logic of things; only the rare soul that ideas, it is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees not altogether the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning same power of the eye inward psychological self-observation as when you look at a friend doing athletics and </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">analysis see whether he is a great and effective introductionmaking his movements correctly or not. We can look into That is, the inward capacity of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because attention is there, in things outside usboth cases, we are but it works in a different field. It can't be said that it is one part of the first place embarrassed by being observing the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance….psychological self-knowledge others; it is only the experience faculty of the modes observation developing in each part of the Selfbeing—that is, it is not the realisation faculty of the Self in its pure beingconcentration and attention.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2306/the27-status-ofjanuary-knowledge1954#p7p34</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The true and ultimate, as distinguished from the immediate or intermediate importance of our observing, reasoning, inquiring, judging intelligence is that it prepares the human being for the right reception and right action of a Light from above which must progressively replace in him the obscure light from below that guides the animal..Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-consecration#p17</refcenter>
= What This sensational thought-mind which is based upon sense, memory, association, first ideas and resultant generalisations or secondary ideas, is common to Observe =all developed animal life and mentality….The intelligence and will of the animal are involved in the sense-mind and therefore altogether governed by it and carried on its stream of sensations, sense-perceptions, impulses; it is instinctive. Man is able to use a reason and will, a self-observing, thinking and all-observing, an intelligently willing mind which is no longer involved in the sense-mind, but acts from above and behind it in its own right, with a certain separateness and freedom. He is reflective, has a certain relative freedom of intelligent will. He has liberated in himself and has formed into a separate power the buddhi. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p4</ref>
== Many voices ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">There are many voices, and The ordinary mind knows itself only as an ego with all are not divine; this may be only a voice the movements of desire. All that keeps one faithful to the Truth nature in a jumble and insists on peace, purityidentifying itself with these movements, devotionthinks "I am doing this, feeling that, sinceritythinking, a spiritual change in joy or in sorrow etc." The first beginning of real self-knowledge is when you feel yourself separate from the nature can be listened to with profit; the rest must be observed with discrimination in you and its movements and not followed blindly. Keep the fire then you see that there are many parts of aspiration burningyour being, but avoid all impatient hastemany personalities each acting on its own behalf and in its own way.</div> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3028/innerthe-voicespsychic-and-indicationbeing#p84</ref>
== The three Guna’s ==<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers '''Active and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Therefore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or refusal the </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">combinations of his own nature. These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, guṇas, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the result of the interaction of these qualitative powers.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-three-modes-of-nature#p2</ref>Passive Observation'''
= Process Your consciousness becomes a screen or mirror; but this is when you are in a state of Selfcontemplation, a mere observer; when you are active, it is like a searchlight. You have only to turn it on, if you want to see luminously and examine penetratingly anything in any place. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-Observation =june-1929#p7</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that '''Observation is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step: you organise—arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: "Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it....".</div>Not Discernment'''
<span style=For the capacity of observation must not be confused with the capacity of discernment. Discernment is an intellectual capacity. Something like a judgment already enters into it, what we call "discrimination"background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(you can distinguish between the origin of one thing and of another, and the reciprocal value of these things. But that ought to be founded on a correct observation. The Mother power of observation comes first,29 July 1953)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">discernment follows. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0503/2930-julyjune-19531929#p47</u>p7</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;">But you must begin when very small, and consciously, very consciously; you must begin with a see of observation of all the movements in yourself, of their relation with others, of—precisely, of your degree of independence, real individuality, of knowing where impulses come from, where other movements come from: whether it is contagion from outside or something that arises from within yourself. A very profound study of all the movements in oneself is necessary in order =What to succeed simply in crystallising a being who is a little conscious, a little conscious.</div>Observe ==
One can prepare the body through a series of observations, studies, understandings,by showing it examples, making it understand things as one makes a child understand them, either by observing its own movements―but generally, in this, one is comparatively blind!―or by observing those of others. And in a more general way, this preparation will be based on recognised studies, on clear facts. Like this, for instance: that a certain number of persons, placed in exactly similar circumstances, experience, each one of them, very different effects. One may go even further: in a given set of definite circumstances, there is a certain number of particular, definite individuals, in apparently quite identical conditions, and for some the effects are catastrophic, while others escape without any harm. <div style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-july-1956#000000;">(The Mother,22 September 1954)p15</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p43</u></div>'''Parts of the Being '''
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up;">It it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a physical retirement kind of soup, all that together. So it is needed, but an inner detachment from the mental formations indistinct and vital desiresdifficult to discover. To find the real self above and within and live in But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, not as though they were in the mind's conceptions your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or the vital's reactionsotherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. These And there are others; then you must be observed and looked at not as one's own but as movements of go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a surface ignorant naturebeginning.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3105/interactions10-withjune-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga1953#p111</u>p31</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;">Conditions for Self-Observation</div>'''Observing the Inner Being'''
== Quiet Mind ==For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and motives of our action, the operative energies that build up our surface personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being that secretly feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within and impacts from outside us; our reason, our organising intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order: but here within we find the separate sources of our mental, our vital and our physical energisms and can see clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p12</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">It is only when we follow the yogic process '''The Three Modes of quieting the mind itself that a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible.</div>Nature'''
<span style="backgroundThe idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Therefore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnatewordforces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or refusal the combinations of his own nature.These modes are termed in/cwsa/21/indeterminates-cosmic-determinations-the Indian books qualities, guṇas, and-are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the-indeterminable#p12</u></span><span style="background-color:transparentforce of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light;color:#000000rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action;">It tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the quiet mind that lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the true observation and knowledge comeresult of the interaction of these qualitative powers.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2923/quietthe-three-andmodes-of-calmnature#p40</u>p2</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p10</u></span>'''Dreams'''
<div style="color:#000000;">But if you remain very quiet, only if you observe—as though you were silently looking at something, you understand—then you will begin seeing more precisely, Now the procedure to deal with dreams and little by little distinguishing the dreamland. First become conscious—conscious of your dreams. Observe the relation between different categories them and the happenings of thingsyour waking hours. You If you remember your night, you will be able to know what one thing is and what another etctrace back very often the condition of your day to the condition of your night., whether it comes from you In sleep some action or from outside, whether it other is always going on a material plane in your mental or vital or on another other plane. All this is learnt through a very quiet observation, quiet but very sharp, you understand; because things happen there are very tiny shades, very tiny, between different things, and when you get used to distinguishing these nuances, you can discern exactly what it isthey govern your waking consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p6</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>(The Mother,20 October 1954)~</divcenter>
<div style="colorIt is a tremendous field of observation—there is no end to the discoveries you can make in your dreams. But there is one important point:#0066cc;">you must not go to sleep when you are very tired, for if you do, you fall into a sort of unconsciousness in which dreams do whatever they like with you, and you have no reaction. Just as I said that you should not eat without having taken rest, I would advise everyone to rest before going to sleep. And for that, you must know how to rest. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0615/201-octoberfebruary-19541951#p46</u>p14</divref>
== Silence ==<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is really an As the inner silence that is needed—a something silent within that looks at outer talk and action but feels it as something superficialconsciousness grows by sadhana, these dream experiences increase in number, clearness, coherence, not as itself accuracy and is quite indifferent after some growth of experience and untouched by it. It consciousness, we can bring forces , if we observe, come to support speech understand them and action or it their significance to our inner life. Even we can stop them by withdrawal or it training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our awareness and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness this kind of sleep, a sleep of experiences, can let them go on and observe without being involved or movedreplace the ordinary subconscient slumber.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3130/speechthree-experiences-of-the-andinner-yogabeing#p76</u>p6</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;">...You must be able to silence your head absolutely and be completely detached, not to have (for example, when you are looking for the solution of a problem), not to have already in your head the solution that seems to you right or the best or most profitable. That must not be there. You must become absolutely like a blank paper, with nothing on it. And you proceed in that way, with a very sincere aspiration to know the truth, without assuming beforehand that it will be like this or like that; because otherwise you will see only your own formation. The very first condition is that the head must keep completely silent during the time one is observing.</div>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:[[#000000;">(The Mother , 30 September 1953)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p13</u></span>top|Back to Contents]]
<span style="backgroundWhy is Self-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To silence the mind it is not enough to throw back each thought as it comes, that can only be a subordinate movement. One must get back from all thought and be separate from it, a silent consciousness observing the thoughts if they come, but not oneself thinking or </span><span styleObservation Important? ="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">identified with the thoughts. Thoughts must be felt as outside things altogether. It is then easier to reject thoughts or let them pass without their disturbing the quietude of the mind.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p99 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p99]
...if he [man] is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe. ...But this knowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic revelation; his thinking mind must be able to accept it, to correlate it with the principle of things and the observed truth of the universe: this is the work of philosophy, and in the field of the truth of the spirit it can only be done by a spiritual philosophy, whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/18-june-1958#p3</ref>
= Right Attitude for Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
== Witness Attitude ==To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p5</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Have you never felt this? As though you were a little behind or above things, and were looking at them taking place but were not doing anything yourself? Witness means an observer, someone who looks on and does not act himself. So, when the mind is very quiet, one can withdraw a little in this way from circumstances and look at things as though he were a witness, a spectator, and not participating in the action himself. This gives you a great detachment, a great quietude, and also a very precise see of the value of things, because it cuts the attachment to action. When you know how to do this with yourself, when you can withdraw and watch yourself acting, you learn many things about yourself. When you are all mixed up and take part in the action, you do not observe yourself acting, you don't know what you are like. But when you draw back and look at yourself, you can perceive many imperfections which you wouldn't have seen otherwise.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent… if each element which comes with its ignorance, its unconsciousness, its egoism, is put before the will to change and one remains awake, compares, observes, studies and slowly acts, that becomes infinitely interesting, one makes marvellous and quite unexpected discoveries. One finds in oneself lots of small hidden folds, little things one had not seen at the beginning;colorone undertakes a sort of inner chase, goes hunting into small dark corners and tells oneself:#000000;">(The MotherWhat, I was like that! This was there in me, I am harbouring this little thing"—sometimes so sordid, so mean, so nasty. And once it has been discovered, how wonderful! One puts the light upon it and it disappears and you no longer have those reactions which made you so sad before, when you used to say,13 October 1954)"Oh! I shall never get there. </spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0604/1319-octoberapril-19541951#p2 http:p14<//incarnateword.in/cwm/06/13-october-1954#p2]ref>
<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">It has been seen If you had that a most effective way of purification is for observation (from the mental Purusha to draw backinner spiritual, to stand as not the passive witness outer intellectual and observe and know himself and the workings ethical viewpoint), then it would be comparatively easy for you to get out of Nature in the lower, the normal beingyour difficulties; but for instance you would find at once where this must irrational impulse to flee away came from and it would not have any hold upon you. Of course, all that can only be combined, for perfection, with a will done to raise the purified best effect when you stand back from the play of your nature into and become the Witness-Control or the higher spiritual beingSpectator-Actor Manager. When But that is done, the Purusha is no longer only a witness, but also what happens when you take this kind of self-seeing posture. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/mental-difficulties-and-the master -need-of his prakriti, īśvara.-quietude#p23</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-action-of-the-divine-shakti#p7</ucenter>~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">The witness Purusha true and ultimate, as distinguished from the immediate or intermediate importance of our observing, reasoning, inquiring, judging intelligence is that it prepares the human being for the right reception and right action of a Light from above which must progressively replace in him the mind observes obscure light from below that guides the inadequacy of his effortanimal. ...Man can bring an enlightened will, all an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the inadequacy in fact difficult work of man's life his self-development; he can more and nature arises from the separation more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the consequent struggle, want inferior function of knowledgedesire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, want of harmony, want of onenesshe is man and no longer an animal. It is essential for him When he can begin to grow out of separative individualityreplace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to universalise himselfa diviner will than his own, linked to make himself one with the universe. This unification can be done only through the soul by making our soul of mind one with the a more universal Mindand transcendent knowledge, our soul of life one with he has commenced the ascent towards the universal Life-soul, our soul of body one with superman; he is on his upward march towards the universal soul of physical NatureDivine.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-consecration#p17</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-perfection-of-the-mental-being#p15</u></div>How to Observe Oneself? =
== Being Sincere But you must begin when very small, and Impartial ==consciously, very consciously; you must begin with a sense of observation of all the movements in yourself, of their relation with others, of—precisely, of your degree of independence, real individuality, of knowing where impulses come from, where other movements come from: whether it is contagion from outside or something that arises from within yourself. A very profound study of all the movements in oneself is necessary in order to succeed simply in crystallising a being who is a little conscious, a little conscious. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p43</ref>
For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to do or that you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for me." Neither vanity and arrogance nor self-depreciation and false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge.<center>~</center>
<span style="background-colorYou project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step:transparent;coloryou organise—arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say:#000000;">(The Mother Very well,12 November 1952)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066ccit will be thus;my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it...."><u>. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1505/1229-novemberjuly-19521953#p6p47</ref></u></span>
== Being Vigilant ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">If one begins to find out, to understand what a feeling is and what a thought is, and how it works, then one can already go quite far on the path with that. One can be quietmust at the same time observe how his feelings and thoughts have an action on the body, happywhat the reciprocity is. And then, cheerful without being all that there is another exercise which consists in a light or shallow way—and looking into oneself for what is persistent, what is lasting, something which makes one say "I", and which is not the happiness need not bring any vital reactionbody. All For obviously, when one was very small, and then when each year one grows up, if one takes fairly long distances, for example a distance of about ten years, they are very different "I"s from what one was when as small as this (gesture), and then what one is now; it is difficult to say that you need to do it is to be observant and vigilantthe same person,—watchful so that you may not give assent to wrong movements or see. If one takes only this, still there is something which has the return feeling of always being the old feelingssame person. So one must reflect, darknessseek, confusion etctry to understand what it is. Not fearThis indeed can lead you far on the path. Then if one also studies the relation between these different things—between thoughts, feelings, but vigilance. If you remain vigilanttheir action on the body, then with the increase reciprocal action of the Force upholding youbody on these things—and also what it is that says "I" permanently, what it is that can trace a power curve in the movement of self-control will comethe being, if one seeks carefully enough, a power to see it leads you quite far. Naturally if one seeks far enough and reject with enough persistence, one reaches the wrong turn or the wrong reaction when it comespsychic. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-march-1955#p23</divref>
[http:<center>~<//incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/fear#p12 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/fear#p12]center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But you have only to observe yourselves... you can observe yourself, catch yourself at least It is not a hundred times a day, with a mind which decides everything, knows everything, judges everything, knows very well what physical retirement that is goodneeded, what bad, what is true, what false, what is rightbut an inner detachment from the mental formations and vital desires... And also how one should act, what this person should have done, how to resolve To find the real self above and within and live in that problem.... All men know, you seenot in the mind's conceptions or the vital's reactions.These must be observed and looked at not as one's own but as movements of a surface ignorant nature.<ref>http://incarnateword. If they were at in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the head -practice-of governments, for instance, they would know very well how to manage everything! But people don't listen to them... that's all!-yoga#p111</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother,21 July 1954)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-july-1954#p40</u></spancenter>
== Becoming Aware When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of Desire ==our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended without our knowing it towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made,—not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p33</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">For that you must observe yourself very, very attentively, and if there is anything in you which produces something like a small intense vibration, then you may be sure that there lies a desire. For example, you say, "This food is necessary for me"—you believe, you imagine, you think that you need such and such a thing and you find the necessary means to obtain the thing. To know if it is a need or a desire, you must look at yourself very closely and ask yourself, "What will happen if I cannot get the thing?" Then if the immediate answer is, "Oh, it will be very bad", you may be sure that it is a matter of desire. It is the same for everything. For every problem you draw back, look at yourself and ask, "Let us see, am I going to have the thing?" If at that moment something in you jumps up with joy, you may be certain there is a desire. On the other hand, if something tells you, "Oh, I am not going to get it", and you feel very depressed, then again it is a desire.</div>= By Vigilance ==
<span style="backgroundOne can be quiet, happy, cheerful without being all that in a light or shallow way—and the happiness need not bring any vital reaction. All that you need to do is to be observant and vigilant,—watchful so that you may not give assent to wrong movements or the return of the old feelings, darkness, confusion etc. Not fear, but vigilance. If you remain vigilant, then with the increase of the Force upholding you, a power of self-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mothercontrol will come, 25 January 1951)a power to see and reject the wrong turn or the wrong reaction when it comes. </spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0431/25-january-1951fear#p3 http:p12<//incarnateword.in/cwm/04/25-january-1951#p3]ref>
<center>~</center>
== Becoming Conscious ==But you have only to observe yourselves... you can observe yourself, catch yourself at least a hundred times a day, with a mind which decides everything, knows everything, judges everything, knows very well what is good, what bad, what is true, what false, what is right... And also how one should act, what this person should have done, how to resolve that problem.... All men know, you see... If they were at the head of governments, for instance, they would know very well how to manage everything! But people don't listen to them... that's all! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-july-1954#p40</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>But a time comes when instead of doing things automatically, impelled by a consciousness and force of which one is quite unaware—a time comes when one can observe what goes on in oneself, study one's movements, find their causes, and at the same time begin to exercise a control first over what goes on within us, then on the influence cast on us from outside which makes us act, in the beginning altogether unconsciously and almost involuntarily, but gradually more and more consciously; and the will can wake up and react. Then at that moment, the moment there is a conscious will capable of reacting, one may say, "I have become conscious." This does not mean that it is a total and perfect consciousness, it means that it is a beginning: for example, when one is able to observe all the reactions in one's being and to have a certain control over them, to let those one approves of have play, and to control, stop, annul those one doesn't approve of.~</divcenter>
<div style=But a time comes when instead of doing things automatically, impelled by a consciousness and force of which one is quite unaware—a time comes when one can observe what goes on in oneself, study one's movements, find their causes, and at the same time begin to exercise a control first over what goes on within us, then on the influence cast on us from outside which makes us act, in the beginning altogether unconsciously and almost involuntarily, but gradually more and more consciously; and the will can wake up and react. Then at that moment, the moment there is a conscious will capable of reacting, one may say, "I have become conscious."colorThis does not mean that it is a total and perfect consciousness, it means that it is a beginning:#000000;"for example, when one is able to observe all the reactions in one's being and to have a certain control over them, to let those one approves of have play, and to control, stop, annul those one doesn't approve of. <ref>(The Mother, http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/28 November -november-1956)#p19</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/28-november-1956#p19</ucenter>~</divcenter>
= Limitations Take one hour of Self-Observation =your life, the one which is most convenient for you, and during that time observe yourself closely and say only the absolutely indispensable words. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/anger#p15</ref>
== Surface Level Observation By Developing a Quiet Mind ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">As a general rule, with a few very rare exceptions, men are content to observe more or less accurately everything that happens around them, and sometimes within themselves, and to classify all these observations according to one superficial system It is only when we follow the yogic process of logic or another. And they call this organisation, these systems, "knowledge". It has never occurred to them, they have not even begun to perceive that all quieting the things they see, touch, feel, experience, are false appearances and not reality mind itselfthat a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1021/aphorismindeterminates-cosmic-determinations-and-the-7indeterminable#p3</u>p12</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>It is evident that our state on the surface is indeed a state of knowledge, so far as it goes, but a limited knowledge enveloped and invaded by ignorance and, to a very large extent, by reason of its limitation, itself a kind of ignorance, at best a mixed knowledge-ignorance. It could not be otherwise since our awareness of the world is born of a separative and surface observation with only an indirect means of cognition at its disposal; our knowledge of ourselves, though more direct, is stultified by its restriction to the surface of our being, by an ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the true motive-forces of our ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">action. It is quite evident that we know ourselves with only a superficial knowledge,—the sources of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the significance of our life and its activities are a mystery: this could not be if we had a real self-knowledge and a real world-knowledge.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p7</u></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">One throws oneself out A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all , but that these will be on the time; all the time one livessurface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, as it wereobserving but not carried away, outside oneself, in such a superficial sensation able to watch and judge them and reject all that it is almost as though one were outside oneself. As soon as one wants even has to observe oneself a little, control oneself a little, simply know what is happening, one is always obliged be rejected and to draw back or pull towards oneself, accept and keep to pull inwards something which is constantly like all that, on the surface. And it is this surface thing which meets all external contacts, puts you in touch with similar vibrations coming from otherstrue consciousness and true experience. That happens almost outside you<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p10</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 20 June 1956)~</divcenter>
<div style="colorThere are four movements which are usually consecutive, but which in the end may be simultaneous:#0066cc;">to observe one's thoughts is the first, to watch over one's thoughts is the second, to control one's thoughts is the third and to master one's thoughts is the fourth. To observe, to watch over, to control, to master. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0803/20conjugate-june-1956verses#p49</u>p7</divref>
== Ignorance ==<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">As the surface mental entity moving from moment to moment, not observing his essential self but only his relation to his experiences of the Time-movement, in What happens usually is that movement keeping the future from himself in what appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence but is an unrealised fullness, grasping knowledge and experience of being in something touches the presentvital, putting often without one's knowing it away in the past which again appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence partly lighted, partly saved and stored brings up by memory, he puts on the aspect of old ordinary or external consciousness in such a thing fleeting way that the inner mind gets covered up and uncertain seizing without stability upon things fleeting all the old thoughts and uncertainfeelings return for a time. But in reality, we shall find, he It is always the same Eternal who is for ever stable physical mind that becomes active and self-possessed in His supramental knowledge gives its assent. If the whole mind remains quiet and what he seizes on is also for ever stable detached observing the vital movement, but not giving its assent, then to reject it becomes more easy. This established quietude and eternal; for it is himself that he is mentally experiencing detachment of the mind marks always a great step forward made in the succession of Timesadhana.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/memorythe-selfvital-consciousnessand-other-andlevels-theof-ignorancebeing#p15</u>p45</spanref>
== Observing Invisible Forces ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">If we observe a happeningBut if you remain very quiet, only if you observe—as though you were silently looking at something, you understand—then you will begin seeing more precisely, we judge and explain little by little distinguishing between different categories of things. You will be able to know what one thing is and what another etc., whether it comes from the result and you or from outside, whether it is on a glimpse of its most external constituents, circumstances material plane or causes; but each happening on another plane. All this is the outcome of learnt through a complex nexus of forces which we do not and cannot observevery quiet observation, quiet but very sharp, you understand; because all forces there are to us invisiblevery tiny shades, very tiny,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite: some of them are actualities working to produce or occasion a new actualitybetween different things, some are possibles that are near to the pre-existent actuals and in a way included in their aggregate; but there can intervene always new possibilities that suddenly become dynamic potentials and add themselves when you get used to the nexusdistinguishing these nuances, and behind all are imperatives or an imperative which these possibilities are labouring to actualiseyou can discern exactly what it is.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p46</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p7</ucenter>~</divcenter>
= Personality It is really an inner silence that is needed—a something silent within that looks at outer talk and action but feels it as something superficial, not as itself and is quite indifferent and untouched by it. It can bring forces to support speech and action or it can stop them by withdrawal or it can let them go on and observe without being involved or moved. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and Self-Observation =yoga#p76</ref>
== Three Guna’s and Self-Observation ==<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In this progression the first step is a certain You must be able to silence your head absolutely and be completely detached superiority , not to have (for example, when you are looking for the three modes solution of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakritia problem), not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act have already in your head the triple round of her ancient habits,—desire, grief and joy attack solution that seems to you right or the heartbest or most profitable. That must not be there. You must become absolutely like a blank paper, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changeswith nothing on it. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower membersAnd you proceed in that way, smiling at their joys and their strainings, regarding and unoverpowered by the failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the heart and nerves, uncompelled and unattached with a very sincere aspiration to know the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladnesstruth, without assuming beforehand that it throws itself into none of these things, but waits unmoved for will be like this or like that; because otherwise you will see only your own formation. The very first condition is that the intimations of a higher Will and head must keep completely silent during the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledgetime one is observing. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p13</spanref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-three-modes-of-nature#p13</ucenter>~</divcenter>
To silence the mind it is not enough to throw back each thought as it comes, that can only be a subordinate movement. One must get back from all thought and be separate from it, a silent consciousness observing the thoughts if they come, but not oneself thinking or identified with the thoughts. Thoughts must be felt as outside things altogether. It is then easier to reject thoughts or let them pass without their disturbing the quietude of the mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p99</ref>
= Parts and Planes of = By Developing the Being Witness Attitude ==
<div style="color:#000000;">Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your never felt this? As though you were a little behind or above things, and were looking at them taking place but were not doing anything yourself? Witness means an observer, someone who looks on and does not act himself. So, when the mindis very quiet, what comes one can withdraw a little in this way from your vitalcircumstances and look at things as though he were a witness, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up; it is mixed up a spectator, and not participating in the outward appearanceaction himself. If This gives you do not take care to distinguisha great detachment, a great quietude, it makes and also a kind very precise sense of soupthe value of things, all that together. So because it is indistinct and difficult cuts the attachment to discoveraction. But if When you observe know how to do this with yourself, after some time when you see certain thingscan withdraw and watch yourself acting, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other learn many things about yourself. When you feel are all mixed up and take part in the action, you would have to go within do not observe yourself to find out from where they come; for other thingsacting, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise don't know what you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousnessare like. And there are others; then But when you must go very deepdraw back and look at yourself, very deep to find out from where they comeyou can perceive many imperfections which you wouldn't have seen otherwise. This is just a beginning<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/13-october-1954#p2</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 10 June 1953)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/10-june-1953#p31</u></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To work for your perfection, A man with a very developed introspective mind often identifies himself with the first step is to become conscious witness part of yourself, of the different parts of your being his mind and observes his own thoughts and studies their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to actionnature. It That is an assiduous study a beginning which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation makes it easy for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">full detachment to form in ourselves a discernment that never errscome. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that others it is to sayless easy, what we are truly created for, what we but it can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little be done by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1230/inner-detachment-and-the-sciencewitness-of-livingattitude#p5</u>p</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>….You may have a mental power of observation, a vital power of observation, a physical power of observation. When you observe ideas, for instance, the train of ideas, the logic of the ideas, it is not altogether the same power of observation as when you look at a friend doing athletics and see whether he is making his movements correctly or not. That is, the capacity of attention is there in both cases, but it works in a different field. It can't be said that it is one part of the being observing the others; it is the faculty of observation developing in each part of the being—that is, the faculty of concentration and attention. For the capacity of observation must not be confused with the capacity of discernment. Discernment is an intellectual capacity. Something like a judgment already enters into it, what we call "discrimination": you can distinguish between the origin of one thing and of another, and the reciprocal value of these things. But that ought to be founded on a correct observation. The power of observation comes first, discernment follows.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(You have to become conscious—that is to say, there must be something in you which is not carried away by thoughts and feelings, but looks at them and observes how they work and how they affect you. The Mother, 27 January 1954)</span>part that observes and knows is called the Witness sākṣī in man. It is always possible to develop this in oneself. <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0630/27inner-detachment-and-januarythe-1954witness-attitude#p34</u>p25</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;">For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, = By Sincerity and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and motives of our action, the operative energies that build up our surface personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being that secretly feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within and impacts from outside us; our reason, our organising intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order: but here within we find the separate sources of our mental, our vital and our physical energisms and can see clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision.</div>Impartiality ==
[http://incarnatewordFor that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to do or that you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth.Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identitythat one; it is not for me." Neither vanity and arrogance nor self-depreciation and false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and-separative-knowledge#p12 does not judge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2115/knowledge-by-identity-and12-separativenovember-knowledge1952#p12]p6</ref>
<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">There is a state of being experienced in Yoga in If you observe yourself, you will see that as soon as you do something which we become disturbs you a double consciousnesslittle, one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds mind immediately gives you a favourable reason to justify yourself—this mind is capable of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, gilding everything. In these conditions it may is difficult to know oneself. One must be, acting upon its agitation absolutely sincere to be able to quiet, enlarge, transform do it. So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer, mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from that height or from any height see clearly into any of these lower states and take its limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while all the rest that we are is either temporarily put away or put behind or else kept as a field little falsehoods of reference from which we can get support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend or recede and from it observe the inferior movementsmental being. <ref>http://incarnateword. Or we can plunge into trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with one enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible./cwm/04/15-january-1951#p3</divref>
==By Becoming Aware of Desire ==
<div style=For that you must observe yourself very, very attentively, and if there is anything in you which produces something like a small intense vibration, then you may be sure that there lies a desire. For example, you say, "This food is necessary for me"—you believe, you imagine, you think that you need such and such a thing and you find the necessary means to obtain the thing. To know if it is a need or a desire, you must look at yourself very closely and ask yourself, "What will happen if I cannot get the thing?" Then if the immediate answer is, "Oh, it will be very bad", you may be sure that it is a matter of desire. It is the same for everything. For every problem you draw back, look at yourself and ask, "Let us see, am I going to have the thing?" If at that moment something in you jumps up with joy, you may be certain there is a desire. On the other hand, if something tells you, "color:#0066cc;Oh, I am not going to get it">, and you feel very depressed, then again it is a desire. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2104/brahman25-purushajanuary-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti1951#p23</u>p3</divref>
== Witness and Parts of Being ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">It is difficult to say generally what is conscious; but naturallyIf you observe yourself attentively, if something observesyou will see that before acting you need an inner impetus, it is always the "witness" element in this part—in each part of the being there is something which is a "witness", which looks onpushes you. There is even a physical witness which can get very much in In the way; for instance, if it watches you playing, ordinary man this can paralyse you considerably. There impetus is also a vital witness which looks at you, sees your desires and enjoys highly all that happens; it acts also as a brakegenerally desire. There is the mental witness which judges ideas, which says, "This idea contradicts this other"desire ought to be replaced by a clear, and which arranges everything. Then there is the great psychic Witnessprecise, who is constant vision of the inner divinityTruth. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-december-1950#p7</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 22 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p6</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Sometimes there is no relation among these different witnesses—there ought to be, but it is not always there. But if there is in the being a will to become perfect, the relation is established quite quickly; one can refer to another and finally, if there is a sufficient sincerity, sufficient concentration, you come to the supreme inner Witness who can judge all things. But generally it may be said that it is always a part By Education of the mind, more or less enlightened, in a little closer contact with the inner being, which observes and judges.</span>Senses==
<span style="background-colorBut it is through sensations that you learn:transparentby seeing, observing, hearing. Classes develop your sensations, studies develop your sensations, the mind receives things through sensations. By the education of the senses the growth of one's general education is aided;color:#000000if you learn to see well, exactly, precisely; if you learn to hear well; if you learn through touch to know the nature of things; if you learn through the see of smell to distinguish between different odours—all these are a powerful means of education. In fact, they should be used for this, as instruments of observation, control and knowledge. If one is sufficiently developed, one can know the nature of things through sight;">(The Motherthrough the see of smell one may also know the value, 22 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparentthe different nature of things;color:#0066ccby touch one can recognise things. It is a question of education;">that is, one must work for it. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0406/2231-march-19511954#p7</u>p13</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>A man with a very developed introspective mind often identifies himself with the witness part of his mind and observes his own thoughts and studies their nature. That is a beginning which makes it easy for the full detachment to come. For others it is less easy, but it can be done by all.~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p]
The child must be taught to observe, to note his reactions and impulses and their causes, to become a discerning witness of his desires, his movements of violence and passion, his instincts of possession and appropriation and domination and the background of vanity which supports them, together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and despair. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p14</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>You have to become conscious—that is to say, there must be something in you which is not carried away by thoughts and feelings, but looks at them and observes how they work and how they affect you. The part that observes and knows is called the Witness sākṣī in man. It is always possible to develop this in oneself.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p25</u></spancenter>
== Psychic Being ==The indispensable starting-point is a detailed and discerning observation of the character to be transformed. In most cases, that itself is a difficult and often a very baffling task. But there is one fact which the old traditions knew and which can serve as the clue in the labyrinth of inner discovery. It is that everyone possesses in a large measure, and the exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of character, in almost equal proportions, which are like the light and the shadow of the same thing. Thus someone who has the capacity of being exceptionally generous will suddenly find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be a coward in some part of his being and the good man will suddenly have wicked impulses. In this way life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, but also with contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has to wage and the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. Consequently, all life is an education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly. In certain cases this education will encourage the movements that express the light, in others, on the contrary, those that express the shadow. If the circumstances and the environment are favourable, the light will grow at the expense of the shadow; otherwise the opposite will happen. And in this way the individual's character will crystallise according to the whims of Nature and the determinisms of material and vital life, unless a higher element comes in in time, a conscious will which, refusing to allow Nature to follow her whimsical ways, will replace them by a logical and clear-sighted discipline. This conscious will is what we mean by a rational method of education. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p6</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">...behind there is the psychic which supports the development, the growth of the being and gives this continuity of consciousness, makes one feel that he is the same being even while being absolutely different, absolutely different. If later one observes himself sufficiently, he can see that the things he understood and could do at that time are things which seem = How to him absolutely inconceivable now, and that he could never do a similar thing because he is no longer that person at all. And yet, because within there was the psychic consciousness which is immortal, one has the feeling that it is always the same being which was there and continues to be there and will continue to be there with more or less progressive and more or less conscious changes.</div>Observe Thoughts==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you don't create thoughts (The Motheri.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, 29 June 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">but rather thoughts occur in you. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0731/29thought-juneand-1955knowledge#p28</u>p3</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>The ordinary mind knows itself only as an ego with all the movements of the nature in a jumble and, identifying itself with these movements, thinks "I am doing this, feeling that, thinking, in joy or in sorrow etc." The first beginning of real self-knowledge is when you feel yourself separate from the nature in you and its movements and then you see that there are many parts of your being, many personalities each acting on its own behalf and in its own way. The two different beings you feel are—one, the psychic being which draws you towards the Mother, the other the external being mostly vital which draws you outward and downwards towards the play of the lower nature. There is also in you behind the mind the being who observes, the witness Purusha, who can stand detached from the play of the nature, observing it and able to choose.~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#0066ccThoughts are not the essence of mind-being, they are only an activity of mental nature; if that activity ceases, what appears then as a thought-free existence that manifests in its place is not a blank or void but something very real, substantial, concrete we may say—a mental being that extends itself widely and can be its own field of existence silent or active as well as the Witness, Knower, Master of that field and its action. Some feel it first as a void, but that is because their observation is untrained and insufficient and loss of activity gives them the sense of blank;">an emptiness there is, but it is an emptiness of the ordinary activities, not a blank of existence. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2830/three-experiences-of-the-psychicinner-being#p84</u>p3</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The actions are of importance only as expressing what is in the nature. You have to be conscious of whatever in your actions is not in harmony with the Yoga and to get rid of it. But for that what is needed is your own consciousness, the psychic, observing from within and throwing off what is seen to be undesirable.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/work-and-yoga#p45</u></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The mental being within watchesIt is only gradually, very slowly, observes through the movements of life and a more or less careful and passes judgment on all thorough education that happens in you begin to have sensations which are personal to you, feelings and ideas which are personal to you. The psychic does not watch An individualised mind is something extremely rare, which comes only after a long education; otherwise it is a kind of thought-current passing through your brain and then through another's and observe in this way like then through a witnessmultitude of other brains, but it feels and knows spontaneously all this is in a much more direct perpetual movement and luminous way by the very purity of its own nature has no individuality. One thinks what others are thinking, others think what still others are thinking, and the divine instinct within iteverybody thinks like that in a great mixture, and sobecause these are currents, whenever it comes vibrations of thought passing from one to the front it reveals another. If you look at once yourself attentively, you will very quickly become aware that very few thoughts in you are personal. Where do you draw them from?—From what you have heard, from what you have read, what you have been taught, and how many of these thoughts you have are the right and what the wrong movements in result of your own experience, your own reflection, your naturepurely personal observation?—Not many.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2809/the20-jivatmanfebruary-in-the-integral-yoga1957#p40</u>p6</spanref>
== Mind and Self-Observation ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">GraduallyWhen one practises Yoga and observes the thoughts, one sees that they come from outside, from universal Nature, as from the action mental, vital or subtle physical worlds etc. The proper thing is prolonged and the outer being begins then to assimilate this actionstand back from these thoughts, there awakens a capacity of observationvoices or suggestions, to reject them or else control them, first in to make the mental consciousness, mind free and quiet and a kind of objectivisation occurs: something in open only to the mind looks ondivine light, observes and translates in its own way. This is what you call understandingforce, knowledge and this is what gives you the impression (smiling) that you are having an experiencepresence of the Divine. ... But that is already considerably diminished in comparison Aspire, get into contact with the experience itselfLight and the true Force, it is a transcription adapted reassert your will to your mental, vital reject these suggestions and physical dimension, that is, something that is shrunkenvoices. Do not take interest in these voices, hardened—and it gives you at keep the same time the impression that it is growing clearer; that is to say, it has become as limited as your understandingmind quiet. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p5</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 31 October 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.Difficulties in/cwm/08/31Self-october-1956#p19</u></span><span styleObservation="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">...We have in all functionings of the mentality four elements, the object of mental consciousness, the act of mental consciousness, the occasion and the subject. In the self-experience of the self-observing inner being, the object is always some state or movement or wave of the conscious being, anger, grief or other emotion, hunger or other vital craving, impulse or inner life reaction or some form of sensation, perception or thought activity. The act is some kind of mental observation and conceptual valuation of this movement or wave or else a mental sensation of it in which observation and valuation may be involved and even lost,—so that in this act the mental person may either separate the act and the object by a distinguishing perception or confuse them together indistinguishably. </span>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-ego-and-self-experience#p5</u></div>=Danger of the Ego==
<div style=But to begin with, how many times, if one thinks, if one quite simply observes oneself, does one catch oneself saying, "It is I!" And, then, one congratulates oneself sometimes, one says, "After all I can do something, I am capable!"colorI am going further:#000000;">So the man of real merit or the more civilised man has a whole mental construction to which he must conform in order to how many people would be in harmony with the ideal capable of the environment in which he lives. But someone who does not conform doing anything at least to all if simply deprived of the smallest part pleasure of being able to tell themselves, "I have done this construction would be considered , I have realised that, I have made a savage and progress, how well I played this game"? How many people would be thrown out able to sincerely do something if this pleasure were taken away? I have known individuals whose mind was much more developed than the rest of the society immediatelybeing, they had understood very well (almost too well); they sat down to meditate and all their energy was gone, all vitality evaporated into a kind of peace, not unpleasant, but very still. In factThere is no more need to do anything, people who are criminals or half-mad are those who obey their impulses without no longer any mental controlneed to move, one dreams. There isn't ...Under a single person among you who gives way without control to all tree, arms crossed, one leaves the impulses that get hold of him. You have only Divine to observe yourselves livingdo everything for oneself, including feeding you if you spend your time sayingneed it. This is perhaps very well, but this shows that the instrument is not ready; it is not really at the service of the Divine, "Noit is at the service of the ego, this I can't do"and when the ego is taken away, or "This I can"it does nothing any longer. Therefore, or so long as one lives in restraining the ego this illusion is necessary to make you act; it is necessary to keep up action until one movement is completely transformed or encouraging another, in any case, till the true consciousness is established. This is mental control(The Mother, 5 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-april-1951#p14</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 15 September 1954)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/15-september-1954#p9</u></spancenter>
...if you do your tapasya, all the time observing yourself doing it and telling yourself, "Am I making any progress, is this going to be better, am I going to succeed?", then it is your ego, you know, which becomes more and more enormous and occupies the whole place, and there is no room for anything else. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p35</ref>
== Vital and Self-Observation Escape attitude ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">What happens usually Constantly man rushes into external action in order not to have time to observe himself and how he lives. For him this is that something touches expressed by the vitaldesire to escape from boredom. Indeed, often without one's knowing for some people itis much more tiresome to remain quiet—seated, and brings up the old ordinary or external consciousness in such to be still. So for them it represents an escape from boredom: to make a way that the inner mind gets covered up lot of noise, to commit many stupidities, and all the old thoughts and feelings return for a time. It become terribly restless; it is the physical mind that becomes active and gives its assenttheir way of escaping boredom. If the whole mind remains quiet And when they sit quietly and detached observing the vital movementlook at themselves, but not giving its assentthey are bored. Perhaps because they are boring. That's very likely. The more boring one is, then to reject it becomes the more easyone is bored. This established quietude and detachment of the mind marks always a great </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">step forward made in the sadhanaVery interesting people usually are not bored.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3107/the26-vitaljanuary-and-other-levels-of-being1955#p45</u>p14</spanref>
==Focusing on the Negative==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">After each crisis there is something gained, if there has been a victory To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and rejectiondiscourages the faith. The gain is Turn your eyes more to externalise the vital disturbancecoming Light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, so that even if it returns it will be felt so much an outside force that confidence in the ultimate victory are the observing consciousness (mental, higher vital) cannot be disturbed. If you keep things thathelp, it will be an immense advance—they make the progress easier and swifter.</spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/wrongsteps-movementstowards-of-theovercoming-vitaldifficulties#p68 http:p28<//incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/wrong-movements-of-the-vital#p68]ref>
<center>~</center>
== Physical What you have to aspire for most is the improved quality of the recipient consciousness in you—discrimination in the mind, the unattached impersonal Witness look on all that goes on in you and Selfaround you, purity in the vital, calm equanimity, enduring patience, absence of pride and the sense of greatness—and more especially, the development of the psychic being in you—surrender, self-giving, psychic humility, devotion... a sufficient foundation and a consciousness always self-observant, vigilant and growing in these things is indispensable—for perfect purification is the basis of the perfect siddhi. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-danger-of-the-ego-and-the-need-of-Observation ==purification#p14</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>One can prepare the body through a series of observations, studies, understandings,by showing it examples, making it understand things as one makes a child understand them, either by observing its own movements―but generally, in this, one is comparatively blind!―or by observing those of others. And in a more general way, this preparation will be based on recognised studies, on clear facts. Like this, for instance: that a certain number of persons, placed in exactly similar circumstances, experience, each one of them, very different effects. One may go even further: in a given set of definite circumstances, there is a certain number of particular, definite individuals, in apparently quite identical conditions, and for some the effects are catastrophic, while others escape without any harm.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 4 July 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-july-1956#p15</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If it To become conscious of what is an inert tamasic passivity subject to any influence and unable to react, then it is subjection to Nature. If it be changed in the nature is a sattwic passivity of the Witness observing and understanding the movements of Nature, then first step towards changing it is an intermediate condition, often necessary for knowledge. If But one must observe these things without being despondent or thinking "it is a luminous passivity open hopeless" or "I cannot change". You do right to be confident that the Divine, shut to all other influences, then it change will come. For nothing is not subjection to Nature but surrender to the Divine.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.impossible in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p24</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For if the giddiness, it may be that in concentration psychic being is awake and leading you go partly out of your body; then, if you get up and move before with the whole Mother's consciousness has come back, there is just such a giddiness as and force behind it and working in you describe. You can observe in future and see whether it This is not this now happening. Be sure that happens. One has to all will be careful not to move after deep concentration or trance, till there is the full consciousness in the bodydone.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficultiesspeech-ofand-the-physical-natureyoga#p59</u>p53</spanref>
= Consciousness and Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
Despair and despondency are always wrong. If you make a mistake, quietly observe it and correct the tendency next time. Even if the mistake recurs often, you have only to persevere quietly—remembering that nature cannot be changed in a day. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/depression-and-despondency#p67</ref>
<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">Your It is a subtle law of the action of consciousness becomes a screen or mirror; but this is when that if you are in a state stress difficulties—you have to observe them, of contemplationcourse, a mere observer; when you are activebut not stress them, it is like a searchlight. You have only they will quite sufficiently do that for themselves—the difficulties tend to turn it stick or even increase; onthe contrary, if you want put your whole stress on faith and aspiration and concentrate steadily on what you aspire to see luminously , that will sooner or later tend towards realisation. It is this change of stress, a change in the poise and examine penetratingly anything attitude of the mind, that will be the more helpful process. <ref>http://incarnateword.in any place./cwsa/31/dealing-with-depression-and-despondency#p22</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 30 June 1929)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7]=Surface Level Observation==
As a general rule, with a few very rare exceptions, men are content to observe more or less accurately everything that happens around them, and sometimes within themselves, and to classify all these observations according to one superficial system of logic or another. And they call this organisation, these systems, "knowledge". It has never occurred to them, they have not even begun to perceive that all the things they see, touch, feel, experience, are false appearances and not reality itself.
<div style="color:#000000;">However, if one observes things a little deeply, one perceives that there [Based on Aphorism 7—What men call knowledge is progress, that things become better the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and better, though apparently they do not improvesees. And for a consciousness seated a little higherReason divides, it is quite evident that all evil—at least what we call evil—all falsehood, all that is contrary to the Truth, all sufferingfixes details and contrasts them; Wisdom unifies, all opposition is the result of marries contrasts in a disequilibriumsingle harmony]. I believe that one who is habituated to seeing things from this higher plane sees immediately that it is like that<ref>http://incarnateword. in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p3</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 8 January 1951)~</divcenter>
<div style="colorIt is evident that our state on the surface is indeed a state of knowledge, so far as it goes, but a limited knowledge enveloped and invaded by ignorance and, to a very large extent, by reason of its limitation, itself a kind of ignorance, at best a mixed knowledge-ignorance. It could not be otherwise since our awareness of the world is born of a separative and surface observation with only an indirect means of cognition at its disposal; our knowledge of ourselves, though more direct, is stultified by its restriction to the surface of our being, by an ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the true motive-forces of our action. It is quite evident that we know ourselves with only a superficial knowledge,—the sources of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the significance of our life and its activities are a mystery:#0066cc;">this could not be if we had a real self-knowledge and a real world-knowledge. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0421/8knowledge-by-identity-januaryand-1951separative-knowledge#p13</u>p7</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>There are two centres or parts of the consciousness—one is a witness, sākṣī, and observes, the other consciousness is active and it is this active consciousness that you felt going down deep into the vital being. If your mind had not become active, you would have known where it went and what it went there to experience or do. When there is an experience, you should not begin to think about it, for that is of no use at all and it only stops the experience—you should remain silent, observe and let it go on to its end.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/suggestions-for-dealing-with-experiences#p8</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">At a certain stage of the sadhana, in the beginning (or near it) of the more intense experiences, it sometimes happens that there is the intense realisation of some aspect of the Divine, a sort of communion with it, and that is seen everywhere and all as that. It is a transitory phase and afterwards one gets the larger experience of the Divine in all its aspects and beyond all aspects. Throughout the experience there should be one part of the being that observes and understands—for sometimes ignorant sadhaks are carried away by their experience and stop short there or fall into extravagance. It must be taken as an experience through which you are passing.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/suggestions-for-dealing-with-experiences#p10</u></spancenter>
= Thoughts and SelfOne throws oneself out all the time; all the time one lives, as it were, outside oneself, in such a superficial sensation that it is almost as though one were outside oneself. As soon as one wants even to observe oneself a little, control oneself a little, simply know what is happening, one is always obliged to draw back or pull towards oneself, to pull inwards something which is constantly like that, on the surface. And it is this surface thing which meets all external contacts, puts you in touch with similar vibrations coming from others. That happens almost outside you. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-Observation =june-1956#p49</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Thoughts are not the essence of mind-being, they are only an activity of mental nature; if that activity ceases, what appears then as a thought-free existence that manifests in its place is not a blank or void but something very real, substantial, concrete we may say—a mental being that extends itself widely and can be its own field of existence silent or active as well as the Witness, Knower, Master of that field and its action. Some feel it first as a void, but that is because their observation is untrained and insufficient and loss of activity gives them the sense of blank; an emptiness there is, but it is an emptiness of the ordinary activities, not a blank of existence.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p3 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p3]=Observing Invisible Forces==
If we observe a happening, we judge and explain it from the result and from a glimpse of its most external constituents, circumstances or causes; but each happening is the outcome of a complex nexus of forces which we do not and cannot observe, because all forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite: some of them are actualities working to produce or occasion a new actuality, some are possibles that are near to the pre-existent actuals and in a way included in their aggregate; but there can intervene always new possibilities that suddenly become dynamic potentials and add themselves to the nexus, and behind all are imperatives or an imperative which these possibilities are labouring to actualise. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p7</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">It is only gradually, very slowly, through the movements of life and a more or less careful and thorough education that you begin to have sensations which are personal to you, feelings and ideas which are personal to you. An individualised mind is something extremely rare, which comes only after a long education; otherwise it is a kind of thoughtSelf Observation -current passing through your brain and then through another's and then through a multitude Exploring Realms of other brains, and all this is in perpetual movement and has no individuality. One thinks what others are thinking, others think what still others are thinking, and everybody thinks like that in a great mixture, because these are currents, vibrations of thought passing from one to another. If you look at yourself attentively, you will very quickly become aware that very few thoughts in you are personal. Where do you draw them from?—From what you have heard, from what you have read, what you have been taught, and how many of these thoughts you have are the result of your own experience, your own reflection, your purely personal observation?—Not many.</div>Consciousness=
<span style="background-color:transparentMan is a type among many types so constructed, one pattern among the multitude of patterns in the manifestation in Matter. He is the most complex that has been created, the richest in content of consciousness and the curious ingeniousness of his building;color:#000000;">(The Motherhe is the head of the earthly creation, but he does not exceed it…. If there is a perfection to which he has to arrive, it must be a perfection in his own kind, within his own law of being,—the full play of it, but by observation of its mode and measure, not by transcendence. To exceed himself, to grow into the superman, 20 February 1957)</span><span style="backgroundto put on the nature and capacities of a god would be a contradiction of his self-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">law, impracticable and impossible. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0922/20man-februaryand-1957the-evolution#p6</u>p8</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>To observe your thoughts, you must first of all separate yourself from them. In the ordinary state, the ordinary man does not distinguish himself from his thoughts. He does not even know that he thinks. He thinks by habit. And if he is asked all of a sudden, "What are you thinking of?", he knows nothing about it. That is to say, ninety-five times out of a hundred he will answer, "I do not know." There is a complete identification between the movement of thought and the consciousness of the being.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p12</u></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">...when undesirable thoughts comebehind there is the psychic which supports the development, the growth of the being and gives this continuity of consciousness, if you look at themmakes one feel that he is the same being even while being absolutely different, observe themabsolutely different. If later one observes himself sufficiently, if you take pleasure in following them in their movementshe can see that the things he understood and could do at that time are things which seem to him absolutely inconceivable now, they will and that he could never stop comingdo a similar thing because he is no longer that person at all. It And yet, because within there was the psychic consciousness which is immortal, one has the feeling that it is always the same thing when you have undesirable feelings or sensation: if you pay attention being which was there and continues to them, concentrate on them or even look at them with a certain indulgence, they be there and will never stop. But if you absolutely refuse continue to receive be there with more or less progressive and express them, after some time they stopmore or less conscious changes. You must be patient and very persistent <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/29-june-1955#p28</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 22 September 1954)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p19</u></spancenter>
There is a state of being experienced in Yoga in which we become a double consciousness, one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting upon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it. So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer, mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from that height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we are is either temporarily put away or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend or recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with one enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p23</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>~</center>Most people—and In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not only those who are uneducated involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient habits,—desire, grief and joy attack the heart, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but even the well-read—can have soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the most contradictorylower members, smiling at their joys and their strainings, regarding and unoverpowered by the most opposite ideas in their heads without even being aware failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the contradictions….And if you observe yourselfheart and nerves, you will see that you have many ideas which ought uncompelled and unattached to be linked by a sequence the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladness, it throws itself into none of intermediate ideas which are these things, but waits unmoved for the result intimations of a considerable widening higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the thought if they are not to coexist in an absurd way.-three-modes-of-nature#p13</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 20 February 1957)~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/20-february-1957#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/20-february-1957#p8]
"The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates... she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working...." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/7-november-1956#p1</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you don't create thoughts (i.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you.~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#0066ccIt is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object;">for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it...It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3123/thoughtthe-ascent-of-andthe-sacrifice-knowledgeii#p3</u>p29</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">When one practises Yoga and observes the thoughts, one sees that they come from outside, from universal Nature, from the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds etc. The proper thing is then to stand back from these thoughts, voices or suggestions, to reject them or else control them, =How to make the mind free and quiet and open only to the divine light, force, knowledge and the presence of the Divine….Aspire, get into contact with the Light and the true Force, reassert your will to reject these suggestions and voices. Do not take interest be in these voices, keep the mind quiet.</span><span stylea Witness State?=="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p5</u></span>
= Sense It is difficult to say generally what is conscious; but naturally, if something observes, it is always the "witness" element in this part—in each part of the being there is something which is a "witness", which looks on. There is even a physical witness which can get very much in the way; for instance, if it watches you playing, this can paralyse you considerably. There is also a vital witness which looks at you, sees your desires and Self Observation =enjoys highly all that happens; it acts also as a brake. There is the mental witness which judges ideas, which says, "This idea contradicts this other", and which arranges everything. Then there is the great psychic Witness, who is the inner divinity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p6</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>This sensational thought-mind which is based upon sense, memory, association, first ideas and resultant generalisations or secondary ideas, is common to all developed animal life and mentality….The intelligence and will of the animal are involved in the sense-mind and therefore altogether governed by it and carried on its stream of sensations, sense-perceptions, impulses; it is instinctive. Man is able to use a reason and will, a self-observing, thinking and all-observing, an intelligently willing mind which is no longer involved in the sense-mind, but acts from above and behind it in its own right, with a certain separateness and freedom. He is reflective, has a certain relative freedom of intelligent will. He has liberated in himself and has formed into a separate power the buddhi.~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p4]
Sometimes there is no relation among these different witnesses—there ought to be, but it is not always there. But if there is in the being a will to become perfect, the relation is established quite quickly; one can refer to another and finally, if there is a sufficient sincerity, sufficient concentration, you come to the supreme inner Witness who can judge all things. But generally it may be said that it is always a part of the mind, more or less enlightened, in a little closer contact with the inner being, which observes and judges. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p7</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>….But it is through sensations that you learn: by seeing, observing, hearing. Classes develop your sensations, studies develop your sensations, the mind receives things through sensations. By the education of the senses the growth of one's general education is aided; if you learn to see well, exactly, precisely; if you learn to hear well; if you learn through touch to know the nature of things; if you learn through the see of smell to distinguish between different odours—all these are a powerful means of education. In fact, they should be used for this, as instruments of observation, control and knowledge. If one is sufficiently developed, one can know the nature of things through sight; through the see of smell one may also know the value, the different nature of things; by touch one can recognise things. It is a question of education; that is, one must work for it.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother witness Purusha in the mind observes that the inadequacy of his effort, all the inadequacy in fact of man's life and nature arises from the separation and the consequent struggle, want of knowledge, want of harmony, want of oneness. It is essential for him to grow out of separative individuality, to universalise himself, to make himself one with the universe. This unification can be done only through the soul by making our soul of mind one with the universal Mind, 31 March 1954)</span><span style="backgroundour soul of life one with the universal Life-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">soul, our soul of body one with the universal soul of physical Nature. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0624/31the-perfection-of-the-marchmental-1954being#p13</u>p15</spanref>
= Education and Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The indispensable starting-point It is a detailed ordinarily considered that the Yogin should draw away from action as much as possible and discerning observation of the character to be transformed. In most cases, especially that itself too much action is a difficult and often hindrance because it draws off the energies outward. To a very baffling task. But </span><span style="background-color:transparentcertain extent this is true;color:#000000;">there is one fact which the old traditions knew and which can serve as we must note farther that when the clue in mental Purusha takes up the labyrinth attitude of inner discovery. It is that everyone possesses in a large measure, mere witness and the exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precisionobserver, two opposite tendencies of charactera tendency to silence, in almost equal proportionssolitude, which are like the light physical calm and bodily inaction grows upon the shadow of the same thing. Thus someone who has the capacity of being exceptionally generous will suddenly find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be a coward in some part of his being and the good man will suddenly have wicked impulses. In So long as this way life seems to endow everyone is not only associated with the possibility of expressing an idealinertia, but also with contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has incapacity or unwillingness to wage and the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. Consequently, all life is an education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly. In certain cases this education will encourage the movements that express the lightact, in othersa word, on with the contrary, those that express the shadow. If growth of the circumstances and the environment are favourabletamasic quality, the light will grow at the expense of the shadow; otherwise the opposite will happen. And in all this way the individual's character will crystallise according is to the whims of Nature and the determinisms of material and vital life, unless a higher element comes in in time, a conscious will which, refusing to allow Nature to follow her whimsical ways, will replace them by a logical and clear-sighted discipline. This conscious will is what we mean by a rational method of educationgood.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1223/vitalthe-educationrelease-from-subjection-to-the-body#p6</u>p7</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>..The child must be taught to observe, to note his reactions and impulses and their causes, to become a discerning witness of his desires, his movements of violence and passion, his instincts of possession and appropriation and domination and the background of vanity which supports them, together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and despair.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p14</u></spancenter>
= Results It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of Selfthe nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-divine-Observation =shakti#p9</ref>
<center>~</center>
...with regard to the movements and experiences of the body the mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and their interaction upon each other. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#p4</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>If you observe yourself attentively, you will see that before acting you need an inner impetus, something which pushes you. In the ordinary man this impetus is generally desire. This desire ought to be replaced by a clear, precise, constant vision of the Truth.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native principle of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its Prakriti and there is then a division of our being between a consciousness that observes and can reserve its willpower and an energy full of the substance of consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge, 21 December 1950)will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soulby its mental nature. </spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0424/21the-decemberdivine-1950shakti#p7 http:p8<//incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-december-1950#p7]ref>
<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">If you observe yourself, you will see that The actions are of importance only as soon as you do something which disturbs you a little, expressing what is in the mind immediately gives you a favourable reason nature. You have to justify yourself—this mind be conscious of whatever in your actions is capable not in harmony with the Yoga and to get rid of gilding everythingit. In these conditions it But for that what is needed is your own consciousness, the psychic, observing from within and throwing off what is difficult seen to know oneselfbe undesirable. <ref>http://incarnateword. One must be absolutely sincere to be able to do it in/cwsa/29/work-and to see clearly into all the little falsehoods of the mental being.-yoga#p45</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 15 January 1951)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p3</u></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">… if each element which comes with its ignorance, its unconsciousness, its egoism, is put before the will to change and one remains awake, comparesThe mental being within watches, observes, studies and slowly acts, passes judgment on all that becomes infinitely interesting, one makes marvellous and quite unexpected discoverieshappens in you. One finds in oneself lots of small hidden folds, little things one had The psychic does not seen at the beginning; one undertakes a sort of inner chase, goes hunting into small dark corners watch and tells oneself: "What, I was like that! This was there observe in me, I am harbouring this little thing"—sometimes so sordidway like a witness, so mean, so nasty. And once but it has been discovered, how wonderful! One puts feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct and luminous way by the light upon it very purity of its own nature and the divine instinct within it disappears , and you no longer have those reactions which made you so sad before, when you used whenever it comes to say, "Oh! I shall never get therethe front it reveals at once what are the right and what the wrong movements in your nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-jivatman-in-the-integral-yoga#p40</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 April 1951)</div>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-april-1951#p14</u></div>'''Content curated by Aditi Kaul'''
= Difficulties during Self-Observation =
{|class="wikitable" style= Danger "background-color: #efefff; width: 100%;"|Read Summary of the Ego =='''[[Self Observation Summary|Self Observation]]'''
<div style="color:#000000;">But to begin with, how many timesDear reader, if one thinks, if one quite simply observes oneself, does one catch oneself saying, "It is I!" And, then, one congratulates oneself sometimes, one says, "After all I can do something, I am capable!" I am going further: how many people would be capable of doing anything at all if simply deprived of the pleasure of being able to tell themselves, "I have done this, I have realised that, I have made a progress, how well I played this game"? How many people would be able to sincerely do something if this pleasure were taken away? I have known individuals whose mind was much more developed than the rest of the being, they had understood very well (almost too well); they sat down to meditate and all their energy was gone, all vitality evaporated into a kind of peace, not unpleasant, but very still. There is no more need to do anything, no longer you notice any need to move, one dreams.... Under a tree, arms crossed, one leaves error in the Divine to do everything for oneself, including feeding you if you need it. This is perhaps very well, but this shows that the instrument is not ready; it is not really at the service of paragraph numbers in the Divinehyperlinks, it is please let us know by dropping an email at the service of the ego, and when the ego is taken away, it does nothing any longerintegral.edu. Therefore, so long as one lives in the ego this illusion is necessary to make you act; it is necessary to keep up action until one is completely transformed or, in any case, till the true consciousness is established@gmail.</div>com|}
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother ,5 April 1951)</span><span styleReferences ="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-april-1951#p14</u></span> <div style="color:#000000;">...if you do your tapasya, all the time observing yourself doing it and telling yourself, "Am I making any progress, is this going to be better, am I going to succeed?", then it is your ego, you know, which becomes more and more enormous and occupies the whole place, and there is no room for anything else. </div> <div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother , 26 April 1951)</div> [http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p35 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p35]  <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Do not be over-eager for experience,—for experiences you can always get, having once broken the barrier between the physical mind and the subtle planes. What you have to aspire for most is the improved quality of the recipient consciousness in you—discrimination in the mind, the unattached impersonal Witness look on all that goes on in you and around you, purity in the vital, calm equanimity, enduring patience, absence of pride and the sense of greatness—and more especially, the development of the psychic being in you—surrender, self-giving, psychic humility, devotion... a sufficient foundation and a consciousness always self-observant, vigilant and growing in these things is indispensable—for perfect purification is the basis of the perfect siddhi.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-danger-of-the-ego-and-the-need-of-purification#p14 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-danger-of-the-ego-and-the-need-of-purification#p14]  == <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Escape attitude</span> == <div style="color:#000000;">Constantly man rushes into external action in order not to have time to observe himself and how he lives. For him this is expressed by the desire to escape from boredom. Indeed, for some people it is much more tiresome to remain quiet—seated, or to be still. So for them it represents an escape from boredom: to make a lot of noise, to commit many stupidities, and become terribly restless; it is their way of escaping boredom. And when they sit quietly and look at themselves, they are bored. Perhaps because they are boring. That's very likely. The more boring one is, the more one is bored. Very interesting people usually are not bored.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 26 January 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/26-january-1955#p14</u></span> == Focusing on the Negative == <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and discourages the faith. Turn your eyes more to the coming Light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, confidence in the ultimate victory are the things that help,—they make the progress easier and swifter.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/steps-towards-overcoming-difficulties#p28</u></span> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is a subtle law of the action of consciousness that if you stress difficulties—you have to observe them, of course, but not stress them, they will quite sufficiently do that for themselves—the difficulties tend to stick or even increase; on the contrary, if you put your whole stress on faith and aspiration and concentrate steadily on what you aspire to, that will sooner or later tend towards realisation. It is this change of stress, a change in the poise and attitude of the mind, that will be the more helpful process.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/dealing-with-depression-and-despondency#p22</u></span> <div style="color:#000000;">It is difficult to observe the difference between the action of the hostile Force and the pressure of the lower Nature because it is the latter that the Force takes hold of for its purpose. But there is in the Force a suggestive character, a conscious arrangement of the attack so as to upset or destroy the sadhana which there is not in the ordinary movement of the lower Nature—for that only comes to satisfy itself and then ceases.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-hostile-forces-and-the-difficulties-of-yoga#p35</u></div> == Overcoming  difficulty == <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If you had that observation (from the inner spiritual, not the outer intellectual and ethical viewpoint), then it would be comparatively easy for you to get out of your difficulties; for instance you would find at once where this irrational impulse to flee away came from and it would not have any hold upon you. Of course, all that can only be done to the best effect when you stand back from the play of your nature and become the Witness-Control or the Spectator-Actor Manager. But that is what happens when you take this kind of self-seeing posture.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/mental-difficulties-and-the-need-of-quietude#p23</u></span> = Other fields of Self-Observation =   == Meditation == <div style="color:#000000;">... when one comes out of meditation, some time later—usually not immediately—from within the being something new emerges in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude in life—in short, a new way of being. This may be fugitive, but at that moment, if one observes it, one finds that something has taken one step forward on the path of understanding or transformation. It may be an illumination, an understanding truer or closer to the truth, or a power of transformation which helps you to achieve a psychological progress or a widening of the consciousness or a greater control over your movements, over the activities of the being.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 5 June 1957)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p20</u></span> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The mind is always in activity, but we do not observe fully what it is doing, but allow ourselves to be carried away in the stream of continual thinking. When we try to concentrate, this stream of self-moved mechanical thinking becomes prominent to our observation. It is the first normal obstacle (the other is sleep during meditation) to the effort towards Yoga.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p30</u></span> == Dreams == Now the procedure to deal with dreams and the dreamland. First become conscious—conscious of your dreams. Observe the relation between them and the happenings of your waking hours. If you remember your night, you will be able to trace back very often the condition of your day to the condition of your night. In sleep some action or other is always going on in your mental or vital or other plane; things happen there and they govern your waking consciousness. == <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 21 April 1929)</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p6</ref>  <div style="color:#000000;">It is a tremendous field of observation—there is no end to the discoveries you can make in your dreams. But there is one important point: you must not go to sleep when you are very tired, for if you do, you fall into a sort of unconsciousness in which dreams do whatever they like with you, and you have no reaction. Just as I said that you should not eat without having taken rest, I would advise everyone to rest before going to sleep. And for that, you must know how to rest.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 1 February 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/1-february-1951#p14</ref></u></span> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">As the inner consciousness grows by sadhana, these dream experiences increase in number, clearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experience and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to understand them and their significance to our inner life. Even we can by training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our awareness and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness this kind of sleep, a sleep of experiences, can replace the ordinary subconscient slumber.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p6</ref></u></span> = Things to Remember = <div style="color:#000000;">If one begins to find out, to understand what a feeling is and what a thought is, and how it works, then one can already go quite far on the path with that. One must at the same time observe how his feelings and thoughts have an action on the body, what the reciprocity is. And then, there is another exercise which consists in looking into oneself for what is persistent, what is lasting, something which makes one say "I", and which is not the body. For obviously, when one was very small, and then when each year one grows up, if one takes fairly long distances, for example a distance of about ten years, they are very different "I"s from what one was when as small as this (gesture), and then what one is now; it is difficult to say that it is the same person, you see. If one takes only this, still there is something which has the feeling of always being the same person. So one must reflect, seek, try to understand what it is. This indeed can lead you far on the path. Then if one also studies the relation between these different things—between thoughts, feelings, their action on the body, the reciprocal action of the body on these things—and also what it is that says "I" permanently, what it is that can trace a curve in the movement of the being, if one seeks carefully enough, it leads you quite far. Naturally if one seeks far enough and with enough persistence, one reaches the psychic.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 9 March 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-march-1955#p23</u></span> = Yogic Experience = == Divine as Observer == <div style="color:#000000;">A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-surrender-in-works-the-way-of-the-gita#p6</u></div> == Purusha and Self-Observation == <div style="color:#000000;">It is ordinarily considered that the Yogin should draw away from action as much as possible and especially that too much action is a hindrance because it draws off the energies outward. To a certain extent this is true; and we must note farther that when the mental Purusha takes up the attitude of mere witness and observer, a tendency to silence, solitude, physical calm and bodily inaction grows upon the being. So long as this is not associated with inertia, incapacity or unwillingness to act, in a word, with the growth of the tamasic quality, all this is to the good.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#p7</u></div> <div style="color:#000000;">It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-divine-shakti#p9</u></div> <div style="color:#000000;">..with regard to the movements and experiences of the body the mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and their interaction upon each other.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#p4</u></div> <div style="color:#000000;">The Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native principle of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its Prakriti and there is then a division of our being between a consciousness that observes and can reserve its willpower and an energy full of the substance of consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge, will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soulby its mental nature.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-divine-shakti#p8</u></span>  == Shakti and Self-Observation == <div style="color:#000000;">"The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates... she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working...."</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 7 November 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/7-november-1956#p1</u></span> <div style="color:#000000;">It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it...It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p29</u></div>  == Evolution and Self-Observation == <div style="color:#000000;">Man is a type among many types so constructed, one pattern among the multitude of patterns in the manifestation in Matter. He is the most complex that has been created, the richest in content of consciousness and the curious ingeniousness of his building; he is the head of the earthly creation, but he does not exceed it…. If there is a perfection to which he has to arrive, it must be a perfection in his own kind, within his own law of being,—the full play of it, but by observation of its mode and measure, not by transcendence. To exceed himself, to grow into the superman, to put on the nature and capacities of a god would be a contradiction of his self-law, impracticable and impossible</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/man-and-the-evolution#p8</u></div> <div style="color:#000000;">In the animal mind is not quite distinct from its own life-matrix and life-matter; its movements are so involved in the life movements that it cannot detach itself from them, cannot stand separate and observe them; but in man mind has become separate, he can become aware of his mental operations as distinct from his life operations, his thought and will can disengage them selves from his sensations and impulses, desires and emotional reactions, can become detached from them, observe and control them, sanction or cancel their functioning: he does not as yet know the secrets of his being well enough to be aware of himself decisively and with certitude as a mental being in a life and body, but he has that impression and can take inwardly that position.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-evolution-of-the-spiritual-man#p6</u></div> == Chitta and Self-Observation == <div style="color:#000000;">Chitta, the basic consciousness, is largely subconscient; it has, open and hidden, two kinds of action, one passive or receptive, the other active or reactive and formative. As a passive power it receives all impacts, even those of which the mind is unaware or to which it is inattentive, and it stores them in an immense reserve of passive subconscient memory on which the mind as an active memory can draw.But ordinarily the mind draws only what it had observed and understood at the time,—more easily what it had observed well and understood carefully, less easily what it had observed carelessly or ill understood; at the same time there is a power in consciousness to send up to the active mind for use what that mind had not at all observed or attended to or even consciously experienced. This power only acts observably in abnormal conditions, when some part of the subconscious chitta comes as it were to the surface or when the subliminal being in us appears on the threshold and for a time plays some part in the outer chamber of mentality where the direct intercourse and commerce with the external world takes place and our inner dealings with ourselves develop on the surface.</div> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-instruments-of-the-spirit#p6</u></span> = Practice of Self-Observation =   <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Take one hour of your life, the one which is most convenient for you, and during that time observe yourself closely and say only the absolutely indispensable words.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/anger#p15 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/anger#p15]  <div style="color:#000000;">There are four movements which are usually consecutive, but which in the end may be simultaneous: to observe one's thoughts is the first, to watch over one's thoughts is the second, to control one's thoughts is the third and to master one's thoughts is the fourth. To observe, to watch over, to control, to master. </div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p7</u></div> == Going Within == <div style="color:#000000;">When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended without our knowing it towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made,—not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals.</div> <div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p33</u></div> == Positive Attitude == <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To become conscious of what is to be changed in the nature is the first step towards changing it. But one must observe these things without being despondent or thinking "it is hopeless" or "I cannot change". You do right to be confident that the change will come. For nothing is impossible in the nature if the psychic being is awake and leading you with the Mother's consciousness and force behind it and working in you. This is now happening. Be sure that all will be done.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p53</u></span> <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Despair and despondency are always wrong. If you make a mistake, quietly observe it and correct the tendency next time. Even if the mistake recurs often, you have only to persevere quietly—remembering that nature cannot be changed in a day.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/depression-and-despondency#p67</u></span>
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