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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;"><u>discernment follows. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0503/2930-julyjune-19531929#p47p7</ref></u></span>
<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><div styleObserve ="color:#000000;">(The Mother,22 September 1954)</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p43</ref></u></div>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It 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 not comparatively blind!―or by observing those of others. And in a physical retirement that is neededmore general way, this preparation will be based on recognised studies, but an inner detachment from the mental formations and vital desireson clear facts. To find the real self above and within and live in Like this, for instance: thata certain number of persons, not placed in the mind's conceptions or the vital's reactionsexactly similar circumstances, experience, each one of them, very different effects. These must be observed and looked at not as one's own but as movements One may go even further: in a given set of definite circumstances, there is a surface ignorant naturecertain number of particular, definite individuals, in apparently quite identical conditions, and for some the effects are catastrophic, while others escape without any harm.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3108/interactions-with4-othersjuly-and-the-practice-of-yoga1956#p111p15</ref></u></span>
= Conditions for Self-Observation ='''Parts of the Being '''
== Quiet Mind ==Have 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 is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discover. But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in 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 otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/10-june-1953#p31</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">It is only when we follow '''Observing the yogic process of quieting the mind itself that a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible.</div><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/indeterminates-cosmic-determinations-and-the-indeterminable#p12</ref></u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in the quiet mind that the true observation and knowledge come.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p40</ref></u></span>Inner Being'''
<span style="backgroundFor 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-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts or mental movements at alland feelings, the sources and motives of our action, but the operative energies that these will be on the build up our surface personality. For we discover and you will feel your true can know the inner being within separate from themthat secretly thinks and perceives in us, observing but not carried awaythe vital being that secretly feels and acts upon life through us, able to watch and judge them and reject all the subtle-physical being that has to be rejected secretly receives and responds to accept the contacts of things through our body and keep to all that its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is true consciousness a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within and true experience.</span><span style="background-color:transparentimpacts from outside us;colorour reason, our organising intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order:#0066cc;"><u>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/2921/peaceknowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p10p12</ref></u></span>
<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, and little by little distinguishing between different categories '''The Three Modes of things. You will be able to know what one thing is and what another etc., whether it comes from you or from outside, whether it is on a material plane or on another plane. All this is learnt through a very quiet observation, quiet but very sharp, you understand; because 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 is.</div><div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother,20 October 1954)</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p46</ref></u></div>Nature'''
== Silence ==The 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-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 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-three-modes-of-nature#p2</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76</ref></u></span>'''Dreams'''
<div style="color:#000000;">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.You must If you remember your night, you will be able to silence trace back very often the condition of your head absolutely and be completely detached, not day to have (for example, when you are looking for the solution condition of a problem), not to have already in your head the solution that seems to you right night. In sleep some action or the best or most profitable. That must not be there. You must become absolutely like a blank paper, with nothing other is always going 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 your mental or vital or like thatother plane; because otherwise you will see only things happen there and they govern your own formationwaking consciousness. The very first condition is that the head must keep completely silent during the time one is observing<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p6</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 30 September 1953)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p13</ref></u></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To silence It is a tremendous field of observation—there is no end to the mind it discoveries you can make in your dreams. But there is one important point: you must not enough go to throw back each thought as it comessleep when you are very tired, that can only be a subordinate movement. One must get back from all thought and be separate from itfor if you do, you fall into a silent consciousness observing the thoughts if sort of unconsciousness in which dreams do whatever they comelike with you, but and you have no reaction. Just as I said that you should not oneself thinking or </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">identified with the thoughtseat without having taken rest, I would advise everyone to rest before going to sleep. Thoughts And for that, you must be felt as outside things altogether. It is then easier know how to reject thoughts or let them pass without their disturbing the quietude of the mindrest.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3115/interactions1-with-others-and-the-practice-offebruary-yoga1951#p99p14</ref>
= Right Attitude for Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
== Witness Attitude ==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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p6</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:[[#000000;">(The Mother,13 October 1954)</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/13-october-1954#p2</ref>top|Back to Contents]]
= Why is Self-Observation Important? =
<div style="color:#000000;">It has been seen that a most effective way ...if he [man] is not to remain this being of purification is for the mental Purusha to draw backsurface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, to stand as the passive witness small limited and observe 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 workings 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 in . 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 lower, material front of the normal beinguniverse. ...But this knowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic revelation; but this his thinking mind must be combined, for perfectionable to accept it, to correlate it with a will to raise the purified nature into principle of things and the observed truth of the higher spiritual being. When that universe: this is donethe work of philosophy, and in the field of the Purusha is no longer truth of the spirit it can only be done by a witnessspiritual philosophy, but also the master of his prakriti, īśvarawhether intellectual in its method or intuitive.</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2409/the-action18-ofjune-the-divine-shakti1958#p7p3</ref></u></div>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>The 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, our soul of life one with the universal Life-soul, our soul of body one with the universal soul of physical Nature.~</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-perfection-of-the-mental-being#p15</ref></u></divcenter>
== Being Sincere To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and Impartial ==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>
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-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 Mother What, I was like that! This was there in me,12 November 1952)</span><span style=I am harbouring this little thing"background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;—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, "><u>Oh! I shall never get there. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1504/1219-novemberapril-19521951#p6p14</ref></u></span>
== Being Vigilant ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">One can be quiet, happy, cheerful without being all If you had that in a light or shallow way—and observation (from the happiness need inner spiritual, not bring any vital reaction. All that the outer intellectual and ethical viewpoint), then it would be comparatively easy for you need to do is get out of your difficulties; for instance you would find at once where this irrational impulse to be observant flee away came from and vigilantit would not have any hold upon you. Of course,—watchful so all that you may not give assent can only be done to wrong movements or the return of the old feelings, darkness, confusion etc. Not fear, but vigilance. If best effect when you remain vigilant, then with stand back from the increase play of your nature and become the Force upholding Witness-Control or the Spectator-Actor Manager. But that is what happens when you, a power take this kind of self-control will come, a power to see seeing posture. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/mental-difficulties-and reject -the wrong turn or the wrong reaction when it comes.-need-of-quietude#p23</divref>
<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/fear#p12~</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But you have only to observe yourselves... you can observe yourselfThe true and ultimate, catch yourself at least a hundred times a day, with a mind which decides everythingas distinguished from the immediate or intermediate importance of our observing, knows everythingreasoning, judges everythinginquiring, knows very well what is good, what bad, what is true, what false, what judging intelligence is that it prepares the human being for the right reception and rightaction of a Light from above which must progressively replace in him the obscure light from below that guides the animal. ... And also how one should actMan can bring an enlightened will, what this person should have done, how an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to resolve that problemthese more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire.... All men knowIn proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, you seehe is man and no longer an animal... If they were at When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the head of governmentsInfinite, for instanceconsciously subject to a diviner will than his own, they would know very well how linked to manage everything! But people don't listen to them... that's all!</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mothera more universal and transcendent knowledge,21 July 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparenthe has commenced the ascent towards the superman;color:#0066cc;"><u>he is on his upward march towards the Divine.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0623/21-julyself-1954consecration#p40p17</ref></u></span>
== Becoming Aware of Desire =How to Observe Oneself? =
<div style="color:#000000;">For that But you must observe yourself begin when verysmall, and consciously, very attentively, and if there is anything in consciously; you which produces something like must begin with a small intense vibrationsense of observation of all the movements in yourself, of their relation with others, then you may be sure that there lies a desire. For exampleof—precisely, you sayof your degree of independence, "This food is necessary for me"—you believereal individuality, you imagineof knowing where impulses come from, you think that you need such and such a thing and you find the necessary means to obtain the thing. To know if where other movements come from: whether it is a need contagion from outside or a desire, you must look at something that arises from within yourself . A very closely and ask yourself, "What will happen if I cannot get profound study of all the thing?" Then if the immediate answer movements in oneself 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 necessary in order to have the thing?" If at that moment something succeed simply in you jumps up with joy, you may be certain there crystallising a being who is a desire. On the other hand, if something tells you, "Oh, I am not going to get it"little conscious, and you feel very depressed, then again it is a desirelittle conscious.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p43</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 25 January 1951)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/25-january-1951#p3</refcenter>
You 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: 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....". <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/29-july-1953#p47</ref>
== Becoming Conscious ==<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">But a time comes when instead of doing things automaticallyIf one begins to find out, impelled by to understand what a consciousness feeling is and force of which one what a thought is quite unaware—a time comes when , and how it works, then one can observe what goes already go quite far on in oneself, study one's movements, find their causes, and the path with that. One must at the same time begin to observe how his feelings and thoughts have an action on the body, what the reciprocity is. And then, there is another exercise a control first over which consists in looking into oneself for what is persistent, what goes on within usis lasting, then on the influence cast on us from outside something which makes us actone say "I", in and which is not the beginning altogether unconsciously body. For obviously, when one was very small, and almost involuntarilythen 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), but gradually more and more consciouslythen what one is now; and it is difficult to say that it is the will can wake up and reactsame person, you see. Then at that momentIf one takes only this, the moment still there is a conscious will capable something which has the feeling of reactingalways 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 may sayalso 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 have become conscious." This does not mean that permanently, what it is a total and perfect consciousness, it means that it is can trace a beginning: for example, when one is able to observe all curve in the movement of the reactions in one's being and to have a certain control over them, to let those if one approves of have playseeks carefully enough, it leads you quite far. Naturally if one seeks far enough and to controlwith enough persistence, stop, annul those one doesn't approve ofreaches the psychic. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-march-1955#p23</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 28 November 1956)~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>It is not a physical retirement that is needed, but an inner detachment from the mental formations and vital desires. To find the real self above and within and live in that, not 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.in/cwmcwsa/0831/28interactions-with-others-and-the-novemberpractice-1956of-yoga#p19p111</ref></u></div>
= Limitations of Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
== Surface Level Observation ==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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p33</ref>
<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 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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p3</ref></u></span>By Vigilance ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is evident One can be quiet, happy, cheerful without being all that our state on in a light or shallow way—and the surface happiness need not bring any vital reaction. All that you need to do 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 observant and surface observation with only an indirect means of cognition at its disposal; our knowledge of ourselvesvigilant, though more direct, is stultified by its restriction —watchful so that you may not give assent to wrong movements or the surface return of our beingthe old feelings, by an ignorance of our true selfdarkness, the true sources of our natureconfusion etc. Not fear, the true motive-forces of our </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">actionbut vigilance. It is quite evident that we know ourselves If you remain vigilant, then with only a superficial knowledge,—the sources the increase of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true nature of our mind, emotionsForce upholding you, sensations is a mystery; our cause power of being and our end of beingself-control will come, the significance of our life and its activities are a mystery: this could not be if we had a real self-knowledge power to see and a real world-knowledgereject the wrong turn or the wrong reaction when it comes.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledgefear#p7p12</ref></u></span>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>One 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.~</div><div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother , 20 June 1956)</div><div style="color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p49</ref></u></divcenter>
== Ignorance ==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>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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 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 the present, putting it away in the past which again appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence partly lighted, partly saved and stored up by memory, he puts on the aspect of a thing fleeting and uncertain seizing without stability upon things fleeting and uncertain. But in reality, we shall find, he is always the same Eternal who is for ever stable and self-possessed in His supramental knowledge and what he seizes on is also for ever stable and eternal; for it is himself that he is mentally experiencing in the succession of Time.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p15</ref></u></spancenter>
== Observing Invisible Forces ==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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/28-november-1956#p19</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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.~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2103/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shaktianger#p7p15</ref></u></div>
= Personality and Self-Observation = By Developing a Quiet Mind ==
== Three Guna’s It is only when we follow the yogic process of quieting the mind itself that a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/indeterminates-cosmic-determinations-and Self-Observation ==the-indeterminable#p12</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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 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 the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, 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 to 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 these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge.~</spancenter>
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. <div style="color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2329/the-three-modes-of-naturepeace#p13</u>p10</divref>
<center>~</center>
= Parts 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 Planes of to master one's thoughts is the Being =fourth. To observe, to watch over, to control, to master. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p7</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Have 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 is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discover. But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in 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 otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother What happens usually is that something touches the vital, often without one's knowing it, and brings up the old ordinary or external consciousness in such a way that the inner mind gets covered up and all the old thoughts and feelings return for a time. It is the physical mind that becomes active and gives its assent. If the whole mind remains quiet and detached observing the vital movement, but not giving its assent, 10 June 1953)then to reject it becomes more easy. This established quietude and detachment of the mind marks always a great step forward made in the sadhana. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0531/10the-junevital-1953and-other-levels-of-being#p31</u>p45</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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 ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p5</u></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">….You may have a mental power of observationBut if you remain very quiet, a vital power of observationonly if you observe—as though you were silently looking at something, a physical power of observation. When you observe ideasunderstand—then you will begin seeing more precisely, for instance, the train and little by little distinguishing between different categories of ideasthings. You will be able to know what one thing is and what another etc., the logic of the ideaswhether it comes from you or from outside, whether it is not altogether the same power of observation as when you look at on a friend doing athletics and see whether he is making his movements correctly material plane or noton another plane. That All this islearnt through a very quiet observation, quiet but very sharp, the capacity of attention is you understand; because there in both casesare very tiny shades, very tiny, but it works in a between 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 isthings, 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 itwhen you get used to distinguishing these nuances, what we call "discrimination": you can distinguish between the origin of one thing and of another, and the reciprocal value of these thingsdiscern exactly what it is. But that ought to be founded on a correct observation. The power of observation comes first, discernment follows<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p46</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 27 January 1954)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/27-january-1954#p34</u></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">For a larger mental being It is really an inner silence that is there needed—a something silent within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, that looks at outer talk and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with action but feels itas something superficial, we can observe the springs of our thoughts not as itself and feelings, the sources is quite indifferent and motives of our action, the operative energies that build up our surface personalityuntouched by it. For we discover and It 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 bring forces to the contacts of things through our body support speech 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 action or it can impose on stop them by withdrawal or 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 let them go on and their interplay observe without being involved or moved. <ref>http://incarnateword.in a clear light of self/cwsa/31/speech-vision.and-yoga#p76</divref>
[http:<center>~<//incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p12 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p12]center>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p13</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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.~</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>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p23</u></div>= By Developing the Witness Attitude ==
== 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 Parts also a very precise sense of the value of Being ==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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/13-october-1954#p2</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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 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.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The MotherA 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, 22 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">but it can be done by all. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0430/22inner-detachment-marchand-1951#p6</u></span><span style="backgroundthe-witness-color:transparent;color:attitude#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 of the mind, more or less enlightened, in a little closer contact with the inner being, which observes and judges.p</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 22 March 1951)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p7</u></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A man with a very developed introspective mind often identifies himself with the witness part of his mind 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 his own thoughts how they work and studies their naturehow they affect you. That The part that observes and knows is a beginning which makes it easy for called the full detachment to comeWitness sākṣī in man. For others it It is less easy, but it can be done by allalways possible to develop this in oneself.</spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p http:p25<//incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p]ref>
== By Sincerity and Impartiality ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You have must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to become conscious—that is do or that you are to saydo, there must be something in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you which away from the right track. It is not carried away by thoughts 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 feelingssay, but looks at them "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for me." Neither vanity and observes how they work arrogance nor self-depreciation and how they affect false modesty should move you. The part As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that observes reflects the truth and knows is called the Witness sākṣī in man. It is always possible to develop this in oneselfdoes not judge.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3015/inner12-detachmentnovember-and-the-witness-attitude1952#p25</u>p6</spanref>
== Psychic Being ==<center>~</center>
<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 sufficientlyyou observe yourself, he can you will see that the things he understood and could as soon as you do at that time are things something which seem to him absolutely inconceivable nowdisturbs you a little, and that he could never do the mind immediately gives you a similar thing because he favourable reason to justify yourself—this mind is no longer that person at allcapable of gilding everything. And yet, because within there was the psychic consciousness which is immortal, one has the feeling that In these conditions it is always the same being which was there and continues difficult to know oneself. One must be there and will continue absolutely sincere to be there with more or less progressive able to do it and more or less conscious changesto see clearly into all the little falsehoods of the mental being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p3</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 29 June 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/29-june-1955#p28</u></span>By Becoming Aware of Desire ==
<div style="color:#000000;">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 For thatyou must observe yourself very, thinkingvery attentively, in joy or in sorrow etc." The first beginning of real self-knowledge and if there is when you feel yourself separate from the nature anything in you and its movements and which produces something like a small intense vibration, then you see may be sure that there are many parts of your beinglies a desire. For example, many personalities each acting on its own behalf and in its own way. The two different beings you feel are—onesay, "This food is necessary for me"—you believe, the psychic being which draws you towards the Motherimagine, the other the external being mostly vital which draws you outward think that you need such and downwards towards such a thing and you find the play of necessary means to obtain the lower naturething. There To know if it is also in a need or a desire, you behind must look at yourself very closely and ask yourself, "What will happen if I cannot get the mind thing?" Then if the being who observesimmediate answer is, "Oh, it will be very bad", you may be sure that it is a matter of desire. It is the witness Purushasame for everything. For every problem you draw back, who can stand detached from look at yourself and ask, "Let us see, am I going to have the play of thing?" If at that moment something in you jumps up with joy, you may be certain there is a desire. On the natureother hand, observing if something tells you, "Oh, I am not going to get it ", and able to chooseyou feel very depressed, then again it is a desire. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/25-january-1951#p3</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p84</ucenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The actions are of importance only as expressing what 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 in the naturegenerally desire. You have This desire ought to be conscious replaced by a clear, precise, constant vision 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 undesirableTruth.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2904/work21-anddecember-yoga1950#p45</u>p7</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct and luminous way by the very purity =By Education of its own nature and the divine instinct within it, and so, whenever it comes to the front it reveals at once what are the right and what the wrong movements in your nature.</span><span styleSenses=="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-jivatman-in-the-integral-yoga#p40</u></span>
== Mind 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 Selfknowledge. 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/31-Observation ==march-1954#p13</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Gradually, as the action is prolonged and the outer being begins to assimilate this action, there awakens a capacity of observation, first in the mental consciousness, and a kind of objectivisation occurs: something in the mind looks on, observes and translates in its own way. This is what you call understanding, and this is what gives you the impression (smiling) that you are having an experience. But that is already considerably diminished in comparison with the experience itself, it is a transcription adapted to your mental, vital and physical dimension, that is, something that is shrunken, hardened—and it gives you at the same time the impression that it is growing clearer; that is to say, it has become as limited as your understanding.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Motherchild 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, 31 October 1956)</span><span style="his instincts of possession and appropriation and domination and the background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">of vanity which supports them, together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and despair. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0812/31-october-1956#p19</u></span><span style="backgroundvital-color:transparent;color:education#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. p14</spanref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-ego-and-self-experience#p5</ucenter>~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;">So the man The indispensable starting-point is a detailed and discerning observation of real merit or the more civilised man has character to be transformed. In most cases, that itself is a difficult and often a whole mental construction to very baffling task. But there is one fact which the old traditions knew and which he must conform can serve as the clue in order to be the labyrinth of inner discovery. It is that everyone possesses in harmony with a large measure, and the ideal exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of the environment character, in almost equal proportions, which he livesare like the light and the shadow of the same thing. But Thus someone who does not conform at least to has the smallest part capacity of this construction would being exceptionally generous will suddenly find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be considered a savage coward in some part of his being and would be thrown out of the society immediatelygood man will suddenly have wicked impulses. In factthis way life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, people who are criminals or half-mad are those who obey their impulses without any mental control. There isn't but also with contrary elements representing in a single person among you who gives way without control 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 impulses contrary, those that get hold express the shadow. If the circumstances and the environment are favourable, the light will grow at the expense of himthe shadow; otherwise the opposite will happen. You have only And in this way the individual's character will crystallise according to observe yourselves livingthe whims of Nature and the determinisms of material and vital life, you spend your unless a higher element comes in in time saying, "Noa conscious will which, this I can't do"refusing to allow Nature to follow her whimsical ways, or "This I can", or in restraining one movement or encouraging anotherwill replace them by a logical and clear-sighted discipline. This conscious will is mental controlwhat we mean by a rational method of education. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p6</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother , 15 September 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/15-september-1954#p9</u></span>How to Observe Thoughts==
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p3</ref>
== Vital and Self-Observation ==<center>~</center>
<span style="backgroundThoughts are not the essence of mind-color:transparentbeing, they are only an activity of mental nature;color:#000000;">What happens usually if that activity ceases, what appears then as a thought-free existence that manifests in its place is that not a blank or void but something touches the vitalvery real, often without one's knowing itsubstantial, concrete we may say—a mental being that extends itself widely and brings up can be its own field of existence silent or active as well as the old ordinary or external consciousness in such a way Witness, Knower, Master of that the inner mind gets covered up field and all the old thoughts and feelings return for its action. Some feel it first as a time. It void, but that is because their observation is the physical mind that becomes active untrained and insufficient and loss of activity gives its assent. If them the whole mind remains quiet and detached observing the vital movementsense of blank; an emptiness there is, but not giving its assent, then to reject it becomes more easy. This established quietude and detachment is an emptiness of the mind marks always ordinary activities, not a great </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">step forward made in the sadhanablank of existence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3130/thethree-vitalexperiences-andof-otherthe-levels-ofinner-being#p45</u>p3</spanref>
<center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">After each crisis there It is something gainedonly gradually, very slowly, if there has been through the movements of life and a victory more or less careful and rejectionthorough education that you begin to have sensations which are personal to you, feelings and ideas which are personal to you. The gain An individualised mind is to externalise the vital disturbancesomething extremely rare, so that even if which comes only after a long education; otherwise it returns it will be felt so much an outside force is a kind of thought-current passing through your brain and then through another's and then through a multitude 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 the observing consciousness (mentalin a great mixture, because these are currents, higher vital) cannot be disturbedvibrations of thought passing from one to another. If you keep look at yourself attentively, you will very quickly become aware thatvery few thoughts in you are personal. Where do you draw them from?—From what you have heard, from what you have read, it will be an immense advancewhat 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.</spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3109/wrong20-movementsfebruary-of-the-vital1957#p68 http:p6<//incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/wrong-movements-of-the-vital#p68]ref>
<center>~</center>
== Physical 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, 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 in these voices, keep the mind quiet. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and Self-Observation ==knowledge#p5</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;">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, Difficulties 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>Self-Observation=
<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 is an inert tamasic passivity subject to any influence and unable to react, then it is subjection to Nature. If it is a sattwic passivity of the Witness observing and understanding the movements Danger of Nature, then it is an intermediate condition, often necessary for knowledge. If it is a luminous passivity open to the Divine, shut to all other influences, then it is not subjection to Nature but surrender to the Divine.</span><span styleEgo="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p24</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For the giddiness, it may be that in concentration you go partly out of your body; then, if you get up and move before the whole consciousness has come back, there is just such a giddiness as you describe. You can observe in future and see whether it is not this that happens. One has to be careful not to move after deep concentration or trance, till there is the full consciousness in the body.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p59</u></span>
= Consciousness 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!" 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 Selfall 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 any need to move, one dreams. ...Under a tree, arms crossed, one leaves 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 the Divine, it is at the service of the ego, and when the ego is taken away, it does nothing any longer. 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. (The Mother, 5 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-april-Observation =1951#p14</ref>
<center>~</center>
...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>
<div style="color:#000000;">Your consciousness becomes a screen or mirror; but this is when you are in a state of contemplation, 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.</div>= Escape attitude ==
<span style="background-colorConstantly 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:transparentto make a lot of noise, to commit many stupidities, and become terribly restless;color:#000000;">(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 Mothermore boring one is, 30 June 1929)the more one is bored. Very interesting people usually are not bored. </spanref>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0307/3026-junejanuary-19291955#p7 http:p14<//incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7]ref>
==Focusing on the Negative==
<div style="color:#000000;">However, if one observes things a little deeply, one perceives that there is progress, that things become better To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and better, though apparently they do not improvediscourages the faith. And for a consciousness seated a little higher, it is quite evident that all evil—at least what we call evil—all falsehood, all that is contrary Turn your eyes more to the Truthcoming Light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, all sufferingcheerfulness, all opposition is confidence in the ultimate victory are the result of a disequilibrium. I believe that one who is habituated to seeing things from this higher plane sees immediately that it is like thathelp,—they make the progress easier and swifter. <ref>http://incarnateword. in/cwsa/31/steps-towards-overcoming-difficulties#p28</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 8 January 1951)~</divcenter>
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. <div style="color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0430/8the-januarydanger-1951of-the-ego-and-the-need-of-purification#p13</u>p14</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 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and Self-Observation =yoga#p53</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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.~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p3 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p3]
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>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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 thought-current passing through your brain and then through another's and then through a multitude 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.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparentIt 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;color:#000000;">(The Motheron 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, 20 February 1957)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">that will be the more helpful process. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0931/20dealing-with-depression-februaryand-1957despondency#p6</u>p22</spanref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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></span>Surface Level Observation==
<div style="color:#000000;">...when undesirable thoughts comeAs a general rule, if you look at themwith a few very rare exceptions, men are content to observe more or less accurately everything that happens around them, if you take pleasure in following them in their movementsand sometimes within themselves, and to classify all these observations according to one superficial system of logic or another. And they will never stop comingcall this organisation, these systems, "knowledge". It is the same thing when you have undesirable feelings or sensation: if you pay attention has never occurred to them, concentrate on them or they have not even look at them with a certain indulgencebegun to perceive that all the things they see, touch, feel, they will never stop. But if you absolutely refuse to receive and express themexperience, after some time they stop. You must be patient are false appearances and very persistentnot reality itself.</div>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000[Based on Aphorism 7—What men call knowledge is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees. Reason divides, fixes details and contrasts them;">(The Mother Wisdom unifies, 22 September 1954)marries contrasts in a single harmony].</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0610/22-septemberaphorism-19547#p19</u>p3</spanref>
<center>~</center>
<div style="color:#000000;">Most people—and not only those who are uneducated It is evident that our state on the surface is indeed a state of knowledge, so far as it goes, but even the wella 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-read—can have ignorance. It could not be otherwise since our awareness of the most contradictoryworld 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 most opposite ideas in their heads without even surface of our being aware , by an ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the contradictions…true motive-forces of our action.And if you observe yourself, you will see It is quite evident that you have many ideas which ought to be linked by we know ourselves with only a sequence superficial knowledge,—the sources of intermediate ideas which our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the result true nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a considerable widening mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the thought if they significance of our life and its activities are a mystery: this could not to coexist be if we had a real self-knowledge and a real world-knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in an absurd way./cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p7</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]
One 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-june-1956#p49</ref>
<div style="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 (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.</div>=Observing Invisible Forces==
<div style="colorIf 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:#0066ccsome 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. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3121/thoughtbrahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-andprakriti-knowledgeshakti#p3</u>p7</divref>
<span style="backgroundSelf Observation -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, to make the mind free and quiet and open only to the divine light, force, knowledge and the presence Exploring Realms 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 in these voices, keep the mind quiet.</span><span styleConsciousness="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p5</u></span>
= Sense 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 Self Observation =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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/man-and-the-evolution#p8</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]
...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 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/29-june-1955#p28</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 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, 31 March 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparentget within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded;color:#0066cc;">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. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0621/31brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-marchprakriti-1954shakti#p13</u>p23</spanref>
= Education <center>~</center> In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and Selffree from the lower Prakriti, not 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 the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, 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 to 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 these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-three-modes-of-Observation =nature#p13</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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 ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p6</u></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;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...The child must be taught to observe, to note his reactions she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and impulses enter into worlds or other regions of this world and their causesact there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, to become feeling the body only as a discerning witness small part of his desiresitself, his movements of violence and passion, his instincts of possession 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 appropriation directly and domination not merely by external observation and contact the background of vanity which supports forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon themas the scientist operates upon physical forces, together with accept their counterparts of weaknessaction and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, discouragementreshape, depression 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 despairto know how our thoughts are created by that working....</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1208/vital7-november-education1956#p14</u>p1</spanref>
= Results of Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p29</ref>
==How to be in a Witness State?==
<div style="color:#000000It is difficult to say generally what is conscious;">If you observe yourself attentivelybut naturally, you will see that before acting you need an inner impetusif something observes, it is always the "witness" element in this part—in each part of the being there is something which pushes youis a "witness", which looks on. In There is even a physical witness which can get very much in the ordinary man way; for instance, if it watches you playing, this impetus can paralyse you considerably. There is generally desirealso a vital witness which looks at you, sees your desires and enjoys highly all that happens; it acts also as a brake. There is the mental witness which judges ideas, which says, "This desire ought to be replaced by a clearidea contradicts this other", preciseand which arranges everything. Then there is the great psychic Witness, constant vision of who is the Truthinner divinity.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p6</divref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother , 21 December 1950)~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-december-1950#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-december-1950#p7]
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>If you observe yourself, you will see that as soon as you do something which disturbs you a little, the mind immediately gives you a favourable reason to justify yourself—this mind is capable of gilding everything. In these conditions it is difficult to know oneself. One must be absolutely sincere to be able to do it and to see clearly into all the little falsehoods of the mental being.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Motherwitness 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, 15 January 1951)</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/0424/15the-perfection-of-the-januarymental-1951being#p3</u>p15</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>… 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; one undertakes a sort of inner chase, goes hunting into small dark corners and tells oneself: "What, 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, "Oh! I shall never get there.~</divcenter>
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 style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#000000;">(The Mother, 19 April 1951)p7</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-april-1951#p14</ucenter>~</divcenter>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-divine-shakti#p9</ref>
= Difficulties during Self-Observation =<center>~</center>
== Danger ...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 Ego ==-body#p4</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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!" 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 any need to move, one dreams.... Under a tree, arms crossed, one leaves 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 the Divine, it is at the service of the ego, and when the ego is taken away, it does nothing any longer. 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.~</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,5 April 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">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. <uref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0424/5the-aprildivine-1951shakti#p14</u>p8</spanref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>...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. ~</divcenter>
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. <div style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/work-and-yoga#000000;">(The Mother , 26 April 1951)p45</divref>
[http:<center>~<//incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p35 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p35]center>
The mental being within watches, observes and passes judgment on all that happens in you. The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct and luminous way by the very purity of its own nature and the divine instinct within it, and so, whenever it comes to the 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</ref>
<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]
'''Content curated by Aditi Kaul'''
== <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{|class="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;wikitable">(The Mother , 26 January 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent#efefff;colorwidth:#0066cc100%;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/26-january-1955#p14</u></span>|Read Summary of '''[[Self Observation Summary|Self Observation]]'''
== Focusing on Dear reader, if you notice any error in the Negative ==paragraph numbers in the hyperlinks, please let us know by dropping an email at integral.edu.in@gmail.com|}
<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 styleReferences ="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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