Skip to Content

Knowledge, Subconscious Knowledge

(21)      Knowledge of experience is unconscious knowledge of the physical.

The body works by movement. The work generates knowledge of the movement. It can be organised into one skill like walking, ploughing, talking, etc. It does not organise itself into such a skill necessarily by itself as the plane of physicality is infinite - every plane is infinite too - and such an organisation would not take place until it is saturated. Such saturation is not in sight in view of the infinity of the plane. There needs to be a conscious direction to limit the field of action and turn it into an organisation. It is social aspiration that awakes in Man that gives such a direction. The direction gives a limitation. That limited area gets saturated. Once the plane is saturated, the energy has the intensity to be organised. There is a Mind in the body which, later, in our classification we call No.7. The merest body is numbered 9 and its initial emotion No.8. The live physical organism is 9 which is incapable of emotion or sensation. Naturally it has no mental discrimination. Organisation belongs to mind. For a skill to be organised out of energy that senses, a mental faculty is needed. As a newborn, No.9 lives. By long living it begins to sense and moves ahead in the scale of evolution. Centuries of living at the level of 8 give birth to a little Mind there. Mind is light, it is discrimination but Mind is mainly an organiser. The enormous flow of energy that is living which can now sense too is channeled into a physical skill of say running. This part is the mental part of the physical we have labeled as No.7. This is the maximum the physical can grow to. In our scheme we divide Man into 9 parts, i.e. the mental, vital and physical planes are subdivided into mental vital, mental physical, mental mental, vital mental, vital vital, vital physical, physical mental, physical vital, physical physical. No.7 is in relation with No.1 the pure mental in the mental plane where concepts are formed. It is there Man's true knowledge is born.

  • The physical movements give birth to sensations and physical knowledge.
  • It is organised at point No.7.
  • Physical knowledge is skill.
  • Skill is energy organised into a pattern that can be repeated ad infinitum.
  • Skill formation required the physical mind organising by repetition the physical energy which flows constantly through the physical plane.
  • It becomes mental knowledge only when it reaches No.1.

(19)      The knowledge of experience is subconscious knowledge of the physical.

Experience is by doing not necessarily learning theoretically. Experience is the knowledge gained by the physical by doing a work. Learning can be through experience or by a mental exercise of thinking or observing. The word subconscious implies another concept of super- conscious. Man is in the middle with a limited, well defined, narrow vision arising out of his focus. Actually, he is a being extending from the subconscious to the superconscious. Only that his vision limits his action to the human range. Physically man sees the world by his eyes up to the range of his vision, hears with his ears in the range of his earshot. But there is a wide world beyond his touch, smell, taste, hearing and seeing. This is the world he can know by his Mind.      

  • His mental world is narrowed by his senses to a short radius.
  • Scientific tools have extended the range of his physical senses.
  • The subconscious and superconscious are out of the range of his senses and out of the range of his scientific tools.

The subconscious is an ocean even as the superconscious is. The physical is more in touch with the subconscious. Experience of any work first fills up the ocean of the subconscious. Only when the subconscious is saturated and overflows, does the conscious come into the scene of operation. The conscious is the Mental. A baby talks between 1 and 3 years of age. Before it utters any word, the baby listens to that word a few thousand times. Its own sub- conscious mind has already inherited the essence of that word, though it is in the sub-conscious. That essence is further fortified by continuous listening till the articulated word arises in the conscious mind for the baby to fully recognise it. From mental recognition there is a distance to be traveled to the verbal articulation. The distance is great. All knowledge received through an experience is thus stored in the subconscious waiting to mature by volume and quality.

In the Theory of Social Development our basis, in truth, one of our bases is this above principle.

  • Knowledge physically gathered by experience accumulates in the subconscious.
  • It emerges in the conscious mind on the saturation of the subconscious.
  • Mind is not in touch with the superconscious. Only the Spirit is.
  • Mind receives in its conscious possession the knowledge that matures in the subconscious.

(18)      The collective social knowledge moves from experience to comprehension.

Experience is subconscious.

Comprehension is conscious.

In the above statement, there are two parts. 1. From the subconscious experience of the society to the conscious comprehension of the Individual. 2. From the subconscious experience of the society to the conscious comprehension of the entire society. The one is the first step and the other is the last step. In a scientific discovery a scientist finds the principle of telephone. From the principle he moves to create the instrument. The discovery is complete in essence, in itself. Then an industrialist produces it in vast quantities. The society slowly accepts the new invention. Over decades a time comes when there is no house without a telephone.

The knowledge of the scientist is the knowledge of the principle and the tool. The knowledge of the society, in the beginning, is the knowledge of the use of the tool with or without the knowledge of the principle or its construction. With education spreading the knowledge of the principle gradually spreads to the entire society. Even though the knowledge of constructing a phone is not necessary for its use, the social consciousness matures at a later time to the point when anyone who wants to learn the process can easily learn it. In essence society has that knowledge.

A discoverer finding the principle of communication through wires is preceded by the social, subconscious observation of natural phenomena that could lead to that discovery.

From experience to comprehension is from the body to the mind. The body itself has a mind. The mind itself has a body in the brain. The mind of the body is denoted as No.7. The body of the mind is denoted as No.3. Actually No.1 is the pure mind, the mental part of the Mind proper. Experience of the body accumulates in No.7 as skill and capacity. On its saturation and maturity it reaches No.3. which is an organiser, par excellence for human execution. No.3 having received the experience of No.7 and executed it by its decision and determination having first organised it on the mental plane as comprehension completes one stage of progress of knowledge. Now the experience and knowledge of the subconscious body has reached the conscious mind. Here the knowledge is interwoven with the experience, not abstract, general knowledge that can be called comprehension, a comprehension of concepts. This is the process of the formation of concepts in No.1. For that the knowledge-experience moves to No.2 where it sheds its action part and retains the part of sensation. No. 2 further moving to No.1 sheds even the sensational part leaving the concept material unencumbered by sensations or actions. Now the process of experience becoming comprehension is detailed.

(10)      All achievements in the society are collective, not individual.

To us Man is supreme, important, but the conception of the society is different. The Society is a Self-existent entity. For its growth it has created family, individual, government and a host of other institutions. When the society wants to grow it has to employ these instruments. When the society achieves its goal, all these intermediary terms will vanish like the scaffolding of a building. Presently the social aim is the unity of humanity expressed in a world government. World government is not an end itself and it may lead to a further growth of human consciousness. Neither the individual, nor the rational government, nor Money that now rules all over the world will survive. They will draw back leaving humanity to rise further. For instance Money can disappear, even the organised law can yield place to institutionalised legal culture.

Presently we see property is an achievement of the Individual. Marriage, which has ruled humanity for centuries is now partially extinct. The concept of individual profit is losing ground. The capacity of one family to monopolies the right to rule vanished. Equally the ability of one caste or class to monopolise culture, education, wealth, the right to rule is being undone in various parts of the world in a substantial measure.

  • The achievement is by the Society.
  • The Individual is yet to emerge.
  • Even when he emerges, his rule will be only a passing phase.
  • Society is ALL, the Individual is nothing.
  • The family is already giving place to a corporate entity as the unit of the Society.
  • In future Man will feel a greater identity with his company or his profession instead of his caste or class.
  • Athletes feel in a small way a greater identification with other athletics than with their nation.
  • The intermediaries between the Society and the Individual are destined to vanish.
  • In the end, the Individual too will disappear when the next species is born.
  • We see in the all-consuming power of the Society that after the individual renders his part in service, he is brushed aside and his contribution is absorbed into the collective consciousness.

(3)   Change of Social existence is a principled evolution.

About the creation of the universe, two theories were popular and they still are. One of them is a) chance and the other b) is necessity of an iron law. They are yet to be reconciled. Maybe the world is looking for a hypothesis that would reconcile both of them. Sri Aurobindo postulated such a hypothesis and justified it. Instead of assuming God created the world, he assumed God, the infinite Being, became the world, the finite beings so that he may evolve back to His infinity. In the finite evolving to its original infinite status, everything appears to be chance because of countless possibilities. This answers the first position. As the evolution takes place through the graded powers of the evolving principles, the iron law is in action within the scope of each structure of power which answers the 2nd proposition. Their meeting point is Life. The age-old question of free will and Fate is answered here. What is finite in the infinite plane is of the infinite freedom in the finite plane.

This being our philosophic basis, we postulate that the evolution is a process of a directed movement and NOT a chance occurrence. Such a change we said passes through four stages of survival, growth, development, and evolution. Everywhere in history we meet with this directed succession, if not at the place of origin, at least in its spreading all over the globe. Whenever society tries to stall this course, humanity takes another course to live up to its conviction. We see agriculture is followed by trade, commerce, urbanisation, and role of Money, industrialisation, and further expansion of trade outside the country. The development of mind creates new social forms, higher utilisation of the existing forces by developing their basic structure. Even when the European settlers go to America they too follow the pattern of succession. India that is trying to find its feet in expanding prosperity started with Green Revolution a couple of decades before its metropolitan cities responded to vigorous consumerism and its youth aspired for higher education. When states like USSR try to stall the course and put industrialisation ahead on the schedule, the basis of the political structure fails. India in irritating USSR about industrialisation launched steel mills in her second Plan, but life forced them to abandon that course in preference to focusing on agriculture. It is noteworthy that the Indian government's effort to expand primary education before Green Revolution was a failure. It is not only the four stages of survival, etc. or agriculture, trade, etc. but even within each - e.g. survival and agriculture - the structure is preserved. It is not possible to cite one example either in the long run or short run where this direction is changed.

The direction follows a gradation. It is there in the human body as physical, vital, mental and spiritual. In the process of production agriculture is preceded by trade which is followed by manufacture and service. In Money it is signified by Money is a material thing as coin followed by Money is trust represented by currency. We see it in banking which originally relied on the productive capacity of the individual and later shifted in the system of credit card to the credit-worthiness of the customer. Memorisation in education represents the physicality of the brain whereas understanding represents the thinking capacity of the same brain shifting to a higher power on the original scale of gradation.

The social goal is the evolution of the conscious individual, from the subconscious collectivity. He goes through the scale of physical, vital, etc. gradation. In all its social activities, society follows to this direction. The principle is evolution of the Individual; the process is from the body to the mind and spirit.

(6)        Society is an organisation on its surface, but is really a living organism at its core.

An organisation is centrally directed by an external authority. An organism is a self-directed integral unit.

An organisation is of related parts to accomplish a work.

An organism is live, automatically in touched with all other parts for the purpose of living.

Society consists of millions of families whose needs are met by production centres in lands and factories which are brought to them by an organisation of distribution that is trade as well as services. The educational, entertainment needs are also fulfilled by multifarious smaller units of organisations such as schools, theatres, etc. On the surface, there are millions of organised activities that constitute the society. The life of the society is lived in its emotions of religion, caste, language, etc. They are institutionalised actions outside the scope of centrally organised direction. At that level, it is an organism as the human body. When that life is threatened, society rises like one man which we call Revolution.

Socially organised activities on the surface.

___________________________________

Social organism emotionally living at its core.

_____________________________________

Market movements.

Prevailing fashions.

Army.

Patriotism that responds to conscription.

Constituted government authority.

Electoral trends that choose those personnel.

Educational systems such as schools, colleges, varsities.

Social importance that energises such institutions.

Newspaper, television, film and other entertainments.

Popularity of the stars, preferences that chooses the advertisers or even the papers or channels.

Laws that govern religion, worship, etc.

Enthusiasm for the festivals, adherence to one religion or choice of another.

Conduct of elections.

Emergence of Revolutions.

Production of food grains and manufactured goods.

Preference in food, taste for branded goods.

Profitable activities such as factories, shops, services.

Non-profit organisations of service such as charitable institution spring up by the emotional intensity of the people.

Political parties are organised activities.

Religious movements are less organised and more spontaneously springing.

Conquering armies are by constituted governments.

Freedom movements are the expressions of the emotions of the people.

 



story | by Dr. Radut