mechanical mind

07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga

Thus, for example, when one goes out of the body I have often spoken to you of this phenomenon-even if it be just to a little extent, even if only mentally then what goes out is a part of the consciousness that controls the normal activities of the body, what remains is the portion that is automatic, producing the spontaneous involuntary movements such as blood circulation or secretion etc., also other nervous or automatic thought movements; this region is no longer under the control of the conscious thinking part. Now, there is always in the atmosphere around you a good number of small entities, quite small often, that are generally formed out of the disintegrated remains of a dead human being: they are like microbes, the microbes of the vital. They have forms and can be visible and they have a will of their own. You cannot say they are always wicked, but they are full of mischief, that is to say, they like amusing themselves at the cost of human beings. & soon as they see that someone is not sufficiently protected, they rush in and take possession of the mechanical mind and bring about all kinds of disagreeable happeningsnightmares, various physical disturbancesyou feel choked, bite or swallow your tongue and even more serious things. When you wish to go into trance, to have the experience of being outside the body, you must have someone by your side, not only to keep watch on your physical body, but also to prevent the vital entities from getting possession of the nerve centres which, as I said, are no longer under the control and protection of the conscious intelligence. There is a still greater danger. When one goes out of the body in a more or less concrete or material way, retaining only a thin and fragile contacta thread of light, as it werewith the body, this thread of contact must be protected, for the attack of the hostiles may come upon it and cut it; if it is cut one can no longer return into the body, and that means death.

1.3.05 - Silence, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga

Only, when there is the peace and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual thoughts. What the sadhaka has to do is to be careful to reject and hush these outsiders, so that during the meditation at least the peace and quietude of the mind and vital may be complete. This can be done best if you keep a strong and silent will. That will is the will of the Purusha behind the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from the action of the nature.

1954-09-15 - Parts of the being - Thoughts and impulses - The subconscient - Precise vocabulary - The Grace and difficulties, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga

Sweet Mother, is the physical mind the same as the mechanical mind?

Almost. You see, there is just a little difference, but not much. The mechanical mind is still more stupid than the physical mind. The physical mind is what we spoke about one day, that which is never sure of anything.

I told you the story of the closed door, you remember. Well, that is the nature of the physical mind. The mechanical mind is at a lower level still, because it doesnt even listen to the possibility of a convincing reason, and this happen to everyone. Usually we dont let it function, but it comes along repeating the same things, absolutely mechanically, without rhyme or reason, just like that. When some craze or other takes hold of it, it goes For example, you see, if it fancies counting: One, two, three, four, then it will go on: One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. And you may think of all kinds of things, but it goes on: One, two, three, four, like that (Mother laughs.) Or it catches hold of three words, four words and repeats them and goes on repeating them; and unless one turns away with a certain violence and punches it soundly, telling it, Keep quiet!, it continues in this way, indefinitely.

1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #unset, #Kabbalah

A silly, mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.

2.1.4.5 - Tests, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga

A silly, mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.

2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The conquest of our constitutional ignorance cannot be complete, cannot become integrally dynamic, if we have not conquered our psychological ignorance; for the two are bound up together. Our psychological ignorance consists in a limitation of our self-knowledge to that little wave or superficial stream of our being which is the conscient waking self. This part of our being is an original flux of formless or only halfformulated movements carried on in an automatic continuity, supported and held together by an active surface memory and a passive underlying consciousness in its flow from moment to moment of time, organised and interpreted by our reason and our witnessing and participating intelligence. Behind it is an occult existence and energy of our secret being without which the superficial consciousness and activity could not have existed or acted. In Matter only an activity is manifest, - inconscient in the outside of things which is all we know; for the indwelling Consciousness in Matter is secret, subliminal, not manifested in the inconscient form and the involved energy: but in us consciousness has become partly manifest, partly awake. But this consciousness is hedged and imperfect; it is bound by its habitual self-limitation and moves in a restricted circle, - except when there are flashes, intimations or upsurgings from the secrecy within us which break the limits of the formation or flow beyond them or widen the circle. But these occasional visitations cannot enlarge us far beyond our present capacities, are not enough to revolutionise our status. That can only be done if we can bring into it the higher undeveloped lights and powers potential in our being and get them consciously and normally into play; for this we must be able to draw freely from those ranges of our being to which they are native but which are at present subconscient or rather secretly intraconscient and circumconscient or else superconscient to us. Or, - the yet more that is also possible, - we must enter into these inner and higher parts of ourselves by an inward plunge or disciplined penetration and bring back with us to the surface their secrets. Or, achieving a still more radical change of our consciousness, we must learn to live within and no longer on the surface and be and act from the inner depths and from a soul that has become sovereign over the nature.
That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life; in our evolution we have overpassed the need of any large organised action of this element, but it remains submerged and obscurely at work below our conscious nature. This obscure activity extends to a hidden and hooded mental substratum into which past impressions and all that is rejected from the surface mind sink and remain there dormant and can surge up in sleep or in any absence of the mind, taking dream forms, forms of mechanical mind action or suggestion, forms of automatic vital reaction or impulse, forms of physical abnormality or nervous perturbance, forms of morbidity, disease, unbalance. Out of the subconscious we bring ordinarily so much to the surface as our waking sensemind and intelligence need for their purpose; in so bringing them up we are not aware of their nature, origin, operation and do not apprehend them in their own values but by a translation into the values of our waking human sense and intelligence. But the risings of the subconscious, its effects upon the mind and body, are mostly automatic, uncalled for and involuntary; for we have no knowledge and therefore no control of the subconscient. It is only by an experience abnormal to us, most commonly in illness or some disturbance of balance, that we can become directly aware of something in the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface, - a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality.
This and much more lives concealed in the subconscience.

2.3.01 - Concentration and Meditation, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Coming out of Concentration or Meditation
The Difficulty of the mechanical mind
Surface Thoughts and Imaginations
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The Difficulty of the mechanical mind

That [the constant recurrence of trivial thoughts] is the nature of the mechanical mind - it is not due to any sensitiveness in it. Only as the other parts of the mind are more silent and under control, this activity looks more prominent and takes more space. It usually wears itself out, if one goes on rejecting it.

*
It was rather that the active mind became more quiet so that the movements of the mechanical mind became more evident - that is what often happens. What has to be done in that case is to detach oneself from these movements and concentrate without farther attention to them. They are then likely to sink into quietude or fall away.

*
To be able to detach oneself from the action of the mechanical mind is the first necessity so that it may be like a noise in the street which passes and which one can ignore. It is easier then for the quiet and peace of the mind to remain undisturbed by this action even if it occurs.

2.3.06 - The Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga

As the vital Mind is limited by the vital view and feeling of things (while the dynamic Intelligence is not, for it acts by the idea and reason), so the mind in the physical or mental physical is limited by the physical view and experience of things, it mentalises the experience brought by the contacts of outward life and things and does not go beyond that (though it can do that much very cleverly), unlike the externalising mind which deals with them more from the reason and its higher intelligence. But in practice these two usually get mixed together. The mechanical mind is a much lower action of the mental physical which, left to itself, would only repeat customary ideas and record the natural reflexes of the physical consciousness to the contacts of outward life and things.

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The Physical Mental or Physical Mind and the Mental Physical or mechanical mind
The physical mental or externalising mind is part of the mental consciousness, not part of the physical consciousness. But it is
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*
The automatic or mechanical mind is called by us the mental physical - and distinguished from the physical mind which is that which deals intelligently with physical things. The other simply stores, associates, repeats, gives reflexes and reactions etc.

2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga

The Mental Physical or mechanical mind
That is the nature of the mental physical to go on repeating without use the movement that has happened. It is what we call the mechanical mind - it is strong in childhood because the thinking mind is not developed and has besides a narrow range of interests. Afterwards it becomes an undercurrent in the mental activities. It must now have risen up with the other characteristics of the mental physical because it is in the physical that the action has come down. Sometimes also when there is silence of the mind, these things come up till they also are quieted down.

*
The mechanical mind is a sort of engine - whatever comes to it it puts into the machine and goes on turning it round and round
- no matter what it is.
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*
From what you describe it seems that you have got into contact with the mechanical mind whose nature is to go on turning

--
*
What is called the mechanical mind is necessary for the maintenance (in the physical) of things gained - it is by conservation and repetition that Nature does that. The subconscient is the basis of conservation and the mechanical mind is the means of repetition. Only they have to be enlightened and change and conserve and repeat the new divine things and not the old undivine ones.

*
If there is a strong activity of the higher parts of the consciousness, the possibility of the mechanical mind working is very much diminished. It may come up in moments of relaxation or fatigue but usually it is active only in a subordinate way that does not attract notice.

*
When the higher consciousness takes hold of the mechanical mind, it ceases to be mechanical.

2.3.10 - The Subconscient and the Inconscient, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
any moment we like the memory of a thing, it is under our control. Subliminal memory can hold all things, even those which the mind cannot understand, e.g. if you hear somebody talking
Hebrew, the subliminal memory can hold that and bring it up accurately in some abnormal state, e.g. the hypnotic. Subconscient memory is a memory of impressions; when they come up as in dream, either the result is something incoherent or fancifully rearranged or it is only the essence of the thing, its psychological deposit that comes up, e.g. sex, fear, some particular libido as the psychoanalysts call it, but the expression given to the latter need not be the same as memory would give; it may repeat the same forms if it gets hold of the mechanical mind in the physical to help its expression, but also it may be quite different from anything in real life.

3.1.3 - Difficulties of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga

The inertia itself is not a dynamic principle. The nature of inertia is apravtti the action of the mechanical mind is a pravtti, though a tamasic obscure pravtti.
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3.3.3 - Specific Illnesses, Ailments and Other Physical Problems, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga

What you describe [a loaded head with sluggish thinking and mechanical thoughts] happens very usually during a cold in the head, as ordinarily one depends upon the brain cells for the transmission of the mental thought. When the mind is not so dependent on the brain cells, then their obscuration by the cold does not interfere with clear seeing and thinking and one is not thrown back in the mechanical mind.
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Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah

All these days I had many difficulties with my mind. At one moment, when I succeed in rising above it, all goes well. But at other times I am overwhelmed. Meditation is painful and without much profit. It is at other moments that I feel sometimes how thin the veil is. The best method I have found consists precisely in climbing as high as possible then the lower being is calmed. The three centres (Sahasrara, Ajna and Solar) are then united. When not in meditation the mechanical mind is very restless and I have difficulty even in reading in concentrating on anything at all. Whence this difficulty? Should I put yet more energy into my meditation and my efforts?

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The Difficulty of the mechanical mind

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The Difficulty of the mechanical mind

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