Joy Conversion

I’ll start with a quote from “Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness” by Satprem: “She hurls herself forth outside Him in a burst of joy, to play at finding Him again in Time – He and She, two in one. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for the sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably…The strong soul conscious of its own immortal stuff and the inexhaustible ocean of its ever-flowing energies, is seized by it with the thrill of an inconceivable rapture. It hears behind the thought, the childlike laughter and ecstasy of the Infinite…Once launched, the play will not cease until all the possibilities have been accomplished…”

I will not attempt to explicate his planes of consciousness, and don’t think that I could, but will list them here.

The Absolute (Sat-Chit-Ananda*)
Supermind
Overmind
Intuitive Mind
Illumined Mind
Higher Mind
Mind
Life
Matter
Subconscient
Inconscient
Nescient

My take on this is that everything is Joy and that matter is bound up, deliberately concealed Joy.

Two thoughts about this came to mind recently.

The first is that the Joy that is to be released from bondage appears to be layered in some way, given his description of planes. That would seem to indicate that each plane is mining Joy from the ones below for their own processing and en-Joy-ment, and then release it into the next higher plane. Thus, every individuated consciousness is, in some fashion, dependent on the ones below to provide the fodder for releasing Joy at their plane. This thought came about when thinking of the practice that many people have of generating gratitude. If what I just said is accurate, then at each plane those above are grateful for those of us working on the front lines below, like here where we are dealing with Life, Matter, and using the basic “Mind.” So, it strikes me that gratitude is not unidirectional, as I perceive gratitude practice to be, but bidirectional. The Joy and gratitude that they have for us is the fuel that allows us to do the often difficult Joy-mining that we have chosen, and they are grateful for that nutrient stream from which they further release Joy at a different frequency range. It’s like the Joy and gratitude flowing downstream tickles the Joy that is buried in matter and due to its resonance with itself, it is called forth to meet its match. As we can attest, it sometimes takes concerted efforts to extract Joy from the stickiness of density and unconsciousness, but the resulting Joy is apparently worth it. The entirety of the stream appears to have been created for that purpose.

“The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss: It longed for the adventure of Ignorance.” – Aurobindo 

The second notion that I had is that of contrast between these layers where Joy is being released. When people get high, by whatever means, it removes some of the constrictions on Mind. The contrast between the frequency range where our minds currently reside and that less confined space lightens us, and the expansiveness into that lightness is Joy-filled and so we delight in “being high.”

I’ll add here the distinction between “states” and “stages” described by Ken Wilber, where a state is momentary and a stage is permanent. A state change is a momentary kind of awakening, perhaps across planes, like the high that LSD, some powerful courses or meditation retreats might evoke. A stage change is more akin to slowly moving up Aurobindo’s planes (and perhaps within a plane) in an evolutionary like fashion. You don’t feel the “high” of the transition from one level swiftly into the next. It’s just your current norm and you are dancing in the vast plane where your attention is currently resonating. The wavelengths are longer than where you began this journey, in my view, but the ongoing releasing of Joy, all in motion towards the Absolute, is still in play. The Absolute has some kind of gravitational force pulling on us, which I will not limit with a name. I suspect that if it is like gravity, that force will become stronger the closer you are to it, much like a magnet or a black hole.

In this view we are Joy conversion units. As we become Joy-full, we are lighter, thus less resistance to the flow of Joy. In an electrical circuit the energy flow in the circuit between the poles is regulated by the resistance in the circuit. The highest difference in potential between the poles is representing the highest voltage, which is when there is no connection between the poles, no circuit, thus no flow. If there is a circuit connected between the poles, a high resistance in the circuit allows for some flow. As resistance is reduced, velocity of the flow increases and the difference of potential decreases to some degree (when using a battery). The more confined Joy is, the more its density impedes flow. As Joy is released there is less constriction and thus higher flow, for the entire circuit “up” and “down” from Matter to the Absolute.

What if the ideal flow is to express the highest experiential planes that you have reached into this physical world, bringing the power of that Joy here, to further burrow into the unconscious and release more Joy from its bondage, and then flow within it back upstream. The entire electromagnetic spectrum oscillates, as does our solar system in the plane of our galaxy, so it seems likely to me that there is some natural oscillation of flow “upstream” and “downstream” in Aurobindo’s planes too, just like the natural flow of breathing in and breathing out. The contrast between the planes that you are consciously oscillating between, the greater the distance between the end points, the more delicious that breathing. The en-Joy-ment is experienced in both the inflow and outflow. If this is the case, the contrast between this physical world and the Absolute provides the highest contrast, thus the greatest potential for Joy. So perhaps this planet is the place to be, despite how it may seem.

Just a thought…

*translations vary but “Existence-Knowledge-Bliss” was used in the Sivananda Ashram that I lived in.