THE POSSIBILITIES OF INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The preceding discussion of the dream state leads us to make some general remarks concerning the possibilities contained within the limits of human individuality, and more particularly the possibilities of this individual state envisaged under the aspect of consciousness, which constitutes one of its principal characteristics. Here, of course, we do not mean to place ourselves at the psychological point of view, although this latter can be defined precisely by consciousness considered as a characteristic inherent in certain categories of phenomena produced in the human being, or, if one prefers a more pictorial mode of expression, as the 'container' of these same phenomena.[1] The psychologist, moreover, is no more concerned with investigating the profound nature of this consciousness than is the geometrician with the question of the nature of space, which he takes as an incontestable fact, and which he considers simply as the container of all the forms that he studies. Psychology, in other words, need only concern itself with what we may call 'phenomenal consciousness', that is, consciousness considered exclusively in its relations with phenomena, and without asking whether or not this is the expression of something of another order
which, by very definition, no longer belongs to the psychological domain.[2]
For us, consciousness is something entirely different from what it is for the psychologist; it does not constitute a particular state of being, and, in any case, is not the only distinctive characteristic of the individual human state; and even in the study of this state, or more precisely of its extra-corporeal modalities, it is not possible for us to admit that everything refers to a point of view more or less similar to that of psychology. Consciousness is more a condition of existence in certain states, but not strictly in the sense in which we speak of the conditions of corporeal existence, for example. It would be more accurate to say that consciousness is a 'raison d'être' for the states in question, however strange this may at first seem, for it is manifestly that by which the individual being participates in universal Intelligence (Buddhi, in Hindu doctrine);[3] but naturally in its determined form (as ahankāra)[4] it belongs to the individual mental faculty (manas), so that in other states the same participation of the being in universal Intelligence may express itself in an entirely different mode. Consciousness, of which we do not claim to give a complete definition here-which would doubtless be of little use[5] is therefore something particular, whether in the human state or in other individual states more or less analogous to it, and consequently is in no way a universal principle; if it nevertheless constitutes an integral part and a necessary element of universal Existence, it does so only by exactly the same right as do all conditions proper to any states of being whatsoever, and it possesses no more privilege
in this respect than do the states to which it refers with respect to other states.[6]
Despite these essential restrictions, consciousness in the individual human state, like this state itself, is nonetheless capable of indefinite extension; and even in the ordinary man, that is, one who has not especially developed his extra-corporeal modalities, it in fact extends much further than is commonly supposed. It is true that it is generally admitted that our present clear and distinct consciousness is not the whole consciousness, that it constitutes only a certain portion thereof, and that what is excluded may well exceed the former in extent and complexity; but if the psychologists readily recognize the existence of a 'subconscious' - which they sometimes abuse in making of it an all too convenient explanation, indiscriminately attributing to it everything that they are unable to classify among the phenomena they study-they always forget to envisage correlatively a 'superconscious', as if consciousness could not as easily be prolonged above as below, if indeed such relative notions of 'above' and 'below' can have any meaning here, as it seems likely they do, at least from the psychologists' particular point of view. It should be noted, moreover, that in reality both the 'subconscious' and the 'superconscious' are simple prolongations of consciousness itself and can never take us out of its integral domain, and consequently cannot in any way be compared to the 'unconscious', that is, to what is outside of consciousness, but on the contrary must be included in the complete notion of the individual consciousness.
Considered in this way, the individual consciousness suffices to account for everything that takes place mentally in the domain of individuality, without need for recourse to the bizarre hypothesis of
a 'plurality of consciousnesses', which some people have even understood in the sense of a literal 'polypsychism'. It is true that the 'unity of the self', as ordinarily envisaged, is equally illusory, but if this is so, it is precisely because plurality and complexity exist in the very heart of the consciousness, which prolongs itself in modalities some of which may be very distant and obscure, such as those that constitute what might be called 'organic consciousness,[8] as well as most of those manifested in the dream state.
From another point of view, the indefinite extension of consciousness renders completely useless certain strange theories that have surfaced in our time, of which the metaphysical impossibility suffices to refute completely. Here we do not intend to speak only of the more or less 'reincarnationist' hypotheses, and others comparable to them, as implying a similar limitation of universal Possibility, which we have already discussed sufficiently,[9] for what we have in view more particularly is the 'transformist' hypothesis, which in any case has now lost much of the undeserved respect it enjoyed for a time.[10] To explain this point without undue digression, let us observe that the so-called law of the 'parallelism of ontogeny and phylogeny', which is one of the principal postulates of 'transformism', assumes before all else that there really is such a thing as a 'phylogeny', or 'filiation of the species', something that is not a fact but a completely gratuitous hypothesis; the only fact that can be established is that the individual realizes certain organic forms in the course of its embryonic development, and that to realize these forms in this way it has no need to have realized them already in socalled 'successive existences', any more than that it is necessary that the species to which it belongs should have realized them on its behalf in a development in which the individual as such could have
had no part. Besides, embryological considerations apart, the concept of the multiple states permits us to envisage all these states as existing simultaneously in one and the same being, and not as traversable only successively in the course of a 'descent' that could pass not only from one being to another but even from one species to another.[11] In one sense, the unity of the species is more real and more essential than that of the individual,[12] which argues against the reality of such a 'descent'; on the contrary, the being that belongs, as an individual, to a determinate species, is nonetheless at the same time independent of that species in its extra-individual states, and, without going too far, can even have links with other species by simple prolongations of its own individuality. For example, as we have already said above, a man who in dream assumes a certain form thereby makes of this form a secondary modality of his own individuality, and consequently realizes it effectively according to the only mode in which this realization is possible for him. From the same point of view, there are also individual prolongations of a somewhat different order, presenting a more organic character; but this would take us outside the bounds of our present subject, and we must limit ourselves to this passing observation.[13] Besides, a more complete and detailed refutation of the 'transformist' theories must above all connect them to the study of the nature of species and their conditions of existence, a study we could not hope to pursue at present; but it is essential to note that the simultaneity of the multiple states suffices to prove the futility of such hypotheses, which are completely untenable when envisaged from the metaphysical
point
of view, and of which the lack of a principle necessarily entails factual errors.
We especially stress the simultaneity of the states of the being because even the individual modifications realized in successive mode in the order of manifestation must be conceived as simultaneous in principle, for otherwise their existence can be only purely illusory. Not only is the 'current of forms' in manifestation-always remembering its altogether relative and contingent character-fully compatible with the 'permanent actuality' of all things in non-manifestation, but, if there were no principle of change, the very fact of change would be deprived of all reality.