Layers of mind

JK on layers of mind - from his biography by Pupul Jayakar

First comes the layer of everyday activity - eating, going to the office, drinking, meeting people, the conditioned habits that operate automatically. It is obviously a static state that conforms to a pattern.

When ones routine is disturbed, the surface layer ceases for an instant and what is below reveals itself. For convenience, we will call this the second layer (of course, since consciousness is non spatial, it cannot be accurate to use terms indicating layer or level). The thinking that emerges from this layer is still conditioned memory, but is not as automatic as the surface layer. It is more active, more elastic; it has more nuances. Here, thought need not conform so completely to pattern, it has more vitality. The next layer is conditioned by like, dislike, choosing, judging, identifying. Here, there is the sense of ego established and in focus.

Next, comes the unconscious memories of the individual and the collective, the tendencies, the forces, the urges, the racial instincts; this is the whole network of desire, the matrix of desire. There is an extraordinary movement here. The ego is still functioning - ego as desire moving in its patterns of cause and effect. The ego as desire that continues. The ego with its unconscious tendencies that reincarnate.