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Psychic
Education and Spiritual Education
Here
also, in spiritual education, the goal you set before you
will assume, in the mind's formulation of it, different
names according to the environment in which you have been
brought up, the path you have followed and the affinities
of your temperament. Those who have a religious tendency
will call it God and their spiritual effort will be towards
identification with the transcendent God beyond all forms,
as opposed to the immanent God dwelling in each form. Others
will call it the Absolute, the Supreme Origin, others Nirvana;
yet others, who view the world as an unreal illusion, will
name it the Only Reality and to those who regard all manifestation
as falsehood it will be the Sole Truth. And every one of
these expressions contains an element of truth, but all
are incomplete, expressing only one aspect of that which
is. Here too, however, the mental formulation has no great
importance and once you have passed through the intermediate
stages, the experience is identical. In any case, the most
effective starting-point, the swiftest method is total self-giving.
Besides, no joy is more perfect than the joy of a total
self-giving to whatever is the summit of your conception:
for some it is the notion of God, for others that of Perfection.
If this self-giving is made with persistence and ardour,
a moment comes when you pass beyond the concept and arrive
at an experience that escapes all description, but which
is almost always identical in its effects. And as your self
giving becomes more and more perfect and integral, it will
be accompanied by the aspiration for identification, a total
fusion with That to which you have given yourself, and little
by little this aspiration will overcome all differences
and all resistances, especially if with the aspiration there
is an intense and spontaneous love, for then nothing can
stand in the way of its victorious drive.
There
is an essential difference between this identification and
the identification with the psychic being. The latter can
be made more and more lasting and, in certain cases, it
becomes permanent and never leaves the person who has realised
it, whatever his outer activities may be. In other words,
the identification is no longer realised only in meditation
and concentration, but its effects are felt at every moment
of one's life, in sleep as well as in waking.
On
the other hand, liberation from all form and the identification
with that which is beyond form cannot last in an absolute
manner; for it would automatically bring about the dissolution
of material form. Certain traditions say that this dissolution
happens inevitably within twenty days of the total identification.
Yet it is not necessarily so; and even if the experience
is only momentary, it produces in the consciousness results
that are never obliterated and have repercussions on all
states of the being, both internal and external. Moreover,
once the identification has been realised, it can be renewed
at will, provided that you know how to put yourself in the
same conditions.
This
merging into the formless is the supreme liberation sought
by those who want to escape from an existence which no longer
holds any attraction for them. It is not surprising that
they are dissatisfied with the world in its present form.
But a liberation that leaves the world as it is and in no
way affects the conditions of life from which others suffer,
cannot satisfy those who refuse to enjoy a boon which they
are the only ones, or almost the only ones, to possess,
those who dream of a world more worthy of the splendours
that lie hidden behind its apparent disorder and wide-spread
misery. They dream of sharing with others the wonders they
have discovered in their inner exploration. And the means
to do so is within their reach, now that they have arrived
at the summit of their ascent.
From
beyond the frontiers of form a new force can be evoked,
a power of consciousness which is as yet unexpressed and
which, by its emergence, will be able to change the course
of things and give birth to a new world. For the true solution
to the problem of suffering, ignorance and death is not
an individual escape from earthly miseries by self-annihilation
into the unmanifest, nor a problematical collective flight
from universal suffering by an integral and final return
of the creation to its creator, thus curing the universe
by abolishing it, but a transformation, a total transfiguration
of matter brought about by the logical continuation of Nature's
ascending march in her progress towards perfection, by the
creation of a new species that will be to man what man is
to the animal and that will manifest upon earth a new force,
a new consciousness and a new power. And so will begin a
new education which can be called the supramental education;
it will, by its all-powerful action, work not only upon
the consciousness of individual beings, but upon the very
substance of which they are built and upon the environment
in which they live.
In
contrast with the types of education we have mentioned previously,
which progress from below upwards by an ascending movement
of the various parts of the being, the supramental education
will progress from above downwards, its influence spreading
from one state of being to another until at last the physical
is reached. This last transformation will only occur visibly
when the inner states of being have already been considerably
transformed. It is therefore quiet unreasonable to try to
recognise the presence of the supramental by physical appearances.
For these will be the last to change and the supramental
force can be at work in an individual long before anything
of it becomes perceptible in his bodily life.
To
sum up, one can say that the supramental education will
result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature
and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but
in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration
of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species
above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end
to the appearance of a divine race upon earth.
February
1952
- The Mother
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