Supermind
and the Life Divine
Page 2
A
manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness
is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner
or later. But it has two aspects, a descent from above,
an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an
evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort,
a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise
her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change,
conversion or transformation into the divine reality and
it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle.
The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of
the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation
possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which
brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process
or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see
it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed,
needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is
because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient
beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the
ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious
force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the
light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving
being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this
is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort
and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be
in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights
of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement
towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation.
It must be still more so when there is a transition across
the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge
and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge,
from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being
to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity
for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be
rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation,
what would seem to our normal present mind a succession
of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could
well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being
so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state
or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental,
from level to divine level, a building up of
divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind
or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness
and Ananda.
The
supramental knowledge, the truth-consciousness of the Supermind
is in itself one and total: even when there is a voluntary
limitation of the knowledge or what might seem to be a partial
manifestation, it is so voluntarily; the limitation does
not proceed from or result in any kind of ignorance, it
is not a denial or withholding of knowledge, for all the
rest of the truth that is not brought into expression is
implicit there. Above all, there are no contradictions:
whatever would seem to be opposites to the mind, here carry
in themselves their own right relation and reconciling agreement,—if
indeed any reconciliation were needed, for the harmony of
these apparent opposites is complete. The mind tends to
put the personal and the impersonal in face of each other
as if they were two contraries, but the Supermind sees and
realises them as, at the lowest, complements and mutually
fulfilling powers of the single Reality and, more characteristically,
as interfused and inseparable and themselves that single
Reality. The Person has his aspect of impersonality inseparable
from himself without which he could not be what he is or
could not be his whole self: the Impersonal is in its truth
not a state of existence, a state of consciousness and a
state of bliss, but a Being self-existent, conscious of
self, full of his own self-existent bliss, bliss the very
substance of his being,—so, the one single and illimitable
Person, Purusha. In the Supermind the finite does not cut
up or limit the infinite, does not feel itself contrary
to the infinite; but rather it feels its own infinity: the
relative and temporal is not a contradiction of eternity
but a right relation of its aspects, a native working or
an imperishable feature of the eternal. Time there is only
the eternal in extension and the eternal can be felt in
the momentary. Thus the integral Divine is there in the
Supermind and no theory of illusion or self-contradictory
Maya need be thrust in to justify its way of existence.
It will be obvious that an escape from life is not necessary
for the Divine to find itself or its reality; it possesses
that always whether in cosmic life or in its transcendent
existence. The divine life cannot be a contradiction of
the Divine or of the supreme reality; it is part of that
reality, an aspect or expression of it and it can be nothing
else. In life on the supramental plane all the Divine is
possessed, and when the Supermind descends on earth, it
must bring the Divine with it and make that full possession
possible here.
The
divine life will give to those who enter into it and possess
it an increasing and finally a complete possession of the
truth-consciousness and all that it carries in it; it will
bring with it the realisation of the Divine in self and
the Divine in Nature. All that is sought by the God-seeker
will be fulfilled in his spirit and in his life as he moves
towards spiritual perfection. He will become aware of the
transcendent reality, possess in the self-experience the
supreme existence, consciousness, bliss, be one with Sachchidananda.
He will become one with cosmic being and universal Nature:
he will contain the world in himself, in his own cosmic
consciousness and feel himself one with all beings; he will
see himself in all and all in himself, become united and
identified with the Self which has become all existences.
He will perceive the beauty of the All-Beautiful and the
miracle of the All-Wonderful; he will enter in the end into
the bliss of the Brahman and live abidingly in it and for
all this he will not need to shun existence or plunge into
the annihilation of the spiritual Person in some self extinguishing
Nirvana. As in the Self, so in Nature, he can realise the
Divine. The nature of the Divine is Light and Power and
Bliss; he can feel the divine Light and Power and Bliss
above him and descending into him, filling every strand
of his nature, every cell and atom of his being, flooding
his soul and mind and life and body, surrounding him like
an illimitable sea and filling the world, suffusing all
his feeling and sense and experience, making all his life
truly and utterly divine. This and all else that the spiritual
consciousness can bring to him the divine life will give
him when it reaches its utmost completeness and perfection
and the supramental truth-consciousness is fulfilled in
all himself; but even before that he can attain to something
of it all, grow in it, live in it, once the Supermind has
descended upon him and has the direction of his existence.
All relations with the Divine will be his: the trinity of
God-knowledge, divine works and devotion to God will open
within him and move towards an utter self-giving and surrender
of his whole being and nature. He will live in God and with
God, possess God, as it is said, even plunge in him forgetting
all separate personality, but not losing it in self-extinction.
The love of God and all the sweetness of love will remain
his, the bliss of contact as well as the bliss of oneness
and the bliss of difference in oneness. All the infinite
ranges of experience of the Infinite will be his and all
the joy of the finite in the embrace of the Infinite
-
Sri Aurobindo
