Supermind
and the Life Divine
Page 3
The
descent of the Supermind will bring to one who receives
it and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities
of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic
experience which we recognise already as constituting the
spiritual life, but also all which we now exclude from that
category but which is capable of divinisation, not excluding
whatever of the earth-nature and the earth-life can be transformed
by the touch of the Supermind and taken up into the manifested
life of the Spirit. For a divine life on earth need not
be a thing apart and exclusive having nothing to do with
the common earthly existence: it will take up human being
and human life, transform what can be transformed, spiritualise
whatever can be spiritualised, cast its influence on the
rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change,
bring about a deeper communion between the universal and
the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth
of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift into
or towards a greater and higher existence. Mind it will
uplift towards a diviner light of thought and will, life
towards deeper and truer emotion and action, towards a larger
power of itself, towards high aims and motives. Whatever
cannot yet be raised into its own full truth of being, it
will bring nearer to that fullness; whatever is not ready
even for that change, will still see the possibility open
to it whenever its still incomplete evolution has made it
ready for self-fulfilment. Even the body, if it can bear
the touch of Supermind, will become more aware of its own
truth,—for there is a body consciousness that
has its own instinctive truth and power of right condition
and action, even a kind of unexpressed occult knowledge
in the constitution of its cells and tissues which may one
day become conscious and contribute to the transformation
of the physical being. An awakening must come in the earth-nature
and in the earth-consciousness which will be, if not the
actual beginning, at least the effective preparation and
the first steps of its evolution towards a new and diviner
world order.
This
would be the fulfilment of the divine life which the descent
of Supermind and the working of the truth-consciousness
taking hold of the whole nature of the living being would
bring about in all who could open themselves to its power
or influence. Even its first immediate effect would be on
all who are capable the possibility of entering into the
truth-consciousness and changing all the movements of the
nature more and more into the movements of the supramental
truth, truth of thought, truth of will, truth in the feelings,
truth in the acts, true conditions of the whole being even
to the body, eventually transformation, a divinising change.
For those who could so open themselves and remain open,
there would be nolimitation to this development and even
no fundamental difficulty; for all difficulties would be
dissolved by the pressure of the supramental light and power
from above pouring itself into the mind and the life-force
and the body. But the result of the supramental descent
need not be limited to those who could thus open themselves
entirely and it need not be limited to the supramental change;
there could also be a minor or secondary transformation
of the mental being within a freed and perfected scope of
the mental nature. In place of the human mind as it now
is, a mind limited, imperfect, open at every oment to all
kinds of deviation from the truth or missing of the truth,
all kinds of error and openness even to the persuasions
of a complete falsehood and perversion of the nature, a
mind blinded and pulled down towards inconscience and ignorance,
hardly arriving at knowledge, an intellect prone to interpret
the higher knowledge in abstractions and indirect figures
seizing and holding even the messages of the higher intuition
with an uncertain and disputed grasp, there could emerge
a
true mind liberated and capable of the free and utmost perfection
of itself and its instruments, a life governed by the free
and illumined mind, a body responsive to the light and able
to carry out all that the free mind and will could demand
of it. This change might happen not only in the few, but
extend and generalise itself in the race. This possibility,
if fulfilled, would mean that the human dream of perfection,
perfection of itself, of its purified and enlightened nature,
of all its ways of action and living, would be no longer
a dream but a truth that could be made real and humanity
lifted out of the hold on it of inconscience and ignorance.
The life of the mental being could be harmonised with the
life of the Supermind which will then be the highest order
above it, and become even an extension and annexe of the
truth-consciousness, a part and province of the divine life.
It is obvious that if the Supermind is there and an order
of supramental being is established as the leading principle
in earth-nature, as mind is now the leading principle, but
with a sureness, a complete government of the earthly existence,
a capacity of transformation of all upon their level and
within their natural boundaries of which the mind in its
imperfection was not capable, an immense change of human
life, even if it did not extend to transformation, would
be inevitable.
It
remains to consider what might be the obstacles in the way
of this possibility, especially those offered by the nature
of the earth-order and its function as a field of a graded
evolution in which our humanity is a stage and, it might
be argued, its very imperfection an evolutionary necessity,
how far could or would Supermind by its presence and government
of things overcome this difficulty while respecting the
principle of gradation, and whether it could not rectify
the wrong and ignorant order imposed by the Ignorance and
Inconscience and substitute for it a right gradation in
which the perfection and divinisation would be possible.
Certainly, the way for the individual would be open; whatever
group of human beings aspire as united in an endeavour at
a perfect individual and collective living or aspire to
the divine life, would be assisted towards the attainment
of its aspiration: that at least the Supermind would make
its minimum consequence. But the greater possibility is
also there and might even be offered to the whole of humanity.
This, then, we have to consider, what would the descent
of the Supermind mean for mankind and what would be its
result or its promise for the whole life and evolutionary
future and destiny of the human race?
-
Sri Aurobindo
