THE supermind, the divine gnosis,
is not something entirely alien to our present consciousness:
it is a superior instrumentation of the spirit and all
the operations of our normal consciousness are limited
and inferior derivations from the supramental, because
these are tentatives and constructions, that the true
and perfect, the spontaneous and harmonious nature and
action of the spirit. Accordingly when we rise from
mind to supermind, the new power of consciousness does
not reject, but uplifts, enlarges and transfigures the
operations of our soul and mind and life. It exalts
and gives to them an ever greater reality of their power
and performance. It does not limit itself either to
the transformation of the superficial powers and action
of the mind and psychic parts and the life, but it manifests
and transforms also those rarer powers and that larger
force and knowledge proper to our subliminal self that
appear now to us as things occult, curiously psychic,
abnormal. These things become in the supramental nature
not at all abnormal but perfectly natural and normal,
not separately psychic but spiritual, not occult and
strange, but a direct, simple, inherent and spontaneous
action. The spirit is not limited like the waking material
consciousness, and the supermind when it takes possession
of the waking consciousness, dematerialises it, delivers
it from its limits, converts the material and the psychic
into the nature of the spiritual being.
The
mental activity that can be most readily organised is,
as has been already indicated, that of pure ideative
knowledge. This is transformed on the higher level to
the true jnäna, supramental thought, supramental
vision, the supramental knowledge by identity. The essential
action of this supramental knowledge has been described
in the preceding chapter. It is necessary however to
see also how this knowledge works in outward application
and how it deals with the data of existence. It differs
from the action of the mind first in this respect that
it works naturally with those operations that are to
the mind the highest and the most difficult, acting
in them or on them from above downward and not with
the hampered straining upward of the mind or with its
restriction to its own and the inferior levels. The
higher operations are not dependent on the lower assistance,
but rather the lower operations depend on the higher
not only for their guidance but for their existence.
The lower mental operations are therefore not only changed
in character by the transformation, but are made entirely
subordinate. And the higher mental operations too change
their character, because, supramentalised, they begin
to derive their light directly from the highest, the
self-knowledge or infinite knowledge.
The
normal thought-action of the mind may for this purpose
be viewed as constituted of a triple motion. First and
lowest and most necessary to the mental being in the
body is the habitual thought mind that founds its ideas
upon the data given by the senses and by the surface
experiences of the nervous and emotional being and on
the customary notions formed by the education and the
outward life and environment. This habitual mind has
two movements, one a kind of constant undercurrent of
mechanically recurrent thought always repeating itself
in the same round of physical, vital, emotional, practical
and summarily intellectual notion and experience, the
other more actively working upon all new experience
that the mind is obliged to admit and reducing it to
formulas of habitual thinking. The mentality of the
average man is limited by this habitual mind and moves
very imperfectly outside its circle.
A
second grade of the thinking activity is the pragmatic
idea mind that lifts itself above life and acts creatively
as a mediator between the idea and the life-power, between
truth of life and truth of the idea not yet manifested
in life. It draws material from life and builds out
of it and upon it creative ideas that become dynamic
for farther life development: on the other side it receives
new thought and mental experience from the mental plane
or more fundamentally from the idea power of the Infinite
and immediately turns it into mental idea force and
a power for actual being and living. The whole turn
of this pragmatic idea mind is towards action and experience,
inward as well as outward, the inward casting itself
outward for the sake of a com-pleter satisfaction of
reality, the outward taken into the inward and returning
upon it assimilated and changed for fresh formations.
The thought is only or mainly interesting to the soul
on this mental level as a means for a large range of
action and experience.
A
third gradation of thinking opens in us the pure ideative
mind which lives disinterestedly in truth of the idea
apart from any necessary dependence on its value for
action and experience. It views the data of the senses
and the superficial inner experiences, but only to find
the idea, the truth to which they bear witness and to
reduce them into terms of knowledge. It observes the
creative action of mind in life in the same way and
for the same purpose. Its preoccupation is with knowledge,
its whole object is to have the delight of ideation,
the search for truth, the effort to know itself and
the world and all that may lie behind its own action
and the world action. This ideative mind is the highest
reach of the intellect acting for itself, characteristically,
in its own power and for its own purpose.
It
is difficult for the human mind to combine rightly and
harmonise these three movements of the intelligence.
The ordinary man lives mainly in the habitual, has a
comparatively feeble action of the creative and pragmatic
and experiences a great difficulty in using at all or
entering into the movement of the pure ideative mentality.
The creative pragmatic mind is commonly too much occupied
with its own motion to move freely and disinterestedly
in the atmosphere of pure ideative order and on the
other hand has often an insufficient grasp on the actualities
imposed by the habitual mentality and the obstacles
it imposes as also on other movements of pragmatic thought
and action than that which it is itself interested in
building. The pure ideative mentality tends to construct
abstract and arbitrary systems of truth, intellectual
sections and ideative edifices, and either misses the
pragmatic movement necessary to life and lives only
or mainly in ideas, or cannot act with sufficient power
and directness in the life field, and is in danger of
being divorced from or weak in the world of the practical
and habitual mentality. An accommodation of some kind
is made, but the tyranny of the predominent tendency
interferes with the wholeness and unity of the thinking
being. Mind fails to be assured master even of its own
totality, because the secret of that totality lies beyond
it in the free unity of the self, free and therefore
capable of an infinite multiplicity and diversity, and
in the supramental power that can alone bring out in
a natural perfection the organic multiple movement of
the self's unity.
The
supermind in its completeness reverses the whole order
of the mind's thinking. It lives not in the phenomenal
but in the essential, in the self, and sees all as being
of the self and its power and form and movement, and
all the thought and the process of the thought in the
supermind must also be of that character. All its fundamental
ideation is a rendering of the spiritual knowledge that
acts by identity with all being and of the supramental
vision. It moves therefore primarily among the eternal,
the essential and the universal truths of self and being
and consciousness and infinite power and delight of
being (not excluding all that seems to our present consciousness
non-being), and all its particular thinking originates
from and depends upon the power of these eternal verities;
but in the second place it is at home too with infinite
aspects and applications, sequences and harmonies of
the truths of being of the Eternal. It lives therefore
at its heights in all that which the action of the pure
ideative mind is an effort to reach and discover, and
even on its lower ranges these things are to its luminous
receptivity present, near or easily grasped and available.
But
while the highest truths or the pure ideas are to the
ideative mind abstractions, because mind lives partly
in the phenomenal and partly in intellectual constructions
and has to use the method of abstraction to arrive at
the higher realities, the super-mind lives in the spirit
and therefore in the very substance of what these ideas
and truths represent or rather fundamentally are and
truly realises them, not only thinks but in the act
of thinking feels and identifies itself with their substance,
and to it they are among the most substantial things
that can be. Truths of consciousness and of essential
being are to the supermind the very stuff of reality,
more intimately and, as one might almost say, densely
real than outward movement and form of being, although
these too are to it movement and form of the reality
and not, as they are to a certain action of the spiritualised
mind, an illusion. The idea too is to it real-idea,
stuff of the reality of conscious being, full of power
for the substantial rendering of the truth and therefore
for creation.
And
again, while the pure ideative mind tends to build up
arbitrary systems which are mental and partial constructions
of the truth, the supermind is not bound by any representation
of system, though it is perfectly able to represent
and to arrange and construct in the living substance
of the truth for the pragmatic purposes of the Infinite.
The mind when it gets free from its exclusivenesses,
systematisings, attachment to its own constructions,
is at a loss in the infiniteness of the infinite, feels
it as a chaos, even if a luminous chaos, is unable any
longer to formulate and therefore to think and act decisively
because all, even the most diverse or contradictory
things, point at some truth in this infinity and yet
nothing it can think is entirely true and all its formulations
break down under the test of new suggestions from the
infinite. It begins to look on the world as a phantasmagory
and thought as a chaos of scintillations out of the
luminous indefinite. The mind assailed by the vastness
and freedom of the supramental loses itself and finds
no firm footing in the vastness. The supermind, on the
contrary, can in its freedom construct harmonies of
its thought and expression of being on the firm ground
of reality while still holding its infinite liberty
and rejoicing in its self of infinite vastness. All
that it thinks, as all that it is and does and lives,
belongs to the truth, the right, the vast, satyam,
rtam, brhat.
The
result of this wholeness is that there is no division
or incompatibility between the free essential ideation
of the super-mind corresponding to the mind's pure ideation,
free, disinterested, illimitable, and its creative,
pragmatic ideation purposeful and determinative. The
infinity of being results naturally in a freedom of
the harmonies of becoming. The supermind perceives always
action as a manifestation and expression of the Self
and creation as a revelation of the Infinite. All its
creative and pragmatic thought is an instrument of the
self's becoming, a power of illumination for that purpose,
an intermediary between the eternal identity and infinite
novelty and variety of illimitable Being and its self-expression
in the worlds and life. It is this that the supermind
constantly sees and embodies and while its ideative
vision and thought interpret to it the illimitable unity
and variety of the Infinite, which it is by a perpetual
identity and in which it lives in all its power of being
and becoming, there is constantly too a special creative
thought, associated with an action of the infinite will,
Tapas, power of being, which determines what it shall
present, manifest or create out of the infinity in the
course of Time, what it shall make—here and now
or in any range of Time or world—of the perpetual
becoming of the self in the universe.
The
supermind is not limited by this pragmatic movement
and does not take the partial motion or the entire stream
of what it so becomes and creates in its thought and
life for the whole truth of its self or of the Infinite.
It does not live only in what it is and thinks and does
selectively in the present or on one plane only of being;
it does not feed its existence only on the present or
the continual succession of moments to whose beats we
give that name. It does not see itself only as a movement
of Time or of the consciousness in time or as a creature
of the perpetual becoming. It is aware of a timeless
being beyond manifestation and of which all is a manifestation,
it is aware of what is eternal even in Time, it is aware
of many planes of existence; it is aware of past truth
of manifestation and of much truth of being yet to be
manifested in the future, but already existing in the
self-view of the Eternal. It does not mistake the pragmatic
reality which is the truth of action and mutation for
the sole truth, but sees it as a constant realisation
of that which is eternally real. It knows that creation
whether on the plane of matter or of life or of mind
or of supermind is and can be only a self-determined
presentation of eternal truth, a revelation of the Eternal,
and it is intimately aware of the pre-existence of the
truth of all things in the Eternal. This seeing conditions
all its pragmatic thought and its resultant action.
The maker in it is a selective power of the seer and
thinker, the self-builder a power of the self-seer,
the self-expressing soul a power of the infinite spirit.
It creates freely, and all the more surely and decisively
for that freedom, out of the infinite self and spirit.
It
is therefore not prisoned in its special becoming or
shut up in its round or its course of action. It is
open, in a way and a degree to which the mind cannot
attain, to the truth of other harmonies of creative
becoming even while in its own it puts forth a decisive
will and thought and action. When it is engaged in action
that is of the nature of a struggle, the replacing of
past or other thought and form and becoming by that
which it is appointed to manifest, it knows the truth
of what it displaces and fulfils even in displacing,
as well as the truth of what it substi-titutes. It is
not bound by its manifesting, selecting, pragmatic conscious
action, but it has at the same time all the joy of a
specially creative thought and selective precision of
action, the Ananda of the truth of the forms and movements
equally of its own and of others' becoming. All its
thought and will of life and action and creation, rich,
manifold, focussing the truth of many planes, is liberated
and illumined with the illimitable truth of the Eternal.
This
creative or pragmatic movement of the supramental thought
and consciousness brings with it an action which corresponds
to that of the habitual or mechanical mentality but
is yet of a very different character. The thing that
is created is the self-determination of a harmony and
all harmony proceeds upon seen or given lines and carries
with it a constant pulsation and rhythmic recurrence.
The supramental thought, organising the harmony of manifested
existence of the supramental being, founds it on eternal
principles, casts it upon the right lines of the truth
that is to be manifested, keeps sounding as characteristic
notes the recurrence of the constant elements in the
experience and the action which are necessary to constitute
the harmony. There is an order of the thought, a cycle
of the will, a stability in the motion. At the same
time its freedom prevents it from being shut up by the
recurrence into a groove of habitual action turning
always mechanically round a limited stock of thinking.
It does not like the habitual mind refer and assimilate
all new thought and experience to a fixed customary
mould of thinking, taking that for its basis. Its basis,
that to which all is referred, is above, upari budhne,
in the largeness of the self, in the supreme foundation
of the supramental truth, budhne rtasya. Its
order of thought, its cycle of will, its stable movement
of action does not crystallise into a mechanism or convention,
but is always alive with the spirit, does not live by
exclusiveness or hostility to other coexistent or possible
order and cycle, but absorbs sustenance from all that
it contacts and assimilates it to its own principle.
The spiritual assimilation is practicable because all
is referred to the largeness of the self and its free
vision above. The order of the supramental thought and
will is constantly receiving new light and power from
above and has no difficulty in accepting it into its
movement: it is, as is proper to an order of the Infinite,
even in its stability of motion indescribably supple
and plastic, capable of perceiving and rendering the
relation of all things to each other in the One, capable
of expressing always more and more of the Infinite,
at its fullest of expressing in its own way all that
is actually expressible of the Infinite.
Thus
there is no discord, disparity or difficulty of adjustment
in the complex motion of the supramental jhäna,
but a simplicity in the complexity, an assured ease
in a many-sided abundance that comes from the spontaneous
sureness and totality of the self-knowledge of the spirit.
Obstacle, inner struggle, disparity, difficulty, discord
of parts and movements continues in the transformation
of mind to supermind only so long as the action, influence
or pressure of the mind insisting on its own methods
of construction continues or its process of building
knowledge or thought and will of action on the foundation
of a primal ignorance resists the opposite process of
supermind organising all as a luminous manifestation
out of the self and its inherent and eternal self-knowledge.
It is thus that the supermind acting as a representative,
interpretative, revealingly imperative power of the
spirit's knowledge by identity, turning the light of
the infinite consciousness freely and inimitably into
substance and form of real-idea, creating out of power
of conscious being and power of real-idea, stabilising
a movement which obeys its own law but is still a supple
and plastic movement of the infinite, uses its thought
and knowledge and a will identical in substance and
light with the knowledge to organise in each supramental
being his own right manifestation of the one self and
spirit.
The
action of the supramental jnäna so constitued
evidently surpasses the action of the mental reason
and we have to see what replaces the reason in the supramental
transformation. The thinking mind of man finds its most
clear and characteristic satisfaction and its most precise
and effective principle of organisation in the reasoning
and logical intelligence. It is true that man is not
and cannot be wholly governed either in his thought
or his action by the reason alone. His mentality is
inextricably subjected to a joint, mixed and intricate
action of the reasoning intelligence with two other
powers, an intuition, actually only half luminous in
the human mentality, operating behind the more visible
action of the reason or veiled and altered in the action
of the normal intelligence, and the life-mind of sensation,
instinct, impulse, which is in its own nature a sort
of obscure involved intuition and which supplies the
intelligence from below with its first materials and
data. And each of these other powers is in its own kind
an intimate action of the spirit operating in mind and
life and has a more direct and spontaneous character
and immediate power for perception and action than the
reasoning intelligence. But yet neither of these powers
is capable of organising for man his mental existence.
His
life-mind,—its instincts, its impulses,—is
not and cannot be self-sufficient and predominant as
it is in the lower creation. It has been seized upon
by the intelligence and profoundly altered by it even
where the development of the intelligence is imperfect
and itself most insistent in its prominence. It has
lost most of its intuitive character, is indeed now
infinitely richer as a supplier of materials and data,
but no longer quite itself or at ease in its action
because half rationalised, dependent at least on some
infused element however vague of reasoning or intelligent
activity and incapable of acting to good purpose without
the aid of the intelligence. Its roots and place of
perfection are in the subconscient from which it emerges
and man's business is to increase in the sense of a
more and more conscient knowledge and action. Man reverting
to a governance of his being by the life-mind would
become either irrational and erratic or dull and imbecile
and would lose the essential character of manhood.
The
intuition, on the other hand, has its roots and its
place of perfection in the supramental which is now
to us the super-conscient, and in mind it has no pure
and no organised action, but is immediately mixed with
the action of the reasoning intelligence, is not quite
itself, but limited, fragmentary, diluted and impure,
and depends for the ordered use and organisation of
its suggestions on the aid of the logical reason. The
human mind is never quite sure of its intuitions until
they have been viewed and confirmed by the judgment
of the rational intelligence: it is there that it feels
most well founded and secure. Man surmounting reason
to organise his thought and life by the intuitive mind
would be already surpassing his characteristic humanity
and on the way to the development of supermanhood. This
can only be done above: for to attempt it below is only
to achieve another kind of imperfection: there the mental
reason is a necessary factor.
The
reasoning intelligence is an intermediate agent between
the life-mind and the yet undeveloped supramental intuition.
Its business is that of an intermediary, on the one
side to enlighten the life-mind, to make it conscient
and govern and regulate as much as may be its action
until Nature is ready to evolve the supramental energy
which will take hold of life and illumine and perfect
all its movements by converting its obscurely intuitive
motions of desire, emotion, sensation and action into
a spiritually and luminously spontaneous life manifestation
of the self and spirit. On the other higher side its
mission is to take the rays of light which come from
above and translate them into terms of intelligent mentality
and to accept, examine, develop, intellectually utilise
the intuitions that escape the barrier and descend into
mind from the superconscience. It does this until man,
becoming more and more intelligently conscient of himself
and his environment and his being, becomes also aware
that he cannot really know these things by his reason,
but can only make a mental representation of them to
his intelligence.
The
reason, however, tends in the intellectual man to ignore
the limitations of its power and function and attempts
to be not an instrument and agent but a substitute for
the self and spirit. Made confident by success and predominance,
by the comparative greatness of its own light, it regards
itself as a thing primary and absolute, assures itself
of its own entire truth and sufficiency and endeavours
to become the absolute ruler of mind and life. This
it cannot do successfully, because it depends on the
lower life intuition and on the covert supermind and
its intuitive messages for its own real substance and
existence. It can only appear to itself to succeed because
it reduces all its experience to rational formulas and
blinds itself to half the real nature of the thought
and action that is behind it and to the infinite deal
that breaks out of its formulas. The excess of the reason
only makes life artificial and rationally mechanical,
deprives it of its spontaneity and vitality and prevents
the freedom and expansion of the spirit. The limited
and limiting mental reason must make itself plastic
and flexible, open itself to its source, receive the
light from above, exceed itself and pass by an euthanasia
of transformation into the body of the supramental reason.
Meanwhile it is given power and leading for an organisation
of thought and action on the characteristically human
scale intermediate between the sub-conscient power of
the spirit organising the life of the animal and the
superconscient power of the spirit which becoming con-scient
can organise the existence and life of a spiritual supermanhood.
-Sri
Aurobindo
