The
lifting of the level of consciousness from the mind
to the supermind and the consequent transformation of
the being from the state of the mental to that of the
supramental Purusha must bring with it, to be complete,
a transformation of all the parts of the nature and
all its activities. The whole mind is not merely made
into a passive channel of the supramental activities,
a channel of their downflow into the life and body and
of their outflow or communication with the outward world,
the material existence,—that is only the first
stage of the process,—but is itself supramentalised
along with all its instruments. There is accordingly
a change, a profound transformation in the physical
sense, a supramentalising of the physical sight, hearing,
touch, etc., that creates or reveals to us a quite different
view, not merely of life and its meaning, but even of
the material world and all its forms and aspects. The
supermind uses the physical organs and confirms their
way of action, but it develops behind them the inner
and deeper senses which see what are hidden from the
physical organs and farther transforms the new sight,
hearing, etc., thus created by casting it into its own
mould and way of sensing. The change is one that takes
nothing from the physical truth of the object, but adds
to it its supraphysical truth and takes away by the
removal of the physical limitation the element of falsehood
in the material way of experience.
The
supramentalising of the physical sense brings with it
a result similar in this field to that which we experience
in the transmutation of the thought and consciousness.
As soon as the sight, for example, becomes altered under
the influence of the supramental seeing, the eye gets
a new and transfigured vision of things and of the world
around us. Its sight acquires an extraordinary totality
and an immediate and embracing precision in which the
whole and every detail stand out at once in the complete
harmony and vividness of the significance meant by Nature
in the object and its realisation of the idea in form,
executed in a triumph of substantial being. It is as
if the eye of the poet and artist had replaced the vague
or trivial unseeing normal vision, but singularly spiritualised
and glorified,—as if indeed it were the sight
of the supreme divine Poet and Artist in which we were
participating and there were given to us the full seeing
of his truth and intention in his design of the universe
and of each thing in the universe. There is an unlimited
intensity which makes all that is seen a revelation
of the glory of quality and idea and form and colour.
The physical eye seems then to carry in itself a spirit
and a consciousness which sees not only the physical
aspect of the object but the soul of quality in it,
the vibration of energy, the light and force and spiritual
substance of which it is made. Thus there comes through
the physical sense to the total sense consciousness
within and behind the vision a revelation of the soul
of the thing seen and of the universal Spirit that is
expressing itself in this objective form of its own
conscious being.
There
is at the same time a subtle change which makes the
sight see in a sort of fourth dimension, the character
of which is a certain internality, the seeing not only
of the superficies and the outward form but of that
which informs it and subtly extends around it. The material
object becomes to this sight something different from
what we now see, not a separate object on the background
or in the environment of the rest of Nature, but an
indivisible part and even in a subtle way an expression
of the unity of all that we see. And this unity that
we see becomes not only to the subtler consciousness
but to the mere sense, to the illumined physical sight
itself, that of the identity of the Eternal, the unity
of the Brahman. For to the supramentalised seeing the
material world and space and material objects cease
to be material in the sense in which we now, on the
strength of the sole evidence of our limited physical
organs and of the physical consciousness that looks
through them, receive as our gross perception and understand
as our conception of matter. It and they appear and
are seen as spirit itself in a form of itself and a
conscious extension. The whole is a unity—the
oneness unaffected by any multitudinousness of objects
and details—held in and by the consciousness in
a spiritual space and all substance there is conscious
substance. This change and this totality of the way
of seeing comes from the exceeding of the limitations
of our present physical sense, because the power of
the subtle or psychical eye has been infused into the
physical and there has again been infused into this
psycho-physical power of vision the spiritual sight,
the pure sense, the supramental Sanjnana.
All
the other senses undergo a similar transformation. All
that the ear listens to, reveals the totality of its
sound body and sound significance and all the tones
of its vibration and reveals also to the single and
complete hearing the quality, the rhythmic energy, the
soul of the sound and its expression of the one universal
spirit. There is the same internality, the going of
the sense into the depths of the sound and the finding
there of that which informs it and extends it into unity
with the harmony of all sound and no less with the harmony
of all silence, so that the ear is always listening
to the Infinite in its heard expression and the voice
of its silence. All sounds become to the supramentalised
ear the voice of the Divine, himself born into sound,
and a rhythm of the concord of the universal symphony.
And there is too the same completeness, vividness, intensity,
the revelation of the self of the thing heard and the
spiritual satisfaction of the self in hearing. The supramentalised
touch also contacts or receives the touch of the Divine
in all things and knows all things as the Divine through
the conscious self in the contact: and there is too
the same totality, intensity, revelation of all that
is in and behind the touch to the experiencing consciousness.
There comes a similar transformation of the other senses.
There
is at the same time an opening of new powers in all
the senses, an extension of range, a stretching out
of the physical consciousness to an undreamed capacity.
The supramental transformation extends too the physical
consciousness far beyond the limits of the body and
enables it to receive with a perfect concreteness the
physical contact of things at a distance. And the physical
organs become capable of serving as channels for the
psychic and other senses so that we can see with the
physical waking eye what is ordinarily revealed only
in the abnormal states and to the psychical vision,
hearing or other sense knowledge. It is the spirit or
the inner soul that sees and senses, but the body and
its powers are themselves spiritualised and share directly
in the experience. The entire material sensation is
supramentalised and it becomes aware, directly and with
a physical participation and, finally, a unity with
the subtler instrumentation, of forces and movements
and the physical, vital, emotional, mental vibrations
of things and beings and feels them all not only spiritually
or mentally but physically in the self and as movements
of the one self in these many bodies. The wall that
the limitations of the body and its senses have built
around us is abolished even in the body and the senses
and there is in its place the free communication of
the eternal oneness. All sense and sensation becomes
full of the divine light, the divine power and intensity
of experience, a divine joy, the delight of the Brahman.
And even that which is now to us discordant and jars
on the senses takes its place in the universal concord
of the universal movement, reveals its rasa, meaning,
design and, by delight in its intention in the divine
consciousness and its manifestation of its law and Dharma,
its harmony with the total self, its place in the manifestation
of the divine being, becomes beautiful and happy to
the soul experience. All sensation becomes Ananda.
The
embodied mind in us is ordinarily aware only through
the physical organs and only of their objects and of
subjective experiences which seem to start from the
physical experience and to take them alone, however
remotely, for their foundation and mould of construction.
All the rest, all that is not consistent with or part
of or verified by the physical data, seems to it rather
imagination than reality and it is only in abnormal
states that it opens to other kinds of conscious experience.
But in fact there are immense ranges behind of which
we could be aware if we opened the doors of our inner
being. These ranges are there already in action and
known to a subliminal self in us, and much even of our
surface consciousness is directly projected from them
and without our knowing it influences our subjective
experience of things. There is a range of independent
vital or pranic experiences behind, subliminal to and
other than the surface action of the vitalised physical
consciousness. And when this opens itself or acts in
any way, there are made manifest to the waking mind
the phenomena of a vital consciousness, a vital intuition,
a vital sense not dependent on the body and its instruments,
although it may use them as a secondary medium and a
recorder. It is possible to open completely this range
and, when we do so, we find that its operation is that
of the conscious life force individualised in us contacting
the universal life force and its operations in things,
happenings and persons. The mind becomes aware of the
life consciousness in all things, responds to it through
our life consciousness with an immediate directness
not limited by the ordinary communication through the
body and its organs, records its intuitions, becomes
capable of experiencing existence as a translation of
the universal Life or Prana. The field of which the
vital consciousness and the vital sense are primarily
aware is not that of forms but, directly, that of forces:
its world is a world of the play of energies, and form
and event are sensed only secondarily as a result and
embodiment of the energies. The mind working through
the physical senses can only construct a view and knowledge
of this nature as an idea in the intelligence, but it
cannot go beyond the physical translation of the energies,
and it has therefore no real or direct experience of
the true nature of life, no actual realisation of the
life force and the life spirit. It is by opening this
other level or depth of experience within and by admission
to the vital consciousness and vital sense that the
mind can get the true and direct experience. Still,
even then, so long as it is on the mental level, the
experience is limited by the vital terms and their mental
renderings and there is an obscurity even in this greatened
sense and knowledge. The supramental transformation
supravitalises the vital, reveals it as a dynamics of
the spirit, makes a complete opening and a true revelation
of all the spiritual reality behind and within the life
force and the life spirit and of all its spiritual as
well as its mental and purely vital truth and significance.
The
supermind in its descent into the physical being awakens,
if not already wakened by previous yogic Sadhana, the
consciousness—veiled or obscure in most of us—which
supports and forms there the vital sheath, the prana
kosa. When this is awakened, we no longer live in the
physical body alone, but also in a vital body which
penetrates and envelops the physical and is sensitive
to impacts of another kind, to the play of the vital
forces around us and coming in on us from the universe
or from particular persons or group lives or from things
or else from the vital planes and worlds which are behind
the material universe. These impacts we feel even now
in their result and in certain touches and affectations,
but not at all or very little in their source and their
coming. An awakened consciousness in the pranic body
immediately feels them, is aware of a pervading vital
force other than the physical energy, and can draw upon
it to increase the vital strength and support the physical
energies, can deal directly with the phenomena and causes
of health and disease by means of this vital influx
or by directing pranic currents, can be aware of the
vital and the vital-emotional atmosphere of others and
deal with its interchanges, along with a host of other
phenomena which are unfelt by or obscure to our outward
consciousness but here become conscient and sensible.
It is acutely aware of the life soul and life body in
ourself and others. The supermind takes up this vital
consciousness and vital sense, puts it on its right
foundation and transforms it by revealing the life force
here as the very power of the spirit dynamised for a
near and direct operation on and through subtle and
gross matter and for formation and action in the material
universe.
The
first result is that the limitations of our individual
life being break down and we live no longer with a personal
life force, or not with that ordinarily, but in and
by the universal life energy. It is all the universal
Prana that comes consciently streaming into and through
us, keeps up there a dynamic constant eddy, an unseparated
centre of its power, a vibrant station of storage and
communication, constantly fills it with its forces and
pours them out in activity upon the world around us.
This life energy, again, is felt by us not merely as
a vital ocean and its streams, but as the vital way
and form and body and outpouring of a conscious universal
Shakti, and that conscient Shakti reveals itself as
the Chit Shakti of the Divine, the Energy of the transcendent
and universal Self and Purusha of which—or rather
of whom—our universalised individuality becomes
an instrument and channel. As a result we feel ourselves
one in life with all others and one with the life of
all Nature and of all things in the universe. There
is a free and conscious communication of the vital energy
working in us with the same energy working in others.
We are aware of their life as of our own or, at the
least, of the touch and pressure and communicated movements
of our life being on them and theirs upon us. The vital
sense in us becomes powerful, intense, capable of bearing
all the small or large, minute or immense vibrations
of this life world on all its planes physical and supraphysical,
vital and supravital, thrills with all its movement
and Ananda and is aware of and open to all forces. The
supermind takes possession of all this great range of
experience, and makes it all luminous, harmonious, experienced
not obscurely and fragmentarily and subject to the limitations
and errors of its handling by the mental ignorance,
but revealed, it and each movement of it, in its truth
and totality of power and delight, and directs the great
and now hardly limitable powers and capacities of the
life dynamis on all its ranges according to the simple
and yet complex, the sheer and spontaneous and yet unfalteringly
intricate will of the Divine in our life. It makes the
vital sense a perfect means of the knowledge of the
life forces around us, as the physical of the forms
and sensations of the physical universe, and a perfect
channel too of the reactions of the active life force
through us working as an instrument of self-manifestation.
-Sri
Aurobindo
