Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death and the death of Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo : Savitri
The Mother [Mira Alfassa] said on
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.
Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive.
It has already been stated that Sri Aurobindo has told us about the various planes of mind and about the Supermind and the Descent of Supermind on earth and of the Advent of the Supramental race on earth.
The human race is born into a world of ignorance and inconscience but is also capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and of an ascent into the light and force and bliss of a spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature. The question now is about the consequence of this descent of Supermind into the earthly existence about for the mankind. The descent into the earthly existence of this supremely creative being and consciousness and power that the Supermind is will not only be a new feature or factor added to the human life and existence, or be put in its front, but it will also have consequences of importance deeply affecting the rest of earth-nature. Though the entire humanity, or even a major portion of the humanity in its present state of existence, may not have a transmutative emergence and rise into the New Race, the Supramental Consciousness and Force will definitely and surely exercise a great influence on mankind as a whole, even a radical change in its existence here on earth. The influence and the change it will bring would be far-reaching and even tremendous. It is not only that the Supermind will be established and a supramental race of beings will be manifested upon the earth, it will also bring about an elevating and transformative change in Mind itself and, inevitably in the consciousness of man, the mental being, and will also equally bring about a radical transformation in the principles and ways of his living, in the ways of his action and in the entire make-up and sense and music of his life and his physique. The access to the supramental consciousness and the supramental life will be open to man, because by such a transformation a race of supramental beings would be created. In the same way, the human race itself has come into being through a considerable elevation and expansion of consciousness and a change in the use of the body and through the evolution of the inherent mental and spiritual abilities and powers out of the animal. The human mind is a principle of an original ignorance that searches for knowledge but arrives only at a partial knowledge. The human mind is the indweller of “a half-way twilight” and it serves and helps of ignorance and it brings for us a combination of truth and error. The effect of the Supramental descent may, even without or before a complete transformation of the mind and the human existence turn the mind into “a power of light, of knowledge finding itself.” As Sri Aurobindo has said, the human mind may even become in man “a subordinate, limited and special action of the Supermind, a sufficiently luminous receptacle of truth”, as it is so in its origin. And all falsity in the action of mind may cease to be or exist.
The descent of Supermind, of the supreme creative Truth-Power, in the earth-nature, may bring a change in the law of evolution, its method and its arrangement: the principle of evolution through knowledge may enter into the forces of the material universe to a large extent.
The evolution now is wholly an evolution in Ignorance. It begins from “the complete nescience of the Inconscient” and proceeds towards only a lesser ignorance, even in the highest attainment of knowledge by mind. It is so, because mental knowledge is only a representation, not a direct knowledge.
When there is the descent of the Supermind, man will then begin to develop the powers and means of a higher knowledge. Even the developing animal may open its mentality to “beginnings of conscious thought and even a rudimentary reason,” and even the plant may develop its “first subconscient reactions” and attain some primary nervous sensitiveness. Even Matter, which is but a blind form of the Spirit, may become more alive with its inherent hidden power and may offer more readily to the new human intelligence, influenced by the Supermind, the secret sense of things, the occult realities it covers, for example, “the record of the past” always preserved in its dumb inconscience, or the working of its involved forces and invisible movements which reveal veiled powers in material nature. This would be a great change promising greater changes in the future. And it would mean only an uplifting of the universal order, and not a disturbance. “Evolution would itself evolve,” says Sri Aurobindo, but it would not stumble or be disturbed.
We have experienced the human mentality in a world which starts from inconscience and proceeds through an almost complete nescience and a slowly lessening ignorance towards a high degree of knowledge. But this is still a partially equipped knowledge and has always an incomplete scope and imperfect method, which does not serve fully the needs of a consciousness always pushing towards the goal of its own still distant absolute. This creates our notion about mind.
In the present stage of its evolution on earth, we see the imperfections and limitations of mind and accept them to be the part of its very nature. But in fact its present boundaries are only its temporary limits and measures of its still incomplete evolutionary progress. The shortcomings its of methods and means are there because it is still immature, and they are not there because of its constitution. Mind has definitely evolved much from the state of mind of the cavemen, of the stage of the Homo Sapiens and the Homo Neanderthals. And mind will definitely evolve further in the time to come, even before its being supramentalised.
In its evolution, the mental being has chosen to take the burden of the physical body and as well the vital consciousness, which have created conditions of great difficulties for the mind, and when compared to these difficulties, its achievement may seem to be great. But in comparison to its great possibilities, its achievement is far below the expectation. And indeed an illumined future is possible for Mind.
Because mind originally is a principle of light, an instrument put forth from the Supermind and is not “in its very nature an inventor of errors, a father of lies bound down to a capacity of falsehood, wedded to its own mistakes and the leader of a stumbling life”[Sri Aurobindo]. though at present it seems it to be so. Though now it works within limits and even creates limits, these limits are luminous borders for a special work by Nature, voluntary bounds with a special purpose, “a surface of the finite ever extending itself under the eye of infinity”[Sri Aurobindo]. This character of Mind will reveal itself when touched by Supermind and human mind will then grow into some minor instrument of the supramental knowledge. Possibly, the mind will no longer be limited by the intellect and will be capable of a mental gnosis, which will be a luminous but diminished reproduction of the Truth, it will extend the power of the Light not only to its own consciousness but to that of the lower levels, when Man will ascend towards self-transcendence. All the Higher levels of Mind, from Overmind to Higher Mind will be able to reflect some of their powers in the ascending human mind and the purified and exalted feeling and vital force and action and thereby prepare the Ascent.
This is essentially the change which will be the result of the evolutionary order, consequent of the descent of Supermind on earth, of the advent of Supermind into the earth-nature. We have seen that this Descent has already occurred on earth on
Mind has its origin in Supermind and is itself a power of Supermind. It is a principle of Light and a power of Light and a force for a Knowledge specially active for a special purpose. But it assumes a different aspect in working out this purpose and separates itself more and more from the supramental light, from the power and illumination of the supramental principle. In this departure of Mind in this direction from its own highest truth, it becomes a creator of ignorance and appears to be the highest power in a world of ignorance. Subjected to ignorance, Mind seems only to arrive at a partial and imperfect knowledge. This decline is there, because Mind is used by the Supermind mainly for bringing the necessary differentiation, so that there is a creation, a universe. In Supermind, in all its creation there is this differentiating power, “the manifestation of the One in the Many and the Many in the One; but the One is never forgotten or lost in its multiplicity” and multiplicity “never takes precedence over the eternal oneness”[Sri Aurobindo]. However, in Mind, the differentiation, the multiplicity does take precedence, and the sense of the universal oneness is lost. The separated unit appears to exist for itself and by itself, and forgets the True Origin.
However, the plane of mind need not be a world of ignorance where falsity, error or nescience must have a place. It may be only a voluntary self-limitation of knowledge.
“It could be a world where all possibilities capable of being determined by mind could manifest themselves in the successions of Time and find a true form and field of their action, the expressive figure of themselves, their capacity of self-development, self-realization of a kind, self-discovery.” [Sri Aurobindo]
In psychic experience the line of descent is found by which the involution takes place and ends in Matter and the creation of the material universe. However, in the psychic experience, what is found is an original inconscience where life and mind and spirit struggle to evolve out of the material inconscience and ignorance to find themselves and grow towards “their full capacity and highest existence”[Sri Aurobindo]. If mind is successful in that endeavour, it can also find back its true character and once more become a principle and power of Light and even help in the working of a true and complete knowledge. At its highest, it may transcend into the supramental truth and become a part and function of the supramental knowledge, and in the lower degree below Supermind it may grow a mental gnosis, a spiritual perception, feeling, activity, sense which serve knowledge and not ignorance. It can be an increasingly luminous way leading from light to light, from truth to truth, no longer circling in “the mazes of half-truth and half-nescience” [Sri Aurobindo]. This is not possible, where mind is not transformed, as it now is, as is still be the leader and the highest achievement of the evolution. But when Supermind descends on earth and is the leading and dominant power here, this will certainly and inevitably happen.
In this connection the Mother has further said:
A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being.
Open yourself to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.
To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.
The Mother has also given us a simple but essential and indispensable advice:
To leap into the new consciousness, the first condition is a mental modesty sufficient to be convinced that all one thinks one knows is nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned.
All that one has learned externally must be only a foothold enabling one to rise towards higher knowledge.
Ref: The Supramental Manifestation on Earth by Sri Aurobindo.
[Continued]
Barin
