-02_A Review of Sri Aurobindos LifeIndex-04_A Note on Supermind

-03_A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation

A Programme for the Second Century of

A Programme for the Second Century of the

Divine Manifestation

 

I

 

IT IS Integration. I am using a much used, much abused word but it happens to be the word. We have reached a status of consciousness within as distinct units, individual or collective: our effort should now be to co-ordinate, to harmonise the different and differing units or separate elements into a well-knit single whole. That means, the ego-centres that are still left and active are to be exorcised, purified – the separative knot has to be dissolved and the true centre of unity to be found – the psychic divine centre.

First each element in the individual, each level of his being must find its centre, its soul or psychic base – and then only a co-ordination of all would be possible. Next through the psychic level the general level of the being and consciousness, that is to say, its expression and its field of action should be lifted and raised to a higher potency of poise – the higher the better – towards the higher mind, towards the overmental – and beyond.

The Divine Presence in the heart – the central psychic – should not only be felt constantly there in the heart but in all other parts or levels of the being: it must create or awake its figure or norm everywhere so that it can inspire and control directly all activities and movements in a global and total gesture. It has to be an integral dynamic Presence, that is the way of uplifting the poise of the adhara, its global existence. The process is first to deepen the Presence, that is from the surface to dive into the inner realm and then float up again into a wider and higher expanse, deeper and deeper means truer and

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truer truth – nearer the pure fundamental reality – the Eternal and Infinite, the supreme Spirit, the bedrock of existence. Higher and higher means formulations of the Reality in a gradually evolving expansion up the ladders of the physical, the vital, the mental consciousness and towards the higher mental and overmental, indeed towards the Supramental.

 

II

 

It is not sufficient that the central psychic being comes forward and exercises what is at most a general influence on the other limbs of the being. It should enter into its counter-parts or counter-points – the inherent psychic centres of each part and parcel and make them directly active. The central psychic – self – has its delegated selves everywhere in the global being. Indeed each particle of the being must itself be a psychic or psychicised particle: a consciousness-photon. There is thus a vital photon, a mental photon, a photon of the physical consciousness even as the material photon. And all these in their hierarchic harmonious arrangement shall constitute the global system of the new person.

Even so, there is to be a transmutation of the environment also: the outer objects and circumstances and happenings will be a field – an Einsteinian field – of modulations, pulsations, tensions, of these consciousness-particles of the psychic.

An uplift of consciousness is a natural consequence of the psychic's aspiration. The psychic has the power to call down the rain of higher existence, a wider law of being-higher means, as I have said, higher than the highest mental yet achieved by man normally and generally-stepping by the intermediary gradations towards the Supermind.

This, on the whole, is the inherent activity of the inferior or subordinate nature in its aspiration to move upward and transform itself. This activity in us all, it must be noted, is supported, initiated and inspired by the self-action of the higher nature, the descent of the above-mental regions. 

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III

 

The first definitive and distinctive higher status is that of the Overmind. Its character is a global and entire being and consciousness, a cosmic and universal all-inclusive existence. Each being attains its self and each self lives in every other self and all selves together and at the same time live in each self. The diversities are not abolished – as in the unitary consciousness and being of the absolute Existence, Brahman – variations  are maintained as the multiple aspects or modalities of the same single infinite eternal power.

 I am now speaking here of samrajya-siddhi, the realisation of the world-empire, the spiritual or Divine Empire. First of course there is, as the basis of the samrajya, the svarajya, the kingdom or reign of the individual's own self. In effect, the world-empire or the imperial reign of the Spirit has three gradations. At the outset each element, that is, each individual human being (we limit ourselves to the human collectivity at present) has to attain svarajya, self-rule, a perfectly homogeneous integral spiritual whole in himself: then all such individuals should achieve integrality with one another. Each lives in and through every other and all together live in everyone. The whole forms an indissoluble integral and unitary life. This collective integration means all individuals have one mind, one vital being, even one physical consciousness, not of course one material body but still a feeling of the' kind. One mind or one vital or one physical consciousness does not mean everyone has the same identical formations and movements in these respective regions, but all possess substantially the same stuff belonging to a self-same unit. A comparison or analogy may explain and illustrate the point. For example, the different parts of a human body form one integrated texture: they are all bound up, united although not fused together, in an inextricable, "inexorable" unity. Action in one part creates a reaction, re-echoes or re-doubles in every other part: they all rise up like one man as it is popularly said, at a single touch. Different in form, different in function, they are identical in their substantial composition, in their fundamental stuff-the organic plasma; even so, the minds of all, their vital movements, their physical movements too, however different and diverse, contrary or

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contradictory, are in their own respective domains part and particles of the one and the same substance and all together contribute to form, to create a symphony, a grand Beethovenesque orchestra.

The next grade of integration in the Divine world-empire comes when not only individuals but groups and collectivities find and establish their own selves – each its svarajya, and all combined in a yet larger and greater organisation: combined and unified they act in a unified and homogeneous living as individuals do in the world aggregate. Although the individual is the basic reality, aggregations and collectivities also are realities, even spiritual realities in the progressive unfoldment of the cosmic spirit.

 

IV

 

Such a consummation, so complex in composition, so global in scope would be possible only when the above-mental or the overmental world-consciousness descends into the mental and lower hemisphere and takes possession of it and becomes active and dynamic there. The movement upward, the evolutionary force in nature inclusive of the human aspiration is the spearhead to break through the solid frontier wall of ignorance and inferior consciousness; the luminous point that breaks through is, as I have said, the soul-power, the psychic. That creates the rift in the dense covering through which can pour down the rains and streams of the universal consciousness with its purificatory ablution of the lower nature and conciousness. But this again becomes not only possible but inevitable when this new consciousness contacts openly and directly its master and overlord, the supreme Supramental Consciousness, which is the true reality pressing down always upon the lower creation, rejecting whatever has to be thrown out, sifting and screening the mixture, sublimating, subsuming all that has to be retained within itself.

The problem, the fundamental problem is not merely to extract the Truth out of its covering of falsehood-in the image of the Upanishads, to pull the inner stem out of its sheath. It is not sufficient to liberate the spirit from the obscuring matter 

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but to instal the spirit in the body of matter and transfigure it into the substance of the Spirit, build it in its own image. It is not sufficient to arrive at the One without the second, the Unitary Unit, but to realise the Unit in its most concrete multiplicity.

  To spiritualise Matter does not mean dematerialising Matter! It means rather re-materialising the Spirit. And that is the task of the Supermind and its intermediate and immediate helpers – agents and emissaries – the Overmind and Above-mind.

 

V

 

  The Supermind is of Course the last and ultimate or other wise the first and original Support and inspiration of all other levels of being and living. Apart from this fundamental, this one source of sustenance, each intermediary level depends directly and leans upon the one that lies just above it, over arches it as it were. Thus speaking of the major intermediaries, the Overmind is under the direct control and guidance of the over-arching Supermind. And Overmind itself over-arches, broods over the mind and from behind guides and controls it. The Mind has evolved primarily because of the pressure of the Overmind standing immediately above it in the hierarchy of the grades of existence. And because of this constant ruling presence of the Overmind, the mind in man is a progressive entity unveiling powers lent or delegated to it, sent down into it from the Overmind. The animal, on the contrary, is not a progressive being like man, for the Overmind does not reach it. The animal is not in contact with the Overmind. It is in contact, a somewhat precarious contact, with the Mind. Something of the Mental has made an inroad into him, into his vital texture. It is to be noted that the mind in the animal is of a different kind from the human mind: it is only in the domesticated animals, the animals living in the neighbourhood of man, having contact with him, that something of the human mind percolates Or is imbibed. As I have said, the human mind has developed and is developing fast, specially in recent years, to an extraordinary degree, in the domain of physical science leading to discoveries that appear so subtle and distant, far off

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as almost to be out of reach of his normal means of experience. Discoveries of other kinds, hints and intimations with regard to other forms and fields of knowledge and experience are explained most logically and adequately by the fact of an interruption or intervention of another type of consciousness into the present constitution of the human mind. We are referring to the influence of the Overmind, gradually becoming more and more explicit, extensive and effective, the immediately directing power, the guide of the new age. And this naturally because of the operative presence, in and through the Overmind, of the Supramental upon earth and in earth.

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