The
Supramental Vision
IN the supramental vision there is a direct, full and immediate
knowledge of things, in the sense that you see all things at the same time
totally, integrally; you see the truth of a thing in all its aspects
simultaneously. But as soon as you want to explain or
describe it, you are obliged to come down to a lower level. Sri Aurobindo calls
it the Mind of Light. Here things have to be said or even thought or expressed
and realised in action one after another in a certain order, in a certain
relation to each other. Therefore the simultaneity disappears; for, in the
present condition of our way of expression it is impossible to say everything
at once outright. We are obliged to veil a portion of what we see and know in
order to bring it out little by little. Sri Aurobindo therefore calls it a
transparent veil; for you see all, you know all at the same time, you have the
entire or total knowledge of a thing, but you cannot express it whole and
entire at one stroke. There are no words, no possible modes of
expression for the supramental vision, so long as we are what we are. We have
to use an inferior procedure to express ourselves, and yet we possess at the
same time the full knowledge. It is because of the necessity of transferring
this knowledge into words that we are compelled, so to say, to hold back a
part of what we know, letting it come out step by step in a succession. It is
the veil of expression that suits our need both for utterance and
understanding. The knowledge is there, really there, we have not got to search
for it and we have not got to express it as we go on finding it; no, it is
there in its totality, only the necessity of expression makes us say things one
after another, and that naturally diminishes the omnipotence ascribed by Sri
Aurobindo to the vision. For what is omnipotent is the total vision expressing
itself totally. Omniscience
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is there, in principle, it is
perceptible; but this omniscience cannot act in its full power, for it has to
come down a step to be able to express itself. To live totally in the supramental knowledge,
one must have other means of expression than those available at present. New modes
of expression have to be developed for expressing supra mental things in a
supramental way. At present we have to raise our mental faculty to its maximum,
to a sort of frontier that is hardly visible and which yet exists; for our
means of expression still belong to this mental world and they do not possess
supramental power. We do not have the necessary organs. We must become beings
of the supramental world, with a supramental substance, a supramental inner
organisation, to express the supramental knowledge in a supramental way. Till
now we could, in some part of our consciousness, come out wholly into the
supramental vision and knowledge, but could not express it from there. We had
to come, as I say, one plane lower down to be able to express ourselves. That is how this veil is transparent to the
consciousness, for the consciousness sees and knows things in a supramental
way, but a part remains veiled and comes out only progressively, for it has not
the means to do otherwise.
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