{"id":1232,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:26","slug":"31-the-gradations-of-the-supermind-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21\/31-the-gradations-of-the-supermind-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-31_The Gradations of the Supermind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\n
\nChapter XXI<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

The
\nGradations of the Supermind<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\nintuitive mind is an immediate translation of truth into mental terms half
\ntransformed by a radiant supramental substance, a translation of some infinite
\nself-knowledge that acts above mind in the superconscient spirit. That spirit becomes
\nconscient<\/span> to us as a greater self at once above and
\nin and around us of which our present self, our mental, vital and physical
\npersonality and nature, is an imperfect portion or a partial derivation or an
\ninferior and inadequate symbol, and as the intuitive mind grows in us, as our
\nwhole being grows more moulded<\/span> to an intuitive
\nsubstance, we feel a sort of half transformation of our members into the nature
\nof this greater self and spirit. All our thought, will, impulse, feeling, even
\nin the end our more outward vital and physical sensations become more and more
\ndirect transmissions from the spirit and are of another and a more and more
\npure, untroubled, powerful and luminous nature. This is one side of the change:
\nthe other is that whatever belongs still to the lower being, whatever still
\nseems to us to come from outside or as a survival of the action of our old
\ninferior personality, feels the pressure of the change and increasingly tends
\nto modify and transform itself to the new substance and nature. The higher
\ncomes down and largely takes the place of the lower, but also the lower
\nchanges, transforms itself into material of the action and becomes part of the
\nsubstance of the higher being. <\/p>\n

The greater
\nspirit above the mind appears at first as a presence, a light, a power, a
\nsource, an infinite, but all that is knowable to us in it is at first an
\ninfinite identity of being, consciousness, power of consciousness, Ananda. The
\nrest comes from it, but takes no determinate shape of thought, will or feeling
\nabove us, but only in the intuitive mind and on its level. Or we feel and are manifoldly<\/span> aware of a great and infinite Purusha
\n <\/p>\n

Page \u2013 781<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

who is the eternally living truth
\nof that being and presence, a great and infinite knowledge which is the potency
\nof that light and consciousness, a great and infinite will which is the potency
\nof that power of consciousness, a great and infinite love which is the potency
\nof that Ananda. But all these potencies are only known to us in any definite
\nmanner, apart from the strong reality and effect of their essential presence,
\nin so far as they are translated to our intuitive mental being and on its level
\nand within its limits. As however we progress or as we grow into a more
\nluminous and dynamic union with that spirit or Purusha, a greater action of
\nknowledge and will and spiritual feeling manifests and seems to organise<\/span> itself above the mind and this we recognise as the
\ntrue supermind and the real native play of the infinite knowledge, will and
\nAnanda. The intuitive mentality then becomes a secondary and inferior movement
\nwaiting upon this higher power, responding and assenting to all its
\nilluminations and dictates, transmitting them to the lower members, and, when
\nthey do not arrive or are not in immediate evidence, often attempting to supply
\nits place, imitate its action and do as best it can the works of the
\nsupramental nature. It takes in fact the same place and relation with regard to
\nit as was taken with regard to itself by the ordinary intelligence at an earlier
\nstage of the Yoga. <\/p>\n

This double
\naction on the two planes of our being at first strengthens the intuitive
\nmentality as a secondary operation and assists it to expel or transform more
\ncompletely the survivals or invasions or accretions of the ignorance. And more
\nand more it intensifies the intuitive mentality itself in its light of
\nknowledge and eventually transforms it into the image of the supermind itself,
\nbut at first, ordinarily, in the more limited action of the gnosis when it takes
\nthe form of what we might call a luminous supramental or divine reason. It is
\nas this divine reason that the supermind itself at the beginning may manifest
\nits action and then, when it has changed the mind into its own image, it
\ndescends and takes the place of the ordinary intelligence and reason. Meanwhile
\na higher supramental power of a much greater character has been revealing
\nitself above which takes the supreme lead of the divine action in the being.
\nThe divine reason is of a more limited character because, although not of the
\nmental stamp and
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 782<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

although an operation of the
\ndirect truth and knowledge, it is a delegated power for a range of purposes
\ngreater in light, but still to a certain extent analogous to those of the
\nordinary human will and reason; it is in the yet greater supermind that there
\ncomes the direct, altogether revealed and immediate action of the Ishwara in
\nthe human being. These distinctions between the intuitive mind, the divine
\nreason and the greater supermind, and others within these gradations
\nthemselves, have to be made because eventually they become of great importance.
\nAt first the mind takes all that comes from beyond it without distinction as
\nthe sufficient spiritual illumination and accepts even initial states and first
\nenlightenments as a finality, but afterwards it finds that to rest here would
\nbe to rest in a partial realisation and that one has to go on heightening and
\nenlarging till at least there is reached a certain completeness of divine
\nbreadth and stature. <\/p>\n

It is difficult
\nfor the intellect to grasp at all what is meant by these supramental
\ndistinctions: the mental terms in which they can be rendered are lacking or
\ninadequate and they can only be understood after a certain sight or certain approximations
\nin experience. A number of indications are all that at present it can be useful
\nto give. And first it will be enough to take certain clues from the thinking
\nmind; for it is there that some of the nearest keys to the supramental action are
\ndiscoverable. The thought of the intuitive mind proceeds wholly by four powers
\nthat shape the form of the truth, an intuition that suggests its idea, an
\nintuition that discriminates, an inspiration that brings in its word and
\nsomething of its greater substance and a revelation that shapes to the sight
\nits very face and body of reality. These things are not the same as certain
\nmovements of the ordinary mental intelligence that look analogous and are
\neasily mistaken for the true intuition in our first inexperience. The suggestive
\nintuition is not the same thing as the intellectual insight of a quick
\nintelligence or the intuitive discrimination as the rapid judgment of the
\nreasoning intellect; the intuitive inspiration is not the same as the inspired action
\nof the imaginative intelligence, nor the intuitive revelation as the strong
\nlight of a purely mental close seizing and experience. <\/p>\n

It would
\nperhaps be accurate to say that these latter activities are mental
\nrepresentations of the higher movements, at- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 783<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

tempts of the ordinary mind to do
\nthe same things or the best possible imitations the intellect can offer of the
\nfunctionings of the higher nature. The true intuitions differ from these
\neffective but insufficient counterfeits in their substance of light, their
\noperation, their method of knowledge. The intellectual rapidities<\/span>
\nare dependent on awakenings of the basic mental ignorance to mental figures and
\nrepresentations of truth that may be quite valid in their own field and for
\ntheir own purpose but are not necessarily and by their very nature reliable.
\nThey are dependent for their emergence on the suggestions given by mental and
\nsense data or on the accumulation of past mental knowledge. They search for the
\ntruth as a thing outside, an object to be found and looked at and stored as an
\nacquisition and, when found, scrutinise<\/span> its surfaces,
\nsuggestions or aspects. This scrutiny can never give a quite complete and
\nadequate truth idea. However positive they may seem at the time, they may at
\nany moment have to be passed over, rejected and found inconsistent with fresh
\nknowledge. <\/p>\n

The intuitive
\nknowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or
\napplication, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and
\nespecially a self-existent certitude. It may take for starting-point or rather
\nfor a thing to light up and disclose in its true sense the data of mind and
\nsense or else fire a train of past thought and knowledge to new meanings and
\nissues, but it is dependent on nothing but itself and may leap out of its own
\nfield of lustres<\/span>, independent of previous suggestion
\nor data, and this kind of action becomes progressively more common and adds
\nitself to the other to initiate new depths and ranges of knowledge. In either
\ncase there is always an element of self-existent truth and a sense of absoluteness
\nof origination suggestive of its proceeding from the spirit’s knowledge by
\nidentity. It is the disclosing of a knowledge that is secret but already
\nexistent in the being: it is not an acquisition, but something that was always
\nthere and revealable<\/span>. It sees the truth from within
\nand illumines with that inner vision the outsides and it harmonises<\/span>,
\ntoo, readily \u2013 provided we keep intuitively awake \u2013 with whatever fresh truth
\nhas yet to arrive. These characteristics become more pronounced and intense in
\nthe higher, the proper supra- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 784<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

mental ranges: in the intuitive
\nmind they may not be always recognisable<\/span> in their
\npurity and completeness, because of the mixture of mental stuff and its
\naccretion, but in the divine reason and greater supramental action they become
\nfree and absolute. <\/p>\n

The suggestive
\nintuition acting on the mental level suggests a direct and illumining inner
\nidea of the truth, an idea that is its true image and index, not as yet the entirely
\npresent and whole sight, but rather of the nature of a bright memory of some truth,
\na recognition of a secret of the self’s knowledge. It is a representation, but
\na living representation, not an ideative<\/span> symbol, a
\nreflection, but a reflection that is lit up with something of the truth’s real
\nsubstance. The intuitive discrimination is a secondary action setting this idea
\nof the truth in its right place and its relation to other ideas. And so long as
\nthere is the habit of mental interference and accretion it works also to
\nseparate the mental from the higher seeing, to discrete the inferior mental
\nstuff that embarrasses with its alloy the pure truth substance, and labours<\/span> to unravel the mingled skein of ignorance and
\nknowledge, falsehood and error. As the intuition is of the nature of a memory,
\na luminous remembering of the self-existent truth, so the inspiration is of the
\nnature of truth hearing: it is an immediate reception of the very voice of the truth,
\nit readily brings the word that perfectly embodies it and it carries something
\nmore than the light of its idea; there is seized some stream of its inner
\nreality and vivid arriving movement of its substance. The revelation is of the
\nnature of direct sight, pratyakşa-dŗşţi<\/i><\/span>,
\nand makes evident to a present vision the thing in itself of which the idea is
\nthe representation. It brings out the very spirit and being and reality of the
\ntruth and makes it part of the consciousness an \u00a0<\/span>the experience. <\/p>\n

In the actual
\nprocess of the development of the supramental nature, supposing it to follow a
\nregular gradation, it may be seen that the two lower powers come out first,
\nthough not necessarily void of all action of the two higher powers, and as they
\nincrease and become a normal action, they make a sort of lower intuitive
\ngnosis. The combination of the two together is necessary for its completeness.
\nIf the intuitive discrimination works by itself, it creates a sort of critical
\nillumination that acts on the ideas and
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 785<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

perceptions of the intellect and
\nturns them on themselves in such a way that the mind can separate their truth
\nfrom their error. It creates in the end in place of the intellectual judgment a
\nluminous intuitive judgment, a sort of critical gnosis: but it is likely to be
\ndeficient in fresh illuminative knowledge or to create only so much extension
\nof truth as is the natural consequence of the separation of error. On the other
\nhand, if the suggestive intuition works by itself without this discrimination,
\nthere is indeed a constant accession of new truths and new lights, but they are
\neasily surrounded and embarrassed by the mental accretions and their
\nconnections and relation or harmonious development out of each other are clouded
\nand broken by the interference. A normalised<\/span> power of
\nactive intuitive perception is created, but not any complete and coherent mind
\nof intuitive gnosis. The two together supply the deficiencies of each other’s
\nsingle action and build up a mind of intuitive perception and discrimination
\nwhich can do the work and more than the work of the stumbling mental intelligence
\nand do it with the greater light, surety and power of a more direct and
\nunfaltering ideation. <\/p>\n

The two higher
\npowers in the same way make a higher intuitive gnosis. Acting as separate
\npowers in the mentality they too are not in themselves sufficient without the
\ncompanion activities. The revelation may indeed present the reality, the identities
\nof the thing in itself and add something of great power to the experience of
\nthe conscious being, but it may lack the embodying word, the out-bringing idea,
\nthe connected pursuit of its relations and consequences and may remain a
\npossession in the self but not a thing communicated to and through the members.
\nThere may be the presence of the truth but not its full manifestation. The
\ninspiration may give the word of the truth and the stir of its dynamis and
\nmovement, but this is not a complete thing and sure in its effect without the
\nfull revelation of all that it bears in itself and luminously indicates and the
\nordering of it in its relations. The inspired intuitive mind is a mind of lightnings<\/span> lighting up many things that were dark, but the
\nlight needs to be canalised<\/span> and fixed into a stream
\nof steady lustres<\/span> that will be a constant power for
\nlucidly ordered knowledge. The higher gnosis by itself in its two sole powers
\nwould be a mind of spiritual splendours living
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 786<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

too much in its own separate
\ndomain, producing perhaps invisibly its effect on the outside world, but
\nlacking the link of a more close and ordinary communication with its more
\nnormal movements that is provided by the lower ideative<\/span>
\naction. It is the united or else the fused and unified action of the four
\npowers that makes the complete and fully armed and equipped intuitive gnosis. <\/p>\n

A regular
\ndevelopment would at first, allowing for some simultaneous manifestation of the
\nfour powers, yet create on a sufficiently extensive scale the lower suggestive
\nand critical intuitive mind and then develop above it the inspired and the revelatory
\nintuitive mentality. Next it would take up the two lower powers into the power
\nand field of the inspiration and make all act as one harmony doing
\nsimultaneously the united \u2013 or, at a higher intensity, indistinguishably as one
\nlight the unified \u2013 action of the three. And last it would execute a similar
\nmovement of taking up into and fusion with the revelatory power of the
\nintuitive gnosis. As a matter of fact in the human mind the clear process of
\nthe development is likely always to be more or less disturbed, confused and
\nrendered irregular in its course, subjected to relapses, incomplete advances,
\nreturns upon things unaccomplished or imperfectly accomplished owing to the
\nconstant mixture and intervention of the existing movements of the mental
\nhalf-knowledge and the obstruction of the stuff of the mental ignorance. In the
\nend however a time can come when the process, so far as it is possible in the
\nmind itself, is complete and a clear formation of a modified supramental light
\nis possible composed of all these powers, the highest leading or absorbing into
\nits own body the others. It is at this point, when the intuitive mind has been
\nfully formed in the mental being and is strong enough to dominate if not yet
\nwholly to occupy the various mental activities, that a farther step becomes
\npossible, the lifting of the centre and level of action above the mind and the
\npredominance of the supramental reason. <\/p>\n

The first
\ncharacter of this change is a complete reversal, a turning over, one might
\nalmost say, upside down of the whole activity. At present we live in the mind
\nand mostly in the physical mind, but still not entirely involved like the
\nanimal in the physic- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 787<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

cal, vital and sensational
\nworkings. On the contrary we have attained to a certain mental elevation from
\nwhich we can look down on the action of the life, sense and body, turn the
\nhigher mental light on them, reflect, judge, use our will to modify the action
\nof the inferior nature. On the other hand we look up too from that elevation
\nmore or less consciously to something above and receive from it either directly
\nor through our subconscient<\/span> or subliminal being some
\nsecret superconscient impulsion of our thought and will and other activities.
\nThe process of this communication is veiled and obscure and men are not
\nordinarily aware of it except in certain highly developed natures: but when we
\nadvance in self-knowledge, we find that all our thought and will originate from
\nabove though formed in the mind and there first overtly active. If we release
\nthe knots of the physical mind which binds us to the brain instrument and
\nidentifies us with the bodily consciousness and can move in the pure mentality,
\nthis becomes constantly clear to the perception. <\/p>\n

The development
\nof the intuitive mentality makes this communication direct, no longer subconscient<\/span> and obscure; but we are still in the mind and
\nthe mind still looks upward and receives the supramental communication and
\npasses it on to the other members. In doing so it no longer wholly creates its
\nown form for the thought and will that come down to it, but still it modifies
\nand qualifies and limits them and imposes something of its own method. It is
\nstill the receiver and the transmitter of the thought and will, \u2013 though not
\nformative of them now except by a subtle influence, because it provides them or
\nat least surrounds them with a mental stuff or a mental setting and framework
\nand atmosphere. When however the supramental reason develops, the Purusha rises
\nabove the mental elevation and now looks down on the whole action of mind,
\nlife, sense, body from quite another light and atmosphere, sees and knows it
\nwith quite a different vision and, because he is no longer involved in the mind,
\nwith a free and true knowledge. Man is at present only partly liberated from
\nthe animal involution, \u2013 for his mind is partially lifted above, partially
\nimmerged and controlled by the life, sense and body, \u2013 and he is not at all
\nliberated from the mental forms and limits. But after he rises to the
\nsupramental
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 788<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

elevation, he is delivered from the
\nnether control and governor of his whole nature \u2013 essentially and initially
\nonly at first and in his highest consciousness, for the rest remains still to
\nbe transformed, \u2013 but when or in proportion as that is done, he becomes a free
\nbeing and master of his mind, sense, life and body. <\/p>\n

The second
\ncharacter of the change is that the formation of the thought and will can take
\nplace now wholly on the supramental level and therefore there is initiated an
\nentirely luminous and effective will and knowledge. The light and the power are
\nnot indeed complete at the beginning because the supramental reason is only an
\nelementary formulation of the supermind and because the mind and other members
\nhave yet to be changed into the mould of the supramental nature. The mind, it
\nis true, no longer acts as the apparent originator, formulator or judge of the
\nthought and will or anything else, but it still acts as the transmitting
\nchannel and therefore in that degree as a recipient and to a certain extent an obstructor<\/span> and qualifier in transmission of the power and
\nlight that comes from above. There is a disparateness between the supramental consciousness
\nin which the Purusha now stands, thinks and wills and the mental, vital and
\nphysical consciousness through which he has to effectuate its light and
\nknowledge. He lives and sees with an ideal consciousness, but he has yet in his
\nlower self to make it entirely practical and effective. Otherwise he can only
\nact with a greater or less spiritual effectiveness through an internal communication
\nwith others on the spiritual level and on the higher mental level that is most
\neasily affected by it, but the effect is diminished and is retarded by the
\ninferiority or lack of the integral play of the being. This can only be
\nremedied by the supermind taking hold of and supramentalising<\/span>
\nthe mental, the vital and the physical consciousness, \u2013 transforming them, that
\nis to say, into moulds of the supramental nature. This is much more easily done
\nif there has been that Yogic preparation of the instruments of the lower nature
\nof which I have already spoken; otherwise there is much difficulty in getting
\nrid of the discord or disparateness between the ideal supramentality<\/span>
\nand the mental transmitting instruments, the mind channel, the heart, the
\nsense, the nervous and the physical being. The supramental reason can do the
\nfirst and a
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 789<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

fairly ample, though not the
\nentire work of this transformation. The supramental reason is of the nature of
\na spiritual, direct, self-luminous, self-acting will and intelligence, not
\nmental, mānasa<\/i><\/span> buddhi<\/i>, but supramental, vij\u00f1āna<\/i><\/span> buddhi<\/i>. It acts by the same four powers
\nas the intuitive mind, but these powers are here active in an initial fullness
\nof body not modified by the mental stuff of the intelligence, not concerned
\nmainly with an illumining of the mind, but at work in their own proper manner
\nand for their own native purpose. And of these four the discrimination here is
\nhardly recognisable<\/span> as a separate power, but is
\nconstantly inherent in the three others and is their own determination of the
\nscope and relations of their knowledge. There are three elevations in this
\nreason, one in which the action of what we may call a supramental intuition
\ngives the form and the predominant character, one in which a rapid supramental
\ninspiration and one in which a large supramental revelation leads and imparts
\nthe general character, and each of these raises us to a more concentrated
\nsubstance and a higher light, sufficiency and scope of the truth will and the
\ntruth knowledge. <\/p>\n

The work of the
\nsupramental reason covers and goes beyond all that is done by the mental
\nreason, but it starts from the other end and has a corresponding operation. The
\nessential truths of self and the spirit and the principle of things are not to the
\nspiritual reason abstract ideas or subtle unsubstantial experiences to which it
\narrives by a sort of overleaping of limits, but a constant reality and the
\nnatural background of all its ideation and experience. It does not like the
\nmind arrive at, but discloses directly both the general and total and the
\nparticular truths of being and consciousness, of spiritual and other sensation
\nand Ananda and of force and action, \u2013 reality and phenomenon and symbol,
\nactuality and possibility and eventuality, that which is determined and that
\nwhich determines, and all with a self-luminous evidence. It formulates and
\narranges the relations of thought and thought, of force and force, of action
\nand action and of all these with each other and throws them into a convincing
\nand luminous harmony. It includes the data of sense, but gives to them another
\nmeaning in the light of what is behind them, and treats them only as outermost
\nindications: the inner truth is
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 790<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

known to a greater sense which it
\nalready possesses. And it is not dependent on them alone even in their own
\nfield of objects or limited by their range. It has a spiritual sense and
\nsensation of its own and it takes and relates to that the data too of a sixth
\nsense, the inner mind sense. And it takes also the illuminations and the living
\nsymbols and images familiar to the psychic experience and relates these too to
\nthe truths of the self and spirit. <\/p>\n

The spiritual
\nreason takes also the emotions and psychic sensations, relates them to their
\nspiritual equivalents and imparts to them the values of the higher
\nconsciousness and Ananda from which they derive and are its modifications in an
\ninferior nature and it corrects their deformations. It takes similarly the
\nmovements of the vital being and consciousness and relates them to the
\nmovements and imparts to them the significances of the spiritual life of the
\nself and its power of Tapas. It takes the physical consciousness, delivers it
\nfrom its darkness and tamas of inertia and makes it a responsive recipient and a
\nsensitive instrument of the supramental light and power and Ananda. It deals
\nwith life and action and knowledge like the mental will and reason, but not
\nstarting from matter, life and sense and their data and relating to them
\nthrough the idea the truth of higher things, but it starts on the contrary from
\ntruth of self and spirit and relates to that through a direct spiritual experience
\nassuming all other experience as its forms and instruments the things of mind
\nand soul and life and sense and matter. It commands a far vaster range than the
\nordinary embodied mind shut up in the prison of the physical senses and vaster
\ntoo than the pure mentality, even when that is free in its own ranges and
\noperates with the aid of the psychical mind and inner senses. And it has that power
\nwhich the mental will and reason do not possess, because they are not truly
\nself-determined and originally determinative of things, the power of
\ntransforming the whole being in all its parts into a harmonious instrument and manifestation
\nof the spirit. <\/p>\n

At the same
\ntime the spiritual reason acts mainly by the representative idea and will in
\nthe spirit, though it has a greater and more essential truth as its constant
\nsource and supporter and reference. It is, then, a power of light of the
\nIshwara, but not the very self-power of his immediate presence in the being; it
\nis his
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 791<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

sūrya-śakti<\/i><\/span>, not his
\nwhole ātma-śakti<\/i><\/span>
\nor parā<\/i><\/span> svā<\/span> prakŗtih<\/span><\/i>, that works in the spiritual reason. The
\nimmediate self-power begins its direct operation in the greater supermind, and
\nthat takes up all that has hitherto been realised in body, life and mind and in
\nthe intuitive being and by the spiritual reason and shapes all that has been
\ncreated, all that has been gathered, turned into stuff of experience and made
\npart of the consciousness, personality and nature by the mental being, into a
\nhighest harmony with the high infinite and universal life of the spirit. The
\nmind can have the touch of the infinite and the universal and can reflect and
\neven lose itself in them, but the supermind alone can enable the individual to
\nbe completely one in action with the universal and transcendent spirit. <\/p>\n

Here the one
\nthing that is always and constantly present, that which one has grown to and in
\nwhich one lives always, is infinite being and all that is is<\/span>
\nseen, felt, known, existed in as only substance of the one being; it is
\ninfinite consciousness and all that is conscious and acts and moves is seen,
\nfelt, received, known, lived in as self-experience and energy of the one being;
\nit is infinite Ananda and all that feels and is felt is seen and felt and
\nknown, received and lived in as forms of the one Ananda. Everything else is
\nonly manifestation and circumstance of this one truth of our existence. This is
\nno longer merely the seeing or knowing, but the very condition of the self in
\nall and all in the self, God in all and all in God and all seen as God, and
\nthat condition is now not a thing offered to the reflecting spiritualised mind
\nbut held and lived by an integral, always present, always active realisation in
\nthe supramental nature. There is thought here and will and sensation and
\neverything that belongs to our nature, but it is transfigured and elevated into
\na higher consciousness. All thought is here seen and experienced as a luminous
\nbody of substance, a luminous movement of force, a luminous wave of Ananda of
\nthe being; it is not an idea in the void air of mind, but experienced in the
\nreality and as the light of a reality of the infinite being. The will and
\nimpulsions are similarly experienced as a real power and substance of the Sat, the
\nChit, the Ananda of the Ishwara. All the spiritualised sensation and emotion
\nare experienced as pure moulds of the conscious- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 792<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

ness and Ananda. The physical
\nbeing itself is experienced as a conscious form and the vital being as an
\noutpouring of the power and possession of the life of the spirit. <\/p>\n

The action of
\nthe supermind in the development is to manifest and organise<\/span>
\nthis highest consciousness so as to exist and act no longer only in the
\ninfinite above with some limited or veiled or lower and deformed manifestations
\nin the individual being and nature, but largely and totally in the individual
\nas a conscious and self-knowing spiritual being and a living and acting power
\nof the infinite and universal spirit. The character of this action, so far as
\nit can be expressed, may be spoken of more fitly afterwards when we come to
\nspeak of the Brahmic<\/span> consciousness and vision. In the
\nsucceeding chapters we shall only deal with so much of it as concerns the
\nthought, will and psychic and other experience in the individual nature. At present
\nall that is necessary to note is that here too there is in the field of the
\nthought and the will a triple action. The spiritual reason is lifted and
\nbroadened into a greater representative action that formulates to us mainly the
\nactualities of the existence of the self in and around us. There is then a
\nhigher interpretative action of the supramental knowledge, a greater scale less
\ninsistent on actualities, that opens out yet greater potentialities in time and
\nspace and beyond. And lastly there is a highest knowledge by identity that is a
\ngate of entrance to the essential self-awareness and the omniscience and
\nomnipotence of the Ishwara. <\/p>\n

It must not
\nhowever be supposed that these superimposed stages are shut off in experience
\nfrom each other. I have placed them in what might be a regular order of
\nascending development for the better possibility of understanding in an intellectual
\nstatement. But the infinite even in the normal mind breaks through its own
\nveils and across its own dividing lines of descent and ascension and gives
\noften intimations of itself in one manner or another. And while we are still in
\nthe intuitive mentality, the things above open and come to us in irregular
\nvisitations, then form as we grow a more frequent and regularised<\/span>
\naction above it. These anticipations are still more large and frequent the
\nmoment we enter on the supramental level. The universal and infinite
\nconsciousness can always seize on and surround the mind
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 793<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and it is when it does so with a certain
\ncontinuity, frequency or persistence that the mind can most easily transform
\nitself into the intuitive mentality and that again into the supramental
\nmovement. Only as we rise we grow more intimately and integrally into the
\ninfinite consciousness and it becomes more fully our own self and nature. And
\nalso, on the other, the lower side of existence which it might seem would then
\nbe not only beneath but quite alien to us, even when we live in the supramental
\nbeing and even when the whole nature has been formed into its mould, that need
\nnot cut us off from the knowledge and feeling of others who live in the ordinary
\nnature. The lower or more limited may have a difficulty in understanding and
\nfeeling the higher, but the higher and less limited can always, if it will,
\nunderstand and identify itself with the lower nature. The supreme Ishwara too
\nis not aloof from us; he knows, lives in, identifies himself with all and yet
\nis not subjugated by the reactions or limited in his knowledge, power and
\nAnanda by the limitations of the mind and life and physical being in the
\nuniverse. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 794<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXI The Gradations of the Supermind    THE intuitive mind is an immediate translation of truth into mental terms half transformed by a radiant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","wpcat-26-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}