{"id":1235,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:27","slug":"35-towards-the-supramental-time-vision-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\/35-towards-the-supramental-time-vision-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-35_Towards the Supramental Time Vision.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

 <\/font>Towards the
\nSupramental Time Vision<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A<\/font><\/b>LL<\/font>
\nbeing, consciousness, knowledge moves, secretly for our present surface
\nawareness, openly when we rise beyond it to the spiritual and supramental
\nranges, between two states and powers of existence, that of the timeless
\nInfinite and that of the Infinite deploying in itself and organising all things
\nin time. These two states are opposed to and incompatible with each other only
\nfor our mental logic with its constant embarrassed stumbling around a false conception
\nof contradictions and a confronting of eternal opposites. In reality, as we
\nfind when we see things with a knowledge founded on the supramental identity
\nand vision and think with the great, profound and flexible logic proper to that
\nknowledge, the two are only coexistent and concurrent status and movement of
\nthe same truth of the Infinite. The timeless Infinite holds in itself, in its
\neternal truth of being, beyond this manifestation, all that it manifests in
\nTime. Its time consciousness too is itself infinite and maintains in itself at
\nonce in a vision of totalities and of particularities, of mobile succession or
\nmoment sight and of total stabilising<\/span> vision or
\nabiding whole sight what appears to us as the past of things, their present and
\ntheir future. <\/p>\n

The
\nconsciousness of the timeless Infinite can be brought home to us in various
\nways, but is most ordinarily imposed on our mentality by a reflection of it and
\na powerful impression or else made present to us as something above the mind, something
\nof which it is aware, towards which it lifts, but into which it cannot enter
\nbecause itself lives only in the time sense and in the succession of the
\nmoments. If our present mind untransformed by the supramental influence tries
\nto enter into the timeless, it must either disappear and be lost in the trance
\nof Samadhi or else, remaining awake, it feels itself diffused in an Infinite
\nwhere there is perhaps a sense of supra-physical space, a vastness, a
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 853<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

boundless extension of
\nconsciousness, but no time self, time movement or time order. And if then the
\nmental being is still mechanically aware of things in time, it is yet unable to
\ndeal with them in its own manner, unable to establish a truth relation between
\nthe timeless and things in time and unable to act and will out of its
\nindefinite Infinite. The action that then remains possible to the mental
\nPurusha is the mechanical action of the instruments of the Prakriti continuing
\nby force of old impulsion and habit or continued initiation of past energy, prārabdha<\/i><\/span>,
\nor else an action chaotic, unregulated, uncoordinated, a confused precipitate
\nfrom an energy which has no longer a conscious centre. <\/p>\n

The supramental
\nconsciousness on the other hand is founded upon the supreme consciousness of
\nthe timeless Infinite, but has too the secret of the deployment of the infinite
\nEnergy in time. It can either take its station in the time consciousness and
\nkeep the timeless infinite as its background of supreme and original being from
\nwhich it receives all its organizing knowledge, will and action, or it can,
\ncentred in its essential being, live in the timeless but live too in a
\nmanifestation in time which it feels and sees as infinite and as the same
\nInfinite, and can bring out, sustain and develop in the one what it holds supernally<\/span> in the other. Its time consciousness therefore
\nwill be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the
\nstream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly
\ndisappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the
\nchanges of time, secondly on a simultaneous eternity of Time in which past,
\npresent and future exist together for ever in the self-knowledge and self-power
\nof the Eternal, thirdly, in a total view of the three times as one movement
\nsingly and indivisibly seen even in their succession of stages, periods,
\ncycles, last \u2013 and that only in the instrumental consciousness \u2013 in the step by
\nstep evolution of the moments. It will therefore have the knowledge of the three
\ntimes, trikāladŗşţi<\/i><\/span>,
\n\u2013 held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rishi, \u2013 not as an abnormal
\npower, but as its normal way of time knowledge. <\/p>\n

This unified
\nand infinite time consciousness and this vision and knowledge are the
\npossession of the supramental being in its own supreme region of light and are
\ncomplete only on the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 854<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

highest levels of the supramental
\nnature. But in the ascent of the human consciousness through the uplifting and
\ntransmuting evolutionary \u2013 that is to say, self-unveiling, self-developing, progressively
\nself-perfecting \u2013 process of Yoga, we have to take account of three successive
\nconditions all of which have to be overpassed<\/span> before
\nwe are able to move on the highest levels. The first condition of our
\nconsciousness, that in which we now move, is this mind of ignorance that has
\narisen out of the inconscience and nescience of material Nature, \u2013 ignorant but
\ncapable of seeking for knowledge and finding it at least in a series of mental
\nrepresentations which may be made clues to the true truth and, more and more
\nrefined and illuminated and rendered transparent by the influence, the
\ninfiltration and the descent of the light from above, prepare the intelligence
\nfor opening to the capacity of true knowledge. All truth is to this mind a
\nthing it originally had not and has had to acquire or has still to acquire, a
\nthing external to it and to be gathered by experience or by following certain
\nascertained methods and rules of enquiry, calculation, application of
\ndiscovered law, interpretation of signs and indices. Its very knowledge implies
\nan antecedent nescience; it is the instrument of Avidya<\/span>.\n<\/p>\n

The second
\ncondition of consciousness is potential only to the human being and gained by
\nan inner enlightening and transformation of the mind of ignorance; it is that
\nin which the mind seeks for its source of knowledge rather within than without
\nand becomes to its own feeling and self-experience, by whatever means, a mind,
\nnot of original ignorance, but of self-forgetful knowledge. This mind is conscious
\nthat the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the
\nbeing, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a
\nthing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and
\nknown at once to be true, \u2013 each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure.
\nThis is its attitude to knowledge even when the occasion of knowing is some
\nexternal experience, sign or indication, because that is to it only the
\noccasion and its reliance for the truth of the knowledge is not on the external
\nindication or evidence but on the inner confirming witness. The true mind is
\nthe universal within us and the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 855<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

individual is only a projection
\non the surface, and therefore this second state of consciousness we have either
\nwhen the individual mind goes more and more inward and is always consciously or
\nsubconsciously near and sensitive to the touches of the universal mentality in
\nwhich all is contained, received, capable of being made manifest, or, still
\nmore powerfully, when we live in the consciousness of universal mind with the
\npersonal mentality only as a projection, a marking board or a communicating
\nswitch on the surface. <\/p>\n

The third state
\nof consciousness is that of the mind of knowledge in which all things and all
\ntruths are perceived and experienced as already present and known and
\nimmediately available by merely turning the inner light upon it, as when one turns
\nthe eye upon things in a room already known and familiar, \u2013 though not always
\npresent to the vision because that is not attentive, \u2013 and notes them as
\nobjects of a pre-existent knowledge. The difference from the second
\nself-forgetful state of consciousness is that there is here no effort or
\nseeking needed but simply a turning or opening of the inner light on whatever field
\nof knowledge, and therefore it is not a recalling of things forgotten and
\nself-hidden from the mind, but a luminous presentation of things already
\npresent, ready and available. This last condition is only possible by a partial
\nsupramentalising<\/span> of the intuitive mentality and its
\nfull openness to any and every communication from the supramental ranges. This
\nmind of knowledge is in its essentiality a power of potential omnipotence, but
\nin its actual working on the level of mind it is limited in its range and
\nprovince. The character of limitation applies to the supermind itself when it
\ndescends into the mental level and works in the lesser substance of mentality,
\nthough in its own manner and body of power and light, and it persists even in
\nthe action of the supramental reason. It is only the higher supramental Shakti acting
\non its own ranges whose will and knowledge work always in a boundless light or
\nwith a free capacity of illimitable extension of knowledge subject only to such
\nlimitations as are self-imposed for its own purposes and at its own will by the
\nspirit. <\/p>\n

The human mind
\ndeveloping into supermind has to pass through all these stages and in its
\nascent and expansion it may
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 856<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

experience many changes and
\nvarious dispositions of the powers and possibilities of its time consciousness
\nand time knowledge. At first man in the mind of ignorance can neither live in
\nthe infinite time consciousness nor command any direct and real power of the
\ntriple time knowledge. The mind of ignorance lives, not in the indivisible
\ncontinuity of time, but successively in each moment. It has a vague sense of
\nthe continuity of self and of an essential continuity of experience, a sense of
\nwhich the source is the deeper self within us, but as it does not live in that
\nself, also it does not live in a true time continuity, but only uses this vague
\nbut still insistent awareness as a background, support and assurance in what
\nwould otherwise be to it a constant baseless flux of its being. In its
\npractical action its only support other than its station in the present is the
\nline left behind by the past and preserved in memory, the mass of impressions
\ndeposited by previous experience and, for the future, an assurance of the
\nregularity of experience and a power of uncertain forecast founded partly upon
\nrepeated experience and well-founded inference and partly on imaginative
\nconstruction and conjecture. The mind of ignorance relies on a certain
\nfoundation or element of relative or moral certainties, but for the rest a
\ndealing with probabilities and possibilities is its chief resource. <\/p>\n

This is because
\nthe mind in the Ignorance lives in the moment and moves from hour to hour like
\na traveller<\/span> who sees only what is near and visible
\naround his immediate standpoint and remembers imperfectly what he has passed
\nthrough before, but all in front beyond his immediate view is the unseen and
\nunknown of which he has yet to have experience. Therefore man in his
\nself-ignorance moving in time exists, as the Buddhists saw, only in the
\nsuccession of thoughts and sensations and of the external forms present to his
\nthought and sense. His present momentary self is alone real to him, his past
\nself is dead or vanishing or only preserved in memory, result and impression, his
\nfuture self is entirely non-existent or only in process of creation or
\npreparation of birth. And the world around him is subject to the same rule of
\nperception. Only its actual form and sum of happenings and phenomena is present
\nand quite real to him, its past is no longer in existence or abides only in memory
\nand <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 857<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

record and in so much of it as
\nhas left its dead monuments or still survives into the present, the future is
\nnot yet at all in existence. <\/p>\n

It must be
\nnoted however that if our knowledge of the present were not limited by our
\ndependence on the physical mind and sense, this result would not be altogether
\ninevitable. If we could be aware of all the present, all the action of
\nphysical, vital, mental energies at work in the moment, it is conceivable that
\nwe would be able to see their past too involved in them and their latent future
\nor at least to proceed from present to past and future knowledge. And under
\ncertain conditions this might create a sense of real and ever present time continuity,
\na living in the behind and the front as well as the immediate, and a step
\nfarther might carry us into an ever present sense of our existence in infinite
\ntime and in our timeless self, and its manifestation in eternal time might then
\nbecome real to us and also we might feel the timeless Self behind the worlds
\nand the reality of his eternal world manifestation. In any case the possibility
\nof another kind of time consciousness than we have at present and of a triple
\ntime knowledge rests upon the possibility of developing another consciousness
\nthan that proper to the physical mind and sense and breaking our imprisonment
\nin the moment and in the mind of ignorance with its limitation to sensation,
\nmemory, inference and conjecture. <\/p>\n

Actually man is
\nnot content solely with living in the present, though it is that he does with
\nthe most pressing vividness and insistence: he is moved to look before and
\nafter, to know as much as he can of the past and try to penetrate as far as he can,
\nhowever obscurely, into the future. And he has certain aids towards this
\nendeavour of which some depend on his surface mind, while others open to
\nintimations from another subliminal or superconscient self which has a greater,
\nsubtler and more certain knowledge. His first aid is that of the reason
\nproceeding forward from cause to effect and backward from effect to cause,
\ndiscovering the law of energies and their assured mechanic process, assuming
\nthe perpetual sameness of the movements of Nature, fixing her time measures and
\nthus calculating on the basis of a science of general lines and assured results
\nthe past and the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 858<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

future. A certain measure of
\nlimited but sufficiently striking success has been gained by this method in the
\nprovince of physical Nature and it might seem that the same process might
\neventually be applied to the movements of mind and life and that at any rate
\nthis alone is man’s one reliable means in any field of looking with precision
\nback and forwards. But as a matter of fact the happenings of vital and still
\nmore of mental nature escape to a very great degree the means of inference and
\ncalculation from assured law that apply in the field of physical knowledge: it
\ncan apply there only to a limited range of regularised<\/span>
\nhappenings and phenomena and for the rest leaves us where we were amid a mixed
\nmass of relative certainties, uncertain probabilities and incalculable
\npossibilities. <\/p>\n

This is because
\nmind and life bring in a great subtlety and intricacy of movement, each
\nrealised movement carries in it a complex of forces, and even if we could
\ndisengage all these, all, that is to say, that are simply actualised<\/span>
\nand on or near the surface, we should still be baffled by all the rest that is
\nobscure or latent, \u2013 concealed and yet potent contributory causes, hidden
\nmotion and motive force, undeployed<\/span> possibilities,
\nuncalculated and incalculable chances of variation. It ceases to be practicable
\nhere for our limited intelligence to calculate accurately and with certitude as
\nin the physical field from precise cause to precise effect, that is to say,
\nfrom a given apparent set of existing conditions to an inevitable resultant of subsequent
\nor a necessary precedence of antecedent conditions. It is for this reason that
\nthe predictions and previsions of the human intelligence are constantly baffled
\nand contradicted by the event, even when largest in their view of the data and most
\ncareful in their survey of possible consequence. Life and mind are a constant
\nflux of possibles intervening between spirit and matter and at each step bring
\nin, if not an infinite, at least an indefinite of possibles, and this would be
\nenough to make all logical calculation uncertain and relative. But in addition
\nthere reigns behind them a supreme factor incalculable by human mind, the will
\nof the soul and secret spirit, the first indefinitely variable, fluid and
\nelusive, the second infinite and inscrutably imperative, bound, if at all, only
\nby itself and the Will in the Infinite. It is therefore only by going back from
\nthe
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 859<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

surface physical mind to the psychic
\nand spiritual consciousness that a vision and knowledge of the triple time, a
\ntranscendence of our limitation to the standpoint and view range of the moment,
\ncan be wholly possible. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile there
\nare certain doors opening from the inner on to the outer consciousness which
\nmake an occasional but insufficient power of direct retro-vision of the past, circumvision<\/span> of the present, prevision of the future even
\nin the physical mind at least potentially feasible. First, there are certain
\nmovements of the mind sense and the vital consciousness that are of this
\ncharacter \u2013 of which one kind, that which has most struck our perceptions, has
\nbeen called presentiment. These movements are instinctive perceptions, obscure
\nintuitions of the sense mind and the vital being, and like all that is
\ninstinctive in man have been suppressed, rendered rare or discredited as
\nunreliable by the engrossing activity of the mental intelligence. If allowed a
\nfree scope, these could develop and supply data not available to the ordinary
\nreason and the senses. But still they would not be of themselves perfectly
\nuseful or reliable indices unless their obscurity were enlightened by an interpretation
\nand guidance which the ordinary intelligence cannot give, but a higher
\nintuition could provide. Intuition, then, is the second and more important
\npossible means available to us, and actually intuition can and does sometimes
\ngive us in this difficult field an occasional light and guidance. But acting in
\nour present mentality it is subject to the disadvantage that it is uncertain in
\noperation, imperfect in its functioning, obscured by false imitative movements
\nof the imagination and fallible mental judgment and continually seized on and
\nalloyed and distorted by the normal action of mind with its constant liability
\nto error. The formation of an organized intuitive mentality purified from these
\ndeficiencies would be needed to enlarge and assure this possibility of the
\nfunctioning of a higher luminous intelligence. <\/p>\n

Man, confronted
\nby this incapacity of the intelligence and yet avid of the knowledge of the
\nfuture, has fallen back on other and external means, omens, sortileges, dreams,
\nastrology and many other alleged data for a past and future knowledge that have
\nbeen in less sceptical<\/span> times formulated as veridical
\nsciences. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 860<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Challenged and discredited by the
\nsceptical<\/span> reason these still persist in attracting
\nour minds and hold their own, supported by desire and credulity and
\nsuperstition, but also by the frequent though imperfect evidence we get of a
\ncertain measure of truth in their pretensions. A higher psychical knowledge
\nshows us that in fact the world is full of many systems of correspondences and
\nindices and that these things, however much misused by the human intelligence,
\ncan in their place and under right conditions give us real data of a supraphysical<\/span> knowledge. It is evident, however, that it is
\nonly an intuitive knowledge that can discover and formulate them, \u2013 as it was
\nin fact the psychical and intuitive mind that originally formulated these ways
\nof veridical knowledge, \u2013 and it will be found in practice that only an
\nintuitive knowledge, not the mere use either of a traditional or a haphazard interpretation
\nor of mechanical rule and formula, can ensure a right employment of these
\nindices. Otherwise, handled by the surface intelligence, they are liable to be
\nconverted into a thick jungle of error. <\/p>\n

The true and
\ndirect knowledge or vision of past, present and future begins with the opening
\nof the psychical consciousness and the psychical faculties. The psychical
\nconsciousness is that of what is now often called the subliminal self, the
\nsubtle or dream self of Indian psychology, and its range of potential
\nknowledge, almost infinite as has been pointed out in the last chapter,
\nincludes a very large power and many forms of insight into both the
\npossibilities and the definite actualities of past, present and future. Its
\nfirst faculty, that which most readily attracts attention, is its power of
\nseeing by the psychical sense images of all things in time and space. As
\nexercised by clairvoyants, mediums and others this is often, and indeed
\nusually, a specialised faculty limited though often precise and accurate in
\naction, and implies no development of the inner soul or the spiritual being or
\nthe higher intelligence. It is a door opened by chance or by an innate gift or
\nby some kind of pressure between the waking and the subliminal mind and admitting
\nonly to the surface or the outskirts of the latter. All things in a certain
\npower and action of the secret universal mind are represented by images \u2013 not
\nonly visual but, if one may use the phrase, auditory and other images, \u2013
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 861<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and a certain development of the
\nsubtle or psychical senses makes it possible, \u2013 if there is no interference of
\nthe constructing mind and its imaginations, if, that is to say, artificial or
\nfalsifying mental images do not intervene, if the psychical sense is free,
\nsincere and passive, \u2013 to receive these representations or transcriptions with
\na perfect accuracy and not so much predict as see in its correct images the
\npresent beyond the range of the physical sense, the past and the future. The
\naccuracy of this kind of seeing depends on its being confined to a statement of
\nthe thing seen and the attempt to infer, interpret or otherwise go beyond the
\nvisual knowledge may lead to much error unless there is at the same time a
\nstrong psychical intuition fine, subtle and pure or a high development of the
\nluminous intuitive intelligence. <\/p>\n

A completer
\nopening of the psychical consciousness leads us far beyond this faculty of
\nvision by images and admits us not indeed to a new time consciousness, but to
\nmany ways of the triple time knowledge. The subliminal or psychic self can bring
\nback or project itself into past states of consciousness and experience and
\nanticipate or even, though this is less common, strongly project itself into
\nfuture states of consciousness and experience. It does this by a temporary
\nentering into or identification of its being or its power of experiencing
\nknowledge with either permanences<\/span> or representations
\nof the past and the future that are maintained in an eternal time consciousness
\nbehind our mentality or thrown up by the eternity of supermind into an
\nindivisible continuity of time vision. Or it may receive the impress of these
\nthings and construct a transcriptive<\/span> experience of
\nthem in the subtle ether of psychical being. Or it may call up the past from
\nthe subconscious memory where it is always latent and give it in itself a living
\nform and a kind of renewed memorative<\/span> existence, and
\nequally it may call up from the depths of latency, where it is already shaped
\nin the being, and similarly form to itself and experience the future. It may by
\na kind of psychical thought vision or soul intuition \u2013 not the same thing as
\nthe subtler and less concrete thought vision of the luminous intuitive
\nintelligence \u2013 foresee or foreknow the future or flash this soul intuition into
\nthe past that has gone behind the veil and recover it for present knowledge. It
\ncan develop a symbolic seeing which conveys the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 862<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

past and the future through a
\nvision of the powers and significances that belong to supraphysical<\/span>
\nplanes but are powerful for creation in the material universe. It can feel the
\nintention of the Divine, the mind of the gods, all things and their signs and
\nindices that descend upon the soul and determine the complex movement of
\nforces. It can feel too the movement of forces that represent or respond to the
\npressure \u2013 as it can perceive the presence and the action \u2013 of the beings of
\nthe mental, vital and other worlds who concern themselves with our lives. It
\ncan gather on all hands all kinds of indications of happenings in past, present
\nand future time. It can receive before its sight the etheric<\/span>
\nwriting, ākāśa-lipi<\/i><\/span>,
\nthat keeps the record of all things past, transcribes all that is in process in
\nthe present, writes out the future. <\/p>\n

All these and a
\nmultitude of other powers are concealed in our subliminal being and with the
\nwaking of the psychical consciousness can be brought to the surface. The
\nknowledge of our past lives, \u2013 whether of past soul states or personalities or
\nscenes, occurrences, relations with others, \u2013 of the past lives of others, of
\nthe past of the world, of the future, of present things that are beyond the
\nrange of our physical senses or the reach of any means of knowledge open to the
\nsurface intelligence, the intuition and impressions not only of physical
\nthings, but of the working of a past and present and future mind and life and
\nsoul in ourselves and others, the knowledge not only of this world but of other
\nworlds or planes of consciousness and their manifestations in time and of their
\nintervention and workings and effects on the earth and its embodied souls and
\ntheir destinies, lies open to our psychical being, because it is close to the
\nintimations of the universal, not engrossed only or mainly with the immediate
\nand not shut up into the narrow circle of the purely personal and physical
\nexperience. <\/p>\n

At the same
\ntime these powers are subject to this disadvantage that they are not by any
\nmeans free from liability to confusion and error, and especially the lower
\nranges and more outer workings of the psychical consciousness are subject to dangerous
\ninfluences, strong illusions, misleading, perverting and distorting suggestions
\nand images. A purified mind and heart and a strong
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 863<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and fine psychical intuition may
\ndo much to protect from perversion and error, but even the most highly developed
\npsychical consciousness cannot be absolutely safe unless the psychical is
\nillumined and uplifted by a higher force than itself and touched and
\nstrengthened by the luminous intuitive mind and that again raised towards the
\nsupramental energy of the spirit. The psychical consciousness does not derive
\nits time knowledge from a direct living in the indivisible continuity of the
\nspirit and it has not to guide it a perfect intuitive discrimination or the
\nabsolute light of the higher truth consciousness. It receives its time
\nperceptions, like the mind, only in part and detail, is open to all kinds of
\nsuggestions, and as its consequent range of truth is wider, more manifold too
\nare its sources of error. And it is not only that which was but that which
\nmight have been or tried and failed to be that comes to it out of the past, not
\nonly that which is but that which may be or wishes to be that crowds on it from
\nthe present and not only things to be but suggestions, intuitions, visions and images
\nof many kinds of possibility that visit it from the future. And always too
\nthere is the possibility of mental constructions and mental images interfering
\nwith the true truth of things in the presentations of the psychical experience.\n<\/p>\n

The coming of
\nthe intimations of the subliminal self to the surface and the activity of the
\npsychical consciousness tend to turn the mind of ignorance, with which we
\nbegin, increasingly though not perfectly into a mind of self-forgetful
\nknowledge constantly illuminated with intimations and upsurgings<\/span>
\nfrom the inner being, antarātman<\/i><\/span>,
\nrays from the still concealed awareness of its whole self and infinite contents
\nand from the awareness \u2013 representing itself here as a sort of memory, a recalling
\nor a bringing out \u2013 of an inherent and permanent but hidden knowledge of past,
\npresent and future that is always carried within itself by the eternal spirit.
\nBut embodied as we are and founded on the physical consciousness, the mind of ignorance
\nstill persists as a conditioning environment, an intervening power and limiting
\nhabitual force obstructing and mixing with the new formation or, even in
\nmoments of large illumination, at once a boundary wall and a strong substratum,
\nand it imposes its incapacities and errors. And to remedy this persistence the
\nfirst neces<\/span>– <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 864<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

sity<\/span> would
\nseem to be the development of the power of a luminous intuitive intelligence
\nseeing the truth of time and its happenings as well as all other truth by
\nintuitive thought and sense and vision and detecting and extruding by its
\nnative light of discernment the intrusions of misprision and error. <\/p>\n

All intuitive
\nknowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit
\nentering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all
\nin itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant
\nor the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming<\/span> light, out of its omniscience. This all
\nincludes all that was, is or will be in time and this omniscience is not
\nlimited, impeded or baffled by our mental division of the three times and the
\nidea and experience of a dead and no longer existent and ill-remembered or forgotten
\npast and a not yet existent and therefore unknowable future which is so
\nimperative for the mind in the ignorance. Accordingly the growth of the
\nintuitive mind can bring with it the capacity of a time knowledge which comes
\nto it not from outside indices, but from within the universal soul of things,
\nits eternal memory of the past, its unlimited holding of things present and its
\nprevision or, as it has been paradoxically but suggestively called, its memory of
\nthe future. But this capacity works at first sporadically and uncertainly and
\nnot in an organised manner. As the force of intuitive knowledge grows, it becomes
\nmore possible to command the use of the capacity and to regularise<\/span>
\nto a certain degree its functioning and various movements. An acquired power
\ncan be established of commanding the materials and the main or the detailed
\nknowledge of things in the triple time, but this usually forms itself as a
\nspecial or abnormal power and the normal action of the mentality or a large
\npart of it remains still that of the mind of ignorance. This is obviously an imperfection
\nand limitation and it is only when the power takes its place as a normal and
\nnatural action of the wholly intuitivised<\/span> mind that
\nthere can be said to be a perfection of the capacity of the triple time
\nknowledge so far as that is possible in the mental being. <\/p>\n

It is by the
\nprogressive extrusion of the ordinary action of the intelligence, the acquiring
\nof a complete and total reliance on
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 865<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the intuitive self and a
\nconsequent intuitivising<\/span> of all the parts of the
\nmental being that the mind of ignorance can be, more successfully, if not as
\nyet wholly, replaced by the mind of self-contained knowledge. But, \u2013 and
\nespecially for this kind of knowledge, \u2013 what is needed is the cessation of
\nmental constructions built on the foundation of the mind of ignorance. The difference
\nbetween the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the
\ndarkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as
\nthey are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs
\nby imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts
\nthings which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices,
\nunreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities
\nwhich do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this
\nartificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the
\ntruth to manifest in it and organise<\/span> its own
\nconstructions. But so long as there is a mixed action and the mental constructions
\nand imaginations are allowed to operate, this passivity of the intuitive mind
\nto the higher light, the truth light, cannot be complete or securely dominate
\nand there cannot therefore be a firm organisation of the triple time knowledge.
\nIt is because of this obstruction and mixture that that power of time vision,
\nof back-sight and around-sight and foresight, which sometimes marks the
\nilluminated mind, is not only an abnormal power among others rather than part
\nof the very texture of the mental action, but also occasional, very partial and
\nmarred often by an undetected intermixture or a self-substituting intervention
\nof error. <\/p>\n

The mental
\nconstructions that interfere are mainly of two kinds, and the first and most
\npowerfully distorting are those which proceed from the stresses of the will
\nclaiming to see and determine, interfering with knowledge and not allowing the intuition
\nto be passive to the truth light and its impartial and pure channel. The
\npersonal will, whether taking the shape of the emotions and the heart’s wishes
\nor of vital desires or of strong dynamic volitions or the wilful<\/span>
\npreferences of the intelligence, is an evident source of distortion when these
\ntry, as they usually do try with success, to impose themselves on the knowledge
\nand <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 866<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

make us take what we desire or
\nwill for the thing that was, is or must be. For either they prevent the true knowledge
\nfrom acting or if it at all presents itself, they seize upon it, twist it out
\nof shape and make the resultant deformation a justifying basis for a mass of
\nwill-created falsehood. The personal will must either be put aside or else its suggestions
\nmust be kept in their place until a supreme reference has been made to the
\nhigher impersonal light and then must be sanctioned or rejected according to
\nthe truth that comes from deeper within than the mind or from higher above. But
\neven if the personal will is held in abeyance and the mind passive for
\nreception, it may be assailed and imposed on by suggestions from all sorts of
\nforces and possibilities that strive in the world for realisation and come
\nrepresenting the things cast up by them on the stream of their will-to-be as
\nthe truth of past, present or future. And if the mind lends itself to these impostor
\nsuggestions, accepts their self-valuations, does not either put them aside or
\nrefer them to the truth light, the same result of prevention or distortion of
\nthe truth is inevitable. There is a possibility of the will element being
\nentirely excluded and the mind being made a silent and passive register of a
\nhigher luminous knowledge, and in that case a much more accurate reception of
\ntime intuitions becomes possible. The integrality of the being demands however
\na will action and not only an inactive knowing, and therefore the larger and
\nmore perfect remedy is to replace progressively the personal by a universalised<\/span> will which insists on nothing that is not
\nsecurely felt by it to be an intuition, inspiration or revelation of what must
\nbe from that higher light in which will is one with knowledge. <\/p>\n

The second kind
\nof mental construction belongs to the very nature of our mind and intelligence
\nand its dealing with things in time. All is seen here by mind as a sum of
\nrealised actualities with their antecedents and natural consequences, an indeterminate
\nof possibilities and, conceivably, although of this it is not certain, a
\ndetermining something behind, a will, fate or Power, which rejects some and
\nsanctions or compels others out of many possibles. Its constructions therefore
\nare made partly of inferences from the actual, both past and present, partly of
\na volitional or an imaginative and conjectural selection and combining
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 867<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of possibilities and partly of a
\ndecisive reasoning or preferential judgment or insistent creative
\nwill-intelligence that tries to fix among the mass of actuals<\/span>
\nand possibles the definitive truth it is labouring<\/span> to
\ndiscover or determine. All this which is indispensable to our thought and
\naction in mind, has to be excluded or transformed before the intuitive
\nknowledge can have a chance of organising itself on a sound basis. A
\ntransformation is possible because the intuitive mind has to do the same work
\nand cover the same field, but with a different handling of the materials and
\nanother light upon their significance. An exclusion is possible because all is
\nreally contained in the truth consciousness above and a silencing of the mind
\nof ignorance and a pregnant receptivity is not beyond our compass in which the
\nintuitions descending from the truth consciousness can be received with a
\nsubtle or strong exactitude and all the materials of the knowledge seen in
\ntheir right place and true proportion. As a matter of practice it will be found
\nthat both methods are used alternatively or together to effect the transition
\nfrom the one kind of mentality to the other. <\/p>\n

The intuitive
\nmind dealing with the triple time movement has to see rightly in thought sense
\nand vision three things, actualities, possibles and imperatives. There is first
\na primary intuitive action developed which sees principally the stream of
\nsuccessive actualities in time, even as the ordinary mind, but with an
\nimmediate directness of truth and spontaneous accuracy of which the ordinary
\nmind is not capable. It sees them first by a perception, a thought action, a
\nthought sense, a thought vision, which at once detects the forces at work on
\npersons and things, the thoughts, intentions, impulsions, energies, influences
\nin and around them, those already formulated in them and those in process of
\nformation, those too that are coming or about to come into or upon them from
\nthe environment or from secret sources invisible to the normal mind,
\ndistinguishes by a rapid intuitive analysis free from seeking or labour or by a
\nsynthetic total view the complex of these forces, discerns the effective from
\nthe ineffective or partly effective and sees too the result that is to emerge.
\nThis is the integral process of the intuitive vision of actualities, but there
\nare others that are less complete in their <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 868<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

character. For there may be
\ndeveloped a power of seeing the result without any previous or simultaneous
\nperception of the forces at work or the latter may be seen only afterwards and
\nthe result alone leap at once and first into the knowledge. On the other hand
\nthere may be a partial or complete perception of the complex of forces, but an
\nincertitude of the definitive result or only a slowly arriving or relative
\ncertitude. These are stages in the development of the capacity for a total and
\nunified vision of actualities. <\/p>\n

This kind of
\nintuitive knowledge is not an entirely perfect instrument of time knowledge. It
\nmoves normally in the stream of the present and sees rightly from moment to
\nmoment only the present, the immediate past and the immediate future. It may,
\nit is true, project itself backward and reconstruct correctly by the same power
\nand process a past action or project itself forward and reconstruct correctly
\nsomething in the more distant future. But this is for the normal power of the
\nthought vision a more rare and difficult effort and usually it needs for a freer
\nuse of this self-projection the aid and support of the psychical seeing. Moreover
\nit can see only what will arrive in the undisturbed process of the actualities
\nand its vision no longer applies if some unforeseen rush of forces or
\nintervening power comes down from regions of a larger potentiality altering the
\ncomplex of conditions, and this is a thing that constantly happens in the
\naction of forces in the time movement. It may help itself by the reception of
\ninspirations that illumine to it these potentialities and of imperative
\nrevelations that indicate what is decisive in them and its sequences and by
\nthese two powers correct the limitations of the intuitive mind of actuality.
\nBut the capacity of this first intuitive action to deal with these greater sources
\nof vision is never quite perfect, as must always be the case with an inferior
\npower in its treatment of the materials given to it from a greater
\nconsciousness. A considerable limitation of vision by its stress on the stream
\nof immediate actualities must be always its character. <\/p>\n

It is possible
\nhowever to develop a mind of luminous inspiration which will be more at home
\namong the greater potentialities of the time movement, see more easily distant
\nthings and
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 869<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

at the same time take up into
\nitself, into its more brilliant, wide and powerful light, the intuitive
\nknowledge of actualities. This inspired mind will see things in the light of
\nthe world’s larger potentialities and note the stream of actuality as a
\nselection and result from the mass of forceful possibles. It will be liable,
\nhowever, if it is not attended with a sufficient revelatory knowledge of
\nimperatives, to a hesitation or suspension of determining view as between
\nvarious potential lines of the movement or even to a movement away from the line
\nof eventual actuality and following another not yet applicable sequence. The
\naid of imperative revelations from above will help to diminish this limitation,
\nbut here again there will be the difficulty of an inferior power dealing with
\nthe materials given to it from the treasury of a higher light and force. But it
\nis possible to develop too a mind of luminous revelation which taking into
\nitself the two inferior movements sees what is determined behind the play of
\npotentialities and actualities and observes these latter as its means of
\ndeploying its imperative decisions. An intuitive mind thus constituted and aided
\nby an active psychic consciousness may be in command of a very remarkable power
\nof time knowledge. <\/p>\n

At the same
\ntime it will be found that it is still a limited instrument. In the first place
\nit will represent a superior knowledge working in the stuff of mind, cast into
\nmental forms and still subject to mental conditions and limitations. It will always
\nlean chiefly on the succession of present moments as a foundation for its steps
\nand successions of knowledge, however far it may range backward or forward, \u2013 it
\nwill move in the stream of Time even in its higher revelatory action and not
\nsee the movement from above or in the stabilities of eternal time with their
\nlarge ranges of vision, and therefore it will always be bound to a secondary
\nand limited action and to a certain dilution, qualification and relativity in
\nits activities. Moreover, its knowing will be not a possession in itself but a
\nreception of knowledge. It will at most create in place of the mind of
\nignorance a mind of self-forgetful knowledge constantly reminded and illumined
\nfrom a latent self-awareness and all-awareness. The range, the extent, the
\nnormal lines of action of the knowledge will vary according to the development,
\nbut it can never be free from very strong limi<\/span>– <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 870<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

tations<\/span>.
\nAnd this limitation will give a tendency to the still environing or subconsciously
\nsubsisting mind of ignorance to reassert itself, to rush in or up, acting where
\nthe intuitive knowledge refuses or is unable to act and bringing in with it
\nagain its confusion and mixture and error. The only security will be a refusal
\nto attempt to know or at least a suspension of the effort of knowledge until or
\nunless the higher light descends and extends its action. This self-restraint is
\ndifficult to mind and, too contentedly exercised, may limit the growth of the
\nseeker. If on the other hand the mind of ignorance is allowed again to emerge
\nand seek in its own stumbling imperfect force, there may be a constant
\noscillation between the two states or a mixed action of the two powers in place
\nof a definite though relative perfection. <\/p>\n

The issue out
\nof this dilemma is to a greater perfection towards which the formation of the
\nintuitive, inspired and revelatory mind is only a preparatory stage, and that
\ncomes by a constant instreaming<\/span> and descent of more
\nand more of the supramental light and energy into the whole mental being and a
\nconstant raising of the intuition and its powers towards their source in the
\nopen glories of the supramental nature. There is then a double action of the
\nintuitive mind aware of, open to and referring its knowledge constantly to the
\nlight above it for support and confirmation and of that light itself creating a
\nhighest mind of knowledge, \u2013 really the supramental action itself in a more and
\nmore transformed stuff of mind and a less and less insistent subjection to
\nmental conditions. There is thus formed a lesser supramental action, a mind of
\nknowledge tending always to change into the true supermind of knowledge. The
\nmind of ignorance is more and more definitely excluded, its place taken by the
\nmind of self-forgetful knowledge illumined by the intuition, and the intuition
\nitself more perfectly organised becomes capable of answering to a larger and
\nlarger call upon it. The increasing mind of knowledge acts as an intermediary
\npower and, as it forms itself, it works upon the other, transforms or replaces
\nit and compels the farther change which effects the transition from mind to
\nsupermind. It is here that a change begins to take place in the time consciousness
\nand time knowledge which finds its base and complete reality and significance
\nonly on the supra- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 871<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

mental levels. It is therefore in
\nrelation to the truth of supermind that its workings can be more effectively
\nelucidated: for the mind of knowledge is only a projection and a last step in
\nthe ascent towards the supramental nature. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 872<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXV   Towards the Supramental Time Vision    ALL being, consciousness, knowledge moves, secretly for our present surface awareness, openly when we rise beyond it…<\/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-1235","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\/1235","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=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}