{"id":1245,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","slug":"15-the-gnostic-being-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/19-the-life-divine-volume-19\/15-the-gnostic-being-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","title":{"rendered":"-15_The Gnostic Being.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\nXXVII<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/span>The
\nGnostic Being<\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA
\nperfect path of the Truth has come into being for our journey <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nto the
\nother shore beyond the darkness. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n1Rig Veda<\/font><\/i>.<\/font>1<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nO Truth-Conscious, be conscious of the Truth, cleave out many
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nstreams
\nof the Truth.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nRig
\nVeda.<\/font>2<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nO Flame, O Wine, your force has become conscious; you have <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\ndiscovered the One Light for the many.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nRig
\nVeda.<\/font><\/i>3<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPure-white and dual in her largenesses, she follows effectively,
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nlike
\none who knows, the path of the Truth and diminishes not its directions.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nRig Veda<\/font><\/i>.<\/font>4<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBy the Truth they hold the Truth that holds all, in the power of
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthe
\nSacrifice, in the supreme ether.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nRig Veda.<\/font><\/i>5<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nO Immortal, thou art born in mortals in the law of the Truth, of
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nImmortality, of Beauty…. Born from the Truth, he grows by
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthe  <\/span>
\nTruth,\u2014a King, a Godhead, the Truth, the Vast.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nRig Veda.<\/font><\/i>6<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n


\nA<\/span><\/font>s
\nwe reach in our thought the line at which the evolution of Mind into Overmind
\npasses over into an evolution of Overmind into Supermind, we are faced with a  <\/span>
\nifficulty which amounts almost to an impossibility. For we are moved to seek for
\nsome precise idea, some clear mental description of the supramental or gnostic
\nexistence of which evolutionary Nature in the Ignorance is in travail; but by
\ncrossing this extreme line of sublimated Mind the consciousness passes out of
\nthe sphere,<\/span><\/p>\n


\nexceeds the characteristic action and escapes from the grasp, of mental
\nperception and knowledge. It is evident indeed that supramental nature must be a
\nperfect 
\n<\/span>integration and consummation of spiritual nature and experience: it would
\nalso contain in itself, by the very character of the evolutionary principle,
\nthough<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n      
\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> I. 46.
\n11. 2<\/sup>
\nV. 12. 2.  <\/span>3<\/sup> I. 93. 4. 4 <\/sup>V. 80. 4.
\n <\/span>5<\/sup> V. 15. 2. 6 <\/sup>IX. 110. 4; 108. 8.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 964<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nit would not be limited to that change, a total spiritualisation of mundane
\nnature; our world-experience would be taken up in this step of our evolution
\nand, by a 
\n<\/span>transformation of its parts of divinity, a creative rejection of its
\nimperfections and disguises, reach some divine truth and plenitude. But these
\nare general formulas and give us no precise idea of the change. Our normal
\nperception or imagination or formulation of things spiritual and things mundane
\nis mental, but in the Gnostic change the evolution crosses a line beyond which
\nthere is a supreme and radical reversal of consciousness and the standards and
\nforms of mental cognition are no longer sufficient: it is difficult for mental
\nthought to understand or describe supramental nature. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nMental nature and mental thought are based on a consciousness of the finite;
\nsupramental nature is in its very grain a consciousness and power of the
\nInfinite. Supramental nature sees everything from the standpoint of oneness and
\nregards all things, even the greatest multiplicity and diversity, even what are
\nto the mind the strongest contradictions, in the light of that oneness; its
\nwill, ideas, feelings, sense are made of the stuff of oneness, its actions
\nproceed upon that basis. Mental nature, on the contrary, thinks, sees, wills,
\nfeels, senses with division as a starting-point and has only a constructed
\nunderstanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from the
\noneness on a basis of limitation and difference. But the supramental, the divine
\nlife is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity. It is impossible
\nfor the mind to forecast in detail what the supramental change must be in its
\nparts of life-action and outward behaviour or lay down for it what forms it
\nshall create for the individual or the collective existence. For the mind acts
\nby intellectual rule or device or by reasoned choice of will or by mental
\nimpulse or in obedience to life-impulse; but supramental nature does not act by
\nmental idea or rule or in subjection to any inferior impulse: each of its steps
\nis dictated by an innate spiritual vision, a comprehensive and exact penetration
\ninto the truth of all and the truth of each thing; it acts always according to
\ninherent reality, not by the mental idea, not according to an imposed law of
\nconduct or a constructive thought or perceptive contrivance. Its movement is
\ncalm, self-possessed, spontaneous,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 965<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nplastic; it arises naturally and inevitably out of a harmonic identity of the
\ntruth which is felt in the very substance of the conscious being, a spiritual
\nsubstance which is universal and therefore intimately one with all that is
\nincluded in its cognition of existence. A mental description of supramental
\nnature could only express itself either in phrases which are too abstract or in
\nmental figures which might turn it into something quite different from its
\nreality. It would not seem to be possible, therefore, for the mind to anticipate
\nor indicate what a supramental being shall be or how he shall act; for here
\nmental ideas and formulations cannot decide anything or arrive at any precise
\ndefinition or determination, because they are not near enough to the law and
\nself-vision of supramental nature. At the same time certain deductions can be
\nmade from the very fact of this difference of nature which might be valid at
\nleast for a general description of the passage from Overmind to Supermind or
\nmight vaguely construct for us an idea of the first status of the evolutionary
\nsupramental existence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThis passage is the stage at which the supermind gnosis can take over the lead
\nof the evolution from the Overmind and build the first foundations of its own
\ncharacteristic manifestation and unveiled activities; it must be marked
\ntherefore by a decisive but long-prepared transition from an evolution in the
\nIgnorance to an always progressive evolution in the Knowledge. It will not be a
\nsudden revelation and effectuation of the absolute Supermind and the supramental
\nbeing as they are in their own plane, the swift apocalypse of a truth-conscious
\nexistence ever self-fulfilled and complete in self-knowledge; it will be the
\nphenomenon of the supramental being descending into a world of evolutionary
\nbecoming and forming itself there, unfolding the powers of the gnosis within the
\nterrestrial nature. This is indeed the principle of all terrestrial being; for
\nthe process of earth-existence is the play of an infinite Reality concealing
\nitself first in a succession of obscurely limited, opaque and incomplete
\nhalf-figures which by their imperfection and character of disguise distort the
\ntruth of which they are in labour, but afterwards arriving more and more at
\nhalf-luminous figures of itself which can become, once there is the supramental
\ndescent, a true
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 966<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nprogressive revelation. The descent from original Supermind, the assumption of
\nevolutionary Supermind is a step which the supramental gnosis can very well
\nundertake and accomplish without changing its own essential character. It can
\nassume the formula of a truth-conscious existence founded in an inherent
\nself-knowledge but at the same time taking up into itself mental nature and
\nnature of life and material body. For the Supermind as the Truth-Consciousness
\nof the Infinite has in its dynamic principle the infinite power of a free
\nself-determination. It can hold all knowledge in itself and yet put forward in
\nformulation only what is needed at each stage of an evolution; it formulates
\nwhatever is in accordance with the Divine Will in manifestation and the truth of
\nthe thing to be manifested. It is by this power that it is able to hold back its
\nknowledge, hide its own character and law of action and manifest Overmind and
\nunder Overmind a world of ignorance in which the being wills on its surface not
\nto know and even puts itself under the control of a pervading Nescience. But in
\nthis new stage the veil thus put on will be lifted; the evolution at every step
\nwill move in the power of the Truth-Consciousness and its progressive
\ndeterminations will be made by a conscious Knowledge and not in the forms of an
\nIgnorance or Inconscience.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAs there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power which
\nshapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of earthly nature
\nthat is ready for the change, so now there will be established on earth a
\nGnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual
\nbeings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this new
\ntransformation. It will also receive into itself from above, progressively, from
\nits own domain of perfect<\/span><\/p>\n


\nlight and power and beauty all that is ready to descend from that domain into
\nterrestrial being. For the evolution proceeded in the past by the upsurging, at
\neach critical stage, of a concealed Power from its involution in the
\nInconscience, but also by a descent from above, from its own plane, of that
\nPower already self-realised in its own higher natural province. In all these
\nprevious stages there has been a division between surface self and consciousness
\nand subliminal self and consciousness; the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 967<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nsurface was formed mainly under the push of the upsurging force from below, by
\nthe Inconscient developing a slowly emergent formulation of a concealed force of
\nthe Spirit, the subliminal partly in this way but mainly by a simultaneous
\ninflux of the largeness of the same force from above: a mental or a vital being
\ndescended into the subliminal parts and formed from its secret station there a
\nmental or a vital personality on the surface. But before the supramental change
\ncan begin, the veil between the subliminal and the surface parts must have been
\nalready broken down; the influx, the descent will be in the entire consciousness
\nas a whole, it will not take place partly behind a veil: the process will be no
\nlonger a concealed, obscure and ambiguous procedure but an open out-flowering
\nconsciously felt and followed by the whole being in its transmutation. In other
\nrespects the process will be identical,\u2014a supramental inflow from above, the
\ndescent of a gnostic being into the nature, and an emergence of the concealed
\nsupramental force from below; the influx and the unveiling between them will
\nremove what is left of the nature of the Ignorance. The rule of the Inconscient
\nwill disappear: for the Inconscience will be changed by the outburst of the
\ngreater secret Consciousness within it, the hidden Light, into what it always
\nwas in reality, a sea of the secret Superconscience. A first formation of a
\ngnostic consciousness and nature will be the consequence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe creation of a supramental being, nature, life on earth, will not be the sole
\nresult of this evolution; it will also carry with it the consummation of the
\nsteps that have led up to it: for it will confirm in possession of terrestrial
\nbirth the Overmind, the Intuition and the other gradations of the spiritual
\nnature-force and establish a race of gnostic beings and a hierarchy, a shining
\nladder of ascending degrees and successive constituent formations of the gnostic
\nlight and power in earth-nature. For the description of gnosis applies to all
\nconsciousness that is based upon Truth of being and not upon the Ignorance or
\nNescience. All life and living beings ready to rise beyond the mental ignorance,
\nbut not ready yet for the supramental height, would find in a sort of echelon or
\na scale with overlapping degrees their assured basis, their intermediate steps
\nof self-formation,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 968<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\ntheir expression of realised capacity of spiritual existence on the way to the
\nsupreme Reality. But also the presence of the liberated and now sovereign
\nsupramental light and force at the head of evolutionary Nature might be expected
\nto have its consequences in the whole evolution. An incidence, a decisive stress
\nwould affect the life of the lower evolutionary stages; something of the light,
\nsomething of the force would penetrate downwards and awaken into a greater
\naction the hidden Truth-Power everywhere in Nature. A dominant principle of
\nharmony would impose itself on the life of the Ignorance; the discord, the blind
\nseeking, the clash of struggle, the abnormal vicissitudes of exaggeration and
\ndepression and unsteady balance of the unseeing forces at work in their mixture
\nand conflict, would feel the influence and yield place to a more orderly pace
\nand harmonic steps of the development of being, a more revealing arrangement of
\nprogressing life and consciousness, a better life-order. A freer play of
\nintuition and sympathy and understanding would enter into human life, a clearer
\nsense of the truth of self and things and a more enlightened dealing with the
\nopportunities and difficulties of existence. Instead of a constant intermixed
\nand confused struggle between the growth of Consciousness and the power of the
\nInconscience, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, the
\nevolution would become a graded progression from lesser light to greater light;
\nin each stage of it the conscious beings belonging to that stage would respond
\nto the inner Consciousness-Force and expand their own law of cosmic Nature
\ntowards the possibility of a higher degree of that Nature. This is at least a
\nstrong possibility and might be envisaged as the natural consequence of the
\ndirect action of Supermind on the evolution. This intervention would not annul
\nthe evolutionary principle, for Supermind has the power of withholding or
\nkeeping in reserve its force of knowledge as well as the power of bringing it
\ninto full or partial action; but it would harmonise, steady, facilitate,
\ntranquillise and to a great extent hedonise the difficult and afflicted process
\nof the evolutionary emergence.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThere is something in the nature of Supermind itself that would make this great
\nresult inevitable. It is in its foundation <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 969<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\na unitarian and integralising and harmonic consciousness, and in its descent and
\nevolutionary working out of the diversity of the Infinite it would not lose its
\nunitarian trend, its push towards integralisation or its harmonic influence. The
\nOvermind follows out diversities and divergent possibilities on their own lines
\nof divergence: it can allow contradictions and discords, but it makes them
\nelements of a cosmic whole so that they are forced, however unwittingly and in
\nspite of themselves, to contribute their shares to its wholeness. Or we may say
\nthat it accepts and even encourages contradictions, but obliges them to support
\neach other’s existence so that there may be divergent roads of being and
\nconsciousness and experience that lead away from the One and from each other but
\nstill maintain themselves on the Oneness and can lead back again each on its own
\npath to the Oneness. That is the secret sense even of our own world of Ignorance
\nwhich works from the Inconscience but with the underlying cosmicity of the
\novermind principle. But the individual being in such a creation does not possess
\nthis secret principle in knowledge and does not base upon it his action. An
\novermind being here would perceive this secret; but he might still work on his
\nown lines of Nature and law of action, Swabhava, Swadharma, according to the
\ninspiration, the dynamic control or the inner governance of the Spirit or the
\nDivine within him and leave the rest to their own line in the whole: an overmind
\ncreation of knowledge in the Ignorance might therefore be something separate
\nfrom the surrounding world of Ignorance and guarded from it by the luminous
\nencircling and separating wall of its own principle. The supramental gnostic
\nbeing, on the contrary, would not only found all his living on an intimate sense
\nand effective realisation of harmonic unity in his own inner and outer life or
\ngroup-life, but would create a harmonic unity also with the still surviving
\nmental world, even if that world remained altogether a world of Ignorance. For
\nthe gnostic consciousness in him would perceive and bring out the evolving truth
\nand principle of harmony hidden in the formations of the Ignorance; it would be
\nnatural to his sense of integrality and it would be within his power to link
\nthem in a true order with his own Gnostic
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 970<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nprinciple and the evolved truth and harmony of his own greater life-creation.
\nThat might be impossible without a considerable change in the life of the world,
\nbut such a change would be a natural consequence of the appearance of a new
\nPower in Nature and its universal influence. In the emergence of the gnostic
\nbeing would be the hope of a more harmonious evolutionary order in terrestrial
\nNature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nA supramental or gnostic race of beings would not be a race made according to a
\nsingle type, moulded in a single fixed pattern; for the law of the Supermind is
\nunity fulfilled in diversity, and therefore there would be an infinite diversity
\nin the manifestation of the gnostic consciousness although that consciousness
\nwould still be one in its basis, in its constitution, in its all-revealing and
\nall-uniting order. It is evident that the triple status of the Supermind would
\nreproduce itself as a principle in this new manifestation: there would be below
\nit and yet belonging to it the degrees of the overmind and intuitive gnosis with
\nthe souls that had realised these degrees of the ascending consciousness; there
\nwould be also at the summit, as the evolution in Knowledge proceeded, individual
\nbeings who would ascend beyond a supermind formulation and reach from the
\nhighest height of Supermind to the summits of unitarian self-realisation in the
\nbody which must be the last and supreme state of the epiphany of the Creation.
\nBut in the supramental race itself, in the variation of its degrees, the
\nindividuals would not be cast according to a single type of individuality; each
\nwould be different from the other, a unique formation of the Being, although one
\nwith all the rest in foundation of self and sense of oneness and in the
\nprinciple of his being. It is only this general principle of the supramental
\nexistence of which we can attempt to form an idea however diminished by the
\nlimitations of mental thought and mental language. A more living picture of the
\ngnostic being Supermind only could make; for the mind some abstract outlines of
\nit are alone possible. The gnosis is the effective principle of the Spirit, a
\nhighest dynamis of the spiritual existence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe gnostic individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man; his whole
\nway of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 971<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\npower of a vast universal spirituality. All the trinities of the Spirit would be
\nreal to his self-awareness and realised in his inner life. All his existence
\nwould be fused into oneness with the transcendent and universal Self and Spirit;
\nall his action would originate from and obey the supreme Self and Spirit’s
\ndivine governance of Nature. All life would have to him the sense of the
\nConscious Being, the Purusha within, finding its self-expression in Nature; his
\nlife and all its thoughts, feelings, acts would be filled for him with that
\nsignificance and built upon that foundation of its reality. He would feel the
\npresence of the Divine in every centre of his consciousness, in every vibration
\nof his life-force, in every cell of his body. In all the workings of his force
\nof Nature he would be aware of the workings of the supreme World-Mother, the
\nSupernature; he would see his natural being as the becoming and manifestation of
\nthe power of the World-Mother. In this consciousness he would live and act in an
\nentire transcendent freedom, a complete joy of the Spirit, an entire identity
\nwith the cosmic Self and a spontaneous sympathy with all in the universe. All
\nbeings would be to him his own selves, all ways and powers of consciousness
\nwould be felt as the ways and powers of his own universality. But in that
\ninclusive universality there would be no bondage to inferior forces, no
\ndeflection from his own highest truth: for this truth would envelop all truth of
\nthings and keep each in its own place, in a relation of diversified harmony,\u2014it
\nwould not admit any confusion, clash, infringing of boundaries, any distortion
\nof the different harmonies that constitute the total harmony. His own life and
\nthe world-life would be to him like a perfect work of art; it would be as if the
\ncreation of a cosmic and spontaneous genius infallible in its working out of a
\nmultitudinous order. The gnostic individual would be in the world and of the
\nworld, but would also exceed it in his consciousness and live in his Self of
\ntranscendence above it; he would be universal but free in the universe,
\nindividual but not limited by a separative individuality. The true Person is not
\nan isolated entity, his individuality is universal; for he individualises the
\nuniverse: it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of
\ntranscendental infinity, like a
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 972<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nhigh cloud-surpassing summit; for he individualises the divine Transcendence. <\/span><\/p>\n

       
\nThe three powers which present themselves to our life as the three keys to its
\nmystery are the individual, the cosmic entity and the Reality present in both
\nand beyond them. These three mysteries of existence would find in the life of
\nthe supramental being a united fulfilment of their harmony. He will be the
\nperfected and complete individual, fulfilled in the satisfaction of his growth
\nand self-expression; for all his elements would be carried to a highest degree
\nand integrated in some kind of comprehensive largeness. What we are striving
\ntowards is completeness and harmony; an imperfection and incapacity or a discord
\nof our nature is that from which inwardly we most suffer. But this is because of
\nour incompleteness of being, our imperfect self-knowledge, our imperfect
\npossession of our self and our nature. A complete self-knowledge in all things
\nand at all moments is the gift of the supramental gnosis and with it a complete
\nself-mastery, not merely in the sense of control of Nature but in the sense of a
\npower of perfect self-expression in Nature. Whatever knowledge of self there
\nwould be, would be perfectly embodied in the will of the self, the will
\nperfectly embodied in the action of the self; the result would be the self’s
\ncomplete dynamic self-formulation in its own nature. In the lower grades of
\ngnostic being, there would be a limitation of self-expression according to the
\nvariety of the nature, a limited perfection in order to formulate some side,
\nelement or combined harmony of elements of some Divine Totality, a restricted
\nselection of powers from the cosmic figure of the infinitely manifold One. But
\nin the supramental being this need of limitation for perfection would disappear;
\nthe diversity would not be secured by limitation but by a diversity in the power
\nand hue of the Supernature: the same whole of being and the same whole of nature
\nwould express themselves in an infinitely diverse fashion; for each being would
\nbe a new totality, harmony, self-equation of the One Being. What would be
\nexpressed in front or held behind at any moment would depend not on capacity or
\nincapacity, but on the dynamic self-choice of the Spirit, its delight of
\nself-expression, on the truth of the <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 973<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nDivine’s will and joy of itself in the individual and, subordinately, on the
\ntruth of the thing that had to be done through the individual in the harmony of
\nthe totality. For the complete individual is the cosmic individual, since only
\nwhen we have taken the universe into ourselves,\u2014and transcended it,\u2014can our
\nindividuality be complete.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe supramental being in his cosmic consciousness seeing and feeling all as
\nhimself would act in that sense; he would act in a universal awareness and a
\nharmony of his individual self with the total self, of his individual will with
\nthe total will, of his individual action with the total action. For what we most
\nsuffer from in our outer life and its reactions upon our inner life is the
\nimperfection of our relations with the world, our ignorance of others, our
\ndisharmony with the whole of things, our inability to equate our demand on the
\nworld with the world’s demand on us. There is a conflict,\u2014a conflict from which
\nthere seems to be no ultimate issue except an escape from both world and
\nself,\u2014between our self-affirmation and a world on which we have to impose that
\naffirmation, a world which seems to be too large for us and to pass
\nindifferently over our soul, mind, life, body in the sweep of its course to its
\ngoal. The relation of our course and goal to the world’s is unapparent to us,
\nand to harmonise ourselves with it we have either to enforce ourselves upon it
\nand make it subservient to us or suppress ourselves and become subservient to it
\nor else to compass a difficult balance between these two necessities of the
\nrelation between the individual personal destiny and the cosmic whole and its
\nhidden purpose. But for the supramental being living in a cosmic consciousness
\nthe difficulty would not exist, since he has no ego; his cosmic individuality
\nwould know the cosmic forces and their movement and their significance as part
\nof himself, and the Truth-Consciousness in him would see the right relation at
\neach step and find the dynamic right expression of that relation. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nFor in fact both individual and universe are simultaneous and interrelated
\nexpressions of the same transcendent Being; even though in the Ignorance and
\nunder its law there is maladjustment and conflict, yet there must be a right
\nrelation, an <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 974<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nequation to which all arrives but which is missed by our blindness of ego, our
\nattempt to affirm the ego and not the Self one in all. The supramental
\nconsciousness has that truth of relation in itself as its natural right and
\nprivilege, since it is the Supermind that determines the cosmic relations and
\nthe relations of the individual with the universe, determines them freely and
\nsovereignly as a power of the Transcendence. In the mental being even the
\npressure of the cosmic consciousness overpowering the ego and an awareness of
\nthe transcendent Reality might not of themselves bring about a dynamic solution;
\nfor there might still be an incompatibility between its liberated spiritual
\nmentality and the obscure life of the cosmic Ignorance which the mind would not
\nhave the power to solve or overcome. But in the supramental being, not only
\nstatically conscious but fully dynamic and acting in the creative light and
\npower of the Transcendence, the supramental light, the truth light,
\nrtam jyotih<\/i>, would have that power. For there would be a unity with the
\ncosmic self, but not a bondage to the Ignorance of cosmic Nature in its lower
\nformulation; there would on the contrary be a power to act in the light of the
\nTruth on that Ignorance. A large universality of self-expression, a large
\nharmonic universality of world-being would be the very sign of the supramental
\nPerson in his gnostic nature. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe existence of the supramental being would be the play of a manifoldly and
\nmultiply manifesting truth-power of one-existence and one-consciousness for the
\ndelight of one-existence. Delight of the manifestation of the Spirit in its
\ntruth of being would be the sense of the gnostic life. All its movements would
\nbe a formulation of the truth of the Spirit, but also of the joy of the
\nSpirit,\u2014an affirmation of spiritual existence, an affirmation of spiritual
\nconsciousness, an affirmation of spiritual delight of being. But this would not
\nbe what self-affirmation tends to be in us in spite of the underlying unity,
\nsomething egocentric, separative, opposed or indifferent or insufficiently alive
\nto the self-affirmation of others or their demand on existence. One in self with
\nall, the supramental being will seek the delight of self-manifestation of the
\nSpirit in himself but equally the delight of the Divine in all: he will have the
\ncosmic joy and will be a
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\npower for bringing the bliss of the Spirit, the joy of being to others; for
\ntheir joy will be part of his own joy of existence. To be occupied with the good
\nof all beings, to make the joy and grief of others one’s own has been described
\nas a sign of the liberated and fulfilled spiritual man. The supramental being
\nwill have no need, for that, of an altruistic self-effacement, since this
\noccupation will be intimate to his self-fulfilment, the fulfilment of the One in
\nall, and there will be no contradiction or strife between his own good and the
\ngood of others: nor will he have any need to acquire a universal sympathy by
\nsubjecting himself to the joys and griefs of creatures in the Ignorance; his
\ncosmic sympathy will be part of his inborn truth of being and not dependent on a
\npersonal participation in the lesser joy and suffering; it will transcend what
\nit embraces and in that transcendence will be its power. His feeling of
\nuniversality, his action of universality will be always a spontaneous state and
\nnatural movement, an automatic expression of the Truth, an act of the joy of the
\nSpirit’s self-existence. There could be in it no place for limited self or
\ndesire or for the satisfaction or frustration of the limited self or the
\nsatisfaction or frustration of desire, no place for the relative and dependent
\nhappiness and grief that visit and afflict our limited nature; for these are
\nthings that belong to the ego and the Ignorance, not to the freedom and truth of
\nthe Spirit. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe gnostic being has the will of action but also the knowledge of what is to be
\nwilled and the power to effectuate its knowledge; it will not be led from
\nignorance to do what is not to be done. Moreover, its action is not the seeking
\nfor a fruit or result; its joy is in being and doing, in pure state of Spirit,
\nin pure act of Spirit, in the pure bliss of the Spirit. As its static
\nconsciousness will contain all in itself and must be, therefore, for ever
\nself-fulfilled, so its dynamis of consciousness will find in each step and in
\neach act a spiritual freedom and a self-fulfilment. All will be seen in its
\nrelation to the whole, so that each step will be luminous and joyous and
\nsatisfying in itself because each is in unison with a luminous totality. This
\nconsciousness, this living in the spiritual totality and acting from it, a
\nsatisfied totality in essence of being and a satisfied totality in the dynamic
\nmovement of being, the sense of the relations of that totality
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\naccompanying each step, is indeed the very mark of a supramental consciousness
\nand distinguishes it from the disintegrated, ignorantly successive steps of our
\nconsciousness in the Ignorance. The gnostic existence and delight of existence
\nis a universal and total being and delight, and there will be the presence of
\nthat totality and universality in each separate movement: in each there will be,
\nnot a partial experience of self or a fractional bit of its joy, but the sense
\nof the whole movement of an integral being and the presence of its entire and
\nintegral bliss of being, Ananda. The gnostic being’s knowledge self-realised in
\naction will be, not an ideative knowledge, but the Real-Idea of the Supermind,
\nthe instrumentation of an essential light of Consciousness; it will be the
\nself-light of all the reality of being and becoming pouring itself out
\ncontinually and filling every particular act and activity with the pure and
\nwhole delight of its self-existence. For an infinite consciousness with its
\nknowledge by identity there is in each differentiation the joy and experience of
\nthe Identical, in each finite is felt the Infinite. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAn evolution of gnostic consciousness brings with it a transformation of our
\nworld-consciousness and world-action: for it takes up into the new power of
\nawareness not only the inner existence but our outer being and our world-being;
\nthere is a remaking of both, an integration of them in the sense and power of
\nthe spiritual existence. There must come upon us in the change at once a
\nreversal and rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its
\ninner trend and tendency. For we stand now between these two terms, an outer
\nworld of Life and Matter that has made us and a remaking of the world by
\nourselves in the sense of the evolving Spirit. Our present way of living is at
\nonce a subjection to Life-Force and Matter and a struggle with Life and Matter.
\nIn its first appearance an outer existence creates by our reactions to it an
\ninner or mental existence; if we shape ourselves at all, it is in most men less
\nby the conscious pressure of a free soul or intelligence from within than by a
\nresponse to our environment and the world-Nature acting upon us: but what we
\nmove towards in the development of our conscious being is an inner existence
\ncreating by its knowledge and power its own outer form of living and self- <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nexpressive environment of living. In the gnostic nature this movement will have
\nconsummated itself; the nature of living will be an accomplished inner existence
\nwhose light and power will take perfect body in the outer life. The gnostic
\nbeing will take up the world of Life and Matter, but he will turn and adapt it
\nto his own truth and purpose of existence; he will mould life itself into his
\nown spiritual image, and this he will be able to do because he has the secret of
\na spiritual creation and is in communion and oneness with the Creator within
\nhim. This will be first effective in the shaping of his own inner and outer
\nindividual existence, but the same power and principle will operate in any
\ncommon gnostic life; the relations of gnostic being with gnostic being will be
\nthe expression of their one gnostic self and supernature shaping into a
\nsignificant power and form of itself the whole common existence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the
\nspiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that refuses
\nto change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his
\ninner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the
\nIgnorance: he is out of the world even when he is within it; if he acts upon it,
\nit is from the fortress of his inner spiritual being where in the inmost
\nsanctuary he is one with the Supreme Existence or the soul and God are alone
\ntogether. The gnostic life will be an inner life in which the antinomy of the
\ninner and the outer, the self and the world will have been cured and exceeded.
\nThe gnostic being will have indeed an inmost existence in which he is alone with
\nGod, one with the Eternal, self-plunged into the depths of the Infinite, in
\ncommunion with its heights and its luminous abysses of secrecy; nothing will be
\nable to disturb or to invade these depths or bring him down from the summits,
\nneither the world’s contents nor his action nor all that is around him. This is
\nthe transcendence-aspect of the spiritual life and it is necessary for the
\nfreedom of the Spirit; for otherwise the identity in Nature with the world would
\nbe a binding limitation and not a free identity. But at the same time God-love
\nand the delight of God will be the heart’s expression of that inner communion
\nand oneness, and that delight and love will expand
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\nitself to embrace all existence. The peace of God within will be extended in the
\ngnostic experience of the universe into a universal calm of equality not merely
\npassive but dynamic, a calm of freedom in oneness dominating all that meets it,
\ntranquillising all that enters into it, imposing its law of peace on the
\nsupramental being’s relations with the world in which he is living. Into all his
\nacts the inner oneness, the inner communion will attend him and enter into his
\nrelations with others, who will not be to him others but selves of himself in
\nthe one existence, his own universal existence. It is this poise and freedom in
\nthe Spirit that will enable him to take all life into himself while still
\nremaining the spiritual self and to embrace even the world of the Ignorance
\nwithout himself entering into the Ignorance. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nFor his experience of cosmic existence will be, by its form of nature and by an
\nindividualised centration, that of one living in the universe but, at the same
\ntime, by self-diffusion and extension in oneness, that of one who carries the
\nuniverse and all its beings within him. This extended state of being will not
\nonly be an extension in oneness of self or an extension in conceptive idea and
\nvision, but an extension of oneness in heart, in sense, in a concrete physical
\nconsciousness. He will have the cosmic consciousness, sense, feeling, by which
\nall objective life will become part of his subjective existence and by which he
\nwill realise, perceive, feel, see, hear the Divine in all forms; all forms and
\nmovements will be realised, sensed, seen, heard, felt as if taking place within
\nhis own vast self of being. The world will be connected not only with his outer
\nbut with his inner life. He will not meet the world only in its external form by
\nan external contact; he will be inwardly in contact with the inner self of
\nthings and beings: he will meet consciously their inner as well as their outer
\nreactions; he will be aware of that within them of which they themselves will
\nnot be aware, act upon all with an inner comprehension, encounter all with a
\nperfect sympathy and sense of oneness but also an independence which is not
\novermastered by any contact. His action on the world will be largely an inner
\naction by the power of the Spirit, by the spiritual-supramental idea-force
\nformulating itself in the world, by the secret unspoken word, by the power of
\nthe heart, by the dynamic life-force, by the
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\nenveloping and penetrating power of the self one with all things; the outer
\nexpressed and visible action will be only a fringe, a last projection of this
\nvaster single total of activity. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAt the same time the universal inner life of the individual will not be confined
\nto an inner pervasive and inclusive contact with the physical world alone: it
\nwill extend beyond it through the full realisation of the subliminal inner
\nbeing’s natural connection with other planes of being; a knowledge of their
\npowers and influences will have become a normal element of the inner experience,
\nand the happenings of this world will be seen not solely in their external
\naspect but also in the light of all that is secret behind the physical and
\nterrestrial creation and movement. A gnostic being will possess not only a
\ntruth-conscious control of the realised Spirit’s power over its physical world,
\nbut also the full power of the mental and vital planes and the use of their
\ngreater forces for the perfection of the physical existence. This greater
\nknowledge and wider hold of all existence will enormously increase the power of
\ninstrumentation of the gnostic being on his surroundings and on the world of
\nphysical Nature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn the Self-Existence of which Supermind is the dynamic Truth-Consciousness,
\nthere can be no aim of being except to be, no aim of consciousness except to be
\nconscious of being, no aim of delight of being other than its delight; all is a
\nself-existent and self-sufficient Eternity. Manifestation, becoming, has in its
\noriginal supramental movement the same character; it sustains in a self-existent
\nand self-sufficient rhythm an activity of being which sees itself as a manifold
\nbecoming, an activity of consciousness which takes the form of a manifold
\nself-knowledge, an activity of force of conscious existence which exists for the
\nglory and beauty of its own manifold power of being, an activity of delight
\nwhich assumes innumerable forms of delight. The existence and consciousness of
\nthe supramental being here in Matter will have fundamentally the same nature,
\nbut with subordinate characters which mark the difference between Supermind in
\nits own plane and Supermind working in its manifested power in the
\nearth-existence. For here there will be an evolving being, an evolving
\nconsciousness, an evolving delight of existence. The gnostic being will appear
\nas the sign of an evolution from the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nconsciousness of the Ignorance into the consciousness of Sachchidananda. In the
\nIgnorance one is there primarily to grow, to know and to do, or, more exactly to
\ngrow into something, to arrive by knowledge at something, to get something done.
\nImperfect, we have no satisfaction of our being, we must perforce strive with
\nlabour and difficulty to grow into something we are not; ignorant and burdened
\nwith a consciousness of our ignorance, we have to arrive at something by which
\nwe  <\/span>can feel that we know; bounded with incapacity, we
\nhave to hunt after strength and power; afflicted with a consciousness of
\nsuffering, we have to try to get something done by which we catch at some
\npleasure or lay hold on some satisfying reality of life. To maintain existence
\nis, indeed, our first occupation and necessity, but it is only a starting-point:
\nfor the mere maintenance of an imperfect existence chequered with suffering
\ncannot be sufficient as an aim of our being; the instinctive will of existence,
\nthe pleasure of existence, which is all that the Ignorance can make out of the
\nsecret underlying Power and Ananda, has to be supplemented by the need to do and
\nbecome. But what to do and what to become is not clearly known to us; we get
\nwhat knowledge we can, what power, strength, purity, peace we can, what delight
\nwe can, become what we can. But our aims and our effort towards their
\nachievement and the little we can hold as our gains turn into meshes by which we
\nare bound; it is these things that become for us the object of life: to know our
\nsouls and to be our selves, which must be the foundation of our true way of
\nbeing, is a secret that escapes us in our preoccupation with an external
\nlearning, an external construction of knowledge, the achievement of an external
\naction, an external delight and pleasure. The spiritual man is one who has
\ndiscovered his soul: he has found his self and lives in that, is conscious of
\nit, has the joy of it; he needs  nothing external for his completeness of
\nexistence. The gnostic being starting from this new basis takes up our ignorant
\nbecoming and turns it into a luminous becoming of knowledge and a realised power
\nof being. All therefore that is our attempt to be in the Ignorance, he will
\nfulfil in the Knowledge. All knowledge he will turn into a manifestation of the
\nself-knowledge of being, all power and action into a power and action of the
\nself-force of
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\nbeing, all delight into a universal delight of self-existence. Attachment and
\nbondage will fall away, because at each step and in each thing there will be the
\nfull satisfaction of self-existence, the light of the consciousness fulfilling
\nitself, the ecstasy of delight of existence finding itself. Each stage of the
\nevolution in the knowledge will be an unfolding of this power and will of being
\nand this joy to be, a free becoming supported by the sense of the Infinite, the
\nbliss of the Brahman, the luminous sanction of the Transcendence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe supramental transformation, the supramental evolution must carry with it a
\nlifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being in
\nwhich yet their own ways and powers would be, not suppressed or abolished, but
\nperfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding. For in the Ignorance all paths
\nare the paths of the Spirit seeking for itself blindly or with a growing light;
\nthe gnostic being and life would be the Spirit’s self-discovery and its seeing
\nand reaching of the aims of all these paths but in the greater way of its own
\nrevealed and conscious truth of being. Mind seeks for light, for knowledge,\u2014for
\nknowledge of the one truth basing all, an essential truth of self and things,
\nbut also of all truth of diversity of that oneness, all its detail,
\ncircumstance, manifold way of action, form, law of movement and happening,
\nvarious manifestation and creation; for thinking mind the joy of existence is
\ndiscovery and the penetration of the mystery of creation that comes with
\nknowledge. This the gnostic change will fulfil in an ample measure; but it will
\ngive it a new character. It will act not by the discovery of the unknown, but by
\nthe bringing out of the known; all will be the finding \u201cof the self by the self
\nin the self\u201d. For the self of the gnostic being will not be the mental ego but
\nthe Spirit that is one in all; he will see the world as a universe of the
\nSpirit. The finding of the one truth underlying all things will be the Identical
\ndiscovering identity and identical truth everywhere and discovering too the
\npower and workings and relations of that identity. The revelation of the detail,
\nthe circumstance, the abundant ways and forms of the manifestation will be the
\nunveiling of the endless opulence of the truths of that identity, its forms and
\npowers of self, its curious manifoldness and multiplicity of form bringing
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\nout infinitely its oneness. This knowledge will proceed by identification with
\nall, by entering into all, by a contact bringing with it a leap of
\nself-discovery and a flame of recognition, a greater and surer intuition of
\ntruth than the mind can reach; there will be an intuition too of the means of
\nembodying and utilising the truth seen, an operative intuition of its dynamic
\nprocesses, a direct intimate awareness guiding the life and the physical senses
\nin every step of their action and service to the Spirit when they have to be
\ncalled in as instruments for the effectuation of process in Life and Matter.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nA replacement of intellectual seeking by supramental identity and gnostic
\nintuition of the contents of the identity, an omnipresence of Spirit with its
\nlight penetrating the whole process of knowledge and all its use,\u2014so that there
\nis an integration between the knower, knowledge and the thing known, between the
\noperating consciousness, the instrumentation and the thing done, while the
\nsingle self watches over the whole integrated movement and fulfils itself
\nintimately in it, making it a flawless unit of self-effectuation,\u2014will be the
\ncharacter of each gnostic movement of knowledge and action of knowledge. Mind,
\nobserving and reasoning, labours to detach itself and see objectively and truly
\nwhat it has to know; it tries to know it as not-self, independent other-reality
\nnot affected by process of personal thinking or by any presence of self: the
\ngnostic consciousness will at once intimately and exactly know its object by a
\ncomprehending and penetrating identification with it. It will overpass what it
\nhas to know, but it will include it in itself; it will know the object as part
\nof itself as it might know any part or movement of its own being, without any
\nnarrowing of itself by the identification or snaring of its thought in it so as
\nto be bound or limited in knowledge. There will be the intimacy, accuracy,
\nfullness of a direct internal knowledge, but not that misleading by personal
\nmind by which we constantly err, because the consciousness will be that of a
\nuniversal and not a restricted and ego-bound person. It will proceed towards all
\nknowledge, not setting truth against truth to see which will stand and survive,
\nbut completing truth by truth in the light of the one Truth of which all are the
\naspects. All idea and vision and perception will have this character of an inner
\nseeing, <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nan intimate extended self-perception, a large self-integrating knowledge, an
\nindivisible whole working itself out by light acting upon light in a
\nself-executing harmony of truth-being. There will be an unfolding, not as a
\ndelivery of light out of darkness, but as a delivery of light out of itself; for
\nif an evolving supramental Consciousness holds back part of its contents of
\nself-awareness behind in itself, it does this not as a step or by an act of
\nIgnorance, but as the movement of a deliberate bringing out of its timeless
\nknowledge into a process of Time-manifestation. A self-illumination, a
\nrevelation of light out of light will be the method of cognition of this
\nevolutionary supramental Nature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAs mind seeks for light, for the discovery of knowledge and for mastery by
\nknowledge, so life seeks for the development of its own force and for mastery by
\nforce: its quest is for growth, power, conquest, possession, satisfaction,
\ncreation, joy, love, beauty; its joy of existence is in a constant
\nself-expression, development, diverse manifoldness of action, creation,
\nenjoyment, an abundant and strong intensity of itself and its power. The gnostic
\nevolution will lift that to its highest and fullest expression, but it will not
\nact for the power, satisfaction, enjoyment of the mental or vital ego, for its
\nnarrow possession of itself and its eager ambitious grasp on others and on
\nthings or for its greater self-affirmation and magnified embodiment; for in that
\nway no spiritual fullness and perfection can come. The gnostic life will exist
\nand act for the Divine in itself and in the world, for the Divine in all; the
\nincreasing possession of the individual being and the world by the Divine
\nPresence, Light, Power, Love, Delight, Beauty will be the sense of life to the
\ngnostic being. In the more and more perfect satisfaction of that growing
\nmanifestation will be the individual’s satisfaction: his power will be the
\ninstrumentation of the power of Supernature for bringing in and extending that
\ngreater life and nature; whatever conquest and adventure will be there, will be
\nfor that only and not for the reign of any individual or collective ego. Love
\nwill be for him the contact, meeting, union of self with self, of spirit with
\nspirit, a unification of being, a power and joy and intimacy and closeness of
\nsoul to soul, of the One to the One, a joy of identity and the consequences of a
\ndiverse identity. It is this joy of an intimate
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\nself-revealing diversity of the One, the multitudinous union of the One and a
\nhappy interaction in the identity, that will be for him the full revealed sense
\nof life. Creation aesthetic or dynamic, mental creation, life-creation, material
\ncreation will have for him the same sense. It will be the creation of
\nsignificant forms of the Eternal Force, Light, Beauty, Reality,\u2014the beauty and
\ntruth of its forms and bodies, the beauty and truth of its powers and qualities,
\nthe beauty and truth of its spirit, its formless beauty of self and essence. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nAs a consequence of the total change and reversal of consciousness establishing
\na new relation of Spirit with Mind and Life and Matter, and a new significance
\nand perfection in the relation, there will be a reversal, a perfecting new
\nsignificance also of the relations between the spirit and the body it inhabits.
\nIn our present way of living the soul expresses itself, as best it can or as
\nbadly as it must, through the mind and the vitality, or, more often, allows the
\nmind and the vitality to act with its support: the body is the instrument of
\nthis action. But the body, even in obeying, limits and determines the mind’s and
\nthe life’s self-expression by the limited possibilities and acquired character
\nof its own physical instrumentation; it has besides a law of its own action, a
\nmovement and will or force or urge of movement of its own subconscious or
\nhalf-emerged conscious power of being which they can only partially,\u2014and even in
\nthat part more by an indirect than by a direct or, if direct, then more by a
\nsubconscious than a willed and conscious action,\u2014influence or alter. But in the
\ngnostic way of being and living the will of the Spirit must directly control and
\ndetermine the movements and law of the body. For the law of the body arises from
\nthe subconscient or inconscient: but in the gnostic being the subconscient will
\nhave become conscious and subject to the supramental control, penetrated with
\nits light and action; the basis of inconscience with its obscurity and
\nambiguity, its obstruction or tardy responses will have been transformed into a
\nlower or supporting superconscience by the supramental emergence. Already even
\nin the realised higher-mind being and in the intuitive and overmind being the
\nbody will have become sufficiently conscious to respond to the influence of the
\nIdea and the Will-Force so that
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\nthe action of mind on the physical parts, which is rudimentary, chaotic and
\nmostly involuntary in us, will have developed a considerable potency: but in the
\nsupramental being it is the consciousness with the Real-Idea in it which will
\ngovern everything. This Real-Idea is a truth-perception which is self-effective;
\nfor it is the idea and will of the Spirit in direct action and originates a
\nmovement of the substance of being which must inevitably effectuate itself in
\nstate and act of being. It is this dynamic irresistible spiritual realism of the
\nTruth-Consciousness in the highest degree of itself that will have here grown
\nconscient and consciously competent in the evolved gnostic being: it will not
\nact as now, veiled in an apparent inconscience and self-limited by law of
\nmechanism, but as the sovereign Reality in self-effectuating action. It is this
\nthat will rule the existence with an entire knowledge and power and include in
\nits rule the functioning and action of the body. The body will be turned by the
\npower of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly
\nresponsive instrument of the Spirit.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThis new relation of the Spirit and the body assumes,\u2014and makes possible,\u2014a free
\nacceptance of the whole of material Nature in place of a rejection; the drawing
\nback from her, the refusal of all identification or acceptance, which is the
\nfirst normal necessity of the spiritual consciousness for its liberation, is no
\nlonger imperative. To cease to be identified with the body, to separate oneself
\nfrom the body-consciousness, is a recognised and necessary step whether towards
\nspiritual liberation or towards spiritual perfection and mastery over Nature.
\nBut, this redemption once effected, the descent of the spiritual light and force
\ncan invade and take up the body also and there can be a new liberated and
\nsovereign acceptance of material Nature. That is possible, indeed, only if there
\nis a changed communion of the Spirit with Matter, a control, a reversal of the
\npresent balance of interaction which allows physical Nature to veil the Spirit
\nand affirm her own dominance. In the light of a larger knowledge Matter also can
\nbe seen to be the Brahman, a self-energy put forth by the Brahman, a form and
\nsubstance of Brahman; aware of the secret consciousness within material
\nsubstance, secure in this larger knowledge, the gnostic light and
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\npower can unite itself with Matter, so seen, and accept it as an instrument of a
\nspiritual manifestation. A certain reverence, even, for Matter and a sacramental
\nattitude in all dealings with it is possible. As in the Gita the act of the
\ntaking of food is spoken of as a material sacrament, a sacrifice, an offering of
\nBrahman to Brahman by Brahman, so also the Gnostic consciousness and sense can
\nview all the operations of Spirit with Matter. The Spirit has made itself Matter
\nin order to place itself there as an instrument for the well-being and joy,
\nyogaksema<\/i>, of created beings, for a self-offering of universal physical
\nutility and service. The gnostic being, using Matter but using it without
\nmaterial or vital attachment or desire, will feel that he is using the Spirit in
\nthis form of itself with its consent and sanction for its own purpose. There
\nwill be in him a certain respect for physical things, an awareness of the occult
\nconsciousness in them, of its dumb will of utility and service, a worship of the
\nDivine, the Brahman in what he uses, a care for a perfect and faultless use of
\nhis divine material, for a true rhythm, ordered harmony, beauty in the life of
\nMatter, in the utilisation of Matter.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAs a result of this new relation between the Spirit and the body, the gnostic
\nevolution will effectuate the spiritualisation, perfection and fulfilment of the
\nphysical being; it will do for the body as for the mind and life. Apart from the
\nobscurity, frailties and limitations, which this change will overcome, the
\nbody-consciousness is a patient servant and can be in its large reserve of
\npossibilities a potent instrument of the individual life, and it asks for little
\non its own account: what it craves for is duration, health, strength, physical
\nperfection, bodily happiness, liberation from suffering, ease. These demands are
\nnot in themselves unacceptable, mean or illegitimate, for they render into the
\nterms of Matter the perfection of form and substance, the power and delight
\nwhich should be the natural outflowing, the expressive manifestation of the
\nSpirit. When the gnostic Force can act in the body, these things can be
\nestablished; for their opposites come from a pressure of external forces on the
\nphysical mind, on the nervous and material life, on the body-organism, from an
\nignorance that does not know how to meet
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nthese forces or is not able to meet them rightly or with power, and from some
\nobscurity, pervading the stuff of the physical consciousness and distorting its
\nresponses, that reacts to them in a wrong way. A supramental self-acting
\nself-effectuating awareness and knowledge, replacing this ignorance, will
\nliberate and restore the obscured and spoiled intuitive instincts in the body
\nand enlighten and supplement them with a greater conscious action. This change
\nwould institute and maintain a right physical perception of things, a right
\nrelation and right reaction to objects and energies, a right rhythm of mind,
\nnerve and organism. It would bring into the body a higher spiritual power and a
\ngreater life-force unified with the universal life-force and able to draw on it,
\na luminous harmony with material Nature and the vast and calm touch of the
\neternal repose which can give to it its diviner strength and ease. Above
\nall,\u2014for this is the most needed and fundamental change,\u2014it will flood the whole
\nbeing with a supreme energy of Consciousness-Force which would meet, assimilate
\nor harmonise with itself all the forces of existence that surround and press
\nupon the body.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIt is the incompleteness and weakness of the Consciousness-Force manifested in
\nthe mental, vital and physical being, its inability to receive or refuse at
\nwill, or, receiving, to assimilate or harmonise the contacts of the universal
\nEnergy cast upon it, that is the cause of pain and suffering. In the material
\nrealm Nature starts with an entire insensibility, and it is a notable fact that
\neither a comparative insensibility or a deficient sensibility or, more often, a
\ngreater endurance and hardness to suffering is found in the beginnings of life,
\nin the animal, in primitive or less developed man; as the human being grows in
\nevolution, he grows in sensibility and suffers more keenly in mind and life and
\nbody. For the growth in consciousness is not sufficiently supported by a growth
\nin force: the body becomes more subtle, more finely capable, but less solidly
\nefficient in its external energy: man has to call in his will, his mental power
\nto dynamise, correct and control his nervous being, force it<\/span><\/p>\n


\nto the strenuous tasks he demands from his instruments, steel it against
\nsuffering and disaster. In the spiritual ascent this power of the consciousness
\nand its will over the instruments, the control of
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\nspirit and inner mind over the outer mentality and the nervous being and the
\nbody, increases immensely; a tranquil and wide equality of the spirit to all
\nshocks and contacts comes in and becomes the habitual poise, and this can pass
\nfrom the mind to the vital parts and establish there too an immense and enduring
\nlargeness of strength and peace; even in the body this state may form itself and
\nmeet inwardly the shocks of grief and pain and all kinds of suffering. Even, a
\npower of willed physical insensibility can intervene or a power of mental
\nseparation from all shock and injury can be acquired which shows that the
\nordinary reactions and the debile submission of the bodily self to the normal
\nhabits of response of material Nature are not obligatory or unalterable. Still
\nmore significant is the power that comes on the level of spiritual Mind or
\nOvermind to change the vibrations of pain into vibrations of Ananda: even if
\nthis were to go only up to a certain point, it indicates the possibility of an
\nentire reversal of the ordinary rule of the reacting consciousness; it can be
\nassociated too with a power of self-protection that turns away the shocks that
\nare more difficult to transmute or to endure. The gnostic evolution at a certain
\nstage must bring about a completeness of this reversal and of this power of
\nself-protection which will fulfil the claim of the body for immunity and
\nserenity of its being and for deliverance from suffering and build in it a power
\nfor the total delight of existence. A spiritual Ananda can flow into the body
\nand inundate cell and tissue; a luminous materialisation of this higher Ananda
\ncould of itself bring about a total transformation of the deficient or adverse
\nsensibilities of physical Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nAn aspiration, a demand for the supreme and total delight of existence is there
\nsecretly in the whole make of our being, but it is disguised by the separation
\nof our parts of nature and their differing urge and obscured by their inability
\nto conceive or seize anything more than a superficial pleasure. In the
\nbody-consciousness this demand takes shape as a need of bodily happiness, in our
\nlife-parts as a yearning for life-happiness, a keen vibrant response to joy and
\nrapture of many kinds and to all surprise of satisfaction; in the mind it shapes
\ninto a ready reception of all forms of mental delight; on a higher level it
\nbecomes apparent
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nin the spiritual mind’s call for peace and divine ecstasy. This trend is founded
\nin the truth of the being; for Ananda is the very essence of the Brahman, it is
\nthe supreme nature of the omnipresent Reality. The Supermind itself in the
\ndescending degrees of the manifestation emerges from the Ananda and in the
\nevolutionary ascent merges into the Ananda. It is not, indeed, merged in the
\nsense of being extinguished or abolished but is there inherent in it,
\nindistinguishable from the self of awareness and the self-effectuating force of
\nthe Bliss of Being. In the involutionary descent as in the evolutionary return
\nSupermind is supported by the original Delight of Existence and carries that in
\nit in all its activities as their sustaining essence; for Consciousness, we may
\nsay, is its parent power in the Spirit, but Ananda is the spiritual matrix from
\nwhich it manifests and the maintaining source into which it carries back the
\nsoul in its return to the status of the Spirit. A supramental manifestation in
\nits ascent would have as a next sequence and culmination of self-result a
\nmanifestation of the Bliss of the Brahman: the evolution of the being of gnosis
\nwould be followed by an evolution of the being of bliss; an embodiment of
\ngnostic existence would have as its consequence an embodiment of the beatific
\nexistence. Always in the being of gnosis, in the life of the gnosis some power
\nof the Ananda would be there as an inseparable and pervading significance of
\nsupramental self-experience. In the liberation of the soul from the Ignorance
\nthe first foundation is peace, calm, the silence and quietude of the Eternal and
\nInfinite; but a consummate power and greater formation of the spiritual
\nascension takes up this peace of liberation into the bliss of a perfect
\nexperience and realisation of the eternal beatitude, the bliss of the Eternal
\nand Infinite. This Ananda would be inherent in the gnostic consciousness as a
\nuniversal delight and would grow with the evolution of the gnostic nature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIt has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the
\nSupreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may
\nbe true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a
\nspiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme
\nhappiness of the vital parts taken up by the Spirit; there is an exaltation,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nexultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure
\ninner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is
\nnot the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the
\nspiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is
\ninstead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is
\nfounded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of
\neternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The
\nSupermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions,
\nbrings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among
\nits first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise
\ntogether, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the
\neternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite. In the gnostic consciousness at
\nany stage there would be always in some degree this fundamental and spiritual
\nconscious delight of existence in the whole depth of the being; but also all the
\nmovements of Nature would be pervaded by it, and all the actions and reactions
\nof the life and the body: none could escape the law of the Ananda. Even before
\nthe gnostic change there can be a beginning of this fundamental ecstasy of being
\ntranslated into a manifold beauty and delight. In the mind, it translates into a
\ncalm of intense delight of spiritual perception and vision and knowledge, in the
\nheart into a wide or deep or passionate delight of universal union and love and
\nsympathy and the joy of beings and the joy of things. In the will and vital
\nparts it is felt as the energy of delight of a divine life-power in action or a
\nbeatitude of the senses perceiving and meeting the One everywhere, perceiving as
\ntheir normal aesthesis of things a universal beauty and a secret harmony of
\ncreation of which our mind can catch only imperfect glimpses or a rare
\nsupernormal sense. In the body it reveals itself as an ecstasy pouring into it
\nfrom the heights of the Spirit and the peace and bliss of a pure and
\nspiritualised physical existence. A universal beauty and glory of being begins
\nto manifest; all objects reveal hidden lines, vibrations, powers, harmonic
\nsignificances concealed from the normal mind and the physical sense. In the
\nuniversal phenomenon is revealed the eternal Ananda.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThese are the first major results of the spiritual <\/span><\/p>\n

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\ntransformation that follow as a necessary consequence of the nature of Supermind.
\nBut if there is to be not only a perfection of the inner existence, of the
\nconsciousness, of an inner delight of existence, but a perfection of the life
\nand action, two other questions present themselves from our mental viewpoint
\nwhich have to our human thought about our life and its dynamisms a considerable,
\neven a premier importance. First, there is the place of personality in the
\nGnostic being,\u2014whether the status, the building of the being will be quite other
\nthan what we experience as the form and life of the person or similar. If there
\nis a personality and it is in any way responsible for its actions, there
\nintervenes, next, the question of the place of the ethical element and its
\nperfection and fulfilment in the gnostic nature. Ordinarily, in the common
\nnotion, the separative ego is our self and, if ego has to disappear in a
\ntranscendental or universal Consciousness, personal life and action must cease;
\nfor, the individual disappearing, there can only be an impersonal consciousness,
\na cosmic self: but if the individual is altogether extinguished, no further
\nquestion of personality or responsibility or ethical perfection can arise.
\nAccording to another line of ideas the spiritual person remains, but liberated,
\npurified, perfected in nature in a celestial existence. But here we are still on
\nearth, and yet it is supposed that the ego-personality is extinguished and
\nreplaced by a universalised spiritual individual who is a centre and power of
\nthe transcendent Being. It might be deduced that this Gnostic or supramental
\nindividual is a self without personality, an impersonal Purusha. There could be
\nmany gnostic individuals but there would be no personality, all would be the
\nsame in being and nature. This, again, would create the idea of a void or blank
\nof pure being from which an action and function of experiencing consciousness
\nwould arise, but without a construction of differentiated personality such as
\nthat which we now observe and regard as ourselves on our surface. But this would
\nbe a mental rather than a supramental solution of the problem of a spiritual
\nindividuality surviving ego and persisting in experience. In the supermind
\nconsciousness personality and impersonality are not opposite principles; they
\nare inseparable aspects of one and the same reality. This reality is not the ego
\nbut the being, who is impersonal and universal in his stuff of
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nnature, but forms out of it an expressive personality which is his form of self
\nin the changes of Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nImpersonality is in its source something fundamental and universal; it is an
\nexistence, a force, a consciousness that takes on various shapes of its being
\nand energy; each such shape of energy, quality, power or force, though still in
\nitself general, impersonal and universal, is taken by the individual being as
\nmaterial for the building of his personality. Thus impersonality is in the
\noriginal undifferentiated truth of things the pure substance of nature of the
\nBeing, the Person; in the dynamic truth of things it differentiates its powers
\nand lends them to constitute by their variations the manifestation of
\npersonality. Love is the nature of the lover, courage the nature of the warrior;
\nlove and courage are impersonal and universal forces or formulations of the
\ncosmic Force, they are the Spirit’s powers of its universal being and nature.
\nThe Person is the Being supporting what is thus impersonal, holding it in
\nhimself as his, his nature of self; he is that which is the lover and warrior.
\nWhat we call the personality of the Person is his expression in nature-status
\nand nature-action,\u2014he himself being in his self-existence, originally and
\nultimately, much more than that; it is the form of himself that he puts forth as
\nhis manifested already developed natural being or self in nature. In the formed
\nlimited individual it is his personal expression of what is impersonal, his
\npersonal appropriation of it, we may say, so as to have a material with which he
\ncan build a significant figure of himself in manifestation. In his formless
\nunlimited self, his real being, the true Person or Purusha, he is not that, but
\ncontains in himself boundless and universal possibilities; but he gives to them,
\nas the divine Individual, his own turn in the manifestation so that each among
\nthe Many is a unique self of the one Divine. The Divine, the Eternal, expresses
\nhimself as existence, consciousness, bliss, wisdom, knowledge, love, beauty, and
\nwe can think of him as these impersonal and universal powers of himself, regard
\nthem as the nature of the Divine and Eternal; we can say that God is Love, God
\nis Wisdom, God is Truth or Righteousness: but he is not himself an impersonal
\nstate or abstract of states or qualities; he is the Being, at once absolute,
\nuniversal and individual. If we look at it from this basis, there is, very
\nclearly, no opposition,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nno incompatibility, no impossibility of a co-existence or one-existence of the
\nImpersonal and the Person; they are each other, live in one another, melt into
\neach other, and yet in a way can appear as if different ends, sides, obverse and
\nreverse of the same Reality. The gnostic being is of the nature of the Divine
\nand therefore repeats in himself this natural mystery of existence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nA supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, but not a
\npersonality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled
\ncombination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since
\nhe is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent. But neither
\ncan his being be a capricious impersonal flux throwing up at random waves of
\nvarious form, waves of personality as it pours through Time. Something like this
\nmay be felt in men who have no strong centralising Person in their depths but
\nact from a sort of confused multi-personality according to whatever element in
\nthem becomes prominent at the time; but the gnostic consciousness is a
\nconsciousness of harmony and self-knowledge and self-mastery and would not
\npresent such a disorder. There are, indeed, varying notions of what constitutes
\npersonality and what constitutes character. In one view personality is regarded
\nas a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being; but
\nanother idea distinguishes personality and character, personality as a flux of
\nself-expressive or sensitive and responsive being, character as a formed fixity
\nof Nature’s structure. But flux of nature and fixity of nature are two aspects
\nof being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of
\npersonality. For in all men there is a double element, the unformed though
\nlimited flux of being or Nature out of which personality is fashioned and the
\npersonal formation out of that flux. The formation may become rigid and ossify
\nor it may remain sufficiently plastic to change constantly and develop; but it
\ndevelops out of the formative flux, by a modification or enlargement or
\nremoulding of the personality, not, ordinarily, by an abolition of the formation
\nalready made and the substitution of a new form of being,\u2014this can only occur in
\nan abnormal turn or a supernormal conversion. But besides this flux and this
\nfixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the
\npersonality is a self-expression;
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\nthe Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the
\npresent act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger
\nthan his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into
\nthe surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no
\nlonger be described by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments,
\nor marked out by any structural limits. But neither is it a mere
\nindistinguishable, quite amorphous and unseizable flux: though its acts of
\nnature can be characterised but not itself, still it can be distinctively felt,
\nfollowed in its action, it can be recognised, though it cannot easily be
\ndescribed; for it is a power of being rather than a structure. The ordinary
\nrestricted personality can be grasped by a description of the characters stamped
\non its life and thought and action, its very definite surface building and
\nexpression of self; even if we may miss whatever was not so expressed, that
\nmight seem to detract little from the general adequacy of our understanding,
\nbecause the element missed is usually little more than an amorphous raw
\nmaterial, part of the flux, not used to form a significant part of the
\npersonality. But such a description would be pitifully inadequate to express the
\nPerson when its Power of Self within manifests more amply and puts forward its
\nhidden daemonic force in the surface composition and the life. We feel ourselves
\nin presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can
\ndistinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix
\nitself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a
\npowerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not
\na limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha. The gnostic
\nIndividual would be such an inner Person unveiled, occupying both the depths,\u2014no
\nlonger self-hidden,\u2014and the surface in a unified self-awareness; he would not be
\na surface personality partly expressive of a larger secret being, he would be
\nnot the wave but the ocean: he would be the Purusha, the inner conscious
\nExistence self-revealed, and would have no need of a carved expressive mask or
\npersona. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThis, then, would be the nature of the gnostic Person, an <\/span><\/p>\n

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\ninfinite and universal being revealing,\u2014or, to our mental ignorance,
\nsuggesting,\u2014its eternal self through the significant form and expressive power
\nof an individual and temporal self-manifestation. But the individual
\nnature-manifestation, whether strong and distinct in outline or multitudinous
\nand protean but still harmonic, would be there as an index of the being, not as
\nthe whole being: that would be felt behind, recognisable but indefinable,
\ninfinite. The consciousness also of the gnostic Person would be an infinite
\nconsciousness throwing up forms of self-expression, but aware always of its
\nunbound infinity and universality and conveying the power and sense of its
\ninfinity and universality even in the finiteness of the expression,\u2014by which,
\nmoreover, it would not be bound in the next movement of farther self-revelation.
\nBut this would still not be an unregulated unrecognisable flux but a process of
\nself-revelation making visible the inherent truth of its powers of existence
\naccording to the harmonic law natural to all manifestation of the Infinite.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAll the character of the life and action of the gnostic being would arise
\nself-determined out of this nature of his gnostic individuality. There could be
\nin it no separate problem of an ethical or any similar content, any conflict of
\ngood and evil. There could indeed be no problem at all, for problems are the
\ncreations of mental ignorance seeking for knowledge and they cannot exist in a
\nconsciousness in which knowledge arises self-born and the act is self-born out
\nof the knowledge, out of a pre-existent truth of being conscious and self-aware.
\nAn essential and universal spiritual truth of being manifesting itself, freely
\nfulfilling itself in its own nature and self-effectuating consciousness, a truth
\nof being one in all even in an infinite diversity of its truth and making all to
\nbe felt as one, would also be in its very nature an essential and universal good
\nmanifesting itself, fulfilling itself in its own nature and self-effectuating
\nconsciousness, a truth of good one in all and for all even in an infinite
\ndiversity of its good. The purity of the eternal Self-existence would pour
\nitself into all the activities, making and keeping all things pure; there could
\nbe no ignorance leading to wrong will and falsehood of the steps, no separative
\negoism <\/span><\/p>\n

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\ninflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm
\non others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one’s own soul, mind, life or
\nbody or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, which is the
\npractical sense of all human evil. To rise beyond virtue and sin, good and evil
\nis an essential part of the Vedantic idea of liberation, and there is in this
\ncorrelation a self-evident sequence. For liberation signifies an emergence into
\nthe true spiritual nature of being where all action is the automatic
\nself-expression of that truth and there can be nothing else. In the imperfection
\nand conflict of our members there is an effort to arrive at a right standard of
\nconduct and to observe it; that is ethics, virtue, merit, punya<\/i>,
\nto do otherwise is sin, demerit, pāpa. Ethical mind declares a law of love, a
\nlaw of justice, a law of truth, laws without number, difficult to observe,
\ndifficult to reconcile. But if oneness with others, oneness with truth is
\nalready the essence of the real ised spiritual nature, there is no need of a law
\nof truth or of love,\u2014the law, the standard has to be imposed on us now because
\nthere is in our natural being an opposite force of separateness, a possibility
\nof antagonism, a force of discord, ill-will, strife. All ethics is a
\nconstruction of good in a Nature which has been smitten with evil by the powers
\nof darkness born of the Ignorance, even as it is expressed in the ancient legend
\nof the Vedanta. But where all is self-determined by truth of consciousness and
\ntruth of being, there can be no standard, no struggle to observe it, no virtue
\nor merit, no sin or demerit of the nature. The power of love, of truth, of right
\nwill be there, not as a law mentally constructed but as the very substance and
\nconstitution of the nature and, by the integration of the being, necessarily
\nalso the very stuff and constituting nature of the action. To grow into this
\nnature of our true being, a nature of spiritual truth and oneness, is the
\nliberation attained by an evolution of the spiritual being: the gnostic
\nevolution gives us the complete dynamism of that return to ourselves. Once that
\nis done, the need of standards of virtue, dharmas, disappears; there is the law
\nand self-order of the liberty of the Spirit, there can be no imposed or
\nconstructed law of conduct, dharma. All becomes <\/span><\/p>\n

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\na self-flow of spiritual self-nature, Swadharma of Swabhava. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nHere we touch the kernel of the dynamic difference between life in the mental
\nignorance and life in the gnostic being and nature. It is the difference between
\nan integral fully conscious being in full possession of its own truth of
\nexistence and working out that truth in its own freedom, free from all
\nconstructed laws, while yet its life is a fulfilment of all true laws of
\nbecoming in their essence of meaning, and an ignorant self-divided existence
\nwhich seeks for its own truth and tries to construct its findings into laws and
\nconstruct its life according to a pattern so made. All true law is the right
\nmotion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action
\nfulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence.
\nThis law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical,\u2014that is the
\ncharacter or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a
\nconscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the
\nbeing aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities
\nof self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment
\nin the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the
\nlaw of the Spirit. An entire freedom of the Spirit, an entire self-existent
\norder self-creating, self-effectuating, self-secure in its own natural and
\ninevitable movement, is the character of this dynamis of the gnostic Supernature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAt the summit of being is the Absolute with its absolute freedom of infinity but
\nalso its absolute truth of itself and power of that truth of being; these two
\nthings repeat themselves in the life of the Spirit in Supernature. All action
\nthere is the action of the supreme Self, the supreme Ishwara in the truth of the
\nSupernature. It is at once the truth of the being of the self and the truth of
\nthe will of the Ishwara one with that truth,\u2014a biune reality,\u2014which expresses
\nitself in each individual gnostic being according to his supernature. The
\nfreedom of the gnostic individual is the freedom of his spirit to fulfil
\ndynamically the truth of his being and the power of his energies in life; but
\nthis is synonymous with an entire obedience of his nature to the truth of Self
\nmanifested in his existence and to the will of the Divine in him and all. This
\nAll-Will is one in
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\neach gnostic individual and in many gnostic individuals and in the conscious All
\nwhich holds and contains them in itself; it is conscious of itself in each
\ngnostic being and is there one with his own will, and at the same time he is
\nconscious of the same Will, the same Self and Energy variously active in all.
\nSuch a gnostic consciousness and gnostic will aware of its oneness in many
\ngnostic individuals, aware of its concordant totality and the meaning and
\nmeeting-point of its diversities, must assure a symphonic movement, a movement
\nof unity, harmony, mutuality in the action of the whole. It assures at the same
\ntime in the individual a unity and symphonic concord of all the powers and
\nmovements of his being. All energies of being seek their self-expression and at
\ntheir highest seek their absolute; this they find in the supreme Self, and they
\nfind at the same time their supreme oneness, harmony and mutuality of united and
\ncommon self-expression in its all-seeing and all-uniting dynamic power of
\nself-determination and self-effectuation, the supramental gnosis. A separate
\nself-existent being could be at odds with other separate beings, at variance
\nwith the universal All in which they co-exist, in a state of contradiction with
\nany supreme Truth that was willing its self-expression in the universe; this is
\nwhat happens to the individual in the Ignorance, because he takes his stand on
\nthe consciousness of a separate individuality. There can be a similar conflict,
\ndiscord, disparity between the truths, the energies, qualities, powers, modes of
\nbeing that act as separate forces in the individual and in the universe. A world
\nfull of conflict, a conflict in ourselves, a conflict of the individual with the
\nworld around him are normal and inevitable features of the separative
\nconsciousness of the Ignorance and our ill-harmonised existence. But this cannot
\nhappen in the gnostic consciousness because there each finds his complete self
\nand all find their own truth and the harmony of their different motions in that
\nwhich exceeds them and of which they are the expression. In the gnostic life,
\ntherefore, there is an entire accord between the free self-expression of the
\nbeing and his automatic obedience to the inherent law of the supreme and
\nuniversal Truth of things. These are to him interconnected sides of the one
\nTruth; it is his own supreme
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\ntruth of being which works itself out in the whole united truth of himself and
\nthings in one Supernature. There is also an entire accord between all the many
\nand different powers of the being and their action; for even those that are
\ncontradictory in their apparent motion and seem in our mental experience of them
\nto enter into conflict, fit themselves and their action naturally into each
\nother, because each has its self-truth and its truth of relation to the others
\nand this is self-found and self-formed in the gnostic Supernature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn the supramental gnostic nature there will therefore be no need of the mental
\nrigid way and hard style of order, a limiting standardisation, an imposition of
\na fixed set of principles, the compulsion of life into one system or pattern
\nwhich is alone valid because it is envisaged by mind as the one right truth of
\nbeing and conduct. For such a standard cannot include and such a structure
\ncannot take up into itself the whole of life, nor can it adapt itself freely to
\nthe pressure of the All-life or to the needs of the evolutionary Force; it has
\nto escape from itself or to escape from its self-constructed limits by its own
\ndeath, by disintegration or by an intense conflict and revolutionary
\ndisturbance. Mind has thus to select its limited rule and way of life, because
\nit is itself bound and limited in vision and capacity; but gnostic being takes
\nup into itself the whole of life and existence, fulfilled, transmuted into the
\nharmonic self-expression of a vast Truth one and diverse, infinitely one,
\ninfinitely<\/span><\/p>\n


\nmultiple. The knowledge and action of the gnostic being would have the wideness
\nand plasticity of an infinite freedom. This knowledge would grasp its objects as
\nit went in the largeness of the whole; it would be bound only by the integral
\ntruth of the whole and the complete and inmost truth of the object, but not by
\nthe formed idea or fixed mental symbols by which the mind is caught and held and
\nconfined in them so as to lose the freedom of its knowledge. The entire activity
\nalso would be  unbound by an obligation of unelastic rule or by the obligation
\nof a past state or action or by its compelling consequence, Karma; it would have
\nthe sequent but self-guided and self-evolving plasticity of the Infinite acting
\ndirectly upon its own finites. This movement will not create a flux or chaos,
\nbut a
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nliberated and harmonic Truth-expression; there would be a free
\nself-determination of the spiritual being in a plastic entirely conscious
\nnature. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nIn the consciousness of the Infinite individuality does not break up nor
\ncircumscribe cosmicity, cosmicity does not contradict transcendence. The gnostic
\nbeing living in the consciousness of the Infinite will create his own
\nself-manifestation as an individual, but he will do so as a centre of a larger
\nuniversality and yet at the same time a centre of the transcendence. A universal
\nindividual, all his action would be in harmony with the cosmic action, but,
\nowing to his transcendence, it would not be limited by a temporary inferior
\nformulation or at the mercy of any or every cosmic force. His universality would
\nembrace even the Ignorance around him in its larger self, but, while intimately
\naware of it, he would not be affected by it: he would follow the greater law of
\nhis transcendent individuality and express its gnostic truth in his own way of
\nbeing and action. His life would be a free harmonic expression of the self; but,
\nsince his highest self would be one with the being of the Ishwara, a natural
\ndivine government of his self-expression by the Ishwara, by his highest self,
\nand by the Supernature, his own supreme nature, would automatically bring into
\nthe knowledge, the life, the action a large and unbound but perfect order. The
\nobedience of his individual nature to the Ishwara and the Supernature would be a
\nnatural consonance and indeed the very condition of the freedom of the self,
\nsince it would be an obedience to his own supreme being, a response to the
\nSource of all his existence. The individual nature would be nothing separate, it
\nwould be a current of the Supernature. All antinomy of the Purusha and the
\nPrakriti, that curious division and unbalance of the Soul and Nature which
\nafflicts the Ignorance, would be entirely removed; for the nature would be the
\noutflowing of the self-force of the Person and the Person would be the
\noutflowing of the supreme Nature, the supramental power of being of the Ishwara.
\nIt is this supreme truth of his being, an infinitely harmonic principle, that
\nwould create the order of his spiritual freedom, an authentic, automatic and
\nplastic order. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nIn the lower existence the order is automatic, the binding of Nature complete,
\nher groove firm and imperative: the cosmic <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nConsciousness-Force evolves a pattern of Nature and its habitual mould or fixed
\nround of action and obliges the infrarational being to live and act according to
\nthe pattern and in the mould or round made for it. Mind in man starts with this
\nprearranged pattern and routine, but, as it evolves, it enlarges the design and
\nexpands the mould and tries to replace this fixed unconscious or half-conscious
\nlaw of automatism by an order based on ideas and significances and accepted
\nlife-motives, or it attempts an intelligent standardisation and a framework
\ndetermined by rational purpose, utility and convenience. There is nothing really
\nbinding or permanent in man’s knowledge-structures or his life-structures; but
\nstill he cannot but create standards of thought, knowledge, personality, life,
\nconduct and, more or less consciously and completely, base his existence on them
\nor, at least, try his best to frame his life in the ideative cadre of his chosen
\nor accepted dharmas. In the passage to the spiritual life the supreme ideal held
\nup is, on the contrary, not law, but liberty in the Spirit; the Spirit breaks
\nthrough all formulas to find its self and, if it has still to be concerned with
\nexpression, it must arrive at the liberty of a free and true instead of an
\nartificial expression, a true and spontaneous spiritual order. \u201cAbandon all
\ndharmas, all standards and rules of being and action, and take refuge in Me
\nalone\u201d, is the summit rule of the highest existence held up by the Divine Being
\nto the seeker. In the seeking for this freedom, in the liberation from
\nconstructed law into law of self and spirit, in the casting away of the mental
\ncontrol in order to substitute for it the control of the spiritual Reality, an
\nabandonment of the lower constructed truth of mind for the higher essential
\ntruth of being, it is possible to pass through a stage in which there is an
\ninner freedom but a lack of outer order,\u2014an action in the flux of nature
\nchildlike or inert like a leaf lying passive or driven  by the wind or even
\nincoherent or extravagant in outer semblance. It is possible also to arrive at a
\ntemporary ordered spiritual expression of the self which is sufficient for the
\nstage one can reach for a time or in this life; or it may be a personal order of
\nself-expression valid according to the norm of what one has already realised of
\nthe spiritual truth but afterwards changing freely by the force of spirituality
\nto
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nexpress the yet larger truth that one goes on to realise. But the supramental
\ngnostic being stands in a consciousness in which knowledge is self-existent and
\nmanifests itself according to the order self-determined by the Will of the
\nInfinite in the Supernature. This self-determination according to a
\nself-existent knowledge replaces the automatism of Nature and the standards of
\nMind by the spontaneity of a Truth self-aware and self-active in the very grain
\nof the existence.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn the gnostic being this self-determining knowledge freely obedient to
\nself-truth and the total truth of Being would be the very law of his existence.
\nIn him Knowledge and Will become one and cannot be in conflict; Truth of spirit
\nand life become one and cannot be at variance: in the self-effectuation of his
\nbeing there can be no strife or disparity or divergence between the spirit and
\nthe members. The two principles of freedom and order, which in mind and life are
\nconstantly representing themselves as contraries or incompatibles, though they
\nhave no need to be that if freedom is guarded by knowledge and order based upon
\ntruth of being, are in the supermind consciousness native to each other and even
\nfundamentally one. This is so because both are inseparable aspects of the inner
\nspiritual truth and therefore their determinations are one; they are inherent in
\neach other, for they arise from an identity and therefore in action coincide in
\na natural identity. The gnostic being does not in any way or degree feel his
\nliberty infringed by the imperative order of his thoughts or actions, because
\nthat order is intrinsic and spontaneous; he feels both his liberty and the order
\nof his liberty to be one truth of his being. His liberty of knowledge is not a
\nfreedom to follow falsehood or error, for he does not need like the mind to pass
\nthrough the possibility of error in order to know,\u2014on the contrary, any such
\ndeviation would be a departure from his plenitude of the gnostic self, it would
\nbe a diminution of his self-truth and alien and injurious to his being; for his
\nfreedom is a freedom of light, not of darkness. His liberty of action is not a
\nlicense to act upon wrong will or the impulsions of the Ignorance, for that too
\nwould be alien to his being, a restriction and diminution of it, not a
\nliberation. A drive for fulfilment of falsehood or wrong will would be
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nfelt by him, not as a movement towards freedom, but as a violence done to the
\nliberty of the Spirit, an invasion and imposition, an inroad upon his
\nSupernature, a tyranny of some alien Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nA supramental consciousness must be fundamentally a Truth-Consciousness, a
\ndirect and inherent awareness of the truth of being and the truth of things; it
\nis a power of the Infinite knowing and working out its finites, a power of the
\nUniversal knowing and working out its oneness and detail, its cosmicity and its
\nindividualities; self-possessed of Truth, it would not have to seek for the
\nTruth or suffer from the liability to miss it as does the mind of the Ignorance.
\nThe evolved gnostic being would have entered into this Truth-Consciousness of
\nthe Infinite and Universal, and it would be that which would determine for him
\nand in him all his individual seeing and action. His would be a consciousness of
\nuniversal identity and a consequent or rather inherent Truth-knowledge,
\nTruth-sight, Truth-feeling, Truth-will, Truth-sense and Truth-dynamis of action
\nimplicit in his identity with the One or spontaneously arising from his identity
\nwith the All. His life would be a movement in the steps of a spiritual liberty
\nand largeness replacing the law of the mental idea and the law of vital and
\nphysical need and desire and the compulsion of a surrounding life; his life and
\naction would be bound by nothing else than the Divine Wisdom and Will acting on
\nhim and in him according to its Truth-Consciousness. An absence of an imposed
\nconstruction of law might be expected to lead in the life of the human
\nignorance, because of the separativeness of the human ego and its smallness, the
\nnecessity it feels to impinge on and possess and utilise other life, to a chaos
\nof conflict, license and egoistic disorder; but this could not exist in the life
\nof the gnostic being. For in the gnostic Truth-Consciousness of a supramental
\nbeing there must necessarily be a truth of relation of all the parts and
\nmovements of the being,\u2014whether the being of the individual or the being of any
\ngnostic collectivity,\u2014a spontaneous and luminous oneness and wholeness in all
\nthe movements of the consciousness and all the action of the life. There could
\nbe no strife of the members; for not only the knowledge and will consciousness
\nbut the heart consciousness and life consciousness and body consciousness, what
\nare
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nin us the emotional, vital or physical parts of nature, would be included in
\nthis integrated harmony of wholeness and oneness. In our language we might say
\nthat the supermind knowledge-will of the gnostic being would have a perfect
\ncontrol of the mind, heart, life and body; but this description could apply only
\nto the transitional stage when the Supernature was remoulding these members into
\nits own nature: once that transition was concluded, there would be no need of
\ncontrol, for all would be one unified consciousness and therefore would act as a
\nwhole in a spontaneous integrality and unity.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn a gnostic being there could be no conflict between self-affirmation of the
\nego and a control by super-ego; for since in his action of life the gnostic
\nindividual would at once express himself, his truth of being, and work out the
\nDivine Will, since he would know the Divine as his true self and the source and
\nconstituent of his spiritual individuality, these two springs of his conduct
\nwould not only be simultaneous in a single action, but they would be one and the
\nsame motor-force. This motive power would act in each circumstance according to
\nthe truth of the circumstance, with each being according to its need, nature,
\nrelation, in each event according to the demand of the Divine Will upon that
\nevent: for all here is the result of a complexus and a close nexus of many
\nforces of one Force, and the gnostic consciousness and Truth-Will would see the
\ntruth of these forces, of each and of all together, and put forth the necessary
\nimpact or intervention on the complex of forces to carry out what was willed to
\nbe done through itself, that and no more. In consequence of the Identity present
\neverywhere, ruling everything and harmonising all diversities, there would be no
\nplay of a separative ego bent on its own separate self-affirmation; the will of
\nthe self of the gnostic being would be one with the will of the Ishwara, it
\nwould not be a separative or contrary self-will. It would have the joy of action
\nand result but would be free from all ego-claim, attachment to action or demand
\nof result; it would do what it saw had to be done and was moved to do. In mental
\nnature there can be an opposition or disparity between self-effort and obedience
\nto the Higher Will, for there the self or apparent person sees itself as
\ndifferent from the supreme Being, Will or Person; but here the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nperson is being of the Being and the opposition or disparity does not arise. The
\naction of the person is the action of the Ishwara in the person, of the One in
\nthe many, and there can be no reason for a separative assertion of self-will or
\npride of  <\/span>independence. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>
\nOn this fact that the Divine Knowledge and Force, the supreme Supernature, would
\nact through the gnostic being with his full participation, is founded the
\nfreedom of the gnostic being; it is this unity that gives him his liberty. The
\nfreedom from law, including the moral law, so frequently affirmed of the
\nspiritual being, is founded on this unity of its will with the will of the
\nEternal. All the mental standards would disappear because all necessity for them
\nwould cease; the higher authentic law of identity with the Divine Self and
\nidentity with all beings would have replaced them. There would be no question of
\nselfishness or altruism, of oneself and others, since all are seen and felt as
\nthe one self and only what the supreme Truth and Good decided would be done.
\nThere would be in the action a pervasive feeling of a self-existent universal
\nlove, sympathy, oneness, but the feeling would penetrate, colour and move in the
\nact, not solely dominate or determine it: it would not stand for itself in
\nopposition to the larger truth of things or dictate a personally impelled
\ndeparture from the divinely willed true movement. This opposition and departure
\ncan happen in the Ignorance where love or any other strong principle of the
\nnature can be divorced from wisdom even as it can be divorced from power; but in
\nthe supermind gnosis all powers are intimate to each other and act as one. In
\nthe gnostic person the Truth-Knowledge would lead and determine and all the
\nother forces of the being concur in the action: there would be no place for
\ndisharmony or conflict between the powers of the nature. In all action there is
\nan imperative of existence that seeks to be fulfilled; a truth of being not yet
\nmanifested has to be manifested or a truth manifesting has to be evolved and
\nachieved and perfected in manifestation or, if already achieved, to take its
\ndelight of being and self-effectuation. In the half-light and half-power of the
\nIgnorance the imperative is secret or only half-revealed and the push to
\nfulfilment is an imperfect, struggling, partly frustrated movement: but in the
\ngnostic being and life the imperatives of being would be felt within, intimately
\nperceived
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nand brought into action; there would be a free play of their possibilities;
\nthere would be an actualisation in accordance with the truth of circumstance and
\nthe intention in the Supernature. All this would be seen in the knowledge and
\ndevelop itself in act; there would be no uncertain combat or torment of forces
\nat work; a disharmony of the being, a contradictory working of the consciousness
\ncould have no place: the imposition of an external standardisation of mechanised
\nlaw would be entirely superfluous where there is this inherence of truth and its
\nspontaneous working in act of nature. A harmonic action, a working out of the
\ndivine motive, an execution of the imperative truth of things would be the law
\nand natural dynamics of the whole existence. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nA knowledge by identity using the powers of the integrated being for richness of
\ninstrumentation would be the principle of the supramental life. In the other
\ngrades of the gnostic being, although a truth of spiritual being and
\nconsciousness would fulfil itself, the instrumentation would be of a different
\norder. A higher-mental being would act through the truth of thought, the truth
\nof the idea and accomplish that in the life-action: but in the supramental
\ngnosis thought is a derivative movement, it is a formulation of truth-vision and
\nnot the determining or the main driving force; it would be an instrument for
\nexpression of knowledge more than for arrival at knowledge or for action,\u2014or it
\nwould intervene in action only as a penetrating point of the body of
\nidentity-will and identity-knowledge. So too in the illumined gnostic being
\ntruth-vision and in the intuitive gnostic being a direct truth-contact and
\nperceptive truth-sense would be the mainspring of action. In the Overmind a
\ncomprehensive immediate grasp of the truth of things and the principle of being
\nof each thing and all its dynamic consequences would originate and gather up a
\ngreat wideness of gnostic vision and thought and create a foundation of
\nknowledge and action; this largeness of being and seeing and doing would be the
\nvaried result of an underlying identity-consciousness, but the identity itself
\nwould not be in the front as the very stuff of the consciousness or the very
\nforce of the action. But in the supramental gnosis all this luminous immediate
\ngrasp of the truth of things, truth-sense, truth-vision, truth-thought would get
\nback into its source of identity- <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nconsciousness and subsist as a single body of its knowledge. The
\nidentity-consciousness would lead and contain everything; it would manifest as
\nan awareness in the very grain of the being’s substance putting forth its
\ninherent self-fulfilling force and determining itself dynamically in form of
\nconsciousness and form of action. This inherent awareness is the origin and
\nprinciple of the working of supramental gnosis; it could be sufficient in itself
\nwith no need of anything to formulate or embody it: but the play of illumined
\nvision, the play of a radiant thought, the play of all other movements of the
\nspiritual consciousness would not be absent; there would be a free
\ninstrumentation of them for their own brilliant functioning, for a divine
\nrichness and diversity, for a manifold delight of self-manifestation, for the
\njoy of the powers of the Infinite. In the intermediate stages or degrees of the
\ngnosis there might be the manifestation of various and separate expressions of
\nthe aspects of the divine Being and Nature, a soul and life of love, a soul and
\nlife of divine light and knowledge, a soul and life of divine power and
\nsovereign action and creation, and innumerable other forms of divine life; on
\nthe supramental height all would be taken up into a manifold unity, a supreme
\nintegration of being and life. A fulfilment of the being in a luminous and
\nblissful integration of its states and powers and their satisfied dynamic action
\nwould be the sense of the gnostic existence.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nAll supramental gnosis is a twofold Truth-Consciousness, a consciousness of
\ninherent self-knowledge and, by identity of self and world, of intimate
\nworld-knowledge; this knowledge is the criterion, the characteristic power of
\nthe gnosis. But this is not a purely ideative knowledge, it is not consciousness
\nobserving, forming ideas, trying to carry them out; it is an essential light of
\nconsciousness, the self-light of all the realities of being and becoming, the
\nself-truth of being determining, formulating and effectuating itself. To be, not
\nto know, is the object of the manifestation; knowledge is only the
\ninstrumentation of an operative consciousness of being. This would be the
\ngnostic life on earth, a manifestation or play of truth-conscious being, being
\ngrown aware of itself in all things, no longer lost to consciousness of itself,
\nno longer plunged into a self-oblivion or a half-oblivion of its real existence
\nbrought about by absorption in form and action, <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nbut using form and action with a delivered spiritual power for its free and
\nperfect self-expression, no longer seeking for its own lost or forgotten or
\nveiled and hidden significance or significances, no longer bound, but delivered
\nfrom inconscience and ignorance, aware of its own truths and powers, determining
\nfreely in a movement always concurrent and in tune in every detail with its
\nsupreme and universal Reality its manifestation, the play of its substance, the
\nplay of its consciousness, the play of its force of existence, the play of its
\ndelight of existence.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn the gnostic evolution there would be a great diversity in the poise, status,
\nharmonised operations of consciousness and force and delight of existence. There
\nwould naturally appear in time many grades of the farther ascent of the
\nevolutive Supermind to its own summits; but in all there would be the common
\nbasis and principle. In the manifestation the Spirit, the Being, while knowing
\nall itself, is not bound to put forth all itself in the actual front of
\nformation and action which is its immediate power and degree of self-expression:
\nit may put forth a frontal self-expression and hold all the rest of itself
\nbehind in an unexpressed delight of self-being. That All behind and its delight
\nwould find itself in the front, know itself in it, maintain and suffuse the
\nexpression, the manifestation with its own presence and feeling of totality and
\ninfinity. This frontal formation with all the rest behind it and held in power
\nof being within it would be an act of self-knowledge, not an act of Ignorance;
\nit would be a luminous self-expression of the Superconscience and not an upthrow
\nfrom the Inconscience. A great harmonised variation would thus be an element in
\nthe beauty and completeness of the evolution of the gnostic consciousness and
\nexistence. Even in dealing with the mind of ignorance around it, as in dealing
\nwith the still lower degrees of the gnostic evolution, the supramental life
\nwould use this innate power and movement of its Truth of being: it would relate
\nin the light of that integral Reality its own truth of being with the truth of
\nbeing that is behind the Ignorance; it would found all relations upon the common
\nspiritual unity, accept and harmonise the manifested difference. The gnostic
\nLight would ensure the right relation and action or reaction of each upon each
\nin every circumstance; the gnostic power or influence would
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\naffirm always a symphonic effectuation, secure the right relation of the more
\ndeveloped and the less developed life and impose by its influence a greater
\nharmony on the lower existence. <\/span><\/p>\n

       
\nThis would be the nature of the being, life and action of the gnostic individual
\nso far as we can follow the evolution with our mental conception up to that
\npoint where it will emerge out of Overmind and cross the border into supramental
\ngnosis. This nature of the gnosis would evidently determine all the relations of
\nthe life or group-life of gnostic beings; for a gnostic collectivity would be a
\ncollective soul-power of the Truth-Consciousness, even as the gnostic individual
\nwould be an  individual soul-power of it: it would have the same integration of
\nlife and action in unison, the same realised and conscious unity of being, the
\nsame spontaneity, intimate oneness-feeling, one and mutual truth-vision and
\ntruth-sense of self and each other, the same truth-action in the relation of
\neach with each and all with all; this collectivity would be and act not as a
\nmechanical but a spiritual integer. A similar inevitability of the union of
\nfreedom and order would be the law of the collective life; it would be a freedom
\nof the diverse play of the Infinite in divine souls, an order of the conscious
\nunity of souls which is the law of the supramental Infinite. Our mental
\nrendering of oneness brings into it the rule of sameness; a complete oneness
\nbrought about by the mental reason drives towards a thoroughgoing
\nstandardisation as its one effective means,\u2014only minor shades of differentiation
\nwould be allowed to operate: but the greatest richness of diversity in the
\nself-expression of oneness would be the law of the gnostic life. In the gnostic
\nconsciousness difference would not lead to discord but to a spontaneous natural
\nadaptation, a sense of complementary plenitude, a rich many-sided execution of
\nthe thing to be collectively known, done, worked out in life. For the difficulty
\nin mind and life is created by ego, by separation of integers into component
\nparts which figure as contraries, opposites, disparates: all in which they
\nseparate from each other is easily felt, affirmed and stressed; that in which
\nthey meet, whatever holds their divergences together, is largely missed or found
\nwith difficulty; everything has to be done by an overcoming or an adjustment of
\ndifference, by a constructed unity. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nThere is, indeed, an underlying principle of oneness and Nature insists on its
\nemergence in a construction of unity; for she is collective and communal as well
\nas individual and egoistic and has her instrumentation of associativeness,
\nsympathies, common needs, interests, attractions, affinities as well as her more
\nbrutal means of unification: but her secondary imposed and too prominent basis
\nof ego-life and ego-nature overlays the unity and afflicts all its constructions
\nwith imperfection and insecurity. A farther difficulty is created by the absence
\nor rather the imperfection of intuition and direct inner contact making each a
\nseparate being forced to learn with difficulty the other’s being and nature, to
\narrive at understanding and mutuality and harmony from outside instead of
\ninwardly through a direct sense and grasp, so that all mental and vital
\ninterchange is hampered, rendered ego-tainted or doomed to imperfection and
\nincompleteness by the veil of mutual ignorance. In the collective gnostic life
\nthe integrating truth-sense, the concording unity of gnostic nature would carry
\nall divergences in itself as its own opulence and turn a multitudinous thought,
\naction, feeling into the unity of a luminous life-whole. This would be the
\nevident principle, the inevitable result of the very character of the
\nTruth-Consciousness and its dynamic realisation of the spiritual unity of all
\nbeing. This realisation, the key to the perfection of life, difficult to arrive
\nat on the mental plane, difficult even when realised to dynamise or organise,
\nwould be naturally dynamic, spontaneously self-organised in all gnostic creation
\nand gnostic life. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThis much is easily understandable if we regard the gnostic beings as living
\ntheir own life without any contact with a life of the Ignorance. But by the very
\nfact of the evolution here the gnostic manifestation would be a circumstance,
\nthough a decisive circumstance, in the whole: there would be a continuance of
\nthe lower degrees of the consciousness and life, some maintaining the
\nmanifestation in the Ignorance, some mediating between it and the manifestation
\nin the gnosis; these two forms of being and life would either exist side by side
\nor interpenetrate. In either case the gnostic principle might be expected, if
\nnot at once, yet finally to dominate the whole. The higher spiritual-mental
\ndegrees would be in touch with the supramental principle now <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 1011<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\novertly supporting them and holding them together and would be delivered from
\nthe once enveloping hold of the Ignorance and Inconscience. As manifestations of
\nthe truth of being, though in a qualified and modified degree, they would draw
\nall their light and energy from the supramental gnosis and would be in large
\ncontact with its instrumental powers; they would themselves be conscious
\nmotive-powers of the Spirit and, although not yet in the full force of their
\nentirely realised spiritual substance, they would not be subjected to a lesser
\ninstrumentation fragmented, diluted, diminished, obscured by the substance of
\nthe Nescience. All Ignorance rising or entering into the overmind, into the
\nintuitive, into the illumined or higher-mind being would cease to be ignorance;
\nit would enter into the light, realise in that light the truth which it had
\ncovered with its darkness and undergo a liberation, transmutation, new state of
\nconsciousness and being which would assimilate it to these higher states and
\nprepare it for the supramental status. At the same time the involved principle
\nof the gnosis, acting now as an overt, arisen and constantly dynamic force and
\nno longer only as a concealed power with a secret origination or a veiled
\nsupport of things or an occasional intervention as its only function, would be
\nable to lay something of its law of harmony on the still existing Inconscience
\nand Ignorance. For the secret gnostic power concealed in them would act with a
\ngreater strength of its support and origination, a freer and more powerful
\nintervention; the beings of the Ignorance, influenced by the light of the gnosis
\nthrough their association with gnostic beings and through the evolved and
\neffective presence of the supramental Being and Power in earth-nature, would be
\nmore conscious and responsive. In the untransformed part of humanity itself
\nthere might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings; for the
\ndirectly intuitive or partly intuitivised but not yet gnostic mental being, the
\ndirectly or partly illumined mental being, the mental being in direct or part
\ncommunion with the higher-thought plane would emerge: these would become more
\nand more numerous, more and more evolved and secure in their type, and might
\neven exist as a formed race of higher humanity leading upwards the less evolved
\nin a true fraternity born of the sense of the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 1012<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nmanifestation of the One Divine in all beings. In this way, the consummation of
\nthe highest might mean also a lesser consummation in its own degree of what must
\nremain still below. At the higher end of the evolution the ascending ranges and
\nsummits of Supermind would begin to rise towards some supreme manifestation of
\nthe pure spiritual existence, consciousness and delight of being of
\nSachchidananda. <\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>A question might arise whether the gnostic reversal, the passage into a
\ngnostic evolution and beyond it would not mean sooner or later the cessation of
\nthe evolution from the Inconscience, since the reason for that obscure beginning
\nof things here would cease. This depends on the farther question whether the
\nmovement between the Superconscience and the Inconscience as the two poles of
\nexistence is an abiding law of the material manifestation or only a provisional
\ncircumstance. The latter supposition is difficult to accept because of the
\ntremendous force of pervasiveness and durability with which the inconscient
\nfoundation has been laid for the whole material universe. Any complete reversal
\nor elimination of the first evolutionary principle would mean the simultaneous
\nmanifestation of the secret involved consciousness in every part of this vast
\nuniversal Inconscience; a change in a particular line of Nature such as the
\nearth-line could not have any such all-pervading effect: the manifestation in
\nearth-nature has its own curve and the completion of that curve is all that we
\nhave to consider. Here this much might be hazarded that in the final result of
\nthe revelatory creation or reproduction of the upper hemisphere of conscious
\nbeing in the lower triplicity the evolution here, though remaining the same in
\nits degrees and stages, would be subjected to the law of harmony, the law of
\nunity in diversity and of diversity working out unity: it would be no longer an
\nevolution through strife; it would become a harmonious development from stage to
\nstage, from lesser to greater light, from type to higher type of the power and
\nbeauty of a self-unfolding existence. It would only be otherwise if for some
\nreason the law of struggle and suffering still remained necessary for the
\nworking out of that mysterious possibility in the Infinite whose principle
\nunderlies the plunge into the Inconscience. But for the earth-nature it would
\nseem
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 1013<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nas if this necessity might be exhausted once the supramental gnosis had emerged
\nfrom the Inconscience. A change would begin with its firm appearance; that
\nchange would be consummated when the supramental evolution became complete and
\nrose into the greater fullness of a supreme manifestation of the
\nExistence-Consciousness-Delight, Sachchidananda. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 1014<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXVII   The Gnostic Being    A perfect path of the Truth has come into being for our journey to the other shore beyond the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","wpcat-27-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","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=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}