{"id":2138,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","slug":"18-mind-and-supermind-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/21-22-the-life-divine\/18-mind-and-supermind-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-18_Mind and Supermind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tChapter XVIII
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tMind and Supermind <\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe discovered that Mind was the Brahman.
\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tTaittiriya Upanishad.<\/i>1<\/sup>  <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIndivisible, but as if divided in beings.
\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tGita.<\/i>2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE CONCEPTION<\/b> which we have so far been striving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental
\nlife which the divine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but which the human soul has to manifest
\nin this body of Sachchidananda formed here into the mould of a mental and physical living. But so far as we have been able
\nyet to envisage this supramental existence, it does not seem to have any connection or correspondence with life as we know
\nit, life active between the two terms of our normal existence, the two firmaments of mind and body. It seems rather to be a
\nstate of being, a state of consciousness, a state of active relation and mutual enjoyment such as disembodied souls might possess
\nand experience in a world without physical forms, a world in which differentiation of souls had been accomplished but not
\ndifferentiation of bodies, a world of active and joyous infinities, not of form-imprisoned spirits. Therefore it might reasonably be
\ndoubted whether such a divine living would be possible with this limitation of bodily form and this limitation of form-imprisoned
\nmind and form-trammelled force which is what we now know as existence. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn fact, we have striven to arrive at some conception of that supreme infinite being, conscious-force and self-delight of
\nwhich our world is a creation and our mentality a perverse <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t1<\/sup>
\nIII. 4.           
\n\t\t\t2<\/sup>
\nXIII. 17.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 170<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tfigure; we have tried to give ourselves an idea of what this
\ndivine Maya may be, this Truth-consciousness, this Real-Idea by which the conscious force of the transcendent and universal
\nExistence conceives, forms and governs the universe, the order, the cosmos of its manifested delight of being. But we have not
\nstudied the connections of these four great and divine terms with the three others with which our human experience is alone
\nfamiliar, ―<\/font>mind, life and body. We have not scrutinised this other and apparently undivine Maya which is the root of all
\nour striving and suffering or seen how precisely it develops out of the divine reality or the divine Maya. And till we have done
\nthis, till we have woven the missing cords of connection, our world is still unexplained to us and the doubt of a possible
\nunification between that higher existence and this lower life has still a basis. We know that our world has come forth from
\nSachchidananda and subsists in His being; we conceive that He dwells in it as the Enjoyer and Knower, Lord and Self; we have
\nseen that our dual terms of sensation, mind, force, being can only be representations of His delight, His conscious force, His
\ndivine existence. But it would seem that they are actually so much the opposite of what He really and supernally is that we
\ncannot while dwelling in the cause of these opposites, cannot while contained in the lower triple term of existence attain to
\nthe divine living. We must either exalt this lower being into that higher status or exchange body for that pure existence,
\nlife for that pure condition of conscious-force, sensation and mentality for that pure delight and knowledge which live in the
\ntruth of the spiritual reality. And must not this mean that we abandon all earthly or limited mental existence for something
\nwhich is its opposite, ―<\/font>either for some pure state of the Spirit or else for some world of the Truth of things, if such exists, or
\nother worlds, if such exist, of divine Bliss, divine Energy, divine Being? In that case the perfection of humanity is elsewhere than
\nin humanity itself; the summit of its earthly evolution can only be a fine apex of dissolving mentality whence it takes the great
\nleap either into formless being or into worlds beyond the reach of embodied Mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 171<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tBut in reality all that we call undivine can only be an action
\nof the four divine principles themselves, such action of them as was necessary to create this universe of forms. Those forms have
\nbeen created not outside but in the divine existence, conscious-force and bliss, not outside but in and as a part of the working of
\nthe divine Real-Idea. There is therefore no reason to suppose that there cannot be any real play of the higher divine consciousness
\nin a world of forms or that forms and their immediate supports, mental consciousness, energy of vital force and formal
\nsubstance, must necessarily distort that which they represent. It is possible, even probable that mind, body and life are to be
\nfound in their pure forms in the divine Truth itself, are there in fact as subordinate activities of its consciousness and part of the
\ncomplete instrumentation by which the supreme Force always works. Mind, life and body must then be capable of divinity;
\ntheir form and working in that short period out of possibly only one cycle of the terrestrial evolution which Science reveals to us,
\nneed not represent all the potential workings of these three principles in the living body. They work as they do because they are
\nby some means separated in consciousness from the divine Truth from which they proceed. Were this separation once abrogated
\nby the expanding energy of the Divine in humanity, their present functioning might well be converted, would indeed naturally be
\nconverted by a supreme evolution and progression into that purer working which they have in the Truth-consciousness.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn that case not only would it be possible to manifest and maintain the divine consciousness in the human mind and body
\nbut, even, that divine consciousness might in the end, increasing its conquests, remould mind, life and body themselves into a
\nmore perfect image of its eternal Truth and realise not only in soul but in substance its kingdom of heaven upon earth. The first
\nof these victories, the internal, has certainly been achieved in a greater or less degree by some, perhaps by many, upon earth;
\nthe other, the external, even if never more or less realised in past aeons as a first type for future cycles and still held in the
\nsubconscious memory of the earth-nature, may yet be intended as a coming victorious achievement of God in humanity. This<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 172<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tearthly life need not be necessarily and for ever a wheel of
\n\t\t\thalf-joyous half-anguished effort; attainment may also be intended and the glory and joy of God made manifest upon earth.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat Mind, Life and Body are in their supreme sources and what therefore they must be in the integral completeness of
\nthe divine manifestation when informed by the Truth and not cut off from it by the separation and the ignorance in which
\npresently we live, ―<\/font>this then is the problem that we have next to consider. For there they must have already their perfection
\ntowards which we here are growing, ―<\/font>we who are only the first shackled movement of the Mind which is evolving in Matter, we
\nwho are not yet liberated from the conditions and effects of that involution of spirit in form, that plunge of Light into its
\nown shadow by which the darkened material consciousness of physical Nature was created. The type of all perfection towards
\nwhich we grow, the terms of our highest evolution must already be held in the divine Real-Idea; they must be there formed and
\nconscious for us to grow towards and into them: for that preexistence in the divine knowledge is what our human mentality
\nnames and seeks as the Ideal. The Ideal is an eternal Reality which we have not yet realised
\n\t\t\tin the conditions of our own being, not a non-existent which the
\n\t\t\tEternal and Divine has not yet grasped and only we imperfect beings
\n\t\t\thave glimpsed and mean to create. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind, first, the chained and hampered sovereign of our human living.
\n\t\t\tMind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole
\nand contains them as if each were a separate integer. Even with what exists only as obvious parts and fractions, Mind establishes this fiction of its ordinary commerce that they are things with which it can deal separately and not merely as aspects
\nof a whole. For, even when it knows that they are not things in themselves, it is obliged to deal with them as if they were
\nthings in themselves; otherwise it could not subject them to its own characteristic activity. It is this essential characteristic of
\nMind which conditions the workings of all its operative powers, whether conception, perception, sensation or the dealings of<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 173<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tcreative thought. It conceives, perceives, senses things as if rigidly
\ncut out from a background or a mass and employs them as fixed units of the material given to it for creation or possession. All its
\naction and enjoyment deal thus with wholes that form part of a greater whole, and these subordinate wholes again are broken
\nup into parts which are also treated as wholes for the particular purposes they serve. Mind may divide, multiply, add, subtract,
\nbut it cannot get beyond the limits of this mathematics. If it goes beyond and tries to conceive a real whole, it loses itself
\nin a foreign element; it falls from its own firm ground into the ocean of the intangible, into the abysms of the infinite where
\nit can neither perceive, conceive, sense nor deal with its subject for creation and enjoyment. For if Mind appears sometimes
\nto conceive, to perceive, to sense or to enjoy with possession the infinite, it is only in seeming and always in a figure of the
\ninfinite. What it does thus vaguely possess is simply a formless Vast and not the real spaceless infinite. The moment it tries to
\ndeal with that, to possess it, at once the inalienable tendency to delimitation comes in and the Mind finds itself again handling
\nimages, forms and words. Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it; it can only lie blissfully
\nhelpless under the luminous shadow of the Real cast down on it from planes of existence beyond its reach. The possession of the
\nInfinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental planes, nor the knowledge of it except by an inert submission
\nof Mind to the descending messages of the Truth-conscious Reality.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis essential faculty and the essential limitation that accompanies it are the truth of Mind and fix its real nature and action,
\nsvabhā<\/font>va
\n<\/i>and
\nsvadharma<\/i>; here is the mark of the divine
\nfiat assigning it its office in the complete instrumentation of the supreme Maya,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>the office determined by that which it is in its
\nvery birth from the eternal self-conception of the Self-existent. That office is to translate always infinity into the terms of the
\nfinite, to measure off, limit, depiece. Actually it does this in our consciousness to the exclusion of all true sense of the Infinite;
\ntherefore Mind is the nodus of the great Ignorance, because<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 174<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tit is that which originally divides and distributes, and it has
\neven been mistaken for the cause of the universe and for the whole of the divine Maya. But the divine Maya comprehends
\nVidya as well as Avidya, the Knowledge as well as the Ignorance. For it is obvious that since the finite is only an appearance of
\nthe Infinite, a result of its action, a play of its conception and cannot exist except by it, in it, with it as a background, itself
\nform of that stuff and action of that force, there must be an original consciousness which contains and views both at the
\nsame time and is intimately conscious of all the relations of the one with the other. In that consciousness there is no ignorance,
\nbecause the infinite is known and the finite is not separated from it as an independent reality; but still there is a subordinate
\nprocess of delimitation, ―<\/font>otherwise no world could exist,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>a process by which the ever dividing and reuniting consciousness
\nof Mind, the ever divergent and convergent action of Life and the infinitely divided and self-aggregating substance of Matter
\ncome, all by one principle and original act, into phenomenal being. This subordinate process of the eternal Seer and Thinker,
\nperfectly luminous, perfectly aware of Himself and all, knowing well what He does, conscious of the infinite in the finite which
\nHe is creating, may be called the divine Mind. And it is obvious that it must be a subordinate and not really a separate working
\nof the Real-Idea, of the Supermind, and must operate through what we have described as the apprehending movement of the
\nTruth-consciousness. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat apprehending consciousness, the Prajnana,
\n\t\t\tplaces, as we have seen, the working of the indivisible All, active
\n\t\t\tand formative, as a process and object of creative knowledge before the
\nconsciousness of the same All, originative and cognisant as the possessor and witness of its own working,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>somewhat as a poet
\nviews the creations of his own consciousness placed before him in it as if they were things other than the creator and his creative
\nforce, yet all the time they are really no more than the play of self-formation of his own being in itself and are indivisible
\nthere from their creator. Thus Prajnana makes the fundamental division which leads to all the rest, the division of the Purusha,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 175<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe conscious soul who knows and sees and by his vision creates
\nand ordains, and the Prakriti, the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his knowledge and his vision, his creation and his all-ordaining power. Both are one Being, one existence, and the forms seen and created are multiple forms of that Being which
\nare placed by Him as knowledge before Himself as knower, by Himself as Force before Himself as Creator. The last action of
\nthis apprehending consciousness takes place when the Purusha pervading the conscious extension of his being, present at every
\npoint of himself as well as in his totality, inhabiting every form, regards the whole as if separately, from each of the standpoints
\nhe has taken; he views and governs the relations of each soul-form of himself with other soul-forms from the standpoint of
\nwill and knowledge appropriate to each particular form. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus the elements of division have come into being. First,
\nthe infinity of the One has translated itself into an extension in conceptual Time and Space; secondly, the omnipresence of
\nthe One in that self-conscious extension translates itself into a multiplicity of the conscious soul, the many Purushas of the
\nSankhya; thirdly, the multiplicity of soul-forms has translated itself into a divided habitation of the extended unity. This divided
\nhabitation is inevitable the moment these multiple Purushas do not each inhabit a separate world of its own, do not each possess
\na separate Prakriti building a separate universe, but rather all enjoy the same Prakriti,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>as they must do, being only soul-forms of the One presiding over the multiple creations of His power,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>yet have relations with each other in the one world
\nof being created by the one Prakriti. The Purusha in each form actively identifies himself with each; he delimits himself in that
\nand sets off his other forms against it in his consciousness as containing his other selves which are identical with him in being
\nbut different in relation, different in the various extent, various range of movement and various view of the one substance, force,
\nconsciousness, delight which each is actually deploying at any given moment of Time or in any given field of Space. Granted
\nthat in the divine Existence, perfectly aware of itself, this is not a binding limitation, not an identification to which the soul<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 176<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tbecomes enslaved and which it cannot exceed as we are enslaved
\nto our self-identification with the body and unable to exceed the limitation of our conscious ego, unable to escape from a
\nparticular movement of our consciousness in Time determining our particular field in Space; granted all this, still there is a free
\nidentification from moment to moment which only the inalienable self-knowledge of the divine soul prevents from fixing itself
\nin an apparently rigid chain of separation and Time succession such as that in which our consciousness seems to be fixed and
\nchained. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with
\nform as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with will-of-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being
\nwith knowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only “as if”; for the
\ndivine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the reality of being; it
\ndoes not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its
\nawareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential totality
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>not that apparent and pluralistic totality
\nof sum and collective aggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses
\nits defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA new factor, a new action of conscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a helplessly limited as opposed
\nto a freely limiting mind, ―<\/font>that is to say, of mind subject to its own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind master of its
\nown play and viewing it in its truth, the creature mind as opposed to the divine. That new factor is Avidya, the self-ignoring
\nfaculty which separates the action of mind from the action of the supermind that originated and still governs it from behind
\nthe veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the particular and not the universal, or conceives only the particular in an unpossessed universal and no longer both particular and universal as phenomena of the Infinite. Thus we have the limited mind which<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 177<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tviews every phenomenon as a thing-in-itself, separate part of a
\nwhole which again exists separately in a greater whole and so on, enlarging always its aggregates without getting back to the
\nsense of a true infinity. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind, being an action of the Infinite, depieces as well as
\naggregates
\nad infinitum.
\n<\/i>It cuts up being into wholes, into ever smaller wholes, into atoms and those atoms into primal atoms,
\nuntil it would, if it could, dissolve the primal atom into nothingness. But it cannot, because behind this dividing action is
\nthe saving knowledge of the supramental which knows every whole, every atom to be only a concentration of all-force, of
\nall-consciousness, of all-being into phenomenal forms of itself. The dissolution of the aggregate into an infinite nothingness at
\nwhich Mind seems to arrive, is to the Supermind only the return of the
\n\t\t\tself-concentrating conscious-being out of its phenomenon into its
\n\t\t\tinfinite existence. Whichever way its consciousness proceeds, by the way of infinite division or by the way of infinite
\nenlargement, it arrives only at itself, at its own infinite unity and eternal being. And when the action of the mind is consciously
\nsubordinate to this knowledge of the supermind, the truth of the process is known to it also and not at all ignored; there is no real
\ndivision but only an infinitely multiple concentration into forms of being and into arrangements of the relation of those forms of
\nbeing to each other in which division is a subordinate appearance of the whole process necessary to their spatial and temporal play.
\nFor divide as you will, get down to the most infinitesimal atom or form the most monstrous possible aggregate of worlds and
\nsystems, you cannot get by either process to a thing-in-itself; all are forms of a Force which alone is real in itself while the rest
\nare real only as self-imagings or manifesting self-forms of the eternal Force-consciousness.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhence then does the limiting Avidya, the fall of mind from Supermind and the consequent idea of real division originally proceed? exactly from what perversion of the supramental functioning? It proceeds from the individualised soul viewing
\neverything from its own standpoint and excluding all others; it proceeds, that is to say, by an exclusive concentration of<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 178<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tconsciousness, an exclusive self-identification of the soul with
\na particular temporal and spatial action which is only a part of its own play of being; it starts from the soul’s ignoring the fact
\nthat all others are also itself, all other action its own action and all other states of being and consciousness equally its own as
\nwell as the action of the one particular moment in Time and one particular standing-point in Space and the one particular form it
\npresently occupies. It concentrates on the moment, the field, the form, the movement so as to lose the rest; it has then to recover
\nthe rest by linking together the succession of moments, the succession of points
\n\t\t\tof Space, the succession of forms in Time and Space, the succession
\n\t\t\tof movements in Time and Space. It has thus lost the truth of the
\n\t\t\tindivisibility of Time, the indivisibility of Force and Substance.
\n\t\t\tIt has lost sight even of the obvious fact that all minds are one
\n\t\t\tMind taking many standpoints, all lives one Life developing many
\n\t\t\tcurrents of activity, all body and form one substance of Force and
\n\t\t\tConsciousness concentrating into many apparent stabilities of force
\n\t\t\tand consciousness; but in truth all these stabilities are really
\n\t\t\tonly a constant whorl of movement repeating a form while it modifies
\n\t\t\tit; they are nothing more. For the Mind tries to clamp everything
\n\t\t\tinto rigidly fixed forms and apparently unchanging or unmoving
\n\t\t\texternal factors, because otherwise it cannot act; it then thinks it
\n\t\t\thas got what it wants: in reality all is a flux of change and
\n\t\t\trenewal and there is no fixed form-in-itself and no unchanging
\n\t\t\texternal factor. Only the eternal Real-Idea is firm and maintains a
\n\t\t\tcertain ordered constancy of figures and relations in the flux of
\n\t\t\tthings, a constancy which the Mind vainly attempts to imitate by attributing fixity to that which is always inconstant. These truths Mind
\nhas to rediscover; it knows them all the time, but only in the hidden back of its consciousness, in the secret light of its self-being; and that light is to it a darkness because it has created the ignorance, because it has lapsed from the dividing into the
\ndivided mentality, because it has become involved in its own workings and in its own creations.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis ignorance is farther deepened for man by his self-identification with the body. To us mind seems to be determined<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 179<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tby the body, because it is preoccupied with that and devoted to
\nthe physical workings which it uses for its conscious superficial action in this gross material world. Employing constantly that
\noperation of the brain and nerves which it has developed in the course of its own development in the body, it is too absorbed in
\nobserving what this physical machinery gives to it to get back from it to its own pure workings; those are to it mostly subconscious. Still we can conceive a life mind or life being which has got beyond the evolutionary necessity of this absorption and
\nis able to see and even experience itself assuming body after body and not created separately in each body and ending with
\nit; for it is only the physical impress of mind on matter, only the corporeal mentality that is so created, not the whole mental
\nbeing. This corporeal mentality is merely our surface of mind, merely the front which it presents to physical experience. Behind,
\neven in our terrestrial being, there is this other, subconscious or subliminal to us, which knows itself as more than the body and is
\ncapable of a less materialised action. To this we owe immediately most of the larger, deeper and more forceful dynamic action of
\nour surface mind; this, when we become conscious of it or of its impress on us, is our first idea or our first realisation of a soul
\nor inner being, Purusha.3<\/sup> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut this life mentality also, though it may get free from
\nthe error of body, does not make us free from the whole error of mind; it is still subject to the original act of ignorance by
\nwhich the individualised soul regards everything from its own standpoint and can see the truth of things only as they present
\nthemselves to it from outside or else as they rise up to its view from its separate temporal and spatial consciousness, forms and
\nresults of past and present experience. It is not conscious of its other selves except by the outward indications they give of their
\nexistence, indications of communicated thought, speech, action, result of actions, or subtler indications
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>not felt directly by the
\nphysical being ―<\/font>of vital impact and relation. Equally is it ignorant of itself; for it knows of its self only through a movement in
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t3<\/font><\/sup>
\nPerceived<\/span> as the life being or vital being,
\n\t\t\t<\/font>
\nprā<\/font>namaya purus<\/font>a.<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 180<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tTime and a succession of lives in which it has used its variously
\nembodied energies. As our physical instrumental mind has the illusion of the body, so this subconscious dynamic mind has the
\nillusion of life. In that it is absorbed and concentrated, by that it is limited, with that it identifies its being. Here we do not yet
\nget back to the meeting-place of mind and supermind and the point at which they originally separated.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut there is still another clearer reflective mentality behind the dynamic and vital which is capable of escaping from this
\nabsorption in life and views itself as assuming life and body in order to image out in active relations of energy that which it
\nperceives in will and thought. It is the source of the pure thinker in us; it is that which knows mentality in itself and sees the world
\nnot in terms of life and body but of mind; it is that4<\/sup>
\nwhich, when we get back to it, we sometimes mistake for the pure spirit as
\nwe mistake the dynamic mind for the soul. This higher mind is able to perceive and deal with other souls as other forms of its
\npure self; it is capable of sensing them by pure mental impact and communication and no longer only by vital and nervous
\nimpact and physical indication; it conceives too a mental figure of unity, and in its activity and its will it can create and possess
\nmore directly ―<\/font>not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical life
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still
\neven this pure mentality does not escape from the original error of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes the
\njudge, witness and centre of the universe and through it alone strives to arrive at its own higher self and reality; all others are
\n“others” grouped to it around itself: when it wills to be free, it has to draw back from life and mind in order to disappear into
\nthe real unity. For there is still the veil created by Avidya between the mental and supramental action; an image of the Truth gets
\nthrough, not the Truth itself. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is only when the veil is rent and the divided mind overpowered, silent and passive to a supramental action that mind itself gets back to the Truth of things. There we find a luminous
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t4<\/font><\/sup> The mental being,
\n\t\t\t<\/font>
\nmanomaya purus<\/font>a.<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 181<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tmentality reflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine
\nReal-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is; we know in every way ourselves in others and as others, others as ourselves and all as the universal and self-multiplied One. We lose the rigidly separate individual standpoint which is the source
\nof all limitation and error. Still, we perceive also that all that the ignorance of Mind took for the truth was in fact truth, but
\ntruth deflected, mistaken and falsely conceived. We still perceive the division, the individualising, the atomic creation, but we
\nknow them and ourselves for what they and we really are. And so we perceive that the Mind was really a subordinate action
\nand instrumentation of the Truth-consciousness. So long as it is not separated in self-experience from the enveloping Master-consciousness
\n\t\t\tand does not try to set up house for itself, so long as it serves
\n\t\t\tpassively as an instrumentation and does not attempt to possess for
\n\t\t\tits own benefit, Mind fulfils luminously its function which is in
\n\t\t\tthe Truth to hold forms apart from each other by a phenomenal, a
\n\t\t\tpurely formal delimitation of their activity behind which the
\n\t\t\tgoverning universality of the being remains conscious and untouched.
\n\t\t\tIt has to receive the truth of things and distribute it according to
\n\t\t\tthe unerring perception of a supreme and universal Eye and Will. It
\n\t\t\thas to uphold an individualisation of active consciousness, delight, force, substance
\nwhich derives all its power, reality and joy from an inalienable universality behind. It has to turn the multiplicity of the One into
\nan apparent division by which relations are defined and held off against each other so as to meet again and join. It has to establish
\nthe delight of separation and contact in the midst of an eternal unity and intermiscence. It has to enable the One to behave as if
\nHe were an individual dealing with other individuals but always in His own unity, and this is what the world really is. The mind
\nis the final operation of the apprehending Truth-consciousness which makes all this possible, and what we call the Ignorance
\ndoes not create a new thing and absolute falsehood but only misrepresents the Truth. The Ignorance is the Mind separated
\nin knowledge from its source of knowledge and giving a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of opposition and conflict<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 182<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tto the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal
\n\t\t\tmanifestation. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe fundamental error of the Mind is, then, this fall from
\n\t\t\tself-knowledge by which the individual soul conceives of its individuality as a separate fact instead of as a form of Oneness and
\nmakes itself the centre of its own universe instead of knowing itself as one concentration of the universal. From that original
\nerror all its particular ignorances and limitations are contingent results. For,
\n\t\t\tviewing the flux of things only as it flows upon and through itself,
\n\t\t\tit makes a limitation of being from which proceeds a limitation of
\n\t\t\tconsciousness and therefore of knowledge, a limitation of conscious
\n\t\t\tforce and will and therefore of power, a limitation of
\n\t\t\tself-enjoyment and therefore of delight. It is conscious of things and knows them only as they present themselves to its individuality and therefore it falls into an ignorance of the
\nrest and thereby into an erroneous conception even of that which it seems to know: for since all being is interdependent, the knowledge either of the whole or of the essence is necessary for the right knowledge of the part. Hence there is an element of error in
\nall human knowledge. Similarly our will, ignorant of the rest of the all-will, must fall into error of working and a greater or less
\ndegree of incapacity and impotence; the soul’s self-delight and delight of things, ignoring the all-bliss and by defect of will and
\nknowledge unable to master its world, must fall into incapacity of possessive delight and therefore into suffering. Self-ignorance
\nis therefore the root of all the perversity of our existence, and that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation, the egoism
\nwhich is the form taken by that self-ignorance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet is all ignorance and all perversity only the distortion of
\nthe truth and right of things and not the play of an absolute falsehood. It is the result of Mind viewing things in the division it makes,
\navidyā<\/font>yā<\/font>m antare<\/i>, instead of viewing itself and its
\ndivisions as instrumentation and phenomenon of the play of the truth of Sachchidananda. If it gets back to the truth from which it
\nfell, it becomes again the final action of the Truth-consciousness in its apprehensive operation, and the relations it helps to create
\nin that light and power will be relations of the Truth and not<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 183<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof the perversity. They will be the straight things and not the
\ncrooked, to use the expressive distinction of the Vedic Rishis,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>Truths, that is to say, of divine being with its self-possessive
\nconsciousness, will and delight moving harmoniously in itself. Now we have rather the warped and zigzag movement of mind
\nand life, the contortions created by the struggle of the soul once grown oblivious of its true being to find itself again, to resolve
\nback all error into the truth which both our truth and our error, our right and our wrong limit or distort, all incapacity into the
\nstrength which both our power and our weakness are a struggle of force to grasp, all suffering into the delight which both our
\njoy and our pain are a convulsive effort of sensation to realise, all death into the immortality to which both our life and our
\ndeath are a constant effort of being to return.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 184<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XVIII   Mind and Supermind   He discovered that Mind was the Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad.1    Indivisible, but as if divided in beings. Gita.2…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-22-the-life-divine","wpcat-45-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","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=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}