{"id":2146,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2146"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:44","slug":"77-chapter-xxiii-the-supramental-instruments-thought-process-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga\/77-chapter-xxiii-the-supramental-instruments-thought-process-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-77_Chapter XXIII The Supramental Instruments \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Thought-Process.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XXIII <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Supramental Instruments \u2014
\nThought-Process <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE SUPERMIND<\/b>, the divine gnosis, is not something entirely alien to our present consciousness: it is a superior
\ninstrumentation of the spirit and all the operations of our normal consciousness are limited and inferior derivations from
\nthe supramental, because these are tentatives and constructions, that the true and perfect, the spontaneous and harmonious nature and action of the spirit. Accordingly when we rise from mind to supermind, the new power of consciousness does not
\nreject, but uplifts, enlarges and transfigures the operations of our soul and mind and life. It exalts and gives to them an ever
\ngreater reality of their power and performance. It does not limit itself either to the transformation of the superficial powers and
\naction of the mind and psychic parts and the life, but it manifests and transforms also those rarer powers and that larger
\nforce and knowledge proper to our subliminal self that appear now to us as things occult, curiously psychic, abnormal. These
\nthings become in the supramental nature not at all abnormal but perfectly natural and normal, not separately psychic but
\nspiritual, not occult and strange, but a direct, simple, inherent and spontaneous action. The spirit is not limited like the waking
\nmaterial consciousness, and the supermind when it takes possession of the waking consciousness, dematerialises it, delivers
\nit from its limits, converts the material and the psychic into the nature of the spiritual being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mental activity that can be most readily organised is, as has been already indicated, that of pure ideative knowledge. This is transformed on the higher level to the true jnana<\/i>, supramental thought, supramental vision, the supramental knowledge by identity. The essential action of this supramental knowledge has
\n  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tbeen described in the preceding chapter. It is necessary however
\nto see also how this knowledge works in outward application and how it deals with the data of existence. It differs from the
\naction of the mind first in this respect that it works naturally with those operations that are to the mind the highest and the
\nmost difficult, acting in them or on them from above downward and not with the hampered straining upward of the mind or
\nwith its restriction to its own and the inferior levels. The higher operations are not dependent on the lower assistance, but rather
\nthe lower operations depend on the higher not only for their guidance but for their existence. The lower mental operations
\nare therefore not only changed in character by the transformation, but are made entirely subordinate. And the higher mental
\noperations too change their character, because, supramentalised, they begin to derive their light directly from the highest, the
\nself-knowledge or infinite knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe normal thought-action of the mind may for this purpose
\nbe viewed as constituted of a triple motion. First and lowest and most necessary to the mental being in the body is the habitual thought mind that founds its ideas upon the data given by the senses and by the surface experiences of the nervous and
\nemotional being and on the customary notions formed by the education and the outward life and environment. This habitual
\nmind has two movements, one a kind of constant undercurrent of mechanically recurrent thought always repeating itself in the
\nsame round of physical, vital, emotional, practical and summarily intellectual notion and experience, the other more actively
\nworking upon all new experience that the mind is obliged to admit and reducing it to formulas of habitual thinking. The
\nmentality of the average man is limited by this habitual mind and moves very imperfectly outside its circle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA second grade of the thinking activity is the pragmatic idea mind
\n\t\t\tthat lifts itself above life and acts creatively as a mediator
\n\t\t\tbetween the idea and the life-power, between truth of life and truth
\n\t\t\tof the idea not yet manifested in life. It draws material from life
\n\t\t\tand builds out of it and upon it creative ideas that become dynamic
\n\t\t\tfor farther life development: on the other side it receives   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tnew thought and mental experience from the mental plane or
\nmore fundamentally from the idea power of the Infinite and immediately turns it into mental idea force and a power for actual being and living. The whole turn of this pragmatic idea mind is towards action and experience, inward as well as outward,
\nthe inward casting itself outward for the sake of a completer satisfaction of reality, the outward taken into the inward and
\nreturning upon it assimilated and changed for fresh formations. The thought is only or mainly interesting to the soul on this mental level as a means for a large range of action and experience. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA third gradation of thinking opens in us the pure ideative
\nmind which lives disinterestedly in truth of the idea apart from any necessary dependence on its value for action and experience.
\nIt views the data of the senses and the superficial inner experience, but only to find the idea, the truth to which they bear
\nwitness and to reduce them into terms of knowledge. It observes the creative action of mind in life in the same way and for the
\nsame purpose. Its preoccupation is with knowledge, its whole object is to have the delight of ideation, the search for truth, the
\neffort to know itself and the world and all that may lie behind its own action and the world action. This ideative mind is the
\nhighest reach of the intellect acting for itself, characteristically, in its own power and for its own purpose. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is difficult for the human mind to combine rightly and harmonise these three movements of the intelligence. The ordinary
\nman lives mainly in the habitual, has a comparatively feeble action of the creative and pragmatic and experiences a great
\ndifficulty in using at all or entering into the movement of the pure ideative mentality. The creative pragmatic mind is commonly too much occupied with its own motion to move freely and disinterestedly in the atmosphere of pure ideative order
\nand on the other hand has often an insufficient grasp on the actualities imposed by the habitual mentality and the obstacles
\nit imposes as also on other movements of pragmatic thought and action than that which it is itself interested in building. The
\npure ideative mentality tends to construct abstract and arbitrary systems of truth, intellectual sections and ideative edifices, and
\n   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\teither misses the pragmatic movement necessary to life and lives
\nonly or mainly in ideas, or cannot act with sufficient power and directness in the life field and is in danger of being divorced from
\nor weak in the world of the practical and habitual mentality. An accommodation of some kind is made, but the tyranny of the
\npredominant tendency interferes with the wholeness and unity of the thinking being. Mind fails to be assured master even of its
\nown totality, because the secret of that totality lies beyond it in the free unity of the self, free and therefore capable of an infinite
\nmultiplicity and diversity, and in the supramental power that can alone bring out in a natural perfection the organic multiple
\nmovement of the self’s unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supermind in its completeness reverses the whole order
\nof the mind’s thinking. It lives not in the phenomenal, but in the essential, in the self, and sees all as being of the self and
\nits power and form and movement, and all the thought and the process of the thought in the supermind must also be of
\nthat character. All its fundamental ideation is a rendering of the spiritual knowledge that acts by identity with all being and of
\nthe supramental vision. It moves therefore primarily among the eternal, the essential and the universal truths of self and being
\nand consciousness and infinite power and delight of being (not excluding all that seems to our present consciousness non-being),
\nand all its particular thinking originates from and depends upon the power of these eternal verities; but in the second place it is at
\nhome too with infinite aspects and applications, sequences and harmonies of the truths of being of the Eternal. It lives therefore
\nat its heights in all that which the action of the pure ideative mind is an effort to reach and discover, and even on its lower
\nranges these things are to its luminous receptivity present, near or easily grasped and available. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut while the highest truths or the pure ideas are to the ideative mind abstractions, because mind lives partly in the phenomenal and partly in intellectual constructions and has to use the method of abstraction to arrive at the higher realities, the
\nsupermind lives in the spirit and therefore in the very substance of what these ideas and truths represent or rather fundamentally
\n  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tare and truly realises them, not only thinks but in the act of
\nthinking feels and identifies itself with their substance, and to it they are among the most substantial things that can be. Truths
\nof consciousness and of essential being are to the supermind the very stuff of reality, more intimately and, as one might almost
\nsay, densely real than outward movement and form of being, although these too are to it movement and form of the reality
\nand not, as they are to a certain action of the spiritualised mind, an illusion. The idea too is to it real-idea, stuff of the reality of
\nconscious being, full of power for the substantial rendering of the truth and therefore for creation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd again, while the pure ideative mind tends to build up arbitrary systems which are mental and partial constructions
\nof the truth, the supermind is not bound by any representation or system, though it is perfectly able to represent and to
\narrange and construct in the living substance of the truth for the pragmatic purposes of the Infinite. The mind when it gets free
\nfrom its exclusivenesses, systematising, attachment to its own constructions, is at a loss in the infiniteness of the infinite, feels
\nit as a chaos, even if a luminous chaos, is unable any longer to formulate and therefore to think and act decisively because
\nall, even the most diverse or contradictory things, point at some truth in this infinity and yet nothing it can think is entirely
\ntrue and all its formulations break down under the test of new suggestions from the infinite. It begins to look on the world as
\na phantasmagory and thought as a chaos of scintillations out of the luminous indefinite. The mind assailed by the vastness
\nand freedom of the supramental loses itself and finds no firm footing in the vastness. The supermind on the contrary can in its
\nfreedom construct harmonies of its thought and expression of being on the firm ground of reality while still holding its infinite
\nliberty and rejoicing in its self of infinite vastness. All that it thinks, as all that it is and does and lives, belongs to the truth,
\nthe right, the vast, satyam<\/i>, r<\/font>tam<\/i>, br<\/font>hat<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe result of this wholeness is that there is no division or
\n\t\t\tincompatibility between the free essential ideation of the supermind
\n\t\t\tcorresponding to the mind’s pure ideation, free, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tdisinterested, illimitable, and its creative, pragmatic ideation
\npurposeful and determinative. The infinity of being results naturally in a freedom of the harmonies of becoming. The supermind
\nperceives always action as a manifestation and expression of the Self and creation as a revelation of the Infinite. All its creative
\nand pragmatic thought is an instrument of the self’s becoming, a power of illumination for that purpose, an intermediary between
\nthe eternal identity and infinite novelty and variety of illimitable Being and its self-expression in the worlds and life. It is this
\nthat the supermind constantly sees and embodies and while its ideative vision and thought interpret to it the illimitable unity
\nand variety of the Infinite, which it is by a perpetual identity and in which it lives in all its power of being and becoming,
\nthere is constantly too a special creative thought, associated with an action of the infinite will, Tapas, power of being, which
\ndetermines what it shall present, manifest or create out of the infinite in the course of Time, what it shall make
\n\u2014 here and now
\nor in any range of Time or world \u2014 of the perpetual becoming of the self in the universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supermind is not limited by this pragmatic movement and does not take the partial motion or the entire stream of what
\nit so becomes and creates in its thought and life for the whole truth of its self or of the Infinite. It does not live only in what it
\nis and thinks and does selectively in the present or on one plane only of being; it does not feed its existence only on the present
\nor the continual succession of moments to whose beats we give that name. It does not see itself only as a movement of Time or
\nof the consciousness in time or as a creature of the perpetual becoming. It is aware of a timeless being beyond manifestation
\nand of which all is a manifestation, it is aware of what is eternal even in Time, it is aware of many planes of existence; it is aware
\nof past truth of manifestation and of much truth of being yet to be manifested in the future, but already existing in the self-view of the Eternal. It does not mistake the pragmatic reality which is the truth of action and mutation for the sole truth, but
\nsees it as a constant realisation of that which is eternally real. It knows that creation whether on the plane of matter or of
\n\t\t\tlife <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tor of mind or of supermind is and can be only a self-determined
\npresentation of eternal truth, a revelation of the Eternal, and it is intimately aware of the pre-existence of the truth of all things
\nin the Eternal. This seeing conditions all its pragmatic thought and its resultant action. The maker in it is a selective power of
\nthe seer and thinker, the self-builder a power of the self-seer, the self-expressing soul a power of the infinite spirit. It creates freely,
\nand all the more surely and decisively for that freedom, out of the infinite self and spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is therefore not prisoned in its special becoming or shut up in its round or its course of action. It is open, in a way and
\na degree to which the mind cannot attain, to the truth of other harmonies of creative becoming even while in its own it puts
\nforth a decisive will and thought and action. When it is engaged in action that is of the nature of a struggle, the replacing of past
\nor other thought and form and becoming by that which it is appointed to manifest, it knows the truth of what it displaces
\nand fulfils even in displacing as well as the truth of what it substitutes. It is not bound by its manifesting, selecting, pragmatic
\nconscious action, but it has at the same time all the joy of a specially creative thought and selective precision of action, the
\nAnanda of the truth of the forms and movements equally of its own and of others’ becoming. All its thought and will of life and
\naction and creation, rich, manifold, focussing the truth of many planes, is liberated and illumined with the illimitable truth of
\nthe Eternal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis creative or pragmatic movement of the supramental
\nthought and consciousness brings with it an action which corresponds to that of the habitual or mechanical mentality but
\nis yet of a very different character. The thing that is created is the self-determination of a harmony and all harmony proceeds
\nupon seen or given lines and carries with it a constant pulsation and rhythmic recurrence. The supramental thought, organising
\nthe harmony of manifested existence of the supramental being, founds it on eternal principles, casts it upon the right lines of the
\ntruth that is to be manifested, keeps sounding as characteristic notes the recurrence of the constant elements in the experience
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\n\t\t\tand the action which are necessary to constitute the harmony.
\nThere is an order of the thought, a cycle of the will, a stability in the motion. At the same time its freedom prevents it from
\nbeing shut up by the recurrence into a groove of habitual action turning always mechanically round a limited stock of thinking.
\nIt does not like the habitual mind refer and assimilate all new thought and experience to a fixed customary mould of thinking,
\ntaking that for its basis. Its basis, that to which all is referred, is above,
\nupari budhne<\/i>, in the largeness of the self, in the supreme
\nfoundation of the supramental truth, budhne r<\/font>tasya<\/i>. Its order of .<\/i>
\nthought, its cycle of will, its stable movement of action does not crystallise into a mechanism or convention, but is always alive
\nwith the spirit, does not live by exclusiveness or hostility to other coexistent or possible order and cycle, but absorbs sustenance
\nfrom all that it contacts and assimilates it to its own principle. The spiritual assimilation is practicable because all is referred
\nto the largeness of the self and its free vision above. The order of the supramental thought and will is constantly receiving new
\nlight and power from above and has no difficulty in accepting it into its movement; it is, as is proper to an order of the Infinite,
\neven in its stability of motion indescribably supple and plastic, capable of perceiving and rendering the relation of all things to
\neach other in the One, capable of expressing always more and more of the Infinite, at its fullest of expressing in its own way
\nall that is actually expressible of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus there is no discord, disparity or difficulty of adjustment
\n\t\t\tin the complex motion of the supramental jnā<\/font>na<\/i>, but a
\n\t\t\tsimplicity in the complexity, an assured ease in a many-sided
\n\t\t\tabundance that comes from the spontaneous sureness and totality of
\n\t\t\tthe self-knowledge of the spirit. Obstacle, inner struggle,
\n\t\t\tdisparity, difficulty, discord of parts and movements continues in
\n\t\t\tthe transformation of mind to supermind only so long as the action,
\n\t\t\tinfluence or pressure of the mind insisting on its own methods of
\n\t\t\tconstruction continues or its process of building knowledge or
\n\t\t\tthought and will of action on the foundation of a primal ignorance
\n\t\t\tresists the opposite process of supermind organising all as a
\n\t\t\tluminous manifestation out of the self and its inherent   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tand eternal self-knowledge. It is thus that the supermind acting
\nas a representative, interpretative, revealingly imperative power of the spirit’s knowledge by identity, turning the light of the
\ninfinite consciousness freely and illimitably into substance and form of real-idea, creating out of power of conscious being and
\npower of real-idea, stabilising a movement which obeys its own law but is still a supple and plastic movement of the infinite, uses
\nits thought and knowledge and a will identical in substance and light with the knowledge to organise in each supramental being
\nhis own right manifestation of the one self and spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe action of the supramental jnā<\/font>na <\/i>so constituted evidently surpasses the action of the mental reason and we have to see
\nwhat replaces the reason in the supramental transformation. The thinking mind of man finds its most clear and characteristic
\nsatisfaction and its most precise and effective principle of organisation in the reasoning and logical intelligence. It is true that
\nman is not and cannot be wholly governed either in his thought or his action by the reason alone. His mentality is inextricably
\nsubjected to a joint, mixed and intricate action of the reasoning intelligence with two other powers, an intuition, actually only
\nhalf luminous in the human mentality, operating behind the more visible action of the reason or veiled and altered in the
\naction of the normal intelligence, and the life-mind of sensation, instinct, impulse, which is in its own nature a sort of obscure involved intuition and which supplies the intelligence from below with its first materials and data. And each of these other powers
\nis in its own kind an intimate action of the spirit operating in mind and life and has a more direct and spontaneous character
\nand immediate power for perception and action than the reasoning intelligence. But yet neither of these powers is capable of
\norganising for man his mental existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis life-mind \u2014 its instincts, its impulses, \u2014 is not and cannot be
\n\t\t\tself-sufficient and predominant as it is in the lower creation. It
\n\t\t\thas been seized upon by the intelligence and profoundly altered by
\n\t\t\tit even where the development of the intelligence is imperfect and
\n\t\t\titself most insistent in its prominence. It has lost most of its
\n\t\t\tintuitive character, is indeed now infinitely richer as <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\ta supplier of materials and data, but no longer quite itself or at
\nease in its action because half rationalised, dependent at least on some infused element however vague of reasoning or intelligent
\nactivity and incapable of acting to good purpose without the aid of the intelligence. Its roots and place of perfection are in
\nthe subconscient from which it emerges and man’s business is to increase in the sense of a more and more conscient knowledge
\nand action. Man reverting to a governance of his being by the life mind would become either irrational and erratic or dull and
\nimbecile and would lose the essential character of manhood. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe intuition on the other hand has its roots and its place of
\nperfection in the supramental which is now to us the superconscient, and in mind it has no pure and no organised action, but is
\nimmediately mixed with the action of the reasoning intelligence, is not quite itself, but limited, fragmentary, diluted and impure,
\nand depends for the ordered use and organisation of its suggestions on the aid of the logical reason. The human mind is never
\nquite sure of its intuitions until they have been viewed and confirmed by the judgment of the rational intelligence: it is there that
\nit feels most well founded and secure. Man surmounting reason to organise his thought and life by the intuitive mind would be
\nalready surpassing his characteristic humanity and on the way to the development of supermanhood. This can only be done
\nabove: for to attempt it below is only to achieve another kind of imperfection: there the mental reason is a necessary factor. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe reasoning intelligence is an intermediate agent between the life mind and the yet undeveloped supramental intuition. Its
\nbusiness is that of an intermediary, on the one side to enlighten the life mind, to make it conscient and govern and regulate as
\nmuch as may be its action until Nature is ready to evolve the supramental energy which will take hold of life and illumine
\nand perfect all its movements by converting its obscurely intuitive motions of desire, emotion, sensation and action into a
\nspiritually and luminously spontaneous life manifestation of the self and spirit. On the other higher side its mission is to take the
\nrays of light which come from above and translate them into terms of intelligent mentality and to accept, examine, develop,
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tintellectually utilise the intuitions that escape the barrier and
\ndescend into mind from the superconscience. It does this until man, becoming more and more intelligently conscient of himself
\nand his environment and his being, becomes also aware that he cannot really know these things by his reason, but can only
\nmake a mental representation of them to his intelligence. The reason, however, tends in the intellectual man to ignore
\nthe limitations of its power and function and attempts to be not an instrument and agent but a substitute for the self and
\nspirit. Made confident by success and predominance, by the comparative greatness of its own light, it regards itself as a thing
\nprimary and absolute, assures itself of its own entire truth and sufficiency and endeavours to become the absolute ruler of mind
\nand life. This it cannot do successfully, because it depends on the lower life intuition and on the covert supermind and its intuitive
\nmessages for its own real substance and existence. It can only appear to itself to succeed because it reduces all its experience
\nto rational formulas and blinds itself to half the real nature of the thought and action that is behind it and to the infinite deal
\nthat breaks out of its formulas. The excess of the reason only makes life artificial and rationally mechanical, deprives it of its
\nspontaneity and vitality and prevents the freedom and expansion of the spirit. The limited and limiting mental reason must make
\nitself plastic and flexible, open itself to its source, receive the light from above, exceed itself and pass by an euthanasia of transformation into the body of the supramental reason. Meanwhile it is given power and leading for an organisation of thought
\nand action on the characteristically human scale intermediate between the subconscient power of the spirit organising the
\nlife of the animal and the superconscient power of the spirit which becoming conscient can organise the existence and life of
\na spiritual supermanhood. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe characteristic power of the reason in its fullness is a
\nlogical movement assuring itself first of all available materials and data by observation and arrangement, then acting upon
\nthem for a resultant knowledge gained, assured and enlarged by a first use of the reflective powers, and lastly assuring itself
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tof the correctness of its results by a more careful and formal
\naction, more vigilant, deliberate, severely logical which tests, rejects or confirms them according to certain secure standards
\nand processes developed by reflection and experience. The first business of the logical reason is therefore a right, careful and
\ncomplete observation of its available material and data. The first and easiest field of data open to our knowledge is the world
\nof Nature, of the physical objects made external to it by the separative action of mind, things not ourself
\n\t\t\tand therefore only indirectly knowable by an interpreting of our
\n\t\t\tsense perceptions, by observation, accumulated experience, inference
\n\t\t\tand reflective thinking. Another field is our own internal being and
\n\t\t\tits movements which one knows naturally by an internally acting
\n\t\t\tmental sense, by intuitive perception and constant experience and by
\n\t\t\treflective thought on the evidences of our nature. The reason with
\n\t\t\tregard even to these inner movements acts best and knows them most
\n\t\t\tcorrectly by detaching itself and regarding them quite impersonally
\n\t\t\tand objectively, a movement which in the Yoga of knowledge ends in
\n\t\t\tviewing our own active being too as not self, a mechanism of Nature
\n\t\t\tlike the rest of the world-existence. The knowledge of other
\n\t\t\tthinking and conscious beings stands between these two fields, but
\n\t\t\tis gained, too, indirectly by observation, by experience, by various
\n\t\t\tmeans of communication and, acting on these, by reflection and
\n\t\t\tinference largely founded on analogy from our knowledge of our own
\n\t\t\tnature. Another field of data which the reason has to observe is its
\n\t\t\town action and the action of the whole human intelligence, for
\n\t\t\twithout that study it cannot be assured of the correctness of its
\n\t\t\tknowledge or of right method and process. Finally, there are other
\n\t\t\tfields of knowledge for which the data are not so easily available
\n\t\t\tand which need the development of abnormal faculties, \u2014 the
\n\t\t\tdiscovery of things and ranges of existence behind the appearances
\n\t\t\tof the physical world and the discovery of the secret self or
\n\t\t\tprinciple of being of man and of Nature. The first the logical
\n\t\t\treason can attempt to deal with, accepting subject to its scrutiny
\n\t\t\twhatever data become available, in the same way as it deals with the
\n\t\t\tphysical world, but ordinarily it is little disposed to deal with
\n\t\t\tthem, finding it  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tmore easy to question and deny, and its action here is seldom
\nassured or effective. The second it usually attempts to discover by a constructive metaphysical logic founded on its analytic and
\nsynthetic observation of the phenomena of life, mind and matter. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe operation of the logical reason is the same in all these
\nfields of its data. At first the intelligence amasses a store of observations, associations, percepts, recepts, concepts, makes a
\nmore or less obvious arrangement and classification of relations and of things according to their likenesses and differences, and
\nworks upon them by an accumulating store and a constant addition of ideas, memories, imaginations, judgments; these make up
\nprimarily the nature of activity of our knowledge. There is a kind of natural enlargement of this intelligent activity of the mind
\nprogressing by its own momentum, an evolution aided more and more by a deliberate culture, the increase of faculties gained
\nby the culture becoming in its turn a part of the nature as they settle into a more spontaneous action,
\n\u2014 the result a progression
\nnot of the character and essential power of the intelligence, but of its degree of power, flexibility, variety of capacity, fineness.
\nThere is a correction of errors, an accumulating of assured ideas and judgments, a reception or formation of fresh knowledge. At
\nthe same time a necessity arises for a more precise and assured action of the intelligence which will get rid of the superficiality
\nof this ordinary method of the intelligence, test every step, scrutinise severely every conclusion and reduce the mind’s action to
\na well-founded system and order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis movement develops the complete logical mind and raises to its
\n\t\t\tacme the acuteness and power of the intelligence. The rougher and
\n\t\t\tmore superficial observation is replaced or supplemented by a
\n\t\t\tscrutinising analysis of all the process, properties, constituents,
\n\t\t\tenergies making up or related to the object and a synthetic
\n\t\t\tconstruction of it as a whole which is added to or in great part
\n\t\t\tsubstituted for the mind’s natural conception of it. The object is
\n\t\t\tmore precisely distinguished from all others and at the same time
\n\t\t\tthere is a completer discovery of its relations with others. There
\n\t\t\tis a fixing of sameness or likeness and kinship and also of
\n\t\t\tdivergences and differences resulting on one side in <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tthe perception of the fundamental unity of being and Nature
\nand the similarity and continuity of their processes, on the other in a clear precision and classification of different energies and
\nkinds of beings and objects. The amassing and ordering of the materials and data of knowledge are carried to perfection as far
\nas is possible to the logical intelligence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMemory is the indispensable aid of the mind to preserve
\nits past observations, the memory of the individual but also of the race, whether in the artificial form of accumulated records
\nor the general race memory preserving its gains with a sort of constant repetition and renewal and, an element not sufficiently
\nappreciated, a latent memory that can under the pressure of various kinds of stimulation repeat under new conditions past
\nmovements of knowledge for judgment by the increased information and intelligence. The developed logical mind puts into
\norder the action and resources of the human memory and trains it to make the utmost use of its materials. The human judgment
\nnaturally works on these materials in two ways, by a more or less rapid and summary combination of observation, inference,
\ncreative or critical conclusion, insight, immediate idea \u2014 this is largely an attempt of the mind to work in a spontaneous manner
\nwith the directness that can only be securely achieved by the higher faculty of the intuition, for in the mind it produces much
\nfalse confidence and unreliable certitude, \u2014 and a slower but in the end intellectually surer seeking, considering and testing
\njudgment that develops into the careful logical action. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe memory and judgment are both aided by the imagination which, as a function of knowledge, suggests possibilities not actually presented or justified by the other powers and opens the
\ndoors to fresh vistas. The developed logical intelligence uses the imagination for suggesting new discovery and hypothesis, but is
\ncareful to test its suggestions fully by observation and a sceptical or scrupulous judgment. It insists too on testing, as far as may
\nbe, all the action of the judgment itself, rejects hasty inference in favour of an ordered system of deduction and induction and
\nmakes sure of all its steps and of the justice, continuity, compatibility, cohesion of its conclusions. A too formalised logical mind <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tdiscourages, but a free use of the whole action of the logical
\nintelligence may rather heighten a certain action of immediate insight, the mind’s nearest approach to the higher intuition, but
\nit does not place on it an unqualified reliance. The endeavour of the logical reason is always by a detached, disinterested and
\ncarefully founded method to get rid of error, of prejudgment, of the mind’s false confidence and arrive at reliable certitudes. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd if this elaborated method of the mind were really sufficient for truth, there would be no need of any higher step
\nin the evolution of knowledge. In fact, it increases the mind’s hold on itself and on the world around it and serves great and
\nundeniable utilities: but it can never be sure whether its data supply it with the frame of a real knowledge or only a frame
\nuseful and necessary for the human mind and will in its own present form of action. It is more and more perceived that the
\nknowledge of phenomena increases, but the knowledge of reality escapes this laborious process. A time must come, is already
\ncoming when the mind perceives the necessity of calling to its aid and developing fully the intuition and all the great range
\nof powers that lie concealed behind our vague use of the word and uncertain perception of its significance. In the end it must
\ndiscover that these powers can not only aid and complete but even replace its own proper action. That will be the beginning
\nof the discovery of the supramental energy of the spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supermind, as we have seen, lifts up the action of the
\nmental consciousness towards and into the intuition, creates an intermediate intuitive mentality insufficient in itself but greater
\nin power than the logical intelligence, and then lifts up and transforms that too into the true supramental action. The first
\nwell-organised action of the supermind in the ascending order is the supramental reason, not a higher logical intellect, but
\na directly luminous organisation of intimately subjective and intimately objective knowledge, the higher
\nbuddhi<\/i>, the logical or rather the logos Vijnana. The supramental reason
\n\t\t\tdoes all the work of the reasoning intelligence and does much more,
\n\t\t\tbut with a greater power and in a different fashion. It is then
\n\t\t\titself taken up into a higher range of the power of knowledge and in  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tthat too nothing is lost, but all farther heightened, enlarged in
\nscope, transformed in power of action. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ordinary language of the intellect is not sufficient to
\ndescribe this action, for the same words have to be used, indicating a certain correspondence, but actually to connote inadequately a different thing. Thus the supermind uses a certain sense action, employing but not limited by the physical organs,
\na thing which is in its nature a form consciousness and a contact consciousness, but the mental idea and experience of sense can
\ngive no conception of the essential and characteristic action of this supramentalised sense consciousness. Thought too in the
\nsupramental action is a different thing from the thought of the mental intelligence. The supramental thinking is felt at its basis
\nas a conscious contact or union or identity of the substance of being of the knower with the substance of being of the thing
\nknown and its figure of thought as the power of awareness of the self revealing through the meeting or the oneness, because carrying in itself, a certain knowledge form of the object’s content, action, significance. Therefore observation, memory, judgment
\ntoo mean each a different thing in the supermind from what it is in the process of the mental intelligence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supramental reason observes all that the intelligence observes \u2014 and much more; it makes, that is to say, the thing
\nto be known the field of a perceptual action, in a certain way objective, that causes to emerge its nature, character, quality,
\naction. But this is not that artificial objectivity by which the reason in its observation tries to extrude the element of personal
\nor subjective error. The supermind sees everything in the self and its observation must therefore be subjectively objective and
\nmuch nearer to, though not the same as the observation of our own internal movements regarded as an object of knowledge. It
\nis not in the separatively personal self or by its power that it sees and therefore it has not to be on guard against the element of
\npersonal error: that interferes only while a mental substratum or environing atmosphere yet remains and can still throw in its
\ninfluence or while the supermind is still acting by descent into the mind to change it. And the supramental method with error
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tis to eliminate it, not by any other device, but by an increasing
\nspontaneity of the supramental discrimination and a constant heightening of its own energy. The consciousness of supermind
\nis a cosmic consciousness and it is in this self of universal consciousness, in which the individual knower lives and with which
\nhe is more or less closely united, that it holds before him the object of knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe knower is in his observation a witness and this relation would seem to imply an otherness and difference, but the point
\nis that it is not an entirely separative difference and does not bring an excluding idea of the thing observed as completely not
\nself, as in the mental seeing of an external object. There is always a basic feeling of oneness with the thing known, for without this
\noneness there can be no supramental knowledge. The knower carrying the object in his universalised self of consciousness as a
\nthing held before his station of witness vision includes it in his own wider being. The supramental observation is of things with
\nwhich we are one in the being and consciousness and are capable of knowing them even as we know ourselves by the force of that
\noneness: the act of observation is a movement towards bringing out the latent knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is, then, first a fundamental unity of consciousness that is greater or less in its power, more or less completely and
\nimmediately revelatory of its contents of knowledge according to our progress and elevation and intensity of living, feeling
\nand seeing in the supramental ranges. There is set up between the knower and the object of knowledge, as a result of this
\nfundamental unity, a stream or bridge of conscious connection \u2014 one is obliged to use images, however inadequate
\n\u2014 and as
\na consequence a contact or active union enabling one to see, feel, sense supramentally what is to be known in the object or
\nabout it. Sometimes this stream or bridge of connection is not sensibly felt at the moment, only the results of the contact are
\nnoted, but it is always really there and an after memory can always make us aware that it was really all the time present: as
\nwe grow in supramentality, it becomes an abiding factor. The necessity of this
\n\t\t\tstream or this bridge of connection ceases when <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tthe fundamental oneness becomes a complete active oneness.
\n˙<\/i> This process is the basis of what Patanjali calls samyama<\/i>, a
\nconcentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness, by which, he says, one can become aware of all that is in the object.
\nBut the necessity of concentration becomes slight or nil when the active oneness grows; the luminous consciousness of the object
\nand its contents becomes more spontaneous, normal, facile. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere are three possible movements of this kind of supramental observation. First, the knower may project himself in consciousness on the object, feel his cognition in contact or
\nenveloping or penetrating it and there, as it were in the object itself, become aware of what he has to know. Or he may by the
\ncontact become aware of that which is in it or belongs to it, as for example the thought or feeling of another, coming from
\nit and entering into himself where he stands in his station of the witness. Or he may simply know in himself by a sort of
\nsupramental cognition in his own witness station without any such projection or entrance. The starting-point and apparent
\nbasis of the observation may be the presence of the object to the physical or other senses, but to the supermind this is not indispensable. It may be instead an inner image or simply the idea of the object. The simple will to know may bring to the supramental
\nconsciousness the needed knowledge \u2014 or, it may be, the will to be known or communicate itself of the object of knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe elaborate process of analytical observation and synthetical construction adopted by the logical intelligence is not the
\nmethod of the supermind and yet there is a corresponding action. The supermind distinguishes by a direct seeing and without any
\nmental process of taking to pieces the particularities of the thing, form, energy, action, quality, mind, soul that it has in view, and
\nit sees too with an equal directness and without any process of construction the significant totality of which these particularities
\nare the incidents. It sees also the essentiality, the Swabhava, of the thing in itself of which the totality and the particularities are the
\nmanifestation. And again it sees, whether apart from or through the essentiality or swabhava, the one self, the one existence,
\nconsciousness, power, force of which it is the basic expression. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tIt may be observing at the time only the particularities, but the
\nwhole is implied, and vice versa<\/i>, \u2014 as for an example, the total state of mind out of which a thought or a feeling arises,
\n\u2014 and
\nthe cognition may start from one or the other and proceed at once by immediate suggestion to the implied knowledge. The
\nessentiality is similarly implied in the whole and in each or all of the particulars and there may be the same rapid or immediate
\nalternative or alternate process. The logic of the supermind is different from that of the mind: it sees always the self as what is,
\nthe essentiality of the thing as a fundamental expression of the being and power of the self, and the whole and particulars as a
\nconsequent manifestation of this power and its active expression. In the fullness of the supramental consciousness and cognition
\nthis is the constant order. All perception of unity, similarity, difference, kind, uniqueness arrived at by the supramental reason
\nis consonant with and depends on this order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis observing action of supermind applies to all things. Its
\nview of physical objects is not and cannot be only a surface or outward view, even when concentrated on the externals. It sees
\nthe form, action, properties, but it is aware at the same time
\nof the qualities or energies, gun<\/font>a<\/i>,ś<\/font>akti<\/i>, of which the form is a translation, and it sees them not as an inference or deduction
\nfrom the form or action, but feels and sees them directly in the being of the object and quite as vividly,
\n\u2014 one might say,
\nwith a subtle concreteness and fine substantiality, \u2014 as the form or sensible action. It is aware too of the consciousness
\nthat manifests itself in quality, energy, form. It can feel, know, observe, see forces, tendencies, impulsions, things abstract to us
\nquite as directly and vividly as the things we now call visible and sensible. It observes in just the same way persons and beings.
\nIt can take as its starting-point or first indication the speech, action, outward signs, but it is not limited by or dependent
\non them. It can know and feel and observe the very self and consciousness of another, can either proceed to that directly
\nthrough the sign or can in its more powerful action begin with it and at once, instead of seeking to know the inner being
\nthrough the evidence of the outer expression, understand rather  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tall the outer expression in the light of the inner being. Even
\nso, completely, the supramental being knows his own inner being and nature. The supermind can too act with equal power
\nand observe with direct experience what is hidden behind the physical order; it can move in other planes than the material
\nuniverse. It knows the self and reality of things by identity, by experience of oneness or contact of oneness and a vision, a seeing
\nand realising ideation and knowledge dependent on or derived from these things, and its thought presentation of the truths of
\nthe spirit is an expression of this kind of sight and experience. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supramental memory is different from the mental, not
\na storing up of past knowledge and experience, but an abiding presence of knowledge that can be brought forward or, more
\ncharacteristically, offers itself, when it is needed: it is not dependent on attention or on conscious reception, for the things of the
\npast not known actually or not observed can be called up from latency by an action which is yet essentially a remembrance.
\nEspecially on a certain level all knowledge presents itself as a remembering, because all is latent or inherent in the self of
\nsupermind. The future like the past presents itself to knowledge in the supermind as a memory of the preknown. The imagination
\ntransformed in the supermind acts on one side as a power of true image and symbol, always an image or index of some value or
\nsignificance or other truth of being, on the other as an inspiration or interpretative seeing of possibilities and potentialities not less
\ntrue than actual or realised things. These are put in their place either by an attendant intuitive or interpretative judgment or by
\none inherent in the vision of the image, symbol or potentiality, or by a supereminent revelation of that which is behind the image
\nor symbol or which determines the potential and the actual and their relations and, it may be, overrides and overpasses them,
\nimposing ultimate truths and supreme certitudes. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supramental judgment acts inseparably from the supramental
\n\t\t\tobservation or memory, inherent in it as a direct seeing or
\n\t\t\tcognition of values, significances, antecedents, consequences,
\n\t\t\trelations, etc.; or it supervenes on the observation as a luminous
\n\t\t\tdisclosing idea or suggestion; or it may go before, independent   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tof any observation, and then the object called up and observed
\nconfirms visibly the truth of the idea. But in each case it is sufficient in itself for its own purpose, is its own evidence and
\ndoes not really depend for its truth on any aid or confirmation. There is a logic of the supramental reason, but its function is
\nnot to test or scrutinise, to support and prove or to detect and eliminate error. Its function is simply to link knowledge with
\nknowledge, to discover and utilise harmonies and arrangement and relations, to organise the movement of the supramental
\nknowledge. This it does not by any formal rule or construction of inferences but by a direct, living and immediate seeing and
\nplacing of connection and relation. All thought in the supermind is in the nature of intuition, inspiration or revelation and all
\ndeficiency of knowledge is to be supplied by a farther action of these powers; error is prevented by the action of a spontaneous and luminous discrimination; the movement is always from knowledge to knowledge. It is not rational in our sense but
\nsuprarational, \u2014 it does sovereignly what is sought to be done stumblingly and imperfectly by the mental reason. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ranges of knowledge above the supramental reason, taking it up and exceeding it, cannot well be described, nor is it
\nnecessary here to make the endeavour. It is sufficient to say that the process here is more sufficient, intense and large in light,
\nimperative, instantaneous, the scope of the active knowledge larger, the way nearer to the knowledge by identity, the thought
\nmore packed with the luminous substance of self-awareness and all-vision and more evidently independent of any other inferior
\nsupport or assistance. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese characteristics, it must be remembered, do not fully
\napply even to the strongest action of the intuitive mentality, but are there seen only in their first glimpses. Nor can they be entirely
\nor unmixedly evident so long as supramentality is only forming with an undercurrent, a mixture or an environment of mental
\naction. It is only when mentality is overpassed and drops away into a passive silence that there can be the full disclosure and the
\nsovereign and integral action of the supramental gnosis.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>861<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXIII   The Supramental Instruments \u2014 Thought-Process   THE SUPERMIND, the divine gnosis, is not something entirely alien to our present consciousness: it is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","wpcat-46-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146","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=2146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}