{"id":2186,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:00","slug":"73-chapter-xix-the-nature-of-the-supermind-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\/73-chapter-xix-the-nature-of-the-supermind-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-73_Chapter XIX The Nature of the Supermind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Nature of the Supermind
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE OBJECT<\/b> of Yoga is to raise the human being from
\nthe consciousness of the ordinary mind subject to the control of vital and material Nature and limited wholly
\nby birth and death and Time and the needs and desires of the mind, life and body to the consciousness of the spirit free in
\nits self and using the circumstances of mind, life and body as admitted or self-chosen and self-figuring determinations of the
\nspirit, using them in a free self-knowledge, a free will and power of being, a free delight of being. This is the essential difference
\nbetween the ordinary mortal mind in which we live and the spiritual consciousness of our divine and immortal being which
\nis the highest result of Yoga. It is a radical conversion as great as and greater than the change which we suppose evolutionary
\nNature to have made in its transition from the vital animal to the fully mentalised human consciousness. The animal has the
\nconscious vital mind, but whatever beginnings there are in it of anything higher are only a primary glimpse, a crude hint
\nof the intelligence which in man becomes the splendour of the mental understanding, will, emotion, aesthesis and reason. Man
\nelevated in the heights and deepened by the intensities of the mind becomes aware of something great and divine in himself
\ntowards which all this tends, something he is in possibility but which he has not yet become, and he turns the powers of his
\nmind, his power of knowledge, his power of will, his power of emotion and aesthesis to seek out this, to seize and comprehend
\nall that it may be, to become it and to exist wholly in its greater consciousness, delight, being and power of highest becoming.
\nBut what he gets of this higher state in his normal mind is only an intimation, a primary glimpse, a crude hint of the splendour,
\nthe light, the glory and divinity of the spirit within him. A complete conversion of all the parts of his being into moulds
\n\t\t\tand<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t instruments of the spiritual consciousness is demanded of him
\nbefore he can make quite real, constant, present to himself this greater thing that he can be and entirely live in what is now to
\nhim at the best a luminous aspiration. He must seek to develop and grow altogether into a greater divine consciousness by an
\nintegral Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Yoga of perfection necessary to this change has, so
\nfar as we have been considering it, consisted in a preparatory purification of the mental, vital and physical nature, a liberation
\nfrom the knots of the lower Prakriti, a consequent replacement of the egoistic state always subject to the ignorant and troubled action of the desire soul by a large and luminous static equality which quiets the reason, the emotional mind, the life
\nmind and the physical nature and brings into us the peace and freedom of the spirit, and a dynamical substitution of the action
\nof the supreme and universal divine Shakti under the control of the Ishwara for that of the lower Prakriti,
\n\u2014 an action whose
\ncomplete operation must be preceded by the perfection of the natural instruments. And all these things together, though not as
\nyet the whole Yoga, constitute already a much greater than the present normal consciousness, spiritual in its basis and moved
\nby a greater light, power and bliss, and it might be easy to rest satisfied with so much accomplished and think that all has been
\ndone that was needed for the divine conversion. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA momentous question however arises as light grows, the
\nquestion through what medium is the divine Shakti to act in the human being? Is it to be always through the mind only and
\non the mind plane or in some greater supramental formulation which is more proper to a divine action and which will take
\nup and replace the mental functions? If the mind is to be always the instrument, then although we shall be conscious of a
\ndiviner Power initiating and conducting all our inner and outer human action, yet it will have to formulate its knowledge, will,
\nAnanda and all things else in the mental figure, and that means to translate them into an inferior kind of functioning other than
\nthe supreme workings native to the divine consciousness and its Shakti. The mind spiritualised, purified, liberated, perfected
\n  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\twithin its own limits may come as near as possible to a faithful
\nmental translation, but we shall find that this is after all a relative fidelity and an imperfect perfection. The mind by its very nature
\ncannot render with an entirely right rightness or act in the unified completeness of the divine knowledge, will and Ananda because
\nit is an instrument for dealing with the divisions of the finite on the basis of division, a secondary instrument therefore and a sort
\nof delegate for the lower movement in which we live. The mind can reflect the Infinite, it can dissolve itself into it, it can live in
\nit by a large passivity, it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and
\nsubject to a greater or less deformation, but it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite Spirit acting in
\nits own knowledge. The divine Will and Wisdom organising the action of the infinite consciousness and determining all things
\naccording to the truth of the spirit and the law of its manifestation is not mental but supramental and even in its formulation
\nnearest to mind as much above the mental consciousness in its light and power as the mental consciousness of man above the
\nvital mind of the lower creation. The question is how far the perfected human being can raise himself above mind, enter into
\nsome kind of fusing union with the supramental and build up in himself a level of supermind, a developed gnosis by the form and
\npower of which the divine Shakti can directly act, not through a mental translation, but organically in her supramental nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is here necessary in a matter so remote from the ordinary lines of our thought and experience to state first what is the
\nuniversal gnosis or divine supermind, how it is represented in the actual movement of the universe and what are its relations
\nto the present psychology of the human being. It will then be evident that though the supermind is suprarational to our intelligence and its workings occult to our apprehension, it is nothing irrationally mystic, but rather its existence and emergence is a
\nlogical necessity of the nature of existence, always provided we grant that not matter or mind alone but spirit is the fundamental
\nreality and everywhere a universal presence. All things are a manifestation of the infinite spirit out of its own being, out of
\n   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tits own consciousness and by the self-realising, self-determining,
\nself-fulfilling power of that consciousness. The Infinite, we may say, organises by the power of its self-knowledge the law of its
\nown manifestation of being in the universe, not only the material universe present to our senses, but whatever lies behind it on
\nwhatever planes of existence. All is organised by it not under any inconscient compulsion, not according to a mental fantasy
\nor caprice, but in its own infinite spiritual freedom according to the self-truth of its being, its infinite potentialities and its
\nwill of self-creation out of those potentialities, and the law of this self-truth is the necessity that compels created things to act
\nand evolve each according to its own nature. The Intelligence \u2014 to give it an inadequate name
\n\u2014 the Logos that thus organises
\nits own manifestation is evidently something infinitely greater, more extended in knowledge, compelling in self-power, large
\nboth in the delight of its self-existence and the delight of its active being and works than the mental intelligence which is to
\nus the highest realised degree and expression of consciousness. It is to this intelligence infinite in itself but freely organising and
\nself-determiningly organic in its self-creation and its works that we may give for our present purpose the name of the divine
\nsupermind or gnosis. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe fundamental nature of this supermind is that all its knowledge
\n\t\t\tis originally a knowledge by identity and oneness and even when it
\n\t\t\tmakes numberless apparent divisions and discriminating modifications
\n\t\t\tin itself, still all the knowledge that operates in its workings,
\n\t\t\teven in these divisions, is founded upon and sustained and lit and
\n\t\t\tguided by this perfect knowledge by identity and oneness. The Spirit
\n\t\t\tis one everywhere and it knows all things as itself and in itself,
\n\t\t\tso sees them always and therefore knows them intimately, completely,
\n\t\t\tin their reality as well as their appearance, in their truth, their
\n\t\t\tlaw, the entire spirit and sense and figure of their nature and
\n\t\t\ttheir workings. When it sees anything as an object of knowledge, it
\n\t\t\tyet sees it as itself and in itself, and not as a thing other than
\n\t\t\tor divided from it about which therefore it would at first be
\n\t\t\tignorant of the nature, constitution and workings and have to learn
\n\t\t\tabout them, as the <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tmind is at first ignorant of its object and has to learn about it
\nbecause the mind is separated from its object and regards and senses and meets it as something other than itself and external
\nto its own being. The mental awareness we have of our own subjective existence and its movements, though it may point to,
\nis not the same thing as this identity and self-knowledge, because what it sees are mental figures of our being and not the inmost
\nor the whole and it is only a partial, derivative and superficial action of our self that appears to us while the largest and most
\nsecretly determining parts of our own existence are occult to our mentality. The supramental Spirit has, unlike the mental being,
\nthe real because the inmost and total knowledge of itself and of all its universe and of all things that are its creations and
\nself-figurings in the universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the second character of the supreme Supermind that
\nits knowledge is a real because a total knowledge. It has in the first place a transcendental vision and sees the universe not only
\nin the universal terms, but in its right relation to the supreme and eternal reality from which it proceeds and of which it is an
\nexpression. It knows the spirit and truth and whole sense of the universal expression because it knows all the essentiality and all
\nthe infinite reality and all the consequent constant potentiality of that which in part it expresses. It knows rightly the relative
\nbecause it knows the Absolute and all its absolutes to which the relatives refer back and of which they are the partial or modified
\nor suppressed figures. It is in the second place universal and sees all that is individual in the terms of the universal as well as in
\nits own individual terms and holds all these individual figures in their right and complete relation to the universe. It is in the
\nthird place, separately with regard to individual things, total in its view because it knows each in its inmost essence of which all
\nelse is the resultant, in its totality which is its complete figure and in its parts and their connections and dependences,
\n\u2014 as well as
\nin its connections with and its dependences upon other things and its nexus with the total implications and the explicits of the
\nuniverse. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mind on the contrary is limited and incapable in all these
\n   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tdirections. Mind cannot arrive at identity with the Absolute even
\nwhen by a stretch of the intellect it conceives the idea, but can only disappear into it in a swoon or extinction: it can only have
\na kind of sense or an intimation of certain absolutes which it puts by the mental idea into a relative figure. It cannot grasp the
\nuniversal, but only arrives at some idea of it through an extension of the individual or a combination of apparently separate
\nthings and so sees it either as a vague infinite or indeterminate or a half-determined largeness or else only in an external scheme or
\nconstructed figure. The indivisible being and action of the universal, which is its real truth, escapes the apprehension of the mind,
\nbecause the mind thinks it out analytically by taking its own divisions for units and synthetically by combinations of these units,
\nbut cannot seize on and think entirely in the terms, though it may get at the idea and certain secondary results, of the essential
\noneness. It cannot, either, know truly and thoroughly even the individual and apparently separate thing, because it proceeds
\nin the same way, by an analysis of parts and constituents and properties and a combination by which it erects a scheme of it
\nwhich is only its external figure. It can get an intimation of the essential inmost truth of its object, but cannot live constantly
\nand luminously in that essential knowledge and work out on the rest from within outward so that the outward circumstances
\nappear in their intimate reality and meaning as inevitable result and expression and form and action of the spiritual something
\nwhich is the reality of the object. And all this which is impossible for the mind to do, but possible only to strive towards and figure,
\nis inherent and natural to the supramental knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe third characteristic of the supermind arising from this
\ndifference, which brings us to the practical distinction between the two kinds of knowledge, is that it is directly truth-conscious,
\na divine power of immediate, inherent and spontaneous knowledge, an Idea holding luminously all realities and not depending
\non indications and logical or other steps from the known to the unknown like the mind which is a power of the Ignorance. The
\nsupermind contains all its knowledge in itself, is in its highest divine wisdom in eternal possession of all truth and even in its
\n  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tlower, limited or individualised forms has only to bring the latent
\ntruth out of itself, \u2014 the perception which the old thinkers tried to express when they said that all knowing was in its real origin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge. The supermind is eternally and on all levels truth-conscious and
\nexists secretly even in mental and material being, surveys and knows the things, even obscurest, of the mental ignorance and
\nunderstands and is behind and governs its processes, because everything in the mind derives from the supermind
\n\u2014 and must
\ndo so because everything derives from the spirit. All that is mental is but a partial, a modified, a suppressed or half-suppressed
\nfigure of the supramental truth, a deformation or a derived and imperfect figure of its greater knowledge. The mind begins with
\nignorance and proceeds towards knowledge. As an actual fact, in the material universe, it appears out of an initial and universal
\ninconscience which is really an involution of the all-conscient spirit in its own absorbed self-oblivious force of action; and
\nit appears therefore as part of an evolutionary process, first a vital feeling towards overt sensation, then an emergence of a
\nvital mind capable of sensation and, evolving out of it, a mind of emotion and desire, a conscious will, a growing intelligence.
\nAnd each stage is an emergence of a greater suppressed power of the secret supermind and spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mind of man, capable of reflection and a coordinated
\n\t\t\tinvestigation and understanding of itself and its basis and
\n\t\t\tsurroundings, arrives at truth but against a background of original
\n\t\t\tignorance, a truth distressed by a constant surrounding mist of
\n\t\t\tincertitude and error. Its certitudes are relative and for the most
\n\t\t\tpart precarious certainties or else are the assured fragmentary
\n\t\t\tcertitudes only of an imperfect, incomplete and not an essential
\n\t\t\texperience. It makes discovery after discovery, gets idea after
\n\t\t\tidea, adds experience to experience and experiment to experiment, \u2014
\n\t\t\tbut losing and rejecting and forgetting and having to recover much
\n\t\t\tas it proceeds, \u2014 and it tries to establish a relation between all
\n\t\t\tthat it knows by setting up logical and other sequences, a series of
\n\t\t\tprinciples and their dependences, generalisations and their
\n\t\t\tapplication, and makes out of its devices a <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tstructure in which mentally it can live, move and act and enjoy
\nand labour. This mental knowledge is always limited in extent: not only so, but in addition the mind even sets up other willed
\nbarriers, admitting by the mental device of opinion certain parts and sides of truth and excluding all the rest, because if it gave
\nfree admission and play to all ideas, if it suffered truth’s infinities, it would lose itself in an unreconciled variety, an undetermined
\nimmensity and would be unable to act and proceed to practical consequences and an effective creation. And even when it is
\nwidest and most complete, mental knowing is still an indirect knowledge, a knowledge not of the thing in itself but of its figures, a system of representations, a scheme of indices, \u2014 except indeed when in certain movements it goes beyond itself, beyond
\nthe mental idea to spiritual identity, but it finds it extremely difficult to go here beyond a few isolated and intense spiritual
\nrealisations or to draw or work out or organise the right practical consequences of these rare identities of knowledge. A greater
\npower than the reason is needed for the spiritual comprehension and effectuation of this deepest knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is what the supermind, intimate with the Infinite, alone can do. The supermind sees directly the spirit and essence, the
\nface and body, the result and action, the principles and dependences of the truth as one indivisible whole and therefore can
\nwork out the circumstantial results in the power of the essential knowledge, the variations of the spirit in the light of its identities,
\nits apparent divisions in the truth of its oneness. The supermind is a knower and creator of its own truth, the mind of man only
\na knower and creator in the half light and half darkness of a mingled truth and error, and creator too of a thing which it
\nderives altered, translated, lessened from something greater than and beyond it. Man lives in a mental consciousness between a
\nvast subconscient which is to his seeing a dark inconscience and a vaster superconscient which he is apt to take for another
\nbut a luminous inconscience, because his idea of consciousness is confined to his own middle term of mental sensation and
\nintelligence. It is in that luminous superconscience that there lie the ranges of the supermind and the spirit.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe supermind is again, because it acts and creates as well as
\nknows, not only a direct truth-consciousness, but an illumined, direct and spontaneous truth-will. There is not and cannot be
\nin the will of the self-knowing spirit any contradiction, division or difference between its will and its knowledge. The spiritual
\nwill is the Tapas or enlightened force of the conscious being of the spirit effecting infallibly what is there within it, and it is
\nthis infallible operation of things acting according to their own nature, of energy producing result and event according to the
\nforce within it, of action bearing the fruit and event involved in its own character and intention which we call variously in its different aspects law of Nature, Karma, Necessity and Fate. These things are to mind the workings of a power outside or above it
\nin which it is involved and intervenes only with a contributory personal effort which partly arrives and succeeds, partly fails and
\nstumbles and which even in succeeding is largely overruled for issues different from or at any rate greater and more far-reaching
\nthan its own intention. The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead
\nas much as they illuminate. His mind is an ignorance striving to erect standards of knowledge, his will an ignorance striving to
\nerect standards of right, and his whole mentality as a result very much a house divided against itself, idea in conflict with idea,
\nthe will often in conflict with the ideal of right or the intellectual knowledge. The will itself takes different shapes, the will of
\nthe intelligence, the wishes of the emotional mind, the desires and the passion of the vital being, the impulsions and blind
\nor half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient nature, and all these make by no means a harmony, but at best
\na precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas
\nwhich can wholly be attained in its true and complete light and direction only by oneness with the spiritual and supramental
\nbeing. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supramental nature on the contrary is just, harmonious and one,
\n\t\t\twill and knowledge there only light of the spirit and power of the
\n\t\t\tspirit, the power effecting the light, the light <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tillumining the power. In the highest supramentality they are
\nintimately fused together and do not even wait upon each other but are one movement, will illumining itself, knowledge fulfilling
\nitself, both together a single jet of the being. The mind knows only the present and lives in an isolated movement of it though
\nit tries to remember and retain the past and forecast and compel the future. The supermind has the vision of the three times,  trikā<\/font>ladr<\/font>s<\/font>t<\/font>i<\/i>; it sees them as an indivisible movement and sees
\ntoo each containing the others. It is aware of all tendencies, energies and forces as the diverse play of unity and knows their
\nrelation to each other in the single movement of the one spirit. The supramental will and action are therefore a will and action
\nof the spontaneous self-fulfilling truth of the spirit, the right and at the highest the infallible movement of a direct and total
\nknowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supreme and universal Supermind is the active Light and
\nTapas of the supreme and universal Self as the Lord and Creator, that which we come to know in Yoga as the divine Wisdom and
\nPower, the eternal knowledge and will of the Ishwara. On the highest planes of Being where all is known and all manifests
\nas existences of the one existence, consciousnesses of the one consciousness, delight’s self-creations of the one Ananda, many
\ntruths and powers of the one Truth, there is the intact and integral display of its spiritual and supramental knowledge. And
\nin the corresponding planes of our own being the Jiva shares in the spiritual and supramental nature and lives in its light
\nand power and bliss. As we descend nearer to what we are in this world, the presence and action of this self-knowledge
\nnarrows but retains always the essence and character when not the fullness of the supramental nature and its way of knowing
\nand willing and acting, because it still lives in the essence and body of the spirit. The mind, when we trace the descent of
\nthe self towards matter, we see as a derivation which travels away from the fullness of self, the fullness of its light and being
\nand which lives in a division and diversion, not in the body of the sun, but first in its nearer and then in its far-off rays.
\nThere is a highest intuitive mind which receives more nearly the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tsupramental truth, but even this is a formation which conceals
\nthe direct and greater real knowledge. There is an intellectual mind which is a luminous half-opaque lid which intercepts and
\nreflects in a radiantly distorting and suppressively modifying atmosphere the truth known to the supermind. There is a still
\nlower mind built on the foundation of the senses between which and the sun of knowledge there is a thick cloud, an emotional
\nand a sensational mist and vapour with here and there lightnings and illuminations. There is a vital mind which is shut away even
\nfrom the light of intellectual truth, and lower still in submental life and matter the spirit involves itself entirely as if in a sleep
\nand a night, a sleep plunged in a dim and yet poignant nervous dream, the night of a mechanical somnambulist energy. It is a
\nre-evolution of the spirit out of this lowest state in which we find ourselves at a height above the lower creation having taken
\nit up all in us and reaching so far in our ascent only the light of the well-developed mental reason. The full powers of self-knowledge and the illumined will of the spirit are still beyond us above the mind and reason in supramental Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf the spirit is everywhere, even in matter \u2014 in fact matter itself
\n\t\t\tis only an obscure form of the spirit \u2014 and if the supermind is the
\n\t\t\tuniversal power of the spirit’s omnipresent self-knowledge
\n\t\t\torganising all the manifestation of the being, then in matter and
\n\t\t\teverywhere there must be present a supramental action and, however
\n\t\t\tconcealed it may be by another, lower and obscurer kind of
\n\t\t\toperation, yet when we look close we shall find that it is really
\n\t\t\tthe supermind which organises matter, life, mind and reason. And
\n\t\t\tthis actually is the knowledge towards which we are now moving.
\n\t\t\tThere is even a quite visible intimate action of the consciousness,
\n\t\t\tpersistent in life, matter and mind, which is clearly a supramental
\n\t\t\taction subdued to the character and need of the lower medium and to
\n\t\t\twhich we now give the name of intuition from its most evident
\n\t\t\tcharacteristics of direct vision and self-acting knowledge, really a
\n\t\t\tvision born of some secret identity with the object of the
\n\t\t\tknowledge. What we call the intuition is however only a partial
\n\t\t\tindication of the presence of the supermind, and if we take this
\n\t\t\tpresence and power in its widest  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tcharacter, we shall see that it is a concealed supramental force
\nwith a self-conscient knowledge in it which informs the whole action of material energy. It is that which determines what we
\ncall law of nature, maintains the action of each thing according to its own nature and harmonises and evolves the whole, which
\nwould otherwise be a fortuitous creation apt at any moment to collapse into chaos. All the law of nature is a thing precise in its
\nnecessities of process, but is yet in the cause of that necessity and of its constancy of rule, measure, combination, adaptation, result a thing inexplicable, meeting us at every step with a mystery and a miracle, and this must be either because it is irrational and
\naccidental even in its regularities or because it is suprarational, because the truth of it belongs to a principle greater than that
\nof our intelligence. That principle is the supramental; that is to say, the hidden secret of Nature is the organisation of something
\nout of the infinite potentialities of the self-existent truth of the spirit the nature of which is wholly evident only to an original
\nknowledge born of and proceeding by a fundamental identity, the spirit’s constant self-perception. All the action of life too
\nis of this character and all the action of mind and reason, \u2014 reason which is the first to perceive everywhere the action of
\na greater reason and law of being and try to render it by its own conceptional structures, though it does not always perceive
\nthat it is something other than a mental Intelligence which is at work, other than an intellectual Logos. All these processes are
\nactually spiritual and supramental in their secret government, but mental, vital and physical in their overt process. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe outward matter, life, mind do not possess this occult action of
\n\t\t\tthe supermind, even while possessed and compelled by the necessity
\n\t\t\tit imposes on their workings. There is what we are sometimes moved
\n\t\t\tto call an intelligence and will operating in the material force and
\n\t\t\tthe atom (although the words ring false because it is not actually
\n\t\t\tthe same thing as our own will and intelligence), \u2014 let us say, a
\n\t\t\tcovert intuition of self-existence at work, \u2014 but the atom and force
\n\t\t\tare not aware of it and are only the obscure body of matter and of
\n\t\t\tpower created by its first effort of self-manifestation. The
\n\t\t\tpresence of such an intuition becomes  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tmore evident to us in all the action of life because that is nearer
\nto our own scale. And as life develops overt sense and mind, as in the animal creation, we can speak more confidently of a
\nvital intuition which is behind its operations and which emerges in the animal mind in the clear form of instinct,
\n\u2014 instinct, an
\nautomatic knowledge implanted in the animal, sure, direct, self-existent, self-guided, which implies somewhere in its being an
\naccurate knowing of purpose, relation and the thing or object. It acts in the life force and mind, but yet the surface life and
\nmind do not possess it and cannot give an account of what it does or control or extend the power at its will and pleasure.
\nHere we observe two things, first, that the overt intuition acts only for a limited necessity and purpose, and that in the rest of
\nthe operations of the nature there is a double action, one uncertain and ignorant of the surface consciousness and the other
\nsubliminal implying a secret subconscient direction. The surface consciousness is full of a groping and seeking which increases
\nrather than diminishes as life rises in its scale and widens in the scope of its conscious powers; but the secret self within assures in
\nspite of the groping of the vital mind the action of the nature and the result needed for the necessity, the purpose and the destiny
\nof the being. This continues on a higher and higher scale up to the human reason and intelligence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe being of man also is full of physical, vital, emotional,
\n\t\t\tpsychical and dynamic instincts and intuitions, but he does not rely
\n\t\t\ton them as the animal does, \u2014 though they are capable in him of a
\n\t\t\tfar larger scope and greater action than in the animal and lower
\n\t\t\tcreation by reason of his greater actual evolutionary development
\n\t\t\tand his yet greater potentiality of development of the being. He has
\n\t\t\tsuppressed them, discontinued their full and overt action by
\n\t\t\tatrophy, \u2014 not that these capacities are destroyed but rather held
\n\t\t\tback or cast back into the subliminal consciousness, \u2014 and
\n\t\t\tconsequently this lower part of his being is much less sure of
\n\t\t\titself, much less confident of the directions of his nature, much
\n\t\t\tmore groping, errant and fallible in its larger scope than that of
\n\t\t\tthe animal in his lesser limits. This happens because man’s real
\n\t\t\tdharma and law of being is to seek for a  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>795<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tgreater self-aware existence, a self-manifestation no longer obscure and governed by an ununderstood necessity, but illumined, conscious of that which is expressing itself and able to give it a
\nfuller and more perfect expression. And finally his culmination must be to identify himself with his greatest and real self and act
\nor rather let it act (his natural existence being an instrumental form of the expression of the spirit) in its spontaneous perfect
\nwill and knowledge. His first instrument for this transition is the reason and the will of the rational intelligence and he is
\nmoved to depend upon that to the extent of its development for his knowledge and guidance and give it the control of the rest
\nof his being. And if the reason were the highest thing and the greatest all-sufficient means of the self and spirit, he could by
\nit know perfectly and guide perfectly all the movements of his nature. This he cannot do entirely because his self is a larger
\nthing than his reason and if he limits himself by the rational will and intelligence, he imposes an arbitrary restriction both
\nin extent and in kind on his self-development, self-expression, knowledge, action, Ananda. The other parts of his being demand
\ntoo a complete expression in the largeness and perfection of the self and cannot have it if their expression is changed in kind and
\ncarved, cut down and arbitrarily shaped and mechanised in action by the inflexible machinery of the rational intelligence. The
\ngodhead of the reason, the intellectual Logos, is only a partial representative and substitute for the greater supramental Logos,
\nand its function is to impose a preliminary partial knowledge and order upon the life of the creature, but the real, final and
\nintegral order can only be founded by the spiritual supermind in its emergence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supermind in the lower nature is present most strongly as intuition and it is therefore by a development of an intuitive
\nmind that we can make the first step towards the self-existent spontaneous and direct supramental knowledge. All the physical, vital, emotional, psychic, dynamic nature of man is a surface seizing of suggestions which rise out of a subliminal intuitive
\nself-being of these parts, and an attempt usually groping and often circuitous to work them out in the action of a superficial
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>796<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tembodiment and power of the nature which is not overtly enlightened by the inner power and knowledge. An increasingly intuitive mind has the best chance of discovering what they are
\nseeking for and leading them to the desired perfection of their self-expression. The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially
\novert and active power of the intuitive spirit. In all its action there is at the covered or half-covered point of origination something
\nwhich is not the creation of the reason, but given to it either directly by the intuition or indirectly through some other part of
\nthe mind for it to shape into intellectual form and process. The rational judgment in its decisions and the mechanical process
\nof the logical intelligence, whether in its more summary or in its more developed operations, conceals while it develops the
\ntrue origin and native substance of our will and thinking. The greatest minds are those in which this veil wears thin and there
\nis the largest part of intuitive thinking, which often no doubt but not always brings with it a great accompanying display of
\nintellectual action. The intuitive intelligence is however never quite pure and complete in the present mind of man, because it
\nworks in the medium of mind and is at once seized on and coated over with a mixed stuff of mentality. It is as yet not brought out,
\nnot developed and perfected so as to be sufficient for all the operations now performed by the other mental instruments, not
\ntrained to take them up and change them into or replace them by its own fullest, most direct, assured and sufficient workings.
\nThis can indeed only be done if we make the intuitive mind a transitional means for bringing out the secret supermind itself of which it is a mental figure and forming in our frontal consciousness a body and instrument of supermind which will
\nmake it possible for the self and spirit to display itself in its own largeness and splendour. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt must be remembered that there is always a difference between the
\n\t\t\tsupreme Supermind of the omniscient and omnipotent Ishwara and that
\n\t\t\twhich can be attained by the Jiva. The human being is climbing out
\n\t\t\tof the ignorance and when he ascends into <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>797<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe supramental nature, he will find in it grades of its ascension,
\nand he must first form the lower grades and limited steps before he rises to higher summits. He will enjoy there the full essential
\nlight, power, Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and
\nindividualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in the Jiva.
\nIt is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine
\nself-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature.
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>798<\/font>  <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XIX   The Nature of the Supermind   THE OBJECT of Yoga is to raise the human being from the consciousness of the ordinary…<\/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-2186","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\/2186","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=2186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}