{"id":2596,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:39","slug":"34-man-and-the-supermind-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/12-essays-divine-and-human\/34-man-and-the-supermind-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-34_Man and the Supermind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
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Man and the Supermind <\/b>
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Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high
\nbeyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The step from man towards superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth’s evolution. There lies our destiny
\nand the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence\u2014inevitable because it is at once the intention
\nof the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature’s process.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The appearance of a human possibility in a material and
\nanimal world was the first glint of a coming divine Light,\u2014the first far-off intimation of a godhead to be born out of Matter.
\nThe appearance of the superman in the human world will be the fulfilment of that distant shining promise.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The difference between man and superman will be the difference between mind and a consciousness as far beyond it as
\nthinking mind is beyond the consciousness of plant and animal; the differentiating essence of man is mind, the differentiating
\nessence of superman will be supermind or a divine gnosis.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Man is a mind imprisoned, obscured and circumscribed in a
\nprecarious and imperfect living but imperfectly conscious body. The superman will be a supramental spirit which will envelop
\nand freely use a conscious body, plastic to spiritual forces. His physical frame will be a firm support and an adequate radiant
\ninstrument for the spirit’s divine play and work in Matter.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Mind, even free and in its own unmixed and unhampered
\nelement, is not the highest possibility of consciousness; for mind is not in possession of Truth, but only a minor vessel or an
\ninstrument and here an ignorant seeker plucking eagerly at a mass of falsehoods and half-truths for the unsatisfying pabulum
\nof its hunger. Beyond mind is a supramental or gnostic power of consciousness that is in eternal possession of Truth; all its motion
\n   
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and feeling and sense and outcome are instinct and luminous
\nwith the inmost reality of things and express nothing else.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Supermind or gnosis is in its original nature at once and in
\nthe same movement an infinite wisdom and an infinite will. At its source it is the dynamic consciousness of the divine Knower
\nand Creator.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\tWhen in the process of unfolding of an always greater force
\nof the one Existence, some delegation of this power shall descend into our limited human nature, then and then only can
\nman exceed himself and know divinely and divinely act and create; he will have become at last a conscious portion of the
\nEternal. The superman will be born, not a magnified mental being, but a supramental power descended here into a new life
\nof the transformed terrestrial body. A gnostic supermanhood is the next distinct and triumphant victory to be won by the spirit
\ndescended into earthly nature.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\tThe disk of a secret sun of Power and Joy and Knowledge is
\nemerging out of the material consciousness in which our mind works as a chained slave or a baffled and impotent demiurge;
\nsupermind will be the formed body of that radiant effulgence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Superman is not man climbed to his own natural zenith,
\nnot a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness,
\nlove, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits, a greater consciousness than the highest
\nconsciousness proper to human nature.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Man is a being from the mental worlds whose mentality
\nworks here involved, obscure and degraded in a physical brain, shut off from its own divinest powers and impotent to change
\nlife beyond certain narrow and precarious limits. Even in the highest of his kind it is baulked of its luminous possibilities of
\nsupreme force and freedom by this dependence. Most often and in most men it is only a servitor, a purveyor of amusements, a
\ncaterer of needs and interests to the life and the body. But the superman will be a gnostic king of Nature; supermind in him
\neven in its evolutionary beginnings will appear as a ray of the eternal omniscience and omnipotence. Sovereign and irresistible
\n   
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it will lay hands on the mental and physical instruments, and,
\nstanding above and yet penetrating and possessing our lower already manifested parts, it will transform mind, life and body
\ninto its own divine and luminous nature.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Man in himself is hardly better than an ambitious nothing.
\nHe is a narrowness that reaches towards ungrasped widenesses, a littleness straining towards grandeurs which are beyond him,
\na dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a darkened ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His life is a striving exulting and suffering wave, an eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dully toiling petty moment of
\nthe universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe. An immortal soul is somewhere hidden
\nwithin him and gives out from time to time some sparks of its presence, and an eternal spirit is above and overshadows with
\nits wings and upholds with its power this soul continuity in his nature. But that greater spirit is obstructed from descent by the
\nhard lid of his constructed personality and this inner radiant soul is wrapped, stifled and oppressed in dense outer coatings. In all
\nbut a few it is seldom active, in many hardly perceptible. The soul and spirit in man seem rather to exist above and behind his
\nformed nature than to be a part of its visible reality; subliminal in his inner being or superconscient above in some unreached
\nstatus, they are in his outer consciousness possibilities rather than things realised and present. The spirit is in course of birth
\nrather than born in Matter.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This imperfect being with his hampered, confused,
\nill-ordered and mostly ineffective consciousness cannot be the end and highest height of the mysterious upward surge of Nature.
\nThere is something more that has yet to be brought down from above and is now seen only by broken glimpses through
\nsudden rifts in the giant wall of our limitations. Or else there is something yet to be evolved from below, sleeping under the
\nveil of man’s mental consciousness or half visible by flashes, as life once slept in the stone and metal, mind in the plant and
\nreason in the cave of animal memory underlying its imperfect apparatus of emotion and sense-device and instinct. Something
\n    <\/span> <\/p>\n

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there is in us yet unexpressed that has to be delivered by an
\nenveloping illumination from above. A godhead is imprisoned in our depths, one in its being with a greater godhead ready
\nto descend from superhuman summits. In that descent and awakened joining is the secret of our future.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Man’s greatness is not in what he is but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and secret workshop of a living labour in which supermanhood is made ready by a divine Craftsman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But he is admitted to a yet greater greatness and it is this that, unlike the lower creation, he is allowed to be partly the conscious
\nartisan of his divine change. His free assent, his consecrated will and participation are needed that into his body may descend the
\nglory that will replace him. His aspiration is earth’s call to the supramental Creator.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

If earth calls and the Supreme answers, the hour can be even now for that immense and glorious transformation.
\n  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

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

Man and the Supermind   Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-essays-divine-and-human","wpcat-52-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","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=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}