{"id":459,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=459"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:08","slug":"04-man-a-transitional-being-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17\/04-man-a-transitional-being-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","title":{"rendered":"-04_Man A Transitional Being.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nII <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/P>
\n


\nEVOLUTION –
\nPSYCHOLOGY <\/b><\/p>\n

<\/P>
\n


\nTHE SUPERMIND   <\/b><\/p>\n

<\/P>
\n

 <\/P>
\n


\n    
\nMan A Transitional Being <\/a>  <\/font><\/b><\/P>
\n

 <\/P>
\n


\n                        M<\/b>AN is a transitional
\nbeing; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees
\nthat to a divine supermanhood. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our
\naspiring but troubled and limited mundane existence. <\/font>
\n<\/P>
\n\t\t


\n     We mean by man mind
\nimprisoned in a living body. But mind is not the highest possible power of
\nconsciousness, for mind is not in possession of Truth, but only its ignorant
\nseeker. Beyond mind is a supramental or gnostic power of consciousness that is in
\neternal possession of Truth. This supermind is at its source the dynamic
\nconsciousness, in its nature at once and inseparably infinite wisdom and
\ninfinite will of the divine Knower and Creator. Supermind is superman; a gnostic
\nsupermanhood is the next distinct and triumphant evolutionary step to be reached
\nby earthly nature.<\/font>
\n<\/P>
\n\t\t


\n    The step from man to superman is the next approaching
\nachievement in the earth’s evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the
\nintention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature’s process.<\/font>
\n<\/P>
\n\t\t


\n    The
\nappearance of a human possibility in a material and animal world was the first
\nglint of some coming divine Light, the first far-off promise of a godhead to be
\nborn out of Matter. The appearance of the superman in the human world will be
\nthe fulfilment of this divine promise. Out of the material consciousness in
\nwhich our mind works as a chained slave is emerging the disk of a secret sun
\nof Power and Joy and Knowledge. The supermind will be the formed body of that
\nradiant effulgence.<\/font>
\n<\/P>
\n\t\t


\n    Supermanhood is not man climbed to his own natural zenith,
\nnot a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will,
\ncharacter, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection.
\nSupermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater
\nconsciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature.<\/font>
\n<\/P>
\n\t\t


\nPage
\n– 7
\n<\/P><\/p>\n

\n

    Man
\nis a mental being whose mentality works here involved, obscure and degraded in a
\nphysical brain. Even in the highest of his kind it is baulked of its luminous possibilities of supreme force and freedom by this dependence, shut off even
\nfrom its own divine Powers, impotent to change our life beyond certain narrow
\nand precarious limits; it is an imprisoned and checked force, most often nothing
\nbut a servitor or caterer of interests or a purveyor of amusement to the life
\nand the body. But divine superman will be a gnostic spirit. Supermind in him
\nwill lay hands on the mental and physical instruments and, standing above and
\nyet Penetrating our lower already manifested parts, it will transform mind, life
\nand body.<\/font><\/span><\/P>
\n\t\t


\n\t\t
\n\t\t    Mind
\nis the highest force in man. But mind in man is an ignorant, clouded and
\nstruggling power. And even when most luminous it is possessed only of a thin,
\nreflected and pallid light. A supermind free, master, expressive of divine
\nglories will be the superman\u2019s central instrument. Its untrammelled movement
\nof self-existent knowledge, spontaneous power and untainted delight will impress
\nthe harmony of the life of the gods on the earthly existence.
\n<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/P><\/p>\n

    Man
\nin himself is little more than an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that
\nreaches to a wideness and a grandeur that are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of
\nthe heights. His mind is a dark ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His
\nlife is a striving, exulting, suffering, an eager passion-tossed and
\nsorrow-stricken or a blindly and dumbly longing petty moment of the universal
\nLife. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe. This
\ncannot be the end of the mysterious up\u00adward surge of Nature. There is something
\nbeyond, something that mankind shall be; it is seen now only in broken glimpses
\nthrough rifts in the great wall of limitations that deny its possibility and
\nexistence. An immortal soul is somewhere within him and gives out some sparks of
\nits presence; above an eternal spirit overshadows him and upholds the
\nsoul-continuity of his nature. But this greater spirit is obstructed from
\ndescent by the hard lid of his constructed personality; and that inner luminous
\nsoul is wrapped, stifled, oppressed in dense outer coatings. In all but a few
\nthe soul is seldom active, in most hardly perceptible. The<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/P><\/p>\n


\n 
\nPage
\n– 8<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

soul
\nand spirit in man seem rather to exist above and behind his nature than to be a
\npart of his external and visible reality. They are in course of birth rather
\nthan born in Matter; they are for human consciousness possibilities rather than
\nthings realised and present.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Man\u2019s
\ngreatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible. His glory is that
\nhe is the closed place and secret workshop of a living labour in which
\nsupermanhood is being made ready by a divine Craftsman. But he is admitted too
\nto a yet greater greatness and it is this that, allowed to be unlike the lower
\ncreation, he is partly an artisan of this divine change; his conscious assent,
\nhis consecrated will and participation are needed that into his body may descend
\nthe glory that will replace him. His aspiration is earth\u2019s call to the
\nsupramental creator.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    If
\nearth calls and the Supreme answers, the hour can be even
\nnow
\nfor that immense and glorious transformation.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    But
\nwhat shall be the gain to be won for the Earth-consciousness we embody by this
\nunprecedented ascent from mind to supermind and what the ransom of the
\nsupramental change? To what end should man leave his safe human limits for this
\nhazardous adventure?
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    First
\nconsider what was gained when Nature passed from the brute inconscience and
\ninertia of what seems inanimate Matter to the vibrant awakening of sensibility
\nof plant range. Life was gained; the gain was the first beginnings of a mite
\ngroping and involved, reaching a consciousness that stretches out dumbly for
\ngrowth, towards sense vibration, to a preparation for vital yearnings, a living
\njoy and beauty. The plant achieved a first form of life but could not possess
\nit, because this first organised life-consciousness had feeling and seeking but
\nblind, dumb, deaf, chained to the soil and was involved in its own nerve and
\ntissue; it could not get out of them, could not get behind its nerve self as
\ndoes the vital mind of the animal; still less could it turn down from above upon
\nit to know and realise and control its own motions as does the observing and
\nthinking mind in man. This was an imprisoned gain, for there was still a gross
\noppression of the first Inconscience which had covered up with the brute
\nphenomenon of Matter and of Energy of Matter all signs of the<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage
\n– 9<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Spirit.
\nNature could in no wise stop here, because she held much in her that was still
\noccult, potential, unexpressed, unorganised, latent; the evolution had
\nperforce to go farther. The animal had to replace the plant at the head and top
\nof  Nature.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    And
\nwhat then was gained when Nature passed from the obscurity of the plant kingdom
\nto the awakened sense, desire and emotion and the free mobility of animal life?
\nThe gain was liberated sense and feeling and desire and courage and cunning and
\nthe contrivance of the objects of desire, passion and action and hunger and
\nbattle and conquest and the sex-call and play and pleasure, and all the joy and
\npain of the conscious living creature. Not only the life of the body which the
\nanimal has in common with the plant but a life-mind that appeared for the first
\ntime in the earth-story and grew from form to more organised form till it
\nreached in the best the limit of its own formula.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    The
\nanimal achieved a first form of mind, but could not possess it, because this
\nfirst organised mind-consciousness was enslaved to a narrow scope, tied to the
\nfull functioning of the physical body and brain and nerve, tied to serve the
\nphysical life and its desires and needs and passions, limited to the insistent
\nuses of the vital urge, to material longing and feeling and action, bound in its
\nown inferior instrumentation, its spontaneous combinings of association and
\nmemory and instinct. It could not get away from them, could not get behind them
\nas man\u2019s intelligence gets behind them to observe them; still less could it
\nturn down on them from above as do human reason and will to control, enlarge,
\nre-order, exceed, sublimate.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    At
\neach capital step of  Nature\u2019s ascent there is a reversal of consciousness in
\nthe evolving spirit. As when a climber turns on a summit to which he has
\nlaboured and looks down with an exalted and wider power of vision on all that
\nwas once above or on a level with him but is now below his feet, the
\nevolutionary being not only transcends his past self, his former now exceeded
\nstatus, but commands from a higher grade of self-experience and vision, with a
\nnew apprehending feeling or a new comprehending sight and effectuating power in
\na greater system of values, all that was once his own consciousness but is now
\nbelow him and belongs to an inferior creation. This reversal is the sign of a
\nde\u00ad<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage
\n– 10<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

cisive
\nvictory and the seal of a radical progress in Nature.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    The
\nnew consciousness attained in the spiritual evolution is always higher in grade
\nand power, always larger, more comprehensive, wider in sight and feeling,
\nricher and finer in faculties, more complex, organic, dominating than the
\nconsciousness that was once our own but is now left behind us. There are greater
\nbreadth and space, heights before impassable, unexpected depths and intimacies.
\nThere is a luminous expansion that is the very sign-manual of the Supreme upon
\nhis work.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Mark
\nthat each of the great radical steps forward already taken by Nature has been
\ninfinitely greater in its change, incalculably vaster in its consequences than
\nits puny predecessor. There is a miraculous opening to an always richer and
\nwider expression, there is a new illuminating of the creation and a dynamic
\nheightening of its significances. There is in this world we live in no equality
\nof all on a flat level, but a hierarchy of ever-increasing precipitous
\nsuperiorities pushing their mountain shoulders upwards towards the Supreme.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Because
\nman is a mental being, he naturally imagines that mind is the one great leader
\nand actor and creator or the indispensable agent in the universe. But this is
\nan error; even for knowledge mind is not the only or the greatest possible
\ninstrument, the one aspirant and discoverer. Mind is a clumsy interlude
\nbetween Nature\u2019s vast and precise subconscient action and the vaster
\ninfallible superconscient action of the Godhead.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    There
\nis nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind\u2019s immobility and
\nthought-free stillness.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    When
\nmind is still, then Truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the
\nsilence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Truth
\ncannot be attained by the Mind\u2019s thought but only by identity and silent
\nvision. Truth lives in the calm wordless Light of the eternal spaces; she does
\nnot intervene in the noise and cackle of logical debate.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Thought
\nin the mind can at most be Truth\u2019s brilliant and transparent garment; it is
\nnot even her body. Look through the robe, not at it and you may see some hint of
\nher form. There can be a thought-body of Truth, but that is the spontaneous
\nsupramental Thought and Word that leap fully formed out of the<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n 
\nPage
\n– 11<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Light,
\nnot any difficult mental counterfeit and patchwork. The Supramental Thought is
\nnot a means of arriving at Truth, but a way of expressing her; for Truth in the
\nSupermind is self-found or self-existent. It is an arrow from the Light, not a
\nbridge to reach it.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    Cease
\ninwardly from thought and word, be motionless within you, look upward into the
\nlight and outward into the vast cosmic consciousness that is around you. Be more
\nand more one with the brightness and the vastness. Then will Truth dawn on you
\nfrom above and flow in you from all around you.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

    But
\nonly if the mind is no less intense in its purity than its silence. For in an
\nimpure mind the silence will soon fill with misleading lights and false <\/font><\/span>voices<\/span>, <\/span><\/b>the
\necho or sublimation of its own vain conceits and opinions or the response to its
\nsecret pride, vanity, ambition, lust, greed or desire. The Titans and the Demons
\nwill speak to it more readily than the divine Voices.<\/span><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

    Silence
\nis indispensable, but also there is needed wideness. If the mind is not silent,
\nit cannot receive the lights and voices of the supernal Truth or receiving mixes
\nwith them its own flickering tongues and blind pretentious babble. Active,
\narrogant, noisy it distorts and disfigures what it receives. If it is not wide,
\nit cannot house the effective power and creative force of the Truth. Some
\nlight may play there but it becomes narrow, confined and sterile: the Force that
\nis descending is cabined and thwarted and withdraws again to its vast heights
\nfrom this rebellious foreign plane. Or even if something comes down and remains
\nit is a pearl in the mire; for no change takes place in the nature or else there
\nis formed only a thin intensity that points narrowly upward to the summits, but
\ncan hold little and diffuse less upon the world around it.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage
\n– 12<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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