{"id":616,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=616"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:15","slug":"17-the-triple-status-of-supermind-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/18-the-life-divine-volume-18\/17-the-triple-status-of-supermind-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-17_The Triple Status of Supermind .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> 
\nXVI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\n\t\t  The Triple Status of Supermind <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nMy self is
\nthat which supports all beings and constitutes their existence…. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                                                                        
\nI am the self which abides within
\nall beings. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                                                                                    Gita.\u00b9<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                                                                                                                                          Three powers of Light
\nuphold three luminous worlds divine. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                                                                                    Rig Veda.\u00b2<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

    B<\/font><\/b>EFORE<\/font>  we pass to this easier understanding of the world we inhabit from the standpoint of an apprehending
\nTruth-Consciousness which sees things as would an individual soul freed from the limitations of mentality and admitted to
\nparticipate in the action of the Divine Supermind, we must pause and resume briefly what we have realised or can yet
\nrealise of the consciousness of the Lord, the Ishwara as He develops the world
\nby His Maya out of the original concentrated unity of His being. <\/p>\n

     We have started with the assertion
\nof all existence as one Being whose essential nature is Consciousness, one
\nConsciousness whose active nature is Force or Will; and this Being is Delight,
\nthis Consciousness is Delight, this Force or Will is Delight. Eternal and
\ninalienable Bliss of Existence, Bliss of Consciousness, Bliss of Force or Will
\nwhether concentrated in itself and at rest or active and creative, this is God
\nand this is ourselves in our essential, our non-phenomenal being. Concentrated
\nin itself, it possesses or rather is the essential, eternal, inalienable Bliss;
\nactive and creative, it possesses or rather becomes the delight of the play of
\nexistence, the play of consciousness, the play of force and will. That play is
\nthe universe and that delight is the sole cause, motive and object of cosmic
\nexistence. The Divine Consciousness possesses that play and delight eternally
\nand inalienably; our essential being, our real self which is concealed from us
\nby the false self or mental ego, also enjoys that play and delight eternally and
\ninalienably and cannot indeed do otherwise since it is one in being with the
\nDivine Consciousness. If we aspire therefore to a divine life, we cannot attain
\nto it by any <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

         
\n\u00b9<\/font> IX. 5; X. 20.           
\n\u00b2<\/font>
\nV. 29. 1.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-142 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

other way than by unveiling this veiled self in us,
\nby mounting from our present status in the false self or mental ego to
\na
\nhigher status in the true self, the Atman, by entering into that unity
\nwith the Divine Consciousness which something superconscient in us
\nalways enjoys,—otherwise we could not exist,—but which our conscious
\nmentality has forfeited.\n<\/p>\n

     But when we thus assert
\nthis unity of Sachchidananda on the one hand and this divided mentality
\non the other, we posit
\ntwo opposite entities one of which must be false if the other is to be
\nheld as true, one of which must be abolished if the other
\nis to be enjoyed. Yet it is in the mind and its form of life and body
\nthat we exist on earth and, if we must abolish the
\nconsciousness of mind, life and body in order to reach the one
\nExistence, Consciousness and Bliss, then a divine life here is
\nimpossible. We must abandon cosmic existence utterly as an illusion in
\norder to enjoy or re-become the Transcendent. From
\nthis solution there is no escape unless there be an intermediate link
\nbetween the two which can explain them to each other
\nand establish between them such a relation as will make it possible for
\nus to realise the one Existence, Consciousness,
\nDelight in the mould of the mind, life and body.\n<\/p>\n

     The intermediate link
\nexists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it
\nis a principle superior to
\nmentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and
\nunity of things and not like the mind in their
\nappearances and phenomenal divisions. The existence of the Supermind is
\na logical necessity arising directly from the
\nposition with which we have started. For in itself Sachchidananda must
\nbe a spaceless and timeless absolute of conscious
\nexistence that is bliss; but the world is, on the contrary, an
\nextension in Time and Space and a movement, a working out, a
\ndevelopment of relations and possibilities by causality—or what so
\nappears to us—in Time and Space. The true name of this
\nCausality is Divine Law and the essence of that Law is an inevitable
\nself-development of the truth of the thing that is, as
\nIdea, in the very essence of what is developed; it is a previously
\nfixed determination of relative movements out of the stuff
\nof infinite possibility. That which thus develops all things must be a
\nKnowledge-Will or Conscious-\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-143<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Force; for all manifestation of universe is a play
\nof the Conscious-Force which is the essential nature of existence. But
\nthe
\ndeveloping Knowledge-Will cannot be mental; for mind does not know,
\npossess or govern this Law, but is governed by it, is
\none of its results, moves in the phenomena of the self-development and
\nnot at its root, observes as divided things the results
\nof the development and strives in vain to arrive at their source and
\nreality. Moreover this Knowledge-Will which develops all
\nmust be in possession of the unity of things and must out of it
\nmanifest their multiplicity; but mind is not in possession of that
\nunity, it has only an imperfect possession of a part of the
\nmultiplicity.<\/p>\n

     
\nTherefore there must be a principle superior to the Mind which
\nsatisfies the conditions in which Mind fails. No doubt, it
\nis Sachchidananda itself that is this principle, but Sachchidananda not
\nresting in its pure infinite invariable consciousness, but
\nproceeding out of this primal poise, or rather upon it as a base and in
\nit as a continent, into a movement which is its form of
\nEnergy and instrument of cosmic creation. Consciousness and Force are
\nthe twin essential aspects of the pure Power of
\nexistence; Knowledge and Will must therefore be the form which that
\nPower takes in creating a world of relations in the
\nextension of Time and Space. This Knowledge and this Will must be one,
\ninfinite, all-embracing, all-possessing, all-forming,
\nholding eternally in itself that which it casts into movement and form.
\nThe Supermind then is Being moving out into a
\ndeterminative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself
\nand wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial
\nextension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in
\nits own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as
\nTruth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also
\nself-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time
\nand Space.<\/p>\n

     
\nThis, then, is the nature of the Divine Consciousness which creates in itself all things by a movement of its
\nconscious-force and governs their development through a self-evolution by inherent knowledge-will of the truth of existence
\nor real-idea which has formed them. The Being that is thus conscient is what we call God; and He must obviously be
\nomnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Omnipresent, for all forms are forms of His
\ncon-<\/p>\n

\nPage-144<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

scious being created by its force of movement in its own extension as Space and Time; omniscient, for all things exist in
\nHis conscious-being, are formed by it and possessed by it; omnipotent, for this all-possessing consciousness is also an
\nall-possessing Force and all-informing Will. And this Will and Knowledge are not at war with each other as our will and
\nknowledge are capable of being at war with each other, because they are not different but are one movement of the same
\nbeing. Nor can they be contradicted by any other will, force or consciousness from outside or within; for there is no
\nconsciousness or force external to the One, and all energies and formations of knowledge within are not other than it, but
\nare merely play of the one all-determining Will and the one all-harmonising Knowledge. What we see as a clash of wills and
\nforces, because we dwell in the particular and divided and cannot see the whole, the Supermind envisages as the conspiring
\nelements of a predetermined harmony which is always present to it because the totality of things is eternally subject to its
\ngaze.<\/p>\n

     
\nWhatever be the poise or form its action takes, this will always be the
\nnature of the divine Consciousness. But, its
\nexistence being absolute in itself, its power of existence is also
\nabsolute in its extension, and it is not therefore limited to one
\npoise or one form of action. We, human beings, are phenomenally a
\nparticular form of consciousness, subject to Time and
\nSpace, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we
\nknow of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation,
\none poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is
\nfor us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge;
\nall the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has
\ndisappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true,
\nbecause it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the
\nDivine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so
\nlimited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one
\nenduring poise even for all time. We find that in the principle
\nof Supermind itself it has three such general poises or sessions of its
\nworld-founding consciousness. The first founds the
\ninalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to
\nsupport the manifestation of the Many in One and One in
\nMany; the third further modifies it so as to\n<\/p>\n

   
\n Page-145<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the
\nillusion of the separate ego.\n<\/p>\n

     We have seen what is the
\nnature of this first and primary poise of the Supermind which founds
\nthe inalienable unity of
\nthings. It is not the pure unitarian consciousness; for that is a
\ntimeless and spaceless concentration of Sachchidananda in
\nitself, in which Conscious Force does not cast itself out into any kind
\nof extension and, if it contains the universe at all,
\ncontains it in eternal potentiality and not in temporal actuality.
\nThis, on the contrary, is an equal self-extension of
\nSachchidananda all-comprehending, all-possessing, all-constituting. But
\nthis all is one, not many; there is no individualisation.
\nIt is when the reflection of this Supermind falls upon our stilled and
\npurified self that we lose all sense of individuality; for
\nthere is no concentration of consciousness there to support an
\nindividual development. All is developed in unity and as one;
\nall is held by this Divine Consciousness as forms of its existence, not
\nas in any degree separate existences. Somewhat as
\nthe thoughts and images that occur in our mind are not separate
\nexistences to us, but forms taken by our consciousness, so
\nare all names and forms to this primary Supermind. It is the pure
\ndivine ideation and formation in the Infinite,—only an
\nideation and formation that is organised not as an unreal play of
\nmental thought, but as a real play of conscious being. The
\ndivine soul in this poise would make no difference between
\nConscious-Soul and Force-Soul, for all force would be action of
\nconsciousness, nor between Matter and Spirit since all mould would be
\nsimply form of Spirit.\n<\/p>\n

     In the second poise of the
\nSupermind the Divine Consciousness stands back in the idea from the
\nmovement which it
\ncontains, realising it by a sort of apprehending consciousness,
\nfollowing it, occupying and inhabiting its works, seeming to
\ndistribute itself in its forms. In each name and form it would realise
\nitself as the stable Conscious-Self, the same in all; but
\nalso it would realise itself as a concentration of Conscious-Self
\nfollowing and supporting the individual play of movement and
\nupholding its differentiation from other play of movement,—the same
\neverywhere in soul-essence, but varying in soul-form.
\nThis\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-146<\/p>\n

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

\n

concentration supporting the soul-form would be the
\nindividual Divine or Jivatman as distinguished from the universal
\nDivine
\nor one all-constituting self. There would be no essential difference,
\nbut only a practical differentiation for the play which
\nwould not abrogate the real unity. The universal Divine would know all
\nsoul-forms as itself and yet establish a different
\nrelation with each separately and in each with all the others. The
\nindividual Divine would envisage its existence as a
\nsoul-form and soul-movement of the One and, while by the comprehending
\naction of consciousness it would enjoy its unity
\nwith the One and with all soul-forms, it would also by a forward or
\nfrontal apprehending action support and enjoy its
\nindividual movement and its relations of a free difference in unity
\nboth with the One and with all its forms. If our purified
\nmind were to reflect this secondary poise of Supermind, our soul could
\nsupport and occupy its individual existence and yet
\neven there realise itself as the One that has become all, inhabits all,
\ncontains all, enjoying even in its particular modification
\nits unity with God and its fellows. In no other circumstance of the
\nsupramental existence would there be any characteristic
\nchange; the only change would be this play of the One that has
\nmanifested its multiplicity and of the Many that are still one,
\nwith all that is necessary to maintain and conduct the play.\n<\/p>\n

     A third poise of the
\nSupermind would be attained if the supporting concentration were no
\nlonger to stand at the back, as
\nit were, of the movement, inhabiting it with a certain superiority to
\nit and so following and enjoying, but were to project itself
\ninto the movement and to be in a way involved in it. Here, the
\ncharacter of the play would be altered, but only in so far as
\nthe individual Divine would so predominantly make the play of relations
\nwith the universal and with its other forms the
\npractical field of its conscious experience that the realisation of
\nutter unity with them would be only a supreme
\naccompaniment and constant culmination of all experience; but in the
\nhigher poise unity would be the dominant and
\nfundamental experience and variation would be only a play of the unity.
\nThis tertiary poise would be therefore that of a sort
\nof fundamental blissful dualism in unity—no longer unity qualified by a
\nsubordinate dualism—\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-147<\/p>\n

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

\n

between the individual Divine and its universal source, with all the consequences that would accrue from the maintenance
\nand operation of such a dualism.\n<\/p>\n

     It may be said that the
\nfirst consequence would be a lapse into the ignorance of Avidya which
\ntakes the Many for the
\nreal fact of existence and views the One only as a cosmic sum of the
\nMany. But there would not necessarily be any such
\nlapse. For the individual Divine would still be conscious of itself as
\nthe result of the One and of its power of conscious
\nself-creation, that is to say, of its multiple self-centration
\nconceived so as to govern and enjoy manifoldly its manifold
\nexistence in the extension of Time and Space; this true spiritual
\nindividual would not arrogate to itself an independent or
\nseparate existence. It would only affirm the truth of the
\ndifferentiating movement along with the truth of the stable unity,
\nregarding them as the upper and lower poles of the same truth, the
\nfoundation and culmination of the same divine play; and
\nit would insist on the joy of the differentiation as necessary to the
\nfullness of the joy of the unity.<\/p>\n

     
\nObviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing
\nwith the same Truth; the Truth of existence
\nenjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise
\nof the soul in enjoying it would be different. The
\ndelight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the
\nstatus of the Truth-Consciousness and involve no lapse
\ninto the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary
\nSupermind would only develop and apply in the terms
\nof the divine multiplicity what the primary Supermind had held in the
\nterms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of
\nthese three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion. The
\nlanguage of the Upanishads, the supreme ancient authority
\nfor these truths of a higher experience, when they speak of the Divine
\nexistence which is manifesting itself, implies the
\nvalidity of all these experiences. We can only assert the priority of
\nthe oneness to the multiplicity, a priority not in time but in
\nrelation of consciousness, and no statement of supreme spiritual
\nexperience, no Vedantic philosophy denies this priority or
\nthe eternal dependence of the Many on the One. It is because in Time
\nthe Many seem not to be eternal but to manifest out
\nof the One and return into it as their\n<\/p>\n

\n Page-148<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

essence that their reality is denied; but it might equally be reasoned that the eternal persistence or, if you will, the eternal
\nrecurrence of the manifestation in Time is a proof that the divine multiplicity is an eternal fact of the Supreme beyond Time
\nno less than the divine unity; otherwise it could not have this characteristic of inevitable eternal recurrence in Time.<\/p>\n

     
\nIt is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis
\non one side of spiritual experience, affirms that
\nto be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our
\nall-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive
\nschools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the
\nunitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the
\ndivine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of
\nreal difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this
\nerror of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that
\nthe play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the
\nOne in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual
\nsoul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert
\nthe eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the
\nexperience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness.
\nOr, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the
\nSupreme and the human soul are eternally different and
\nreject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish
\nthat difference. But the position that we have now
\nfirmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and
\nexclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these
\naffirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an
\nill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the
\nabsolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not
\nlimited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as
\na basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity
\nas the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment
\nof unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present
\nstatement with these discussions or undertake the vain
\nlabour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the
\nabsolute freedom of the Divine Infinite. <\/p>\n

\n Page-149<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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