{"id":631,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=631"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:21","slug":"19-mind-and-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\/19-mind-and-supermind-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-19_Mind and Supermind .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> 
\nXVIII<\/p>\n

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

\nMind and Supermind<\/font> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

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

   He discovered
\nthat Mind was the Brahman.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                Taittiriya Upanishad<\/i>.<\/font>\u00b9
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIndivisible,
\nbut as if divided in beings. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                            Gita.<\/i><\/font>\u00b2
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

    T<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\nconception which we have so far been striving to form is that of the
\nessence only of the supramental life which the
\ndivine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but
\nwhich the human soul has to manifest in this body of
\nSachchidananda formed here into the mould of a mental and physical
\nliving. But so far as we have been able yet to envisage
\nthis supramental existence, it does not seem to have any connection or
\ncorrespondence with life as we know it, life active
\nbetween the two terms of our normal existence, the two firmaments of
\nmind and body. It seems rather to be a state of
\nbeing, a state of consciousness, a state of active relation and mutual
\nenjoyment such as disembodied souls might possess and
\nexperience in a world without physical forms, a world in which
\ndifferentiation of souls had been accomplished but not
\ndifferentiation of bodies, a world of active and joyous infinities, not
\nof form-imprisoned spirits. Therefore it might reasonably
\nbe doubted whether such a divine living would be possible with this
\nlimitation of bodily form and this limitation of
\nform-imprisoned mind and form-trammelled force which is what we now
\nknow as existence. <\/p>\n

     In fact, we have striven to arrive
\nat some conception of that supreme infinite being, conscious-force and
\nself-delight of which our world is a creation and our mentality a perverse
\nfigure; we have tried to give ourselves an idea of what this divine Maya may be,
\nthis Truth-Consciousness, this Real-Idea by which the conscious force of the
\ntranscendent and universal Existence conceives, forms and governs the universe,
\nthe order, the cosmos of its manifested delight of being. But we have not
\nstudied the connections of these four great and divine terms with the three
\nothers with <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

       
\n\u00b9<\/font>III. 4. <\/font>    
\n\u00b2 <\/font>XIII. 17.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-159 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

which our human experience is alone familiar,—mind, life and body. We have not scrutinised this other and apparently
\nundivine Maya which is the root of all our striving and suffering or seen how precisely it develops out of the divine reality or
\nthe divine Maya. And till we have done this, till we have woven the missing cords of connection, our world is still
\nunexplained to us and the doubt of a possible unification between that higher existence and this lower life has still a basis.
\nWe know that our world has come forth from Sachchidananda and subsists in His being; we conceive that He dwells in it as
\nthe Enjoyer and Knower, Lord and Self; we have seen that our dual terms of sensation, mind, force, being can only be
\nrepresentations of His delight, His conscious force, His divine existence. But it would seem that they are actually so much
\nthe opposite of what He really and supernally is that we cannot while dwelling in the cause of these opposites, cannot while
\ncontained in the lower triple term of existence attain to the divine living. We must either exalt this lower being into that
\nhigher status or exchange body for that pure existence, life for that pure condition of conscious-force, sensation and
\nmentality for that pure delight and knowledge which live in the truth of the spiritual reality. And must not this mean that we
\nabandon all earthly or limited mental existence for something which is its opposite,—either for some pure state of the Spirit
\nor else for some world of the Truth of things, if such exists, or other worlds, if such exist, of divine Bliss, divine Energy,
\ndivine Being? In that case the perfection of humanity is elsewhere than in humanity itself; the summit of its earthly evolution
\ncan only be a fine apex of dissolving mentality whence it takes the great leap either into formless being or into worlds
\nbeyond the reach of embodied Mind.\n<\/p>\n

     But in reality all that we
\ncall undivine can only be an action of the four divine principles
\nthemselves, such action of them
\nas was necessary to create this universe of forms. Those forms have
\nbeen created not outside but in the divine existence,
\nconscious-force and bliss, not outside but in and as a part of the
\nworking of the divine Real-Idea. There is therefore no
\nreason to suppose that there cannot be any real play of the higher
\ndivine consciousness in a world of forms or that forms
\nand their\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-160<\/p>\n

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

\n

immediate supports, mental consciousness, energy of vital force and formal substance, must necessarily distort that which
\nthey represent. It is possible, even probable that mind, body and life are to be found in their pure forms in the divine Truth
\nitself, are there in fact as subordinate activities of its consciousness and part of the complete instrumentation by which the
\nsupreme Force always works. Mind, life and body must then be capable of divinity; their form and working in that short
\nperiod out of possibly only one cycle of the terrestrial evolution which Science reveals to us, need not represent all the
\npotential workings of these three principles in the living body. They work as they do because they are by some means
\nseparated in consciousness from the divine Truth from which they proceed. Were this separation once abrogated by the
\nexpanding energy of the Divine in humanity, their present functioning might well be converted, would indeed naturally be
\nconverted by a supreme evolution and progression into that purer working which they have in the Truth-Consciousness.\n<\/p>\n

     In that case not only would
\nit be possible to manifest and maintain the divine consciousness in the
\nhuman mind and body
\nbut, even, that divine consciousness might in the end, increasing its
\nconquests, remould mind, life and body themselves into a
\nmore perfect image of its eternal Truth and realise not only in soul
\nbut in substance its kingdom of heaven upon earth. The
\nfirst of these victories, the internal, has certainly been achieved in
\na greater or less degree by some, perhaps by many, upon
\nearth; the other, the external, even if never more or less realised in
\npast aeons as a first type for future cycles and still held
\nin the subconscious memory of the earth-nature, may yet be intended as
\na coming victorious achievement of God in
\nhumanity. This earthly life need not be necessarily and for ever a
\nwheel of half-joyous half-anguished effort; attainment may
\nalso be intended and the glory and joy of God made manifest upon earth.\n<\/p>\n

     What Mind, Life and Body
\nare in their supreme sources and what therefore they must be in the
\nintegral completeness
\nof the divine manifestation when informed by the Truth and not cut off
\nfrom it by the separation and the ignorance in which
\npresently we live,—this then is the problem that we have next to
\nconsider.<\/p>\n

\n Page-161<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

For there they must have already their perfection towards which we here are growing,—we who are only the first shackled
\nmovement of the Mind which is evolving in Matter, we who are not yet liberated from the conditions and effects of that
\ninvolution of spirit in form, that plunge of Light into its own shadow by which the darkened material consciousness of
\nphysical Nature was created. The type of all perfection towards which we grow, the terms of our highest evolution must
\nalready be held in the divine Real-Idea; they must be there formed and conscious for us to grow towards and into them: for
\nthat pre-existence in the divine knowledge is what our human mentality names and seeks as the Ideal. The Ideal is an
\neternal Reality which we have not yet realised in the conditions of our own being, not a non-existent which the Eternal and
\nDivine has not yet grasped and only we imperfect beings have glimpsed and mean to create.\n<\/p>\n

     Mind, first, the chained
\nand hampered sovereign of our human living. Mind in its essence is a
\nconsciousness which
\nmeasures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole
\nand contains them as if each were a separate integer.
\nEven with what exists only as obvious parts and fractions, Mind
\nestablishes this fiction of its ordinary commerce that they
\nare things with which it can deal separately and not merely as aspects
\nof a whole. For, even when it knows that they are not
\nthings in themselves, it is obliged to deal with them as if they were
\nthings in themselves; otherwise it could not subject them
\nto its own characteristic activity. It is this essential characteristic
\nof Mind which conditions the workings of all its operative
\npowers, whether conception, perception, sensation or the dealings of
\ncreative thought. It conceives, perceives, senses things
\nas if rigidly cut out from a background or a mass and employs them as
\nfixed units of the material given to it for creation or
\npossession. All its action and enjoyment deal thus with wholes that
\nform part of a greater whole, and these subordinate
\nwholes again are broken up into parts which are also treated as wholes
\nfor the particular purposes they serve. Mind may
\ndivide, multiply, add, subtract, but it cannot get beyond the limits of
\nthis mathematics. If it goes beyond and tries to conceive
\na real whole, it loses itself in a foreign element; it falls from its
\nown firm ground into the ocean of the\n<\/p>\n

 Page-162<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

intangible, into the abysms of the infinite where it
\ncan neither perceive, conceive, sense nor deal with its subject for
\ncreation
\nand enjoyment. For if Mind appears sometimes to conceive, to perceive,
\nto sense or to enjoy with possession the infinite, it is
\nonly in seeming and always in a figure of the infinite. What it does
\nthus vaguely possess is simply a formless Vast and not
\nthe real spaceless infinite. The moment it tries to deal with that, to
\npossess it, at once the inalienable tendency to delimitation
\ncomes in and the Mind finds itself again handling images, forms and
\nwords. Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only
\nsuffer it or be possessed by it; it can only lie blissfully helpless
\nunder the luminous shadow of the Real cast down on it from
\nplanes of existence beyond its reach. The possession of the infinite
\ncannot come except by an ascent to those supramental
\nplanes, nor the knowledge of it except by an inert submission of Mind
\nto the descending messages of the Truth-Conscious
\nReality.\n<\/p>\n

     This essential faculty and
\nthe essential limitation that accompanies it are the truth of Mind and
\nfix its real nature and
\naction, svabhā<\/font>va <\/i>and svadharma;<\/i>
\nhere is the mark of the divine fiat assigning it its office in the
\ncomplete instrumentation of
\nthe supreme Maya,—the office determined by that which it is in its very
\nbirth from the eternal self-conception of the
\nSelf-existent. That office is to translate always infinity into the
\nterms of the finite, to measure off, limit, depiece. Actually it
\ndoes this in our consciousness to the exclusion of all true sense of
\nthe infinite; therefore Mind is the nodus of the great
\nIgnorance, because it is that which originally divides and distributes,
\nand it has even been mistaken for the cause of the
\nuniverse and for the whole of the divine Maya. But the divine Maya
\ncomprehends Vidya as well as Avidya, the Knowledge
\nas well as the Ignorance. For it is obvious that since the finite is
\nonly an appearance of the infinite, a result of its action, a
\nplay of its conception and cannot exist except by it, in it, with it as
\na background, itself form of that stuff and action of that
\nforce, there must be an original consciousness which contains and views
\nboth at the same time and is intimately conscious
\nof all the relations of the one with the other. In that consciousness
\nthere is no ignorance, because the infinite is known and
\nthe finite is not separated from it as an independent reality;\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-163<\/p>\n

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

\n

but still there is a subordinate process of delimitation,—otherwise no world could exist,—a process by which the ever
\ndividing and reuniting consciousness of Mind, the ever divergent and convergent action of Life and the infinitely divided and
\nself-aggregating substance of Matter come, all by one principle and original act, into phenomenal being. This subordinate
\nprocess of the eternal Seer and Thinker, perfectly luminous, perfectly aware of Himself and all, knowing well what He does,
\nconscious of the infinite in the finite which He is creating, may be called the divine Mind. And it is obvious that it must be a
\nsubordinate and not really a separate working of the Real-Idea, of the Supermind, and must operate through what we have
\ndescribed as the apprehending movement of the Truth-Consciousness.\n<\/p>\n

     That apprehending
\nconsciousness, the Prajnana, places, as we have seen, the working of
\nthe indivisible All, active and
\nformative, as a process and object of creative knowledge before the
\nconsciousness of the same All, originative and
\ncognisant as the possessor and witness of its own working,—somewhat as
\na poet views the creations of his own
\nconsciousness placed before him in it as if they were things other than
\nthe creator and his creative force, yet all the time
\nthey are really no more than the play of self-formation of his own
\nbeing in itself and are indivisible there from their creator.
\nThus Prajnana makes the fundamental division which leads to all the
\nrest, the division of the Purusha, the conscious soul
\nwho knows and sees and by his vision creates and ordains, and the
\nPrakriti, the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his
\nknowledge and his vision, his creation and his all-ordaining power.
\nBoth are one Being, one existence, and the forms seen
\nand created are multiple forms of that Being which are placed by Him as
\nKnowledge before Himself as Knower, by
\nHimself as Force before Himself as Creator. The last action of this
\napprehending consciousness takes place when the
\nPurusha pervading the conscious extension of his being, present at
\nevery point of himself as well as in his totality, inhabiting
\nevery form, regards the whole as if separately, from each of the
\nstandpoints he has taken; he views and governs the
\nrelations of each soul-form of himself with other soul-forms from the
\nstandpoint of will and knowledge appropriate to each
\nparticular form.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-164<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

    
\nThus the elements of division have come into being. First, the infinity
\nof the One has translated itself into an extension in
\nconceptual Time and Space; secondly, the omnipresence of the One in
\nthat self-conscious extension translates itself into a
\nmultiplicity of the conscious soul, the many Purushas of the Sankhya;
\nthirdly, the multiplicity of soul-forms has translated
\nitself into a divided habitation of the extended unity. This divided
\nhabitation is inevitable the moment these multiple Purushas
\ndo not each inhabit a separate world of its own, do not each possess a
\nseparate Prakriti building a separate universe, but
\nrather all enjoy the same Prakriti,—as they must do, being only
\nsoul-forms of the One presiding over the multiple creations
\nof His power,—yet have relations with each other in the one world of
\nbeing created by the one Prakriti. The Purusha in
\neach form actively identifies himself with each; he delimits himself in
\nthat and sets off his other forms against it in his
\nconsciousness as containing his other selves which are identical with
\nhim in being but different in relation, different in the
\nvarious extent, various range of movement and various view of the one
\nsubstance, force, consciousness, delight which each
\nis actually deploying at any given moment of Time or in any given field
\nof Space. Granted that in the divine Existence,
\nperfectly aware of itself, this is not a binding limitation, not an
\nidentification to which the soul becomes enslaved and which it
\ncannot exceed as we are enslaved to our self-identification with the
\nbody and unable to exceed the limitation of our
\nconscious ego, unable to escape from a particular movement of our
\nconsciousness in Time determining our particular field in
\nSpace; granted all this, still there is a free identification from
\nmoment to moment which only the inalienable self-knowledge
\nof the divine soul prevents from fixing itself in an apparently rigid
\nchain of separation and Time succession such as that in
\nwhich our consciousness seems to be fixed and chained.<\/p>\n

     
\nThus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with
\nwill-of-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with knowledge-of-being as if they were separate
\nconsciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only “as if”; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as<\/p>\n

\n Page-165<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the reality of being; it does not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a
\nsubordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its awareness of infinity, a delimitation
\ndependent on its awareness of essential totality—not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation
\nwhich is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses its defining power for the play of
\nwell-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.\n<\/p>\n

     A new factor, a new action
\nof conscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a
\nhelplessly limited as
\nopposed to a freely limiting mind,—that is to say, of mind subject to
\nits own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind
\nmaster of its own play and viewing it in its truth, the creature mind
\nas opposed to the divine. That new factor is Avidya, the
\nself-ignoring faculty which separates the action of mind from the
\naction of the Supermind that originated and still governs it
\nfrom behind the veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the
\nparticular and not the universal, or conceives only the
\nparticular in an unpossessed universal and no longer both particular
\nand universal as phenomena of the Infinite. Thus we
\nhave the limited mind which views every phenomenon as a
\nthing-in-itself, separate part of a whole which again exists
\nseparately in a greater whole and so on, enlarging always its
\naggregates without getting back to the sense of a true infinity<\/p>\n

     .
\nMind, being an action of the Infinite, depieces as well as aggregates ad infinitum<\/i>. It cuts up being into wholes, into ever
\nsmaller wholes, into atoms and those atoms into primal atoms, until it would, if it could, dissolve the primal atom into
\nnothingness. But it cannot, because behind this dividing action is the saving knowledge of the supramental which knows
\nevery whole, every atom to be only a concentration of all-force, of all-consciousness, of all-being into phenomenal forms of
\nitself. The dissolution of the aggregate into an infinite nothingness at which Mind seems to arrive, is to the Supermind only
\nthe return of the self-concentrating conscious-being out of its phenomenon into its infinite existence. Whichever way its
\nconsciousness proceeds, by the way of infinite division or by the way of\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-166<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 infinite enlargement, it arrives only at
\nitself, at its own infinite unity and eternal being. And when the
\naction of the mind is
\nconsciously subordinate to this knowledge of the Supermind, the truth
\nof the process is known to it also and not at all
\nignored; there is no real division but only an infinitely multiple
\nconcentration into forms of being and into arrangements of the
\nrelation of those forms of being to each other in which division is a
\nsubordinate appearance of the whole process necessary
\nto their spatial and temporal play. For divide as you will, get down to
\nthe most infinitesimal atom or form the most monstrous
\npossible aggregate of worlds and systems, you cannot get by either
\nprocess to a thing-in-itself; all are forms of a Force
\nwhich alone is real in itself while the rest are real only as
\nself-imagings or manifesting self-forms of the eternal
\nForce-Consciousness.\n<\/p>\n

     Whence then does the
\nlimiting Avidya, the fall of mind from Supermind and the consequent
\nidea of real division
\noriginally proceed? exactly from what perversion of the supramental
\nfunctioning? It proceeds from the individualised soul
\nviewing everything from its own standpoint and excluding all others; it
\nproceeds, that is to say, by an exclusive concentration
\nof consciousness, an exclusive self-identification of the soul with a
\nparticular temporal and spatial action which is only a part
\nof its own play of being; it starts from the soul’s ignoring the fact
\nthat all others are also itself, all other action its own action
\nand all other states of being and consciousness equally its own as well
\nas the action of the one particular moment in Time
\nand one particular standing-point in Space and the one particular form
\nit presently occupies. It concentrates on the moment,
\nthe field, the form, the movement so as to lose the rest; it has then
\nto recover the rest by linking together the succession of
\nmoments, the succession of points of Space, the succession of forms in
\nTime and Space, the succession of movements in
\nTime and Space. It has thus lost the truth of the indivisibility of
\nTime, the indivisibility of Force and Substance. It has lost
\nsight even of the obvious fact that all minds are one Mind taking many
\nstandpoints, all lives one Life developing many
\ncurrents of activity, all body and form one substance of Force and
\nConsciousness concentrating into many apparent
\nstabilities of force and                                                                                                             \n<\/p>\n

\nPage-167<\/p>\n

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

\n

consciousness; but in truth all these stabilities
\nare really only a constant whorl of movement repeating a form while it
\nmodifies it; they are nothing more. For the Mind tries to clamp
\neverything into rigidly fixed forms and apparently unchanging
\nor unmoving external factors, because otherwise it cannot act; it then
\nthinks it has got what it wants: in reality all is a flux of
\nchange and renewal and there is no fixed form-in-itself and no
\nunchanging external factor. Only the eternal Real-Idea is
\nfirm and maintains a certain ordered constancy of figures and relations
\nin the flux of things, a constancy which the Mind
\nvainly attempts to imitate by attributing fixity to that which is
\nalways inconstant. These truths Mind has to rediscover; it
\nknows them all the time, but only in the hidden back of its
\nconsciousness, in the secret light of its self-being; and that light is
\nto it a darkness because it has created the ignorance, because it has
\nlapsed from the dividing into the divided mentality,
\nbecause it has become involved in its own workings and in its own
\ncreations.\n<\/p>\n

     This ignorance is farther
\ndeepened for man by his self-identification with the body. To us mind
\nseems to be determined
\nby the body, because it is preoccupied with that and devoted to the
\nphysical workings which it uses for its conscious
\nsuperficial action in this gross material world. Employing constantly
\nthat operation of the brain and nerves which it has
\ndeveloped in the course of its own development in the body, it is too
\nabsorbed in observing what this physical machinery
\ngives to it to get back from it to its own pure workings; those are to
\nit mostly subconscious. Still we can conceive a life mind
\nor life being which has got beyond the evolutionary necessity of this
\nabsorption and is able to see and even experience itself
\nassuming body after body and not created separately in each body and
\nending with it; for it is only the physical impress of
\nmind on matter, only the corporeal mentality that is so created, not
\nthe whole mental being. This corporeal mentality is
\nmerely our surface of mind, merely the front which it presents to
\nphysical experience. Behind, even in our terrestrial being,
\nthere is this other, subconscious or subliminal to us, which knows
\nitself as more than the body and is capable of a less materialised
\naction. To this we owe immediately most of the larger, deeper and more<\/p>\n

\n Page-168<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

forceful dynamic action of our surface mind; this, when we become conscious of it or of its impress on us, is our first idea or
\nour first realisation of a soul or inner being, Purusha.\u00b9<\/font> \n<\/p>\n

    
\nBut this life mentality also, though it may get free from the error of
\nbody, does not make us free from the whole error of
\nmind; it is still subject to the original act of ignorance by which the
\nindividualised soul regards everything from its own
\nstandpoint and can see the truth of things only as they present
\nthemselves to it from outside or else as they rise up to its
\nview from its separate temporal and spatial consciousness, forms and
\nresults of past and present experience. It is not
\nconscious of its other selves except by the outward indications they
\ngive of their existence, indications of communicated
\nthought, speech, action, result of actions, or subtler indications—not
\nfelt directly by the physical being—of vital impact and
\nrelation. Equally is it ignorant of itself; for it knows of its self
\nonly through a movement in Time and a succession of lives in
\nwhich it has used its variously embodied energies. As our physical
\ninstrumental mind has the illusion of the body, so this
\nsubconscious dynamic mind has the illusion of life. In that it is
\nabsorbed and concentrated, by that it is limited, with that it
\nidentifies its being. Here we do not yet get back to the meeting-place
\nof mind and Supermind and the point at which they
\noriginally separated.\n<\/p>\n

     But there is still another
\nclearer reflective mentality behind the dynamic and vital which is
\ncapable of escaping from this
\nabsorption in life and views itself as assuming life and body in order
\nto image out in active relations of energy that which it
\nperceives in will and thought. It is the source of the pure thinker in
\nus; it is that which knows mentality in itself and sees the
\nworld not in terms of life and body but of mind; it is that\u00b2
\n<\/font> which, when we get back to it, we sometimes mistake for the pure spirit as we mistake the dynamic mind for the soul. This
\nhigher mind is able to perceive and deal with other souls as other forms of its pure self; it is capable of sensing them by pure
\nmental impact and communication and no longer only by vital and nervous impact and physical indications; it conceives too a
\nmental figure of unity, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

      
\n\u00b9<\/font> 
\nPerceived as the life being or vital being, prā<\/font>namaya purusa.<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

        
\n<\/i><\/font>\u00b2<\/font>
\nThe mental being, <\/font>manomaya purusa.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage-169<\/p>\n

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

\n

and in its activity and its will it can create and
\npossess more directly—not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical
\nlife—and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still even
\nthis pure mentality does not escape from the original
\nerror of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes
\nthe judge, witness and centre of the universe and through
\nit alone strives to arrive at its own higher self and reality; all
\nothers are “others” grouped to it around itself: when it wills to
\nbe free, it has to draw back from life and mind in order to disappear
\ninto the real unity. For there is still the veil created by Avidya
\nbetween the mental and supramental action; an image of the Truth gets
\nthrough, not the Truth itself.\n<\/p>\n

     It is only when the veil is
\nrent and the divided mind overpowered, silent and passive to a
\nsupramental action that mind
\nitself gets back to the Truth of things. There we find a luminous
\nmentality reflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine
\nReal-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is; we know in every
\nway ourselves in others and as others, others as
\nourselves and all as the universal and self-multiplied One. We lose the
\nrigidly separate individual standpoint which is the
\nsource of all limitation and error. Still, we perceive also that all
\nthat the ignorance of Mind took for the truth was in fact truth
\nbut truth deflected, mistaken and falsely conceived. We still perceive
\nthe division, the individualising, the atomic creation, but
\nwe know them and ourselves for what they and we really are. And so we
\nperceive that the Mind was really a subordinate
\naction and instrumentation of the Truth-Consciousness. So long as it is
\nnot separated in self-experience from the enveloping
\nMaster-Consciousness and does not try to set up house for itself, so
\nlong as it serves passively as an instrumentation and
\ndoes not attempt to possess for its own benefit, Mind fulfils
\nluminously its function which is in the Truth to hold forms apart
\nfrom each other by a phenomenal, a purely formal delimitation of their
\nactivity behind which the governing universality of the
\nbeing remains conscious and untouched. It has to receive the truth of
\nthings and distribute it according to the unerring
\nperception of a supreme and universal Eye and Will. It has to uphold an
\nindividualisation of active consciousness, delight,
\nforce, substance which\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-170<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

derives all its power, reality and joy from an
\ninalienable universality behind. It has to turn the multiplicity of the
\nOne into an
\napparent division by which relations are defined and held off against
\neach other so as to meet again and join. It has to
\nestablish the delight of separation and contact in the midst of an
\neternal unity and intermiscence. It has to enable the One to
\nbehave as if He were an individual dealing with other individuals but
\nalways in His own unity, and this is what the world
\nreally is. The mind is the final operation of the apprehending
\nTruth-Consciousness which makes all this possible, and what
\nwe call the Ignorance does not create a new thing and absolute
\nfalsehood but only misrepresents the Truth. The Ignorance
\nis the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge and
\ngiving a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of
\nopposition and conflict to the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in
\nits universal manifestation.\n<\/p>\n

     The fundamental error of
\nthe Mind is, then, this fall from self-knowledge by which the
\nindividual soul conceives of its
\nindividuality as a separate fact instead of as a form of Oneness and
\nmakes itself the centre of its own universe instead of
\nknowing itself as one concentration of the universal. From that
\noriginal error all its particular ignorances and limitations are
\ncontingent results. For, viewing the flux of things only as it flows
\nupon and through itself, it makes a limitation of being from
\nwhich proceeds a limitation of consciousness and therefore of
\nknowledge, a limitation of conscious force and will and
\ntherefore of power, a limitation of self-enjoyment and therefore of
\ndelight. It is conscious of things and knows them only as
\nthey present themselves to its individuality and therefore it falls
\ninto an ignorance of the rest and thereby into an erroneous
\nconception even of that which it seems to know: for since all being is
\ninterdependent, the knowledge either of the whole or
\nof the essence is necessary for the right knowledge of the part. Hence
\nthere is an element of error in all human knowledge.
\nSimilarly our will, ignorant of the rest of the all-will, must fall
\ninto error of working and a greater or less degree of incapacity
\nand impotence; the soul’s self-delight and delight of things, ignoring
\nthe all-bliss and by defect of will and knowledge unable
\nto master its world, must fall into incapacity\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-171<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of possessive delight and therefore into suffering. Self-ignorance is therefore the root of all the perversity of our existence,
\nand that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation, the egoism which is the form taken by that self-ignorance.<\/p>\n

     
\nYet is all ignorance and all perversity only the distortion of the truth and right of things and not the play of an absolute
\nfalsehood. It is the result of Mind viewing things in the division it makes, avidyā<\/font>yā<\/font>m antare,<\/i>
\ninstead of viewing itself and its
\ndivisions as instrumentation and phenomenon of the play of the truth of
\nSachchidananda. If it gets back to the truth from
\nwhich it fell, it becomes again the final action of the
\nTruth-Consciousness in its apprehensive operation, and the relations it
\nhelps to create in that light and power will be relations of the Truth
\nand not of the perversity. They will be the straight things
\nand not the crooked, to use the expressive distinction of the Vedic
\nRishis,—Truths, that is to say, of divine being with its
\nself-possessive consciousness, will and delight moving harmoniously in
\nitself. Now we have rather the warped and zigzag
\nmovement of mind and life, the contortions created by the struggle of
\nthe soul once grown oblivious of its true being to find
\nitself again, to resolve back all error into the truth which both our
\ntruth and our error, our right and our wrong limit or distort,
\nall incapacity into the strength which both our power and our weakness
\nare a struggle of force to grasp, all suffering into the
\ndelight which both our joy and our pain are a convulsive effort of
\nsensation to realise, all death into the immortality to which both our
\nlife and our death are a constant effort of being to return. <\/p>\n

\nPage-172<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER  XVIII Mind and Supermind                                  He discovered that Mind was the Brahman.                                                 Taittiriya Upanishad.\u00b9 Indivisible, but as if divided in beings.                                                            …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","wpcat-13-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","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=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}