{"id":651,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=651"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:29","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:29","slug":"15-the-supermind-as-creator-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\/15-the-supermind-as-creator-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-15_The Supermind as Creator .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER <\/p>\n

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

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


\n\t\tThe Supermind as Creator<\/p>\n

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\nAll things are self-deployings of the Divine
\nKnowledge.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n                                                                        Vishnu Purana.\u00b9<\/font><\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     A<\/font><\/b> principle of active Will and Knowledge superior to Mind and creatrix of the worlds is then the intermediary power and
\nstate of being between that self-possession of the One and this flux of the Many. This principle is not entirely alien to us; it
\ndoes not belong solely and incommunicably to a Being who is entirely other than ourselves or to a state of existence from
\nwhich we are mysteriously projected into birth, but also rejected and unable to return. If it seems to us to be seated on
\nheights far above us, yet are they the heights of our own being and accessible to our tread. We can not only infer and
\nglimpse that Truth, but we are capable of realising it. We may by a progressive expanding or a sudden luminous
\nself-transcendence mount up to these summits in unforgettable moments or dwell on them during hours or days of greatest
\nsuperhuman experience. When we descend again, there are doors of communication which we can keep always open or
\nreopen even though they should constantly shut. But to dwell there permanently on this last and highest summit of the
\ncreated and creative being is in the end the supreme ideal for our evolving human consciousness when it seeks not
\nself-annulment but self-perfection. For, as we have seen, this is the original Idea and the final harmony and truth to which
\nour gradual self-expression in the world returns and which it is meant to achieve.<\/p>\n

     
\nStill, we may doubt whether it is possible, now or at all, to give any
\naccount of this state to the human intellect or to utilise in any
\ncommunicable and organisable way its divine workings for the elevation
\nof our human knowledge and action.
\nThe doubt does not arise solely from the rarity or dubiety of any known
\nphenomena that would betray a human working of
\nthis divine faculty, or from the remoteness which separates this action<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9 <\/font>II. 12. 39.<\/font> <\/p>\n

 Page-122<\/font><\/p>\n

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from the experience and verifiable knowledge of ordinary humanity; it is strongly suggested also by the apparent
\ncontradiction in both essence and operation between human mentality and the divine Supermind.\n<\/p>\n

     And certainly, if this
\nconsciousness had no relation at all to mind nor anywhere any identity
\nwith the mental being, it
\nwould be quite impossible to give any account of it to our human
\nnotions. Or, if it were in its nature only vision in knowledge
\nand not at all dynamic power of knowledge, we could hope to attain by
\nits contact a beatific state of mental illumination, but
\nnot a greater light and power for the works of the world. But since
\nthis consciousness is creatrix of the world, it must be not
\nonly state of knowledge, but power of knowledge, and not only a Will to
\nlight and vision, but a Will to power and works. And
\nsince Mind too is created out of it, Mind must be a development by
\nlimitation out of this primal faculty and this mediatory act
\nof the supreme Consciousness and must therefore be capable of resolving
\nitself back into it through a reverse development
\nby expansion. For always Mind must be identical with Supermind in
\nessence and conceal in itself the potentiality of
\nSupermind, however different or even contrary it may have become in its
\nactual forms and settled modes of operation. It
\nmay not then be an irrational or unprofitable attempt to strive by the
\nmethod of comparison and contrast towards some idea
\nof the Supermind from the standpoint and in the terms of our
\nintellectual knowledge. The idea, the terms may well be
\ninadequate and yet still serve as a finger of light pointing us onward
\non a way which to some distance at least we may tread.
\nMoreover it is possible for Mind to rise beyond itself into certain
\nheights or planes of consciousness which receive into
\nthemselves some modified light or power of the supramental
\nconsciousness and know that by an illumination, intuition or a direct
\ncontact or experience, although to live in it and see and act from it
\nis a victory that has not yet been made humanly possible<\/p>\n

     . And first we may pause a moment
\nand ask ourselves whether no light can be found from the past which will guide
\nus towards these ill-explored domains. We need a name, and we need a
\nstarting-point. For we have called this state of consciousness the<\/p>\n

 Page-123 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Supermind; but the word is ambiguous since it may be taken in the sense of mind itself super-eminent and lifted above
\nordinary mentality but not radically changed, or on the contrary it may bear the sense of all that is beyond mind and
\ntherefore assume a too extensive comprehensiveness which would bring in even the Ineffable itself. A subsidiary
\ndescription is required which will more accurately limit its significance.\n<\/p>\n

     It is the cryptic verses of
\nthe Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the
\ngospel of the divine and
\nimmortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to
\nus. We can see through these utterances the
\nconception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary
\nfirmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is
\nluminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth
\nof vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and
\nmovement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of
\naction and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast
\nall-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that
\nvastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity;
\ntruth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth
\nof being: these seem to be the essential terms of the
\nVedic description. The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are
\npowers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in
\ntheir proper home, are in their knowledge “truth-conscious” and in
\ntheir action possessed of the “seer-will”. Their
\nconscious-force turned towards works and creation is possessed and
\nguided by a perfect and direct knowledge of the thing
\nto be done and its essence and its law,—a knowledge which determines a
\nwholly effective will-power that does not deviate
\nor falter in its process or in its result, but expresses and fulfils
\nspontaneously and inevitably in the act that which has been
\nseen in the vision. Light is here one with Force, the vibrations of
\nknowledge with the rhythm of the will and both are one,
\nperfectly and without seeking, groping or effort, with the assured
\nresult. The divine Nature has a double power, a
\nspontaneous self-formulation and self-arrangement which wells naturally
\nout of the essence of the thing manifested and
\nexpresses its original truth, and a self-force of light inherent in the
\nthing itself and the source of its spontaneous and
\ninevitable self-arrangement.\n<\/p>\n

   
\n Page-124<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

     <\/p>\n

There are subordinate, but important details. The Vedic seers seem to speak of two primary faculties of the
\n“truth-conscious” soul; they are Sight and Hearing, by which is intended direct operations of an inherent Knowledge
\ndescribable as truth-vision and truth-audition and reflected from far-off in our human mentality by the faculties of revelation
\nand inspiration. Besides, a distinction seems to be made in the operations of the Supermind between knowledge by a
\ncomprehending and pervading consciousness which is very near to subjective knowledge by identity and knowledge by a
\nprojecting, confronting, apprehending consciousness which is the beginning of objective cognition. These are the Vedic
\nclues. And we may accept from this ancient experience the subsidiary term “truth-consciousness” to delimit the connotation
\nof the more elastic phrase, Supermind.<\/p>\n

     
\nWe see at once that such a consciousness, described by such characteristics, must be an intermediate formulation
\nwhich refers back to a term above it and forward to another below it; we see at the same time that it is evidently the link
\nand means by which the inferior develops out of the superior and should equally be the link and means by which it may
\ndevelop back again towards its source. The term above is the unitarian or indivisible consciousness of pure Sachchidananda
\nin which there are no separating distinctions; the term below is the analytic or dividing consciousness of Mind which can
\nonly know by separation and distinction and has at the most a vague and secondary apprehension of unity and infinity,—for,
\nthough it can synthetise its divisions, it cannot arrive at a true totality. Between them is this comprehensive and creative
\nconsciousness, by its power of pervading and comprehending knowledge the child of that self-awareness by identity which
\nis the poise of the Brahman and by its power of projecting, confronting, apprehending knowledge parent of that awareness
\nby distinction which is the process of the Mind.<\/p>\n

     
\nAbove, the formula of the One eternally stable and immutable; below,
\nthe formula of the Many which, eternally
\nmutable, seeks but hardly finds in the flux of things a firm and
\nimmutable standing-point; between, the seat of all trinities, of
\nall that is biune, of all that becomes Many-in-One and yet remains
\nOne-in-\n<\/p>\n

  
\n  Page-125<\/p>\n

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Many because it was originally One that is always potentially Many. This intermediary term is therefore the beginning and
\nend of all creation and arrangement, the Alpha and the Omega, the starting-point of all differentiation, the instrument of all
\nunification, originative, executive and consummative of all realised or realisable harmonies. It has the knowledge of the One,
\nbut is able to draw out of the One its hidden multitudes; it manifests the Many, but does not lose itself in their
\ndifferentiations. And shall we not say that its very existence points back to Something beyond our supreme perception of the
\nineffable Unity,—Something ineffable and mentally inconceivable not because of its unity and indivisibility, but because of its
\nfreedom from even these formulations of our mind,—Something beyond both unity and multiplicity? That would be the utter
\nAbsolute and Real which yet justifies to us both our knowledge of God and our knowledge of the world.<\/p>\n

     
\nBut these terms are large and difficult to grasp; let us come to precisions. We speak of the One as Sachchidananda; but
\nin the very description we posit three entities and unite them to arrive at a trinity. We say “Existence, Consciousness, Bliss”,
\nand then we say, “they are one.” It is a process of the mind. But for the unitarian consciousness such a process is
\ninadmissible. Existence is Consciousness and there can be no distinction between them; Consciousness is Bliss and there
\ncan be no distinction between them. And since there is not even this differentiation, there can be no world. If that is the sole
\nreality, then world is not and never existed, can never have been conceived; for indivisible consciousness is undividing
\nconsciousness and cannot originate division and differentiation. But this is a
\nreductio ad absurdum<\/i>; we cannot admit it
\nunless we are content to base everything upon an impossible paradox and an unreconciled antithesis.<\/p>\n

     
\nOn the other hand, Mind can conceive with precision divisions as real;
\nit can conceive a synthetic totality or the finite
\nextending itself indefinitely; it can grasp aggregates of divided
\nthings and the samenesses underlying them; but the ultimate
\nunity and absolute infinity are to its conscience of things abstract
\nnotions and unseizable quantities, not something that is real<\/p>\n

\n Page-126<\/font><\/p>\n

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to its grasp, much less something that is alone
\nreal. Here is therefore the very opposite term to the unitarian
\nconsciousness;
\nwe have, confronting the essential and indivisible unity, an essential
\nmultiplicity which cannot arrive at unity without
\nabolishing itself and in the very act confessing that it could never
\nreally have existed. Yet it was; for it is this that has found
\nunity and abolished itself. And again we have a reductio ad absurdum<\/i> repeating the violent paradox which seeks to
\nconvince thought by stunning it and the irreconciled and irreconcilable antithesis.\n<\/p>\n

     The difficulty, in its
\nlower term, disappears if we realise that Mind is only a preparatory
\nform of our consciousness.
\nMind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential
\nknowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely
\nfrom the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or
\ndelimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole
\ninto its parts which it regards as separate mental objects. It is only
\nthe parts and accidents that the Mind can see definitely
\nand, after its own fashion, know. Of the whole its only definite idea
\nis an assemblage of parts or a totality of properties and
\naccidents. The whole not seen as a part of something else or in its own
\nparts, properties and accidents is to the mind no
\nmore than a vague perception; only when it is analysed and put by
\nitself as a separate constituted object, a totality in a larger
\ntotality, can Mind say to itself, “This now I know.” And really it does
\nnot know. It knows only its own analysis of the object
\nand the idea it has formed of it by a synthesis of the separate parts
\nand properties that it has seen. There its characteristic
\npower, its sure function ceases, and if we would have a greater, a
\nprofounder and a real knowledge,—a knowledge and not
\nan intense but formless sentiment such as comes sometimes to certain
\ndeep but inarticulate parts of our mentality,—Mind
\nhas to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by
\ntranscending it or reverse and so rectify its operations
\nafter leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a
\nvaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The
\nutmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has
\nemerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to
\nenlighten its blind instincts, random intuitions, vague perceptions
\ntill it shall become capable of this greater light and\n<\/p>\n

\n     Page-127<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

this higher ascension. Mind is a passage, not a culmination.\n<\/p>\n

     On the other hand, the
\nunitarian consciousness or indivisible Unity cannot be that impossible
\nentity, a thing without
\ncontents out of which all contents have issued and into which they
\ndisappear and become annihilated. It must be an original
\nself-concentration in which all is contained but in another manner than
\nin this temporal and spatial manifestation. That which
\nhas thus concentrated itself, is the utterly ineffable and
\ninconceivable Existence which the Nihilist images to his mind as the
\nnegative Void of all that we know and are but the Transcendentalist
\nwith equal reason may image to his mind as the positive
\nbut indistinguishable Reality of all that we know and are. “In the
\nbeginning,” says the Vedanta, “was the one Existence
\nwithout a second”, but before and after the beginning, now, for ever
\nand beyond Time is that which we cannot describe
\neven as the One, even when we say that nothing but That is. What we can
\nbe aware of is, first, its original
\nself-concentration which we endeavour to realise as the indivisible
\nOne; secondly, the diffusion and apparent disintegration
\nof all that was concentrated in its unity which is the Mind’s
\nconception of the universe; and thirdly, its firm self-extension in
\nthe Truth-consciousness which contains and upholds the diffusion and
\nprevents it from being a real disintegration, maintains
\nunity in utmost diversity and stability in utmost mutability, insists
\non harmony in the appearance of an all-pervading strife and
\ncollision, keeps eternal cosmos where Mind would arrive only at a chaos
\neternally attempting to form itself. This is the
\nSupermind, the Truth-consciousness, the Real-Idea which knows itself
\nand all that it becomes.\n<\/p>\n

     Supermind is the vast
\nself-extension of the Brahman that contains and develops. By the Idea
\nit develops the triune
\nprinciple of existence, consciousness and bliss out of their
\nindivisible unity. It differentiates them, but it does not divide. It
\nestablishes a Trinity, not arriving like the Mind from the three to the
\nOne, but manifesting the three out of the One,—for it
\nmanifests and develops,—and yet maintaining them in the unity,—for it
\nknows and contains. By the differentiation it is able
\nto bring forward one or other of them as the effective Deity which
\ncontains the others involved or explicit in itself and this
\nprocess it makes the\n<\/p>\n

  
\n  Page-128<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

foundation of all other differentiations. And it acts by the same operation on all the principles and possibilities which it
\nevolves out of this all-constituent trinity. It possesses the power of development, of evolution, of making explicit, and that
\npower carries with it the other power of involution, of envelopment, of making implicit. In a sense, the whole of creation
\nmay be said to be a movement between two involutions, Spirit in which all is involved and out of which all evolves
\ndownward to the other pole of Matter, Matter in which also all is involved and out of which all evolves upwards to the other
\npole of Spirit.\n<\/p>\n

     Thus the whole process of
\ndifferentiation by the Real-Idea creative of the universe is a putting
\nforward of principles,
\nforces, forms which contain for the comprehending consciousness all the
\nrest of existence within them and front the
\napprehending consciousness with all the rest of existence implicit
\nbehind them. Therefore all is in each as well as each in all.
\nTherefore every seed of things implies in itself all the infinity of
\nvarious possibilities, but is kept to one law of process and
\nresult by the Will, that is to say, by the Knowledge-Force of the
\nConscious-Being who is manifesting himself and who, sure
\nof the Idea in himself, predetermines by it his own forms and
\nmovements. The seed is the Truth of its own being which this
\nSelf-Existence sees in itself, the resultant of that seed of
\nself-vision is the Truth of self-action, the natural law of
\ndevelopment, formation and functioning which follows inevitably upon
\nthe self-vision and keeps to the processes involved in
\nthe original Truth. All Nature is simply, then, the Seer-Will, the
\nKnowledge-Force of the Conscious-Being at work to evolve
\nin force and form all the inevitable truth of the Idea into which it
\nhas originally thrown itself.<\/p>\n

     
\nThis conception of the Idea points us to the essential contrast between our mental consciousness and the
\nTruth-Consciousness. We regard thought as a thing separate from existence, abstract, unsubstantial, different from reality,
\nsomething which appears one knows not whence and detaches itself from objective reality in order to observe, understand
\nand judge it; for so it seems and therefore is to our all-dividing, all-analysing mentality. The first business of Mind is to
\nrender “discrete”, to make fissures much more than to discern, and so it has made this  paral-<\/p>\n

\nPage-129<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

ysing fissure between thought and reality. But in Supermind all being is consciousness, all consciousness is of being,
\nand the idea, a pregnant vibration of consciousness, is equally a vibration of being pregnant of itself; it is an initial coming
\nout, in creative self-knowledge, of that which lay concentrated in uncreative self-awareness. It comes out as Idea that is a
\nreality, and it is that reality of the Idea which evolves itself, always by its own power and consciousness of itself, always
\nself-conscious, always self-developing by the will inherent in the Idea, always self-realising by the knowledge ingrained in its
\nevery impulsion. This is the truth of all creation, of all evolution.\n<\/p>\n

     In Supermind being,
\nconsciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as
\nthey seem to be in our
\nmental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three
\neffective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the
\neffect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the
\nself-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and
\napprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the
\nidea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not
\nmental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is
\nReal-Idea.<\/p>\n

     
\nIn Supermind knowledge in the Idea is not divorced from will in the Idea, but one with it—just as it is not different from
\nbeing or substance, but is one with the being, luminous power of the substance. As the power of burning light is not different
\nfrom the substance of the fire, so the power of the Idea is not different from the substance of the Being which works itself
\nout in the Idea and its development. In our mentality all are different. We have an idea and a will according to the idea or an
\nimpulsion of will and an idea detaching itself from it; but we differentiate effectually the idea from the will and both from
\nourselves. I am; the idea is a mysterious abstraction that appears in me, the will is another mystery, a force nearer to
\nconcreteness, though not concrete, but always something that is not myself, something that I have or get or am seized with,
\nbut am not. I make a gulf also between my will, its means and the effect, for these I regard as concrete realities outside and
\nother than myself. Therefore neither myself nor the idea nor the will in me are self-effective. The idea may fall away from
\nme, the will may fail, the means\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-130<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

may be lacking, I myself by any or all of these lacunae may remain unfulfilled.\n<\/p>\n

     But in the Supermind there
\nis no such paralysing division, because knowledge is not self-divided,
\nforce is not
\nself-divided, being is not self-divided as in the mind; they are
\nneither broken in themselves, nor divorced from each other.
\nFor the Supermind is the Vast; it starts from unity, not division, it
\nis primarily comprehensive, differentiation is only its
\nsecondary act. Therefore whatever be the truth of being expressed, the
\nidea corresponds to it exactly, the will-force to the
\nidea,—force being only power of the consciousness,—and the result to
\nthe will. Nor does the idea clash with other ideas,
\nthe will or force with other will or force as in man and his world; for
\nthere is one vast Consciousness which contains and
\nrelates all ideas in itself as its own ideas, one vast Will which
\ncontains and relates all energies in itself as its own energies. It
\nholds back this, advances that other, but according to its own
\npreconceiving Idea-Will.\n<\/p>\n

     This is the justification
\nof the current religious notions of the omnipresence, omniscience and
\nomnipotence of the Divine
\nBeing. Far from being an irrational imagination they are perfectly
\nrational and in no way contradict either the logic of a
\ncomprehensive philosophy or the indications of observation and
\nexperience. The error is to make an unbridgeable gulf
\nbetween God and man, Brahman and the world. That error elevates an
\nactual and practical differentiation in being,
\nconsciousness and force into an essential division. But this aspect of
\nthe question we shall touch upon afterwards. At
\npresent we have arrived at an affirmation and some conception of the
\ndivine and creative Supermind in which all is one in
\nbeing, consciousness, will and delight, yet with an infinite capacity
\nof differentiation that deploys but does not destroy the
\nunity,—in which Truth is the substance and Truth rises in the Idea and
\nTruth comes out in the form and there is one truth of
\nknowledge and will, one truth of self-fulfilment and therefore of
\ndelight; for all self-fulfilment is satisfaction of being. Therefore,
\nalways, in all mutations and combinations a self-existent and
\ninalienable harmony. <\/p>\n

\nPage-131<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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