Matter as 'Substance of the Spirit'
I
Not from Mind to Supermind...
the ways are 'other'!
THIS is not - and, perhaps, cannot be - a paper like the usual ones! There is nothing 'usual' about the subject itself.
A presentation - sequential and standing complete by itself - would not be a true rendering of this experience. An experience which is taking place in the life of humanity - in the being of man and in the new structures of his life and his civilisations, in the upheavals and movements that mark our times.
We will be true to experience as it is being lived - in its concreteness and in its specificity - without trying to 'organise' it in a seeming pattern of 'coherence', which is the mind's way of dealing with everything. We shall only attempt to share some of this experience, as it comes, without an effort to 'explain' it, in any way whatsoever.
Such is the nature of the action of the Supermind in Matter... it sees, it acts, it creates... and the multiple vibrates with its single movement. This movement is visible, it is there....
An intermediary instrument - such as the mind - is not needed to explain and organise this 'action', in the limits of its own characteristic functioning.
As the nature of the experience - so the form of sharing it. Direct... and as it comes, in its pristine quality.
When the mind reaches its zenith of development - and arrives at the same time at a keen and agonising awareness of its inability to deal effectively with life and with matter - then
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it is getting ready to exceed itself. But not by an increase of its own activity - but by a silencing of it and by a grounding of the stuff of itself 'into the material base of one's being. Specifically - in the body itself.
Thus held in the body, the mind's habitual functioning undergoes a change. A kind of totality of perception - in which knowing, feeling and action form one single movement of perceiving and of being - begins to emerge. It is direct in its nature, not inferential, not successive, not constructional in any way. To be is to see. To see is to know, to feel and to act in one sweep - where there is no distinction between them. There is one movement in which the being participates in all that is around - from the most minute to a wide sweep of existence.
Here lies a path to the Supermind. There must be others -for the infinity of possible approaches have to make themselves manifest.
But it is certainly not by a further and further increase of the activity of the mind as we have known it that we can reach it. A falling away from this activity, in whatever way, seems necessary at a certain stage of the human journey. More one cannot say - but this seems to be sure.
These words of The Mother resound in us:
The effect of the Supramental action will be multiple, infinitely varied, not forced to follow one precise line and the same line for all..1
The Supermind is already realised somewhere in the domain of the subtle physical, it is already existent and visible and concrete, already expressing itself in forms and in activities... And inevitably there is a subtle influence of that phy sicality on external matter if one is ready to receive the impressions and admit them into one's consciousness.2
1. The Mother, Towards February 29,1960, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1960, p. 11.
2. Ibid., p. 12.
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Matter seems to 'haunt' us... with what it carries within itself. We are happier using the French word hantise - which is more sensitively expressive of what we feel. It has almost become a passion of the Spirit!
Not so strange in our times that are unusual...
We share, in these pages, a few lines of experience - concrete for us - without trying to link them up as an 'organised presentation'.
II
Supermind... emerging in Matter?
There is a new Matter - palpable to our touch. To our feel, to our sense of texture, to our sense of fragrance... A matter, of a molten density, of a fullness of 'love'. 'Love' that is not an emotion. Love that is the very stuff of matter. Love that is power - matter in its omniscience.
A matter that has become aware of itself as being the 'substance of the Spirit'.
*
Through a perfection of 'form' and an organisation of 'forms' - which is the great achievement of our times - it has pierced the veil of its own 'objectivity', that kept it from knowing itself in its true state. Its very perfection has fine-tuned it to 'turn within'... matter 'turning within' itself to know what lies hidden in its core. And, it discovers that it is none other than the 'body' of the Spirit.
In this poise of itself as the Spirit, it begins a new creation. The beginning of a new 'possibility' in creation....
No longer one that evolved from a base of inconscience. But one that rises in the full blaze of a golden light - from a matter become conscious of its 'self in the Spirit.
This new creation bursts forth in a 'translucency of matter'.. . in its forms. And 'form' presents itself as consciousness - between 'form' and 'form'... there is no veil that interposes
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itself. There is only a direct contact of 'conscious being' with 'conscious being'... in a space of utter transparency.
A change that is beginning to take place on earth, with us humans... and with nature, as the first instrument to respond to this new manifestation.
This throws the world of man and his civilisations into utter chaos and confusion, with jets of the transparent air piercing great holes in the opaque fabric of the world's life.
Till the 'new' stabilises itself and grows in fullness and in extent, as a growing embryo. And by such growth, it replaces the old.
The 'old' is not transformed - it is replaced. Like the 'new particle' of the physicist, whose very presence makes the old particles lose their energy and disappear in the 'mass'.
This 'new' matter - 'self aware of its own true reality -is there, in our body, in the first instance - and around us, in the contiguity of matter, in which we live and have our being. The old tries to crowd in - but the new emerges and holds its own. It has come to stay. To be - and to grow in fullness.
There are - or, must be, we do not know - a million ways to sense and live in this 'new7 matter. We can only share our own.
Perhaps, the steps that have led to this can be shared. We will try to do so...
As embodied beings, our very personality is grounded in matter. It is the matrix in which we live and move and work. Our entire external personality - not only the body - but in a large measure, the life parts in us and several levels of the mind even, have their base in matter. We have a ground of rootedness in materiality. It is thus that we are here on the earth and live and function as we do.
And, yet, as the mind develops the activity innate to it and takes it to a high peak of achievement, it finds itself... for a while... in a circle of its own self-sufficiency. Of ideas well worked out, of processes that are deductive, constructive or
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sequential. Or, it even has a glimpse of totalities or vast interconnections - but it cannot turn them into direct and concrete 'experience', in which the conscious being, in its integrality, takes part. Mind spins its world, takes it to a lofty perfection and, by the very perfection of this cogency and well-orderedness, shows its limitations! Limitations that are inherent in it - by nature and function.
It makes an abstraction of the rest of life, matter included! It seizes 'figures' of it, offers explanations - but does not enter into the living reality of their existence.
This is a powerful experience that we go through and it marks a turning point in one's movement of consciousness... with its barrenness and a kind of inconclusiveness that leaves life where it was, cold and untouched. The brilliance of thought hangs up above - planning on another level of existence - and existence, in its concreteness, vibrates at its own. Between the two, there is a chasm - in no uncertain terms and of no mean magnitude. The gap is wide, difficult to bridge - and the labour painful in the extreme. Painful... in the sense of being 'physically' painful.
For the link with matter is lost, and to recover it - in another mode of being, for one does not travel backward in a process of growth - there is need of an arduous labour.
How does it take place and work itself out?
The need of it has to be acute - till it hurts! Till one can no longer live in this vacuum, splitting the planes of existence in one's being. Otherwise, the effort needed would not be forthcoming.
The activity of the mind - that is at the 'top' like a point or position of attenuation - of the 'column' of consciousness that is oneself, has to 'travel' down the levels, till it comes to rest in the material base of one's total being, in the body itself, and be firmly held there. This is a first step. And, then, to take its abiding 'station' there and start on a new kind of functioning of itself altogether.
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This process takes time and it is painful to the body itself - not in an emotional way but in a 'physical' one. The natural activity of the mind tries to persist, to re-assert itself at the least provocation. It doesn't unwind its own processes easily! To settle in 'matter' - it has to do the latter. For, in matter, there is a directness - whether of perception or of willing or of action - which is at the level of existence as such. Matter goes straight to the point. It does not deduce, construe or build up.
But this settling down of the activity of the mind... in the base of the material substance of the body itself... does take place. With this, the mind's own functioning begins to change. It perceives, wills and moves into action in one direct movement of conscious being. And the concrete result and effect on life is both immediate and visible.
There is no 'thought' - but there is 'seeing', which effectuates itself at the level of existence, in a 'self-realising' manner. There is no effort, no straining. A totality of process of the conscious being existing in life and matter begins. There is no sense of hiatus anywhere. There is an ease of self-effectuation, marked by simplicity... There is no 'knowing' and, then, a 'doing'. There is a 'seeing' - that just 'works' itself out!
When this new positioning of the mind is firmly established - which takes time, as there are customary recurrences of its earlier activity, because the habit is of long standing -then, one finds that one is within matter... through the body itself. And, through the body, in the 'contiguity of matter' around us.
Our habitual way of dealing with matter, of working with it, is to see it from the 'outside' - to handle it 'organisationally'. To see its bits and pieces and to organise them in spatial relations in an objective sense of dimension.
But to be 'inside' matter and to reach out to it from the core of one's conscious being is to discover matter in an entirely different way. It is supple, malleable, offers itself in a movement of 'self-giving'. It is not fixed, rigid, obdurate with
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hard surfaces - to the touch, to the feel, to smell. It has another quality of substance - for 'substance' it is and always remains.
And this way of being 'inside' matter - of thus penetrating it and working with it - makes one experience all the matter around one's body as an unbroken contiguity of material existence.
There is relation, structuring, form - but no separation, no distancing. Space is there - but as extension of this 'contiguity' of material existence. Time keeps changing its modality. It has its own evolution - it is not given to be always and ever the same! It grows, it changes in its very nature and 'form of being', as the rhythm of the universe creates and recreates itself endlessly from its Eternal source.
The body itself spills over into space and tunes itself to the changing modality of time...
In this contiguity of matter, one lives the life on earth. And matter, reveals more and more, the stuff it is made of... . with a vibrancy, a concreteness, a power that has no parallel, and an 'infallibility' in action unknown before.
There is a joy in that discovery, a sense of delight that floods the entire being. The senses themselves partake of that delight - each in its own manner - in touch and feel, by sight and smell. Matter offers itself as 'substance of the Spirit' to the senses that are turned within! The joys of matter, it is said, are greater than the joys of the mind.3 They have to be experienced to realise how true this is....
We are witness to another line of action on matter - not as an mtimate participant in its existence - but one that consists of a disengagement of its constituents by an objective analysis of it, under externally controlled conditions of experimentation.
We see the physicist using a reductionist method to break up the constituents into their smallest elements and then to re-construct an aggregate by a sum of them - so as to arrive at a knowledge of matter, its properties, the forces at work in
3. Sri Aurobindo
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it and the potencies they carry. The knowledge of the parts leads to the knowledge of the aggregate. A process of reduction and subsequent re-construction is the path followed in an exploration and 'utilisation' of matter.
At a certain point of this labour - arduous, disciplined and productive of astounding results - the physicist has arrived at a discovery that has totally, and irrevocably, reversed this position, on which he had earlier taken his firm stand. That there are no parts that can make an aggregate! He finds himself, in the presence of wholes. A 'whole' of dynamic energy, conscious and self-existent, which presents itself in the parts, losing nothing of its totality and imbuing each part with the role and function it has the specific purpose to serve within the 'whole'.
As if a reversal could be more total - or, more irrevocable!
The functioning of this 'whole' - in matter - is like a rhythmic action that touches the multiple points of its own fine and complex structuring in a single movement of conscious force. The movement of the entire universe is of this nature.
Today, we have a wide world of a net-working technology that is created from the knowledge of forces and of points of transmission and their specification, springing from this perception of matter and of its working. We live by this technology and function by it. A technology that is changing and evolving, by the dizzying speed of new revelations.
A question arises... The physicist has arrived at this reversal of the knowledge he had of matter by continuing to pursue the reductionist method of investigation. Either - the deeper he delves into the stuff of matter, newer realities emerge. Or - some change in the quality of his perceiving consciousness must have taken place, for him to seize hold of realities other than the ones accessible to him earlier.
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We cannot say but, possibly, both have their part to play. The practical application of this reversal of the knowledge of matter, in the form of present-day technology - and its fast pace of further advance - is a fact of all importance that stamps our life in every way.
Moving deeper into the stuff of matter by the method of objective analysis, the physicist reaches a point of great and incredible 'sensitivity'. We use this word, in place of another, because how else to describe the progressive disappearance of a line of demarcation between the objective and the subjective! Matter appears to shed its own objectivity and reveals itself in its utter subjectivity - even to the physicist!
This is the miracle of our times! By whichever method, we move into matter - through our conscious being or by a process of external disengagement of its constituents - we reach its intrinsic status and reality... that of a whole of conscious energy, giving form to itself in a substance that is the 'stuff of the Spirit.
A massive action is in the making... Levels of being, in a vertical dimension, and in the movement of a many-sided axis focussing on to a nodal point seem to be pressing down and into us. With an effort to 'ground' the entire graded complexity of existence into matter - the matter of our being, the body... and, into the matter of the world and of our civilisations.
A massive action reaching into the stuff of matter itself. To make something 'new' emerge from it? To make it conscious of its own omniscience - as substance of the Spirit?
A totality of being - being-in-matter - like the compressed curves of a spiral seem to be our mode of existing! Complex and not easy - but the experience seems to carry an incredible kind of plenitude. Or, the near possibility of it!
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The time of great achievements is not marked by a cloudburst in the sky or a rain of gold. Though both may be there! Matter - by its own refinement in seeking a perfection of the 'form', and by a sounding of its depths by a movement of consciousness - reveals its identity in a totality of its being. Of being conscious of itself as the substance of the Spirit. It is this that is significant - it has become conscious of its 'self.
The millennium that has just begun witnesses the birth of this new creation - beginning from a matter that knows what it is: the body of the Spirit itself.
What will it create? How will it spin a new raiment for man from the gold threads of the Spirit's stuff?
The future awaits us - to reveal its fullness. But the process of this new creation has begun...
Signs are there.. .visible and active. A translucency of gold is in the air - that throws up all things dense in a blaze of light. A power of love and a sense of delight make it possible for us to bear such an action. Gratefully... and to ask for more...
A new perfection beckons - too new to be even given a name...
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