Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

SRI AUROBINDO'S SUPERMIND AND THE

ANCIENT INDIAN SCRIPTURES

A LETTER

Sri Aurobindo has said that the Vedic Rishis knew the Supermind as "satyam-ritam-brihat" — "the True, the Right, the Vast". In their earliest scripture, the Rigveda, the terms most frequently used in a joint form are "satyam" and "ritam". "Brihat" additionally comes in as applied to one or the other: e.g., "ritam-brihat" (1.75.5). The full Aurobindonian phrase occurs as such only in the Atharvaveda's great hymn to Earth (XII.1.1).

According to Sri Aurobindo, the Supermind is also denoted in the Rigveda by the expression "turiyam .svid" (X.67.1) — "a certain fourth" — whose discoverer is said to have been Rishi Ayasya. This "turiya", however, is not to be mixed up with the fourth state going by that name in the Mandukya Upanishad (7, 12). The Rigvedic "fourth" is not the Mandukyan grand finale, the indescribable Supracosmic who is neither the concentrated "Prajna", the creator and lord of all, nor the subtle "Tejasa", the brilliant dweller in the mid-world, nor the gross-physical "Vaiswanara", the universal godhead of Matter. The "turiya" of the Rigveda stands "fourth" from below as well as from above: it is above the lower triplicity of "prithivi" (earth), "antariksha" (vital mid-world) and "dyau" (mind-heaven) but below the higher triplicity, "tridhatu", constituted by "vasu" (substance), "urj" (abounding force of being) and "priyam" or "mayas" (delight or love), the Rigvedic equivalents of the Vedantic "sat-chit-ananda" (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) and the Puranic "satya-tapas-jana" (truth-energy-creative joy).

Sri Aurobindo appears to be in no doubt that the Vedic seers and the early Upanishadic sages were aware of the Supramental plane. But, in his view, the later sages of the Upanishads concentrated on the infinite "Atman", the sheer

Page 174

Self of selves, which is one with the eternal "Brahman", the ever-silent One without a second, instead of taking it as a supreme basis in the ultimate Reality for that Reality's illimitable power of expression or manifestation. The reason, to Sri Aurobindo, for this concentration on the inactive all-transcending Brahman-Atman is threefold. (1) The Vedics found no way to make the Supermind effective for transformation or divinisation of embodied life. The Upanishadics even held that once one definitely entered "the gates of the sun", symbolising the Supermind, there could be no return to earth-concerns. (2) The Upanishadics came more and more to mistake what the Isha Upanishad calls the "golden lid, covering the face of Truth", as the ultimate dynamic side of the Divine. The "golden lid" Sri Aurobindo distinguishes from the Supermind as the Overmind, a similar-dissimilar delegate of the supreme Truth-Consciousness. Since the Overmind lacks the power to divinise the nature-part of man's existence, the sages began to be convinced that this part which looked undivinisable could not be a real feature of the Brahman who is all: in other words, it must be a strange anomaly, an unreality wearing the appearance of the real. The world thus was regarded in a manner which in philosophical history was the forerunner of the later Shankarite idea of Maya, the indescribable illusionist world-magic. (3) The experience of the supracosmic Absolute, the "nirguna" or quality-less Infinite and Eternal, brought home to the post-Rigvedic Yogis the "proof" of their conviction of the world's non-divinity and unreality, because in this experience the world does actually figure as an insubstantial floating phantasm.

Sri Aurobindo further says that originally the old Indian terms "vijnana" and "mahas" answered also to his Supermind. "Vijnana" occurs in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the level which is beyond the being of "manas" (mind) and precedes the being of "Ananda" (Bliss). The same Upanishad mentions "mahas" and informs us that Rishi Mahachamasya discovered this level. Both "vijnana" and "mahas" came, in

Page 175

course of time, to denote the Overmind. At a still more subsequent period, most probably later than the main Puranas, "vijnana" got identified with "buddhi", the highest stratum of the human intelligence; the pure reason as distinguished from the sense-mind which was labelled as "manas". Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan carried on this practice in our own day. Possibly "mahas" suffered the same degringolade.

Now between the intellect and the Beyond there stood nothing, and the Beyond was identified with the silent Brahman or passive Atman. The concept of "Ishwara" or God remained and was deemed useful for a devotion-oriented or dynamism-motived practical sadhana preparatory to the realisation of the ultimate Supracosmic — but, theoretically and in the final reckoning, this concept was understood as the silent Brahman (alias passive Atman) experienced within Maya as Creator and Lord. The moment Maya was got rid of in the experience of the supracosmic One without a second, Ishwara would disappear, having been rendered superfluous. He was classed as the Highest Illusion,

The last infirmity of noble minds (to adapt a Miltonic phrase to our purpose).

In the Gita we have a great attempt to go back to the ancient integrality of spiritual vision. The "purushottama" — the Supreme Being — who is higher than the "kshara (mutable) purusha" and the "akshara (immutable) purusha" and who subsumes them — does strike one as a Supramental reality, especially when accompanied by the concept of "para-prakriti", the creative Supernature. But this latter concept is rather shadowy and what in the last resort encompasses our minds as "purushottama" is the shining shadow of the Supermind in the top-layer, the synthesising crest of the Overmind from where Sri Krishna who, in Sri Aurobindo's view, is the Being of Bliss ("ananda") come as an Avatar, using the Overmind-divinity as his instrument of manifestation. He wove together the three Yogas — "karma" (Work) "jnana" (Knowledge) and "bhakti" (Devotion) — and

Page 176

suggested the secret of secrets, the abandonment of all "dharmas" (rules, laws, creeds) to take refuge solely in the "purushottama" who would deliver the mortal from all grief and evil. But still the world in the Gita's vision does not quite escape being "anityam asukham" (transient and unhappy), for all the field it offers of a mighty victory of Righteousness as in the Bharata War.

The way in which the Acharyas, the erudite commentators, have interpreted the Gita, each in favour of his own penchant, is not entirely unconnected with the Gita's own many-sided synthesising failure to express what the Over-mind fundamentally moves towards yet is unable to point out unequivocally, much less to reveal convincingly. Taking advantage of whatever temporary stress the Gita,puts on "karma", "jnana" or "bhakti", the Acharyas harp on their spiritual predilections and feel self-justified because the Gita in fact falls short of a fully satisfying unification. The fault with the Acharyas lay in their missing its nisus towards that unification. Sri Aurobindo alone has brought it out unmistakably and disclosed the Overmind Godhead as a help towards the Supermind even though it may be a sublime danger if dwelt in too concentratedly. Hence his designation of the descent of it into his physical being on 24 November 1926 as "siddhi" (fulfilment) and yet his "No" to the Mother some nine months later when she was ready to precipitate the Overmind creation on earth.

Page 177