The Destiny of the Body

Chapter X

The Descent of the Supermind

I know that I can lift man's soul to God,

I know that he can bring the Immortal down.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, p. 687)

The integral perfection can come only by a mounting ascent of the lowest into the highest and an incessant descent of the highest into the lowest till all becomes one at once solid block and plastic sea-stuff of the Truth infinite and eternal.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 478)

There are different statuses of the divine consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness. It is only with the latter that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body — in my sense of completeness.

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 118)

In our attempt to chalk out the steps following which an embodied being here upon earth may hope to transfigure his waking existence so much so that a divinely dynamic life can flower out in the earthly garden, we have come to the finding that an essential preliminary condition is for our soul to consciously ascend to the supernal grades of being and power of the self-manifesting spirit, that intervene between our normal mind and the Truth-Consciousness of Supermind.

Of course, it is true that without actually ascending to these higher spiritual mental planes and permanently living there, if we can open ourselves from below to their knowledge and spiritual influences, we can somewhat spiritualise our normal waking being and consciousness. But the spiritual change effected in this way is

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never profound or wide in its scope. It touches only the fringe of our dynamic existence. In order to have an entire consciousness and power of Being, it is altogether indispensable that we gather up our consciousness and rise out of the sphere of ignorant mind into the radiant higher altitudes of the Spirit.

And these ascents must be made in full awareness and not merely in the immobile trance-state of absorbed superconscience. For in the latter case, on the return to the waking consciousness from these temporary sojourns, only an indeterminate spiritual impression may abide but not much of dynamic effect. In order to have the dynamis of the higher spiritual grades of being active and organised in our waking life, we must first effectuate "a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action."¹

But this ascension of our consciousness to these higher luminous planes, even if permanently centred there, does not suffice for the spiritual transformation of our being and nature. The permanent ascent from the lower to the higher consciousness must be followed by the complementary process of a permanent descent of the higher into the lower. The transmutation of our present modes of being and activities into spiritual values leading to the transfiguration of our waking existence necessitates then not merely an ascension to the planes above nor even the exertion from there of an indirect pressure and influence upon our lower being but the bringing down of the Power and Light of the supernal reaches in the very field of our normal being, consciousness and action. For "there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness, and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get mukti but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change)."²

The descent of the spiritual potencies and forces of the higher planes (from the Higher Mind to the Overmind) is thus the third necessary motion following the other two of ascension and permanent stationing above. In this process of percolation, downpour or influx, occur "an increasing inflow from above, an experience of reception and retention of the descending spirit or its powers

¹ The Life Divine, p. 737.

² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 114. (Italics ours)

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and elements of consciousness."¹ When this phase is more or less completed, we say that the being and nature has undergone spiritual transformation, a transformation that links the manifested existence with what lies beyond and above it.

But even this is not enough for our goal. For, the process of spiritualisation brings about mostly a subjective transformation, the instrumental Nature remaining as before full of many disabilities and deficiencies. Even the Overmind, the summit-reach of our spiritual mind-range, fails to effectuate a complete change of Nature, for this too is "subject to limitations in the working of the effective Knowledge, limitations in the working of the Power, subject to a partial and limited Truth."²

For the full and radical transformation what is indispensable is the direct intervention and the unveiled action of the supramental Gnosis in our earth-existence and earth-nature. But that can come about only when a prior ascent to the plane of Supermind is followed by the supramental descent in the field of terrestrial manifestation.

But what precisely are the difficulties offered by our present being and nature, that cannot be satisfactorily met even by the highest spiritual-mental powers ? What are the lacunae involved in the process of spiritual transformation? The essential difficulty comes from the fact that we are evolutionary creatures. Our evolution has started from the apparently blank bosom of Inconscience and this dark heritage of original Nescience is still weighing very heavily upon our nature. Our normal being is almost wholly moulded out of the Inconscience and "it is this substance of nescience that has to be transformed into a substance of super-conscience, a substance in which consciousness and a spiritual awareness are always there even when they are not active, not expressed....Till that is done, the nescience invades or encompasses or even swallows up and absorbs into its oblivious darkness all that enters into it; it compels the descending light to compromise with the lesser light it enters: there is a mixture, a diminution and dilution of itself, a diminution, a modification, an incomplete authenticity of its truth and power."³

It is because of this blind opposing Necessity, this dark attach-

¹ The Life Divine, p. 912.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 106.

³ The Life Divine, p. 961.

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merit to the already established and seemingly inexorable Laws of the Ignorance that the higher spiritual lights and powers, even those of the Overmind, coming down into the obscurity of our physical consciousness lose much of their transforming potency and become instead mutilated, circumscribed and not altogether dynamically effective.

Thus a perfect transfiguration of our lower nature is a far cry if we would rely on the spiritual-mental powers alone. We may feel indeed our inner consciousness luminous and liberated and ecstatic, but our outer being and nature will still go on in their old unregenerate way, bringing in periods of dull obscurations and unwanted reactions due to the play of the guṇas. "The power of divinely illumined mind may be immense compared with ordinary powers, but it will still be subject to incapacity and there can be no perfect correspondence between the force of the effective will and the light of the idea which inspires it. The infinite Presence may be there in status, but dynamis of the operations of nature still belongs to the lower Prakriti, must follow its triple modes of working and cannot give any adequate form to the greatness within it. This is the tragedy of ineffectivity, of the hiatus between ideal and effective will..."¹

This is the reason why it has been always found that a subjective spirituality concentrated on the change of the inner being alone, leaving the outer nature to go its old way, is much easier to accomplish than to objectivise this spirituality in the dynamic life of a free world-action. In the course of our Spiritual Sadhana, our totality of existence very soon and very easily dissociates into two fields, an inner one and an outer one. The inner being and nature has always a much less fettered gait: it awakens easily enough, receives freely the higher spiritual influences and gets more or less transformed. But the external surface self and nature are mostly moulded by the forces of the established Ignorance and the original Nescience. And hence they are tardy in awakening, sluggish in receiving and impervious to uninhibited assimilation. It is, for this reason, "always easier to spiritualise the inner self-sufficient parts than to transform the outer action; a perfection of introspective, indwelling... spirituality aloof from the world or self-protected against it is easier than a perfection of the whole nature in a dynamic, kinetic spirituality objectivised in the life, embracing

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 457. (Italics ours)

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the world, master of its environment, sovereign in its commerce with world-nature."¹

But whether easy of fulfilment or not, this is what we have placed before us as our goal: an integral transformation of our outer being and nature as well as that of the inner one, entailing the divinisation of our waking physical existence and of the dynamic life of action. And as we have mentioned before, it is only the overt intervention of the divine supermind in our earth-nature that can negative the dark Necessity of downward pull of our present evolutionary existence and usher in the establishment of the Life Divine.

And for that an ascent out of the lower hemisphere topped by the Overmind onto the plane of supramental Gnosis becomes the first necessity. For, the dynamic as well as the static realisation of Sachchidananda cannot be inseparably and simultaneously had except through the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness of the divine Reality. "The universe is dynamism, movement — the essential experience of Sachchidananda apart from the dynamism and movement is static. The full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness than the supermind, because the instrumentation in all other [lower] planes is inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the consciousness of the other spiritual planes, even if it descends, can make no radical change in the earth-consciousness, it can only modify or enrich it."²

So we see that this sublime ascent from below, from out of the spiritual mind's sphere, into the supramental plane of being and consciousness, is the first radical step on the way to the fulfilment we have been seeking in our Yoga. But this ascension is not enough: it has to be completed by a supreme descent from above, the descent of the Supermind in earth-nature. For, it is only in the divine Truth-Consciousness or Supermind that the power of dynamic transformation can be integral and absolute.

As a matter of fact, "only the supermind can thus descend without losing its full power of action; for its action is always in-

¹ The Life Divine, p. 960.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 454.

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trinsic and automatic, its will and knowledge identical and the result commensurate: its nature is a self-achieving Truth-consciousness....¹ Only the supramental Force can entirely overcome [the] difficulty of the fundamental Nescience; for with it enters an opposite and luminous imperative Necessity which underlies all things and is the original and final self-determining truth-force of the self-existent Infinite. This greater luminous spiritual Necessity and its sovereign imperative alone can displace or entirely penetrate, transform into itself and so replace the blind Ananke of the Inconscience." ²

So, this is the second capital movement: the descent of the Supermind in earth-existence and earth-nature. But something much more has to be achieved before our goal of divine and dynamic life upon earth becomes a realised fact of existence. The involved Supermind has to emerge to meet the descending Supermind.

As a matter of fact, even now, the supramental principle is here secretly lodged in all existence, even behind the grossest materiality. It is the Supermind that is sustaining and governing this manifested lower worlds by its self-concealed power and law. But at present the Supermind is involved and hidden behind this lower triplicity of mind, life and matter: it cannot act overtly or in its own intrinsic power, because of the absence of proper instrumentation in the earth-nature. Its "power veils itself and [its] law works unseen through the shackled limitations and limping deformations of the lesser rule of our physical, vital, mental Nature."³

Now if the supramental change of the whole substance of our being and of all its modes and movements has at all to be made perfect and integral, this involved Supermind in Nature must be liberated upon earth, join with the descending Supermind, prepare the ground for the divine dynamic play of Supernature (parā prakṛti) and act as "an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings..., — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness-Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole

¹ The Life Divine, p. 917.

² Ibid., p. 962. (Italics ours)

³ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 454.

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and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body...."¹

It is in this way that the spiritual penury of our waking existence can be radically remedied and one can enjoy a divine life here upon earth itself, even in the physical embodied existence, without any "need to shun existence or plunge into the annihilation of the spiritual Person in some self-extinguishing Nirvana."²

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 962-63.

² The Supramental Manifestation, p. 85.

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