Supermind in Integral Yoga

Part Two

Supramental Vision of the Supreme Reality:

Indeterminability of the Absolute

Let us first begin with the supramental vision of the ultimate reality. In the supramental realization, the ultimate reality is found to be indeterminable; this indeterminability has two senses; in the first sense, the reality or the absolute is seen to be not limitable or definable by any one determination and by any sum of determinations; in the second sense, the Absolute is seen to be not bound down to an indeterminable vacancy of pure existence. Thus the indeterminable is a source of all determinations, and its indeterminability is a natural and necessary condition both of its infinity of being and its infinity of power of being; it can be infinitely all things because it is no thing in particular and exceeds any definable totality. As Sri Aurobindo explains, it is this essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself into negative positives and their affirming positives, and thus we have a series of positive and negative descriptions of the Absolute which always remains indeterminable. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"It is this essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself into our consciousness through the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience, the immobile immutable Self, the Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal without qualities, the pure featureless One Existence, the Impersonal, the Silence void of activities, the Non-being,

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the Ineffable and the Unknowable. On the other side it is the essence and source of all determinations, and this dynamic essentiality manifests to us through the fundamental affirming positives in which the Absolute equally meets us; for it is the Self that becomes all things, the Saguna Brahman, the Eternal with infinite qualities, the One who is the Many, the infinite Person who is the source and foundation of all persons and personalities, the Lord of creation, the Word, the Master of all works and action; it is that which being known all is known: these affirmatives correspond to those negatives. For it is not possible in a supramental cognition to split asunder the two sides of the One Existence, — even to speak of them as sides is excessive, for they are in each other, their co-existence or one-existence is eternal and their powers sustaining each other found the self-manifestation of the Infinite."¹³

Yogic Experiences during Mind's passage towards Supermind

If we ask as to how we can come to know the Absolute and its Supramental consciousness and power, the answer is that yoga makes possible our passage from our consciousness to the Supermind and to the Absolute. In the yogic passage from the level of the mind towards the supramental status, it is affirmed, these negating positives and affirming positives are, at first, normally experienced, each in exclusive separate cognition, or if not in any extreme exclusivism, but in separate cognitions; they begin to fuse themselves as we rise higher until in the supramental cognition they are seen in each other and their one-existence is found to be natural. In fact, at one of the important stages of the transition from the mental to the supramental, Sri

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Aurobindo points out, one most liberatingly helpful, if not indispensable, experience that may intervene is the entry into a total Nirvana of mentality and mental ego, a passage into the silence of the Spirit. In any case, in the integral yoga, the realization of the pure Self and the Silence of the Spirit must always precede the transition to that mediating eminence of the consciousness from which a clear vision of the ascending and descending stairs of manifested existence is commanded and the position of the freed power of ascent and descent becomes a spiritual prerogative.

Again, there are three important varieties of yogic experience on the basis of which the rival philosophies of Vedanta have come to be formulated; these are found to be, in the supramental consciousness, reflections that are obtained during the transition from the mind to the supermind; these reflections correspond to the three statuses of the supermind. The first status of the supermind, as has already been noted, is that of an equal self-extension of Sachchidananda, all-comprehending, all-possessing, all-constituting. In this status, all is one, not many; there is no individualization. As Sri Aurobindo points out, it is when the reflection of this status of the supermind falls upon our stilled and purified mind and self that we lose all sense of individuality; for there is no concentration of consciousness there to support an individual development; at this stage, therefore, the experience and the realization of the acosmic Absolute is obtained. It is in the second poise of the supermind that consciousness concentrates itself to support individual development by a sort of apprehending consciousness, which is itself a secondary faculty of comprehending consciousness. In the second status of the supermind, on account of the functioning of the apprehending consciousness,

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the universal Divine would know all soul-forms as itself and yet establish a different relation with each separately and in each with all the others. Sri Aurobindo points out that if our purified mind were to reflect this secondary poise of Supermind, our soul could support and occupy its individual existence and yet even there realize itself as the One that has become all, inhabits all, contains all, enjoying even in its particular modification its unity with God and its fellows. At this stage, therefore, the experience and realization of the individual and its inalienable relationship of Identity and Difference is obtained, — the experience and realization that is formulated in the Vedantic philosophy of Qualified Monism. In the third status of the supermind, the individual concentration no longer stands at the back, as it were, of the movement, but it projects itself into the movement so as to be in a way involved in it. It is this tertiary poise that would account for a sort of fundamental blissful dualism in unity, — no longer unity qualified by a subordinate dualism. If this status gets reflected on the purified mind, it would get translated as the experience and realization of blissful dualism. It is His reflection that would explain the truth and the validity of the Dualistic philosophy of the Vedanta. Again, there is the pure unitarian consciousness of Sachchidananda, which is distinguishable from even the first and primary poise of the supermind; that unitarian consciousness is a Timeless and Spaceless concentration of Sachchidananda in itself, in which Conscious-Force does not cast itself out into any kind of extension, and if it contains the universe at all contains it in eternal potentiality and not in temporal actuality. If this unitarian consciousness can get reflected in the Silent Mind, then the corresponding experience and realization could

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form the basis of the philosophy where an exclusive emphasis is laid on the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness.

In the light of the supramental realization of the integral yoga, Sri Aurobindo sums up as follows how human mentality, in its passage upwards from the Mind to the Supermind, lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, and how ultimately the position of integrality removes the necessity of exclusiveness:

"It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But the position that we have now firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done,

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the absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present statement with these discussions or undertake the vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite."'⁴

Supermind and Levels of Consciousness Beyond Supermind

It may be argued that the supramental cognition is, after all, not the final truth of things. It may be contended that the supramental plane of consciousness is an intermediate step between mind, on the one hand, and the complete experience of Sachchidananda on the other. It may, therefore, be urged that in the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit beyond the supramental plane, existence would not at all be based on the determination of the One in multiplicity, and it would manifest solely and simply a pure identity in oneness. In reply to this argument, Sri Aurobindo points out that the supramental Truth-Consciousness would not be absent from these planes, for it is an inherent power of Sachchidananda. Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that in the complete experience of Sachchidananda, determinations would not be demarcations, but they will be plastic, interfused, each a boundless finite. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"For there all is in each and each is in all radically and integrally, — there would be to the utmost a fundamental awareness of identity, a mutual inclusion and inter-penetration of consciousness: knowledge as we envisage it

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would not exist, because it would not be needed, since all would be direct action of consciousness in being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware. But sill relations of consciousness, relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence."¹⁵

Supermind and Ignorance

But all Yoga presupposes the present status of the individual in the state of ignorance from which the individual is striving to liberate himself. Thus there has been this problem of how and why the individual has lapsed from the supramental consciousness and, how and why there is this vast phenomenon of Inconscience and how and why the inconscient undergoes the evolutionary process at the summit of which the humanity stands today in the grip of Ignorance with all its consequences. This is a bewildering question, and even though we find, in the past traditions, clues and hints of the answer, the riddle seems to have remained unresolved. Indeed, in one prominent line of argument, it has been held that Ignorance, avidya, and the cosmic illusionary power, Maya, which is the parent of avidya, are an inexplicable mystery; but it is argued that that mystery, which perplexes the human mind, ceases to bewilder, — not because the mystery is resolved, but because it stands dissolved when the human mind falls completely silent in the ineffable experience of the Absolute. Here there is no reference even to the Maya and avidya, which in reality never existed.¹⁶ The untenability of this answer, — the truth of it, truth behind it and the error in it, — has been studied by

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Sri Aurobindo, and an important part of Sri Aurobindo's "The Life Divine" has been devoted to this study. In terms of the integral yoga, where the integral reality is realized as the Supreme Object of knowledge, knowing which everything becomes known, it is found that Ignorance and Inconscience are neither inexplicable nor an original mystery. According to the integral yoga of the supermind, the Ignorance and the Inconscience are not eternal, their origin can be traced, their rationale can be comprehended, and their root cause can be removed as a result of which, not only can the supramental consciousness be attained but also manifested, individually as well as collectively in the earth-consciousness.

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