The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9

The Supramental Vision

In the supramental vision there is a direct, full and immediate knowledge of things, in the sense that you see all things at the same time totally, integrally; you see the truth of a thing in all its aspects simultaneously.

But as soon as you want to explain or describe it, you are obliged to come down to a lower level. Sri Aurobindo calls it the Mind of Light. Here things have to be said or even thought or expressed and realised in action one after another in a certain order, in a certain relation to each other. Therefore the simultaneity disappears; for, in the present condition of our way of expression it is impossible to say everything at once outright. We are obliged to veil a portion of what we see and know in order to bring it out little by little. Sri Aurobindo therefore calls it a transparent veil; for you see all, you know all at the same time, you have the entire or total knowledge of a thing, but you cannot express it whole and entire at one stroke.

There are no words, no possible modes of expression

Page 70

for the supramental vision, so long as we are what we are. We have to use an inferior procedure to express ourselves, and yet we possess at the same time the full knowledge. It is because of the necessity of transferring this knowledge into words that we are compelled, so to say, to hold back a part of what we know, letting it come out step by step in a succession. It is the veil of expression that suits our need both for utterance and understanding. The knowledge is there, really there, we have not got to search for it and we have not got to express it as we go on finding it; no, it is there in its totality, only the necessity of expression makes us say things one after another, and that naturally diminishes the omnipotence ascribed by Sri Aurobindo to the vision. For what is omnipotent is the total vision expressing itself totally. Omniscience is there, in principle, it is perceptible; but this omniscience cannot act in its full power, for it has to come down a step to be able to express itself.

To live totally in the supramental knowledge, one must have other means of expression than those available at present. New modes of expression have to be developed for expressing supramental things in a supramental way. At present we have to raise our mental faculty to its maximum,

Page 71

to a sort of frontier that is hardly visible and yet which exists; for our means of expression still belong to this mental world and they do not possess supramental power. We do not have the necessary organs. We must become beings of the supramental world, with a supramental substance, a supramental inner organisation, to express the supramental knowledge in a supramental way. Till now we could, in some part of our consciousness, come out wholly into the supramental vision and knowledge, but could not express it from there. We had to come, as I say, one plane lower down to be able to express ourselves.

That is how this veil is transparent to the consciousness, for the consciousness sees and knows things in a supramental way, but a part remains veiled and comes out only progressively, for it has not the means to do otherwise.

Page 72