Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Lecture IX

Chap. 14. The Supermind as Creator

Chap. 15. The Supreme Truth-Consciousness

We are in the 14th chapter and I would like to compress, if possible, the 14th and the 15th together. We have worked up to what might be called self-possession of the One on one side : the Infinite is, of course, the one Satchidananda. There is the Self-possession of the One and then there are the Many or the multiple on this side. World of ignorance, infinite succession of the movement of the many. There are these two things going on : One and the Many. These many are changing constantly because they flow in time. The flux of the many that we see on this side, flows all the time from the One. Between the world of flux and the world of the One there is the connecting link called the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness. Supermind is a connection—infinity the supermind and the world. Here is the infinite world of the One which is the realm of the truth and the reality—then the world of flux and Many,—of human mind, of ignorance, and the connecting link of the supermind. Supermind is really the creator of the world. We can say that when the infinite turns its gaze toward creation, or moves to creation its nature becomes supermind or Truth-Consciousness. It first becomes truth-conscious before it projects itself into the world as we know it. The one infinite and absolute, when it moves to create the first step that it takes within its own self,—without projection in this material world that we know,—is the creation of a truth-world, a supramental plane of consciousness. Creation begins with Truth-Consciousness and not with a false consciousness. That is the law. At present, it is too high for man to reach but it is attainable by man because it is man's own highest

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possibility or the highest self. Man can and does occasionally open to that consciousness. Mind means the mental consciousness including the intellect and the heart, and generally the vital will-power is added to it. Sometimes the mind ascends and opens to it, or glimpses it, but then it closes; the door opens again and something comes down,—either the light of knowledge or power of it comes down and again the door closes. That is the present relation between mind, and the channel supermind which connects it to the Infinite. Occasionally, there is a chink through which the Light flows on this side of the mind, in society, in man, and that creates religion, philosophy, seeking for truth etc., etc. Now the question that Sri Aurobindo puts here is how to make a permanent relation between this lower triplicity of mind, life and body on this side,—the world of flux,—and the Truth-Consciouness which is attainable by man, which is a potential capacity— the highest to which man can attain. The problem is how to make a permanent ascent to the supramental consciousness. The door has opened occasionally, some Light has come down and the door has closed again. Light has come down and worked here and maintained the world. Even now when the world is not open to it, it is supporting the world from behind. That is not the solution of man's problem. That is the Divine's working. But the world is not divine. To man's consciousness and to his perception the world is not divine though the Divine is supporting it from behind. That is the whole problem. There are people who say the divine is working everywhere and the world is being supported by the Divine, so everything is all right. It is all right when one gets into the Divine consciousness; but when one is not in the divine consciousness then the world is not all right and the world is indeed imperfect. Then the problem of attaining perfection does arise and if it does not arise there is no use trying to set it. To one who says he does not

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believe in possible perfection, the question does not arise. The honest egoistic attitude is much better than saying all is God, everything is God, everything is nice, everything is perfect. Things may be perfectin the Supermind. That is where one has to ascend, then there will be perfection but not now. You cannot know or say with justification and with any sense of honesty that it is perfect because imperfection is self-evident: imperfection does not require to be proved. The Divine is supporting the world otherwise the world would not be, but from that it does not follow that man has to do nothing, rather man has a lot to do. Man who represents the Divine here in mind, life and body, is not merely a piece of matter. That is the first truth to be realized. And because it is the Divine that has allowed the multiplicity and flux of the many and the movement of the universe man has to open his consciousness and ascend to the Higher consciousness and take a permanent station in it. Earth-consciousness would begin to solve its problem when man who is the embodiment of mind, life and body consciousness,—the lower triplicity— consciously embodies within himself the higher working of the Truth-Consciousness which is a first projection of the world from the Infinite, from the One, from Satchidananda. It is difficult to convey to the mind what is the Supermind and how the infinite One, above all relativities and absolutes, manages to create this world and become the creator. To the mind this is difficult to convey because the process is not mental. Still there is some relation between Mind and Supermind; between this world and the Truth-World. One can not say that because it cannot be described, therefore it does not exist. If I experience something wonderful and marvellous, it may defy description but it does not mean that it does not exist. There is a relation between this imperfect world and that perfect world, but it is very difficult, to convey the idea to the mind because of the rarety of the

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experience and also the difficulty of communication. Human language and mind being limited instruments of expression of the soul, do not lend themselves easily to an expression of this truth, which is so baffing to the mind. That is why, those who speak about it resort to symbols when they express the higher Reality. It is not that they do not have the experience. They have the experience but to convey it in terms of the intellect is very difficult. Therefore, they make use of symbols. That is the easiest way of conveying whatever truth they see to other people. Still, mind can certainly know something about it. But when it knows something about it, it can also doubt it and ask : "Does that world really exist or are you making a mental concept and a vision out of it ? Is it only the mind's vision which has relevance only to mind without any applicability to life ? Does this Truth-Consciousness correspond to a Power, not merely a vision of Truth—something that is there as seen, not something that can work and is dynamic ? These questions the mind can ask. One way of solving them is for the mind to make an ascent to the Higher Consciousness and learn the truth. In fact mind is derivative from Supermind. You can see that the process of creation, from being to becoming, from the One to the Many, from the absolute, to the relative, or, from the Truth-Consciousness to the world as we know it, includes the creation of mind, life, and matter. So mind is a derivative power of this Truth-Consciousness. Therefore, there is a relation between them. Mind, even without its knowing, is supported by this Consciousness. Mind is not left alone to work out the problem of reaching the Reality. Mind seeks the Reality because it is derivative from the Reality. Naturally, therefore, it tries to go back to the reality. We can know something about it in the mind when it works in the mind as inspiration, as revelation. That is how people have known something about it. An intuition comes, an inspiration

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comes, some light comes, a vision of some revelation comes—giving a vision of some higher Truth. Thus an opening is made in mental consciousness. That gives us a first inkling.

More than that, the fingerpost of this nature of creative Divine Consciousness is given in one of the oldest books of the world, the Veda. The language used is symbolic but still it points to the process of how the Satchidananda, the infinite and the Eternal has become, so to say, the flux that we perceive as the world. The flux, the world, is contained in it. In what way is it contained ? It speaks of this as the 'Vast', Bṛhat—a vastness that is beyond the firmament of our physical and mental consciousness. It says The Vast is "beyond earth and heaven." Earth is the physical consciousness, Heaven is the mental consciousness. Beyond the two firmaments of earth and heaven is the Vastness, Bṛhat, the word they use in the Veda. It is all-comprehensive, luminous Truth-Consciousness, it is harmony of being. And in the Vastness you have comprehensiveness, luminosity of truth and harmony of being and we speak of this as God. The consciousness of God is Truth-Consciousness; it is not a mental consciousness. Agni is said to be Seer-will, the will that actuates itself in it. Light is one with the force of Will, Knowledge and Will go together; where the vibration of knowledge is one with rhythm of will and both become indistinguishable. There the divine nature is described as distinguished from human nature. When the Rig Veda speaks of the realm of the gods or the realm of Truth-Consciousness, it is really describing to us the divine nature and its function—, and how the divine nature is constituted. The first knowledge you get is a fingerpost on the path in which divine nature is described in its two-fold power of spontaneous self-formation and a self-arrangement which comes out naturally from the essence of the thing that is manifested. The seond part

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of it is the force of light that is inherent in the thing itself. This is a little difficult but let us take the Vedic guide because without that perhaps the indication will not be clear. The two processes by which man begins to know the Divine Consciousness are inspiration and revelation, the two powers by which mind has known something of it. Hearing the vibration of Truth and seeing the vision of Truth—these two powers have brought man some inkling of the constitution of divine nature. It means there is a plane of consciousness where you can see the Truth. There is some plane where a vibration of Truth is sent forth and the mind can hear it and can receive the vibration of truth and give expression to it either in language, generally symbolic, or in some other way. So that these two or rather three powers in the human consciousness,—inspiration, intuition and revelation—give an inkling into the working of that divine nature which has first projected itself into the world. It is truth-vision and truth-audition as Sri Aurobindo calls it and this is reflected in mental consciousness. One can say or put it a little differently : Satchidananda, the infinite and the absolute projected the supermind, and from the supermind is derived the mind. You can put it that way if you like and then the contrary process will be from mind to ascend to the supermind; and from there to the Infinite One. You see the absolute one and indivisible consciousness, then the projection of it first in the supermind —the Truth-Consciousness and then in mind, which is the analytical and dividing faculty. Supermind is comprehensive and creative consciousness. That is how the eternally stable One gives rise to eternally mutable Many. Eternally stable Unity above and eternally mutable multiplicity here below. The one, eternal, always holds within himself the potentiality of the many. It is not as if the One was negative and incapable of the multiplicity. It is there that human mind gets into difficulty and is lost in the maze. It is the One but

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it is not a mental one. This One that we speak of is the infinite and the eternal, therefore, not subject to the terms of mind. That is why the one eternal and stable holds within itself also the potentiality of the many all the time. It is not as if the One was unitarian; because those who try to describe the Absolute do not realise that when they assert that the absolute cannot become active, cannot create, cannot have any multiplicity within it, they arbritarily limit the absolute. If mind can so define the Absolute and put it within limits, then it will cease to be the Absolute. People question : if Brahman is infinite, how can it create the world ? How can it be Brahman if it creates the world ? This is the logic of the finite applied to the logic of the infinite. The logic of the finite is true only in the mental world. For example, man generally acts out of attachment. The argument advanced is that if Brahman creates the world, it will also fall from its status. But then it would no longer be Brahman,—it would be a human being. You see the logic of the finite is not commensurate with the logic of the infinite. In the finite two plus two is equal to four, but in the mathematics of the infinite, infinite plus infinite is equal to infinite. Infinite multiplied by infinite is infinite. One has to bear in mind that the freedom of the Eternal is absolute,—that is to say, it is freedom beyond unity and also beyond multiplicity. Even our description of it as Sat, Chit and Ananda is the mental way of defining that which is One. If we allow the mind to arrange its intuition it would say: Satchidananda is indivisible unity and mind is essential mutiplicity. It is in the Supermind that the link between the Eternal Satchidananda and the Triple world of mind, life and body exists, that unity and diversity co-exist without division—they both stand and act on the basis of the Infinite Brahman.

Mind is only a preparatory term—not an instrument of essential knowledge. Mind is analytical, it cuts from the

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whole and treats the parts as if they were wholes. And at the end what mind knows is its own analysis of the subject, it does not know the object. It happens so because in terrestrial evolution mind is embedded in matter and is limited by the inertia of matter to a great extent. Mind and life both enlighten matter but they are only passages, not the culmination of the process of enlightenment.

In the Supermind, that is the Truth-Consciousness, there is unity but it is not a negative unity. Rather, it is original self-concentration of the Infinite which is greater than the All. Therefore to say that it is One does not seem logical. It is true that the nature of the absolute self-concentration of the Supreme is unity, the One. But in the Supermind it becomes vast self-extension of the Infinite which knows and contains it: it thus has the original self-concentration which is the One and also a power of self-diffusion. In the Mind this self-diffusion might appear as disintegration of the unity. But the Supermind has its firm hold on the self-extension of the Truth-Consciousness which contains the diffusion and prevents disintegration. It maintains unity in diversity and thus keeps stability in utmost mutability.

Creation, therefore, is a movement between two involutions : that of the Spirit involved in Matter and of Matter involved in the Spirit. Every seed implies all infinity—all infinity of possibility. Nature really is seer-will, knowledge-force of the Conscious-being at work. In the mind thought seems separate from existence, in the mind abstract thought and Reality are distinct from each other, so also are will and idea. In the Supermind all being is consciousness and all consciousness is being. In the Supermind consciousness of being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will— all is one movement. There is, we may say, Idea in the Supermind but it is only light of the Reality,—not an abstraction of the mind. One may say it is vibration of consciousness and

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being which Sri Aurobindo calls the Real-Idea to distinguish it from the mental idea. Real-Idea may be said to be effective self-awareness of the Supermind in which knowledge and power are one like light and burning power of fire.

The problem of man is to rise to the Supermind and bring it down here in life so as to make it a direct dynamic factor in the evolutionary process on earth. As we have already remarked one may say that a process of double evolution is at work. The process can be understood by taking the analogy of a seed. We see a power of spontaneous self-formation and self-arrangement at work. A force inherent in the being of the seed fulfils that which is involved in it. The tree is pre-existent in the seed. The whole world is pre-existent in the Supermind —there the idea is not separate from the impulse at work. In the mind the ideal and the power of realisation are not inseparable. In the Supermind self-awareness is effective,—while in the mind self-awareness is not effective.

We may ask : what is the Supermind, and the reply in the light of previous exposition is : "Nature of the Divine Being in action is the Supermind." So Supermind is the Lord, it is the Creator. It appears to us as an operation of the Truth-Consciousness in which an ordering self-knowledge seems to be at work,—a world of matter, a vetgetable world, an insect world, an animal world. If the ordering self-knowledge was not there, there would be only chaos. If infinite potentialities of the Infinite were set to work without this ordering self-knowledge it would only lead to chaos—and we would not find any order either in matter or in life. It would be as Sri Aurobindo says- "a play of unbounded and uncontrolled chance." But we find an order, and not "a teeming amorphous, confused uncertainty." In fact, we find on the contrary the working of a law. The working of a self-determining self-knowledge is perceived by the mind as law. Law is

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mind's perception of the working out of the Real-Idea, which is predetermined, predestined. Law can be said to be the expression of self-natate, svabhāva, which is "determined by the compelling truth of the Real-Idea" in each thing. The world is a movement in time and space, its development is "a regulated interaction of related things in space to which succession of time gives the aspect of causality."

The causality perceived by mind is not a law without exception. The mind is tempted to connect two consecutive events and establish the relation of cause and effect between them. If a particular sound was regularly followed by a flash of light the mind would jump to the conclusion that the sound was the cause and light the effect, whereas as matter of fact two phenomena may happen to succeed each other by a pure coincidence. Apart from such a possible source of error one can see that even in phenomena on the material plane the result may be due not to one but several known and unknown circumstances. And so to establish a relation of cause and effect would not be rational. That is what seems to have happened in the realm of physical science in which the law of causation was supposed to act without exception. The latest position in science seems to be that instead of law of causation the law of Indeterminacy is prevailing. It is found that in many important cases the cause cannot be determined. For example, in the atomic ring it is not possible to determine the position or speed of the particle because one has to introduce the ray of light to see the phenomenon; that would interfere with the process. Hence the result is indeterminable. Take the case of a cylinder filled with a gas. The particles of the gas break up on bombardment from X-ray. It is found that some particles break up and others don't. The cause of this behaviour is not possible to know, it is indeterminable. Why a particular number of particles break up and not others is not determinable by science.

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Science now claims to give only average behaviour. If we carefully watch the working of the law of causality in the mind, we find that it is rather a complex of preceding conditions followed by a complex of succeeding conditions. In fact, the mind does not know all the factors of the preceding conditions which bring about the result, and so when in actuality there is breach in the law of causation, one comes across a factor or factors which were not perceived before. The result which the mind sees may not be the result of the cause recognized by it. There are innumerable examples that illustrate the truth of this indeterminacy. When all the possible causes for success are provided something turns up and the result intended does not materialise. In the last war the Allied army under Lord Montgomery was poised for attack and everything pointed to the carrying out of the plan. Next day, the papers came out : "General Mud in charge" —the attack was postponed because of the rain. In certain diseases the doctors and even others assert that it is incurable, and yet there are cases in which one finds that it is cured.

Time and Space are the Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension subjectively as Time, objectively as Space. Space is, thus, the self-extension of the Infinite—the Brahman. Space is not empty, it is filled with the silence of the Infinite. "Mind measures time by event and space by matter." Time and Space are only two aspects of the universal force of consciousness. To a consciousness higher than mind time would be eternal Present and so it can know the world quite in another way than the mind. Eternity of time can be compressed into a moment, it can be expanded to everlasting time. Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem "In hori's aeternum" "Eternity in an hour". Blake, I think, wrote about "Eternity in a grain of sand." Man has in him his natural instruments —mind, heart, vital being, nervous and physical being—and

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the true Self, the Spark of the Divine. Man can awaken his true Self and identify it with the Eternal, and immortal. It is then possible for it to project its perfection into the instruments of nature and make them participate in the immortality of the Spirit by a process of transformation. Immortality is not merely avoidance of death of the body, it is participation in the immortality of the Spirit by the instruments of nature. Ordinarily, the mind refuses to accept the possibility of attaining a Higher Consciousness and of transformation of nature.

Supermind, on the contrary, working as Truth-Consciousness embraces the whole and unifies the succession of time and divisions of space. When we say Supermind embraces and unifies the whole it means it does so "in a succession of developing harmony". If the Eternity of which we speak was static then all would exist in it and not be worked out. One has to use an analogy and imagine the creator of the universe as a poet or a dreamer. Things are worked out from within even in time, and not from outside. The outer aspect of the shock and struggle and straining is only the superficial working of the inner forces. "Supermind sees things steadily and sees them whole"; that is its nature.

First, Supermind contains all forms of itself; second, it "pervades them as the indwelling Presence, self-revealing light". It is present in every force and form, and "limits the variations which it compels", it gathers, disposes, modifies, energises. It is seated within everything as the Lord, "in the heart of all existences" as the Gita says. Each thing in Nature is governed by this indwelling Presence; it carries out the work of intelligence in the plant and in the animal without intelligence. Thus it works out the Real-Idea in which "Self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence." Therefore Supermind is " all - comprehensive, all-pervading, all-inhabiting consciousness wherein the Knower, Knowledge

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and Known are identical."

Mind is not prepared to accept this just as it is not willing to accept that the earth is going round the Sun because of the contrary appearances. This is due to the inherent duality of mental consciousness which even in introspection needs 'I' and 'not-I'. Mind does not see that behind its apparent fundamental division there is. oneness. Supermind, on the contrary, "possesses the unity in a single act of vision" and this Vision is Life. Supermind has the "indivisibility of Truth which contains all multiplicity" without derogating the unity. It feels the emergence of the tree out of the seed in which it is already contained. There is a fixed process in the phenomenon of form and a permanence of form which is the permanence of the Real-Idea. To the mind the form and the spirit are separate, to the Supermind they are not separate at all,—the tree and the process are not separate things. The tree does not explain the seed nor does the seed explain the tree. "Cosmos explains both—God explains Cosmos." The process at work is not a mental process. When people put the question whether the egg was first or the hen, they do not understand that the question is beyond logic, beyond mind. One is already referring to a universal energy which has been carrying out the Real-Idea. The process can go on infinitely repeating itself in an infinite recurrence. In the Supermind there is "no independant centre of existence", no individual separate ego : all is absolutely identical One, and the One is all existences. It is "equally present everywhere," it is single and equal,

Questions and Answers

Q: Should one observe the rules of society while purusing spiritual life ?

A : If you study carefully the growth of societies you will

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find that standards of good and bad, even ideas of morality have been constantly changing. One can observe them so long as they do not clash with the conscience, with the needs of spirituality. But if one does not flout them when they clash with the inner need, there would be no progress. Take the case of untouchability in India or colour bar here. If the conscience revolts against it one has to oppose it even if it has lasted for centuries in a community. A spiritual man is not bound by these rules. He keeps the door for redemption open even for the worst criminal, knowing the Omnipotence of Divine Grace.

Q: You spoke of the Real-Idea—can it be the same as Prajā

A : No. It is Prajñā or Prajñāna of the Upanishads. It is the Divine's own self-view.

Q: There are eminent persons who not only do not accept the idea of God but they ridicule it. Why is that ?

A: In the age of democracy we can't object to people holding their views particularly because God does not seem to object to their views. Dilip Kumar Roy, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, sent him Anatole France's strictures on God and it evoked a very interesting reply. I reproduce the correspondence in full—

(Either God would prevent evil if he could, but would not, or he could but would not, or he neither could nor would, or he both would and could. If he would but could not, he is impotent if he could but would not, he is perverse, if he neither could nor would he is at once impotent and perverse; if he both could and would why on earth hasn't he done it, Father ?)

I send this to you as I immensely enjoyed the joke and am

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sure you would too, hoping you would have something to say to it.

Dilip

Dilip,

Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about the rational animal humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when they met in some Heaven of Irony, I suppose it can't have been in the heaven of Karl Marx, in spite of France's conversion before his death. God is reported to have strolled up to him and said "I say, Anatole, you know that was a good joke of yours; but there was a good cause for my non-interference. Reason came along and told me : 'Look here, why do you pretend to exist ? You know you don't exist and never existed or, if you do, you have made such a mess of your creation that we can't tolerate you any longer. Once we have got you out of the way all will be right upon earth—tip-top, A-I; my daughter Science and I have arranged that between us. Man will raise his noble brow, the head of creation, dignified, free, equal, fraternal, democratic, depending upon nothing but himself, with nothing greater than himself anywhere in existence. There will be no God, no priestcraft, no religion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere. Industry will fill the earth with abundance, Commerce will spread her golden reconciling wings everywhere, universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no room for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured, disciplined, rational, scientific, well-informed arriving always at the right conclusion upon full and sufficient data. The voice of the scientists and the experts will be loud in the land and guide mankind to the earthly paradise. A perfected society; health universalised by a developed

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medical science and a sound hygiene; everything rationalised; science evolved, infallible, omnipotent, omniscient; the riddle of existence solved; the Parliament of Man, the Federation of world; evolution, of which man, magnificent man, is the last term, completed in the noble white race, a humanitarian kindness and uplifting for our backward brown, yellow and black brothers; peace, peace, peace, reason, order, unity everywhere'. There was a lot more like that, Anatole, and I was so much impressed by the beauty of the picture and its convenience, for I would have nothing to do or to supervise, that I at" once retired from business—for, you know that I was always of a retiring disposition and inclined to keep myself behind the veil or in the background at the best of times. But what is this I hear ? It does not seem to me from reports that reason even with the help of Science has kept her promise. And if not, why not ? Is it because she would not, or because she could not ? Or is it because she both would not and could not ?—Or because she both would and could, but somehow did not ? And I say, Anatole, these children of theirs, the State, Industrialism, Capitalism and the rest have a queer look; they seem very much like Titanic monsters—armed too with all the powers of Intellect and all the weapons and organisation of Science. Yet it does look as if mankind were no freer under them than under the Kings and the Churches ! ! What has happened ?—or is it possible that Reason is not supreme and infallible, even that she has made a greater mess of it than I could have done myself ! ! ! Here the report of the conversation ends; I give it for what it is worth, for I am not acquainted with this God and have to take him on trust from Anatole France.

Sri Aurobindo

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