APPENDIX I
AESTHESIS- HIGHER THAN MENTAL
Aesthetic enjoyment and perception of beauty are generally limited by man's present consciousness, that is to say, by the mental, the vital and the physical fields of consciousness. Man has believed in the sovereignty of Reason, but he has found that even at best Reason is only an "enlightener and a minister", it is not the master The societies that tried to set up Reason as the governor of life found that it could not lead man to perfection and that even the order which Reason attempted to establish in the collective life was only provisional. Many more things than Reason are needed for the integral fulfilment of man's life. For instance he needs art and beauty.
Is the seeking for beauty, the impulse to create, rational? The story of Beauty and the Beast illustrates the irrational, and yet the irresistible, attraction of beauty and its ennobling power.
The first approach of man to these things'— art and beauty - is through his crude impulse for possessions, or for the satisfaction of his animal impulses. Still the trans- forming power of beauty changes the beast in man into" a noble human being.
But beauty is not confined to man's present state of nature; aesthesis is not merely of the mental or emotional or vital level, it extends also to overhead levels.' In the multi-dimensionality of consciousness are included those overhead dimensions.
We saw that in the beginning the seeking for beauty
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¹ For a study of this subject refer to Prof. Gokaka's series in the "Mother India", 1953. Also refer to Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Savitri.
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is not rational, rather it is an impulse, an instinct which seeks satisfaction and enjoyment. It seeks the joy of creating.
This crude beginning, Sri Aurobindo calls the "infra- rational" stage of the aesthetic being. Then when reason begins to act in man it tries to regulate this crude infra- rational impulse; it organises the knowledge of the techniques of the arts, and lays down laws for the guidance of artists. This marks the Rational stage of the aesthetic development. While accepting the great contribution of Reason to the development of the arts, it was always known that the highest creations of art do not owe their origin to the intellect. Art can be intellectual but then it is not great art. During this Rational stage of development the suprarational has been sending down flashes and sparks, illuminations and intuitions.
Sri Aurobindo's great contribution to aesthetics is his plea for raising human aesthesis to a level of conscious- ness which he calls "overhead". He has shown that it is possible, and now necessary, to raise the centre of artistic creation to " Overhead" levels of consciousness and create from there. He also points out that these "over- head " levels have always existed and have acted intermittently. They have been not only influencing but now and then penetrating into various fields of artistic creation.
Some illustrations from poetry, which Sri Aurobindo characterised as due to the overhead influx, may be cited.
The following lines from Keats :
" Solitary thinkings such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain. "
The expression is charged with a perception that indicates the overhead origin.
Or, the lines from Wordsworth :
" The winds come to me from the fields of sleep " or
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" Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone."
The experience embodied in these lines and the expression is characteristic of overhead consciousness. The intangible fields of sleep waft to the poet tangible " winds "', this concretising of the subtle or the intangible is a power of overhead levels.
In Sanskrit literature the distinction between creations of the mind and those of overhead levels was known and recognised : the first kind of works were called " Laukika" and the second " Arsha ". This finds expression in Bhava bhuti's drama, the Uttararamacharita :
Laukikanam tu sadhunam artham vak anu vartate
Rishinam punaradyanam vacham arthonudhavati
" In the case of ordinary writers the speeeh-the expression-follows their intention, the meaning,-while in that of the original Rishis the meaning runs after their speech." That is to say, the expression of overhead inspiration comes spontaneously without any mental activity, and it acquires its intellectual meaning subsequently. Thus, "voyaging through seas of thought, alone" is concrete expression of a glimpse of overhead level.
"I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,
And around beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved in which the world
And all her train were hurled. "
Vaugham
Milton's ;
" These thoughts that wander through eternity."
These lines convey the overhead touch in their substance and expression.
A few lines, as samples, from Sri Aurobindo may be quoted :
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" I caught for some eternal eye the sudden
Kingfisher flashing to a darkling pool."
—Savitri
Here the power of eye-sight as a universal faculty is perceived : the extraordinary keenness of the faculty of sight embodied in the kingfisher is the working of " some eternal eye."
Or
" Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air."
The Poet sees the butterflies, with their wings painted in variegated colours, flying in the air as " flowers". If the butterflies were only "flowers", they would have been lowered from the consciousness of insects to that of the vegetable kingdom. But he speaks of them as "conscious flowers" that belong to the air, as ordinary flowers to the land.
" A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss
Has changed my heart and changed the earth around :
" And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue
Because of change within me by thy look. "
The sea of bliss - of infinite Ananda, has created this world. " A foam-leap " from that ocean, in the form of Savitri, has so changed the heart of Satyavan that now the whole world appears to be a shadow of Savitri, the incarnation of supreme bliss.
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APPENDIX II
OVERHEAD AESTHESIS
Sri Aurobindo pleads that " an evolutionary ascent o all the activities of mind and life is not impossible."¹
The importance of the planes of consciousness beyond Mind for spiritual realisation is well known in India, but their dynamic nature and their importance to the life of man is not known. In the phase of evolution that is now approaching the need for clarifying the functions and powers of the Overhead consciousness is all the more urgent. Sri Aurobindo shows that all the overhead planes are not to be classed together, there are gradations of them.
"These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis"².
It is possible to mistake these gradations for heightened operations of mental faculties. Sri Aurobindo warns against it: "They are not merely methods, way of knowing or faculty or power of cognition; they are domains of being, grades of substance and energy of the spiritual being, fields of existence which are each a level of the universal consciousness—Force constituting and organizing itself into a higher status."³
" In the descent of these higher grades upon us it is this greater light, force essence of being and consciousness, energy of delight that enters into mind, life, body, change and repair their diminished and diluted and incapable substance, convert it into its own higher and stronger dynamics of spirit and intrinsic form and force of reality."4
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¹ Letters
² Life Divine
³ Ibid.
4 Ibid.
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Would these gradations automatically succeed when they descend into Mind, Life and Body ? Sri Aurobindo explains the method of their working : " These higher forces are not in their descent immediately all-powerful as they would naturally be in their own plane of action and in their own medium. In the evolution of Matter they have to enter into a foreign and inferior medium and work upon it, meet with unreceptiveness or blind refusal of the Ignorance, experience the negation and obstruction of the Inconscience."5
The problem is to open, if possible, consciously, to these higher planes, establish a contact, and receive without mixture of the lower nature the Overhead creation. Though it is usual to regard these planes as mystical, it is known that their powers have been acting intermittently in man through history : man has been familiar with them in his artistic creations. Almost all the ancient human cultures knew about them.
We will take up the Overhead powers and give some idea of each in Sri Aurobindo's words : The Higher Mind: " The poetic intelligence is quite different; it is the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination akin to the intellect proper but lifted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane."
"In the Higher Mind we are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed."
" The Higher Mind is the first plane where one becomes aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight not illumined by any of the intense or upper lights but as in a large strong and clear day-light. "
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5 Life Divine
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"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth-an image which in this experience becomes a reality, we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a compact and steady Sunshine."6
One characteristic of the Higher Mind is " totality of truth-seeing at a single view."
Illumined Mind : " Beyond this Truth-Thought (i. e. Higher Mind ) we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of nature of truth-sight with thought formation as a minor and dependent activity."
" It has an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment - a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible light very usually envelops this action."
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-Stuff."
" The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid, it acts usually by a luminous rush.,.. Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrous- ness of robe which is its characteristic." 7
Example: "I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light
And around beneath it. Time, in hours, days,
years
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6 Life Divine
7. Life Literature, Yoga
Page 98
And all her train were hurled"
Intuition: "Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-Sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition. For though we have applied that word to a supra intellectual way of knowing yet what we actually know as intuition is only a special movement of self-existent knowledge." 8
"Intuition has four-fold power. A power of revelatory Truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or Truth-hearing, a power of Truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth."
" The intuition is usually a lightning flash showing up a single spot or plot of ground or scene with an entire and miraculous completeness of vision to the surprised ecstasy of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a single stroke. " 9
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8 Life Divine
9 Letters on Savitri
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APPENDIX III
OVERMIND
"At the source of this Intuition we discover a super-conscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, and original intensity determinant of all mental energies,—not Mind as we know but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of not some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of" knowledge-ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our' sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality." It " connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance."¹
"The Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness that epithet would more accurately apply to the supramental and the Sachchidanand Consciousness though it looks up to the Transcendental and may receive something from it and though it does transcend the ordinary human mind and in its full and native self-power, when it does not lean down and become part of mind, is super- conscient to us. It is more properly a cosmic consciousness, even the very base of the cosmic as we perceive, understand and feel it. It stands behind every particular in the cosmos and is the source of all our mental, vital or physical actualities and possibilities which are diminished and degraded derivations and variations from it."²
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¹ Life divine
² Letters on Savitri -
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"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance."³
"If we regard the powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with others."
"Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision."
"Even to what is discordant it gives a place in the system of cosmic concordances—discords become a part of a vast harmony therefore of beauty. It feels Oneness, sympathy, love for all—sees the face of the Divine every- where."
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit."
"Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods; what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence".
"Overmind is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality."
"In the Overmind we have the first firm foundation of the experience of universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight."
"Overmind, has. ..greater aesthesis and when it sees objects, it sees in them what the mind cannot see."4
³ Life Divine
4 Letters Vol. III
Page 101
"As yet there is no Overmind language created Overmind, used by Overmind beings."
"Overmind has to take mind, life and Matter as its medium and field, work under their dominant condition accept their fundamental law and method."
"Overmind has to use a language which has been made by mind, not by itself." " It can only strain and intensify this medium as much as possible for its own uses, but not change this fundamental - or characteristically mental law and method."5
"It has to observe them and do what it can to heighten, deepen and enlarge."
"It is still more difficult to say anything very tangible about Overmind aesthesis. What happens at present is that something comes down and accepts to work under the law of the mind and with a mixture of the mind and it must be judged by the laws and standards of the mind. It brings in new tone, new colours, new elements, but it does not change radically as yet the stuff of the consciousness with which we labour."6
"If we look carefully and subtly at things we may see that the greatest lines or passages in the world's literature have the Over-mind touch or power. They bring with them an atmosphere, a profound and extraordinary light, an amplitude of wing which, if the Overmind would not only intervene but descend, seize wholly and transform, would be the first glimpse of a poetry, higher, larger, deeper and more consistently absolute than any which the human past has been able to give us. An evolutionary ascent of all the activities of mind and life is not impossible."
Some examples of Overmind poetry,—or poetry carrying the Overmind touch :
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5 Letters Vol. III.
6 Letters on Savitri
Page 102
I
. " The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep."7
" In the last line there is something of the Overmind
substance expressed not directly but through the
highest intuitive consciousness, and because it is
not direct the Overmind rhythm is absent."8
II
" Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." 7
" Those thoughts that wander through eternity." 9
III
"We can feel perhaps the spirit of the universe
feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast
oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo"
"Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides"
Or it may enter again into Vyasa's
"A void and dreadful forest ringing with the
cricket's cry"
" Vanam pratibhayam sunyam
Jhillikagananinaditam "
or remember its call to the soul of man
" Anityam asukham lokam imam
prapya bhajaswa mam "
"Thou who hast come to this transient and unhappy
world, love and worship Me." 10
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7 Wordsworth
8 Sri Aurobindo
9 Milton
10 Letters Vol. III
Page 103
What is sparks and flashes in other poets
in " Savitri " becomes a blaze from end to end.
"This is a sailor on the flow of time,
This is world-Matter's slow discoverer
Who, launched in his small corporeal birth,
Has learnt his craft in tiny bays of self,
But dares at last unplumbed infitudes
A voyager upon Eternity's seas."11
"The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice
In vain is seen the upper shining way
Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling suns
She loves her fall and no Omnipotence
Her mortal imperfection can erase
Force on man's crooked ignorance Heaven's
Straight Line
Or colonise a world of death with Gods."
"All is too little that the world can give;
Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time
And cannot fill the spirits sacred thirst."12
"Intense, one pointed, monumental, lone
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer."13
"The life of the enchanted globe became
A storm of sweetness and of light and song,
A revel of colour and ecstasy,
A hymn of rays, a litany of cries."
"A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours
Asocas burned in Grimson spots of flame,
Pale mango blossoms fed the liquid voice
of the love maddened coil......
11 Book I. Canto 4
12 p. 277
13. p. 288
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- - - The sunlight was the great gods golden smile
All Nature was at beauty's festival."
"Whoever is too great must lonely live ' Adored he walks in mighty solitude;
Vain is his labour to create his kins,
His only comrade is the Strength within."
"0 sunlight moulded like a golden maid !
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;"
"All with thy coming fills Air, Soil and Stream
wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee."
"Narada the heavenly sage from Paradise
Came chanting through the large and lustrous Air."
"Attracted by the golden summer-earth
that lay beneath him like a glowing bowl
Tilted upon a table of the gods,
Turning as if moved by an unseen hand"
"To catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun."
"Thou hast not drunk from an earthly cup
The empty roses of thy hands are filled
only with their own beauty and the thrill
of a remembered clasp, and in thee glows
A heavenly jar, thy firm, deep-honied heart
New-brimming with a sweet and nectarous wine."
"A pillard ripple of gold !"14
"Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light."
"Pain is the hammer of the gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart."
"Pain is the hand of Nature sculpting men to- Greatness;"
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14. Vol. II, P. 69
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