Volume VII, Issue 2-3
Author: Chitra Kolluru
Editor’s Note: Chitra Kolluru pens an inspiring reflection on the work each one of us must do if we aspire to collaborate with the Divine in bringing forth the Next Future, a Supramental Creation.
A 10-year old chooses to stay away from home to join a Veda Pathashaala and be subjected to a hard life of work and learning; a 25-year old graduate from a top Business Management Institute resigns from his job to pursue the life of a Buddhist monk; a 40-something career woman leaves behind her 17+ years of thriving career in a prestigious institution to settle in Pondicherry in pursuit of spiritual knowledge and a higher discovery; and many such stories are evidence of the stamp of the spirit on this largely material world.
Our ordinary relationship with the world is that of dominating and sometimes crushing the forces at play in our lives, or on the contrary, getting overpowered and becoming subservient to them. Neither of these scenarios gives us a feeling of having arrived or a sense of contentment. Neither can quench the thirst or bestow the bliss which we are secretly or evidently searching.
Sri Aurobindo explains that our life is driven by the mind (largely the sense mind and at times the rational mind) and the vital (continuously asking asking for gratification and pleasure). Both are heavily under the influence of the material plane. The mind, life and body constitute the planes of ignorance. Partial, limiting, dividing and falsifying intelligence is their characteristic, which means that the knowledge we absorb is limited and distorted. Mind’s understanding is based on a dividing principle; the sum is a poor aggregation of its parts without driving a synthetic essence.
The demands of the mind are discovery of knowledge (all types), rationalism and ego gratification; the demand of the vital is image (false honour) and pleasure (a highly limited and distorted form of delight); and the body demands food and comfort (its natural characteristic being that of tamas). All three are hence added impediments on the spiritual path. Steeped in ignorance, these prove to be poor instruments hindering the soul to set out on the path of transcendence towards a higher consciousness-power.
One of the options for the spirit-seeking-human is to drop or grossly ignore these instruments, through strict askesis and pursue only the highest impersonal consciousness. The path of Integral Yoga laid down by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is one of transformation of the instruments — mind, life and body, so that they partake in the journey towards the Divine and are benefited in the process by their upliftment, refinement and divinization.
Our true happiness lies in the true growth of our whole being, in a victory throughout the total range of our existence, in mastery of the inner as well as and more than the outer, the hidden as well as the overt nature; our true completeness comes not by describing wider circles on the plane where we began, but by transcendence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, CWSA, 22: 758
In his Letters on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo clearly puts before us the aim of Integral Yoga.
The aim of the yoga is to open the consciousness to the Divine, to live in the inner consciousness more and more while acting from it on the external life, to bring the inmost psychic to the front and by the power of the psychic, to purify and change the being so that it may become ready for transformation and for the union with the Divine Knowledge, Will and Love.
From Renaissance Archives:
Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of Evolution and Superman
While man is a mental being, his evolution starts by being a mentalized animal, preoccupied with bodily needs and desires of life. At this stage, says Sri Aurobindo, mind is the servant and minister of life and body, not their sovereign and master. But with the aspiration and right effort, mind asserts its selfhood and starts to succeed in the pursuit of knowledge; it also brings about the refinement of the vital and physical movements.
This is not possible only through mental constructs or through a growth in mental activities. If that could be possible, science would have transformed the way we approach life within and without. While science and technology have met the needs of physical comforts and vital desires, hardly have they been able to ascend to the high altar for the collective human life.
Even religion, which is a creation of the higher mind of humanity, has not able to do that. The reason: even the best of mental intelligence creates only a half-light that is not sustainable, much less transforming of other planes that constitute a human being. Sri Aurobindo reminds us, this is because we are not merely embodied minds but spiritual beings. There is a spiritual plane that governs our life, if not overtly then covertly. Into that we must heighten our force of consciousness.
Just as life was born from matter and the thinking mind emerged from life to govern it, similarly, mind is not the final juncture of the evolving man and the world. Supermind, the truth consciousness of the Divine will transform all the lower planes of ignorance and the earth at large with its emergence — this is the “ordering selfknowledge by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicities”, says Sri Aurobindo (CWSA, 22: 141).
What is the Supermind?
In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo speaks of Supermind “as the nature of the Divine Being, not indeed in its absolute self-existence, but in its action as the Lord and Creator of its own worlds” (CWSA, 22: 141)
In understanding the Supermind, we are focusing on the impersonal aspect of the Divine, not the personal God that we pray to and adore through the devotion in our heart, but the Lord of all creation, who is the one behind the worlds and the world order. And yet, this all-powerful Being is likely to allow a conception to dawn on us when we are stripped of ego and approach him with humility and devotion and complete self-giving, not with passion or with judgement.
It is indeed difficult to understand the Supermind beyond a theoretical concept from the vistas of the mind. But like in the Vedas and Puranas we can explain esoteric spiritual concepts through stories, analogy, symbolism, and imagery. We will need to employ all these to glimpse the Supermind and the Gnostic Consciousness — the consciousness of the Supreme, the omnipresent for whom Space and time are but constructs for a lower order understanding — hence all-pervading and eternal.
The One, unveiled (when the Gnostic Consciousness dawns), who in his complete magnanimity and magnificence manifests a creation that will exist in complete balance and harmony with all the forces and beings therein, regardless of the infinite possibilities of manifestation. The beings of this world, in their ascendence above the mind — whether to the intuitive or the Overmental plane, will draw from this supreme Consciousness something for their growth and progress.
Truth and Oneness are the very basis of the Supramental. Therefore, unlike the mental approach of breaking a thing, an idea or a concept into its constituents to grapple with each and then resort to a patchy aggregation of the parts to arrive at grasping the whole, the Supramental acts upon each thing, idea or concept as per its inherent reality and its comprehensive truth, and associates with the same through a ‘knowledge by identity’, by identifying with the essential truth of it.
When we confront a person in the family over a situation, our surface consciousness meets his surface consciousness. Behind each there are layers of perceptions, experiences, emotions — small and big — and sometimes we have no control over what we want to accomplish, how the thoughts emerge and what actions play out. There seems to be no correlation between our will, thoughts and actions, and all of these may have no connection to the outcomes that stumble forth.
Imagine a world where everyone is connected with everything else at the level of its essential truth, where the surface ego which rules every situation today is no longer king, where the demands of the ego – honor, desire, limitation, fear are small, insignificant, powerless, where self-giving is power and love rules every collective entity, where the distinction between surface and subliminal consciousness thins away, and where strife and conflict are alien, owing to the Oneness that links each to all. There the Universal Cosmic order is achieved naturally and with ease while not compromising individual growth and progress, because individual aspiration is closely linked to the universal and it is the universal consciousness that is individualized.
How far can we let our puny thoughts grow and build and perceive this Godly world of Love and Harmony? Not far, it starts to crumble very soon into the impossibility of rational thought, ego-centered feelings and a limited capacity.
In a world where going beyond the rational mind is a blue moon occurrence and even the plane of Intuition is out of reach, leave alone the Overmental, where one is constantly being accosted by emotions, influences and impulses that one has no control on, what is the meaning of trying to understand the Supramental and its effects on the Earth and Humanity? What does this lofty message from our Lord and Master mean for us?
There is a deep meaning. As it beckons the Supramental Life upon earth, it gives a path for each one of us. Through our small effort, we must prepare the bedrock of this future world of felicity and be willing collaborators of the Divine Plan. And just as from the time of the Vedic seers, our moist field of action is ourselves. This is what we must become king of (swarat).
I am reminded of an inspiring video of the Gnostic Centre at Delhi where its founder, Ameeta Mehra, explains that their attempt was to create a space for the growth of Consciousness, a place of peace where one naturally fell into meditation, and to bring forth an intentional community of like-minded folks, concentrated on self-discovery and the Supramental Vision. They could achieve this after an intense period of self-preparation by drawing on the power of Mother and Sri Aurobindo and under the guidance of a luminary such as Nirodbaran.
But the most powerful message from this video was that the real foundation was to be built within each person involved in the mission — founders and associates; the physical spaces and serene structures would emerge after. The difficulties and bottlenecks existed within, whether it be limitation of understanding or limited capacities. As the Mother has said, the work is always within and must be taken up within each individual.
In the dim environments that envelop us today, our unadulterated concentration on the Self, our sincere seeking of our Psychic to be the guiding light in all we say and do; our turning inward and making choices that align with that inmost psychic, and loosening the hold of desires and wants — this is the work we must do. And each one of us is a sure place to start.
When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house
A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A power into mind’s inner chamber steal
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world
The truth-light capture Nature by surprise
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, CWSA, 33: 55
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
