Remembering Satprem

The world is continuing with death. The humanity is still a continuing sacrifice to death.

However, for Mira Alfassa, The Mother, one of the most important aspect of the Work to be done was the conquest of death.

She said :
"Death is the problem given me to resolve."
"I am on my way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted.... Death is the result of a distortion of consciousness."
To the unseeing humanity The Mother has passed away, though a few have known Her in a New Body. And one of those bright few is Satprem.

He, too, believed in the Task of fighting away death. And that was his Work. He has fought with death till the last of his physical body. Before his departure, he told that the Work is done.


OOOOO

TODAY, the 30th day of 2008, is the birthday anniversary of Satprem. He dedicated his life and existence for the Future of the mankind, for the mankind of the Future, having followed the steps of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, on the Way towards Supermanhood from the present state of the mankind, on the Way for transforming the mankind into the New Race, the race of the Supermen, the race of the Supramental Beings. After the passing away of The Mother, he left Sri Aurobindo Ashram and published the thirteen volumes of Mother’s Agenda. Further, he also wrote a number of books of everlasting value, that give us Light and directions on the New Way, which he received from The Mother during his conversation with Her.

He was born in Paris in 1923. When he was twenty years old, he was arrested by Gestapo (of Germany during Hitler’s regime) and spent about a year and a half in some concentration camps. When he came out, he was a sad, shocked and disturbed person. However, a higher spiritual destiny led him to Egypt and from there to Pondicherry in India. In Pondichery, he knew Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Soon, he left for Guiana, Brazil, Africa etc. But again, he finally returned to India in 1953.

On 3rd March 1957, The Mother named him Satprem. His original name was Bernard. Satprem became a close disciple and a confidante of The Mother. He stayed in Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Soon after the Mother’s Departure on 17th November 1973, Satprem left the Ashram.

In 1982, having followed The Mother’s footsteps, Satprem withdrew completely to set out on a new venture, on a new adventure, uncertain and dangerous, of finding out the great passage into the next evolution beyond Man, which also means a conquest of death. And he undertook the work of exploring the cause of death and the ways and means of conquering death — Life has evolved since billions of years, but it has been conquered by death — and it still has continued to be an enigma for Mind also. Evolution beyond Mind has to be an Evolution beyond death also.

Sri Aurobindo made a prophecy in Savitri:
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.In order to find out the secret of going beyond mankind, beyond death and ignorance, The Mother says, one has to plunge into the cells of the Body. The cells are the roots. The secret of the Transformation lies there.
During the 1960s and 1970s, The Mother stated that the cells of Her body were becoming more and more conscious. She said that the transformation of the cells, of the "mind of the cells", is the secret means for the physical transformation, which is of crucial importance and significance. She also said that the cells of Her body were progressively organizing themselves to a have a kind of mind of their own.

She regarded death as a state of mind of the cells which the cells accepted. If they could change their perspective, if they did not accept death as something inevitable, this would help the cells maintain themselves without any deterioration and linger their longevity.
She said that one of the secrets for physical transformation was/is to overcome the effect of the "physical mind" and the subconscient. This part of the nature is filled with inertia and has the habit of being resigned to defeat, of being negative and pessimistic in attitude and tendencies, and of grumbling. As a result, it reinforces illnesses and is a great obstruction to the physical transformation. According to Her, this was a great obstacle to the emergence of the new species. The Mother strived hard to bring in the higher consciousness into the physical and sub-conscient aspect of Her being.

The Mother said :
There is a consciousness in the cells: it is what we call the ‘body consciousness’ and it is wholly bound up with the body. This consciousness has much difficulty in changing, because it is under the influence of the collective suggestion which absolutely opposed to the transformation. So one has to struggle with this collective suggestion, not only with the collective suggestion of the present, but with the collective suggestion of the earth consciousness as a whole, the terrestrial human consciousness which goes back to the earliest formation of man. That has to be overcome before the cells can be spontaneously aware of the Truth, of Eternity of matter.

What is more essential in an Integral Transformation is to transform the consciousness of the cells. Transformation of the mind and the vital being has been achieved through yogic discipline — there has been transformation of consciousness. As The Mother has said, at least quite a few persons have been aware of the Divine Presence or the Truth of their being. But they have not attained the Total Transformation, the Integral Transformation. Even the global consciousness of the physical has been transformed — but that is not enough for going beyond human state of darkness and disease and death. There has to be a transformation of the consciousness of the cells.

The Mother has said:
Finally, there is the physical consciousness itself, the material consciousness, the body consciousness, and that is the one which has so far never been entirely transformed. The global, overall consciousness of the body has been transformed, that is, one can throw off the bondage of thoughts, of habits that one no longer considers inevitable. That can change, it has been changed. But what remains to be changed is the consciousness of the cells.




OOOOO

Satprem concentrated and worked on bringing this change in the consciousness of the cells in the physical body.

That is the Way for integrally transforming the human being towards Supermanhood. That work is Satprem’s contribution to the mankind, in which he is indeed unique and it is not yet known if any one else has walked on this Way.

Satprem says:
And then you begin to wonder if it is not the body that holds the true secret — if it is not these first cells or that microorganism from a few billion years ago that hold what we have been seeking in vain with all our scientific or intellectual artifices, if it is not this first spasm of “life” enclosed in a bubble that knows or recognizes its Nectar, its air from beyond the graves, its life denser than all our lives, its breathing more powerful than all our oxygens — and that, finally, not only the way out of this grave, but the way to let another air in here which will bring our walls down.
A new Life.
A new Earth.
A new Evolution — Evolution II.
[Satprem : Evolution II]
Satprem lived and worked for this progressive journey beyond death and beyond Ignorance. He has definitely made a great deal of progressive exploration and advancement on the Way.

And the Work must go on till the goal is achieved. That is the greatest and the most important for the mankind — to go beyond mankind. The Work has to continue and will definitely continue, as that is the Will of Divine in Evolution.


OOOOO

Some persons have recently equated Satprem and Peter Heeh. This is sheer ignorance and ingratitude. Heeh cannot simply be compared to, or raised to the height of, Satprem. Satprem has NEVER done or written anything to belittle or understate Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He was one of the closest disciples of The Mother. And his book Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness is definitely one of the books on Sri Aurobindo. He is definitely a source of inspiration for the followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

That is why Satprem, the brilliant pioneer, is remembered.

Barindranath Chaki

Written on 30-10-2008,
Published on 31-10-2008

Posted simultaneously also in ASPIRATION and Sulekha.

Tags : Sri Aurobindo Mira Alfassa The Mother Satprem A new Evolution Evolution II Integral Transformation Consciousness of the Cells

The First Step

Hill after hill was climbed and now,
Behold, the last tremendous brow
And the great rock that none has trod:
A step, and all is sky and God.

[One Day : Sri Aurobindo]


The Evolution from the Ape to Man was over many a millennium back. The Homo Neanderthal and then the Homo Sapiens came into being. But Man was groping in utter Darkness : he did not find his Way, and even if it was shown to him or even if he discovered it, he lost it. He lost his Way, though his existence was and is the Search of the Way from Darkness to Light.

“Hill after hill was climbed…” — several realizations were there before Man — the Divine came to us in one form or another and led the Way. Avatars were there who climbed the hills.

And the last great rock was still there untouched, unclimbed — the rock “that none has trod” : the rock of the Supramental Consciousness. The Supramental Realization was the Step that was to be taken.

And it was Sri Aurobindo who took the Step— the first Step. That was the Task before Him, before Sri Aurobindo The Avatar.

OOOOO

On 4th April, 1910, at 4PM, Sri Aurobindo arrived at and took His first Step on Pondicherry. He had left Calcutta and, thereby, British India on 1st April 1910, and proceeded towards Colombo in a steamer named SS Duplex. As revealed from the records, He traveled in the steamer as one Jyotindra Mitter and the ticket was up to Colombo, so that His movements remain utterly misleading to the Police of British India. Bijoy Nag, Sri Aurobindo’s companion in the journey, was named Bankim Chandra Basak. On the way to Colombo, they dropped in Pondicherry.

That was the First Step by the One who brought the Greatest Revolution in the spiritual endeavours taken by Mankind. That was the end of the revolutionary chapter in the life of Sri Aurobindo — and then began His journey towards to the New World, the Supramental World, the New Creation — His true Work —the New Vision and the New Way before mankind.

OOOOO
In 1906, Sri Aurobindo left Baroda and came to Calcutta, as the first Principal of the newly formed Bengal National College. However, He soon resigned that post, being more and more actively involved in the Nationalist Movement. We should know and remember that Sri Aurobindo was the first of the Nationalist leaders who thought about a completel independence for India as the goal of the Movement, and for several years he was practically involved in this struggle. Consequently, He was arrested in the well-known Alipore Bomb Case. He was kept in solitary confinement for about a year as an 'under-trial' prisoner in Alipore jail. During this period, He had a great spiritual experience, the second of the major spiritual experiences of his life.
After He was acquitted and released, the British authorities continued to pursue him, due to the continued activities of the Revolutionaries. An inner Voice asked him to go, at first to Chandernagore, and then to Pondicherry. He secretly left British India, as He was being persecuted as a politically dangerous person, for having dreamt of the Independence of India, and then took refuge in Pondicherry.

OOOOO

In Pondicherry, He concentrated intensively and extensively to the exploration of the new spiritual possibilities. When The Mother [Mira Alfassa] joined Him and when, later, the Ashram was formed, with Her collaboration and using His newfound spiritual and Supramental discoveries and experiences and wisdom, He continued His Work: the Adventure of Consciousness, through the Supramental Discovery and Its Ascent, Descent, and through the Supramental Transformation, which He found to be the only solution for all the human problems, continuing for millennia.

What happened in Pondicherry on the 4th of April 1910, was the beginning of a unique Spiritual History. As it happened, it seemed that everything was set by the unseen Hands, ready from beforehand, and unfolded by The Divine Dreamer’s Will, through previously thought and shaped events, like the unfoldment of the Divine Lotus! And in ourse of Time, we find that as a consequence of this First Step, now the Whole earth and the the mankind are on the threshold of a Great Change.

Sr Aurobindo, along with The Mother, had the New Vision, the Golden Vision. He has foreseen the enlightned and golden Future on our earth, and hasthen endeavoured to transform the earth, to make His Vision true and real.

I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
architects of immortality.

OOO
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.

OOO
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
Behind man's inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:

OOO
He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth's thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth's deeds shall touch the superhuman's height,
Earth's seeing widen into the infinite.

[Savitri, Book III, Canto IV: Sri Aurobindo]

Barin Chaki
Written on 04-04-2008,
Published on 07-04-2008

The Divine Moment

Ninety-four years back, a French lady, not much known at that time to the outer world, had a meeting with Someone who secretly left British India, being persecuted as a politically dangerous person, for having dreamt of the Independence of India, and then too refuge in a corner in French India, in Pondicherry. Few people knew or anticipated the result and the outcome of the meeting.

The Mother met Sri Aurobindo on the 29th March 1914.

The consequence was the ongoing Transformation of the human world towards the Supramental Manifestation on earth. That meeting was definitely one of the most important turning point in the human history, the turning point when Man has begin his journey for transcending his imperfections and his living in ignorance and darkness, for growing towards Supermanhood, leaving his checkered human existence.

It was a Divine Moment, chosen by the Divine.

The Mother saw Him for the first time, at 3:30 PM on that particular day, in His house in Rue Francois Martin in Pondicherry. “At the very first sight, recognition came like a flash of lightning: Sri Aurobindo was verily the ‘Krishna’ she had met so often in her dreams. There was no need for speech, she sat at Sri Aurobindo’s feet and closed her eyes, only her mind was open to him. A great silence now encompassed her and flooded her soul. There was a breaking of past intellectual moulds, a dissolution of arduous mental constructions, followed by a new crystallization in the image of total identification with the incarnate Divine.” [Sri Aurobindo by K R Srinivasa Iyengar]


Of this Moment, The Mother later wrote the next day:

Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude.

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth, and Thy reign shall be indeed established on earth.
[Prayers and Meditations]

OOOOO

The densest darkness is still around — darkness and dark activities therein. Millions and million human beings are still immersed in that darkness — the so-called human beings who are more inhuman, and even subhuman, than human, and they are grossly involved in activities and habits that are leading the Race to disintegration and destruction and still more darkness. It seems that a significant portion of the Race has forgotten any impression of a higher Aspiration, that has been leading mankind always.

We find the instances of mass killings, for several reasons, for fulfilling dark political and religious ambitions, for satisfying insatiable animal passion and greed and deformed lust. We find disturbances everywhere, in smaller and bigger scales. We find clash and hatred and genocide at many places —in Tibet, in Afghanistan, in India and Pakistan. Killers are firing free everywhere.

But also we find that the Hope is there, the non-flickering Ray of Hope. And it has been there, since Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have kindled the Hope. Their Action together began on this day the 29th March 1914.

The greatest consequence of Their Collaboration was, and is, the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth on the 29th February 1956, preceded by the Descent of the Supramental in the Person and in the Body of Sri Aurobindo on the occasion of His Physical Departure and even earlier.

The Supramental Descent was the Hope and then it turned to become the New Reality. That is the Key to the Next Future — the New Future, the New Creation.

OOOOO
Like the squirrel helping in the Setubandha in Ramayana, we also have a role in the formation of the New Future, the Supramental Future — to Work for IT within our capacity and scope, and the minimum of IT is not to have a regression, never to go back, to the World of Darkness and dense and gross animality and never to put off the fire of Aspiration..


Barin Chaki
29-03-2008

The New Way 2

The New Way 2

Barindranath Chaki

20-03-2008

When we look around, we find ourselves, the human beings, generally satisfied with our ignorance and doubts and darkness, our passions and weaknesses, our narrowness and selfishness, our divisions and limitations, our diseases and death. We are proud that we are human beings, because we are somewhat better in our existence and in our situations, in comparison with other forms and expressions of life on earth, the animals and insects and plants. Life is and was an expression of a Force of vitality and strength, of joy and happiness in the inertia and Inconscience that Matter is. But this expression is limited. There is movement in life, but limited by inertia and laziness and indolence. There is force in life, but limited by weaknesses, illnesses and diseases, by sleep and death. There is joy and happiness in life, limited by sorrows and sufferings and pain. There is freedom in life, but limited by all incapacities, falls and failures, by inertia and indolence, by endless bondages and hindrances, and ultimately by death. There is consciousness in life, but it is limited and overwhelmed by ignorance and Inconscience, by the sheer absence of Light and Wisdom and Knowledge.

But if we look back, before the Advent of Man on Earth, we find that it was a movement of a Consciousness-Force towards manifestation of Light in darkness, of Consciousness in Inconscience, of Wisdom and Knowledge in Ignorance, of Joy and Creativity in barren inertness.

When Man evolved out of the Ape, it was the first expression of the principle of Mind, the principle that seeks Truth, searches Truth through layers of Darkness, and aspires to bring Light into Darkness, Consciousness into Inconscience, Life into diseases and Death. Manifestation of Life on earth would have been meaningless, had not the human race come into being.

In the evolutionary history of the earth, ‘the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic’* signifies a very important Moment. [*Satprem: Mother’s Agenda, 1951-1960, P11]

Let us note that Satprem states of birth of the first man amid the hostile hordes! This is remarkable, as the birth of the new race was the result of an evolutionary urge of Nature, and the majority of the horde was unable to be fit and worthy of the Progress. All apes have never turned into the human beings.

Satprem has further said: A first man is the contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high indefeasible ferns — and to begin with, it does not even know that it is man.

A certain simian fellow turned into a man, as chosen by Nature, representing the Supreme Consciousness-Force, but it did not know that he is a New Being, a Man. And his coming into existence was beyond all understanding and logic of the “hostile horde” of the Apes.

And began the March towards the manifestation of Truth, Goodness and Beauty, the March of human civilization and logic and philosophy and arts and Science. But was our March satisfactory? Have we reached anywhere near the Goal — the goal of fulfilment and creativity, of Light and Joy and Immortality?

As we have seen, we are still hovering in Darkness, aided and empowered by all logic and Science and Philosophy. We are still limping in our march and are baffled on our Way, as we are in constant perplexion and the searches have become never-ending: which way to go? We are still living in sadness, with sorrows and sufferings and pain, though we are in search of happiness for centuries and millennia. Mind has become a vicious circle and we are continuously groping in uncertainties.

However, there is the Way, the New Way, the New Vision — as visioned by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, as expressed in Their numerous writings and sayings.

As the birth of the first man was a very important turning point in the evolutionary history of the earth, so also, the coming of the Light from  Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, is another and a greater turning point in the earthly evolution.

Barindranath Chaki

20-03-2008

February

Indeed, the 21st, 28th and 29th days of February bring along with them the Force and Light and Joy of a New Consciousness that vibrates in the air — one may feel it also, if one tries to remain quiet and receptive and open.
That is the Force that is there on earth, in order to bring a Big Change here, from the mental and vital world to the Supramental Manifestation.
To try to commune with The Mother, with the Divine — that will be and is the best way of celebration of these days.
Let us sincerely try to have a constant communion with Her.

Barin
21-02-2008

The Transition

The Transition — The Seventeenth November

Thirty-three years back, on the Seventeenth Day of November, 1973, Mira Alfassa, The Mother in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, left Her physical body and walked and entered into the then newly formed Supramental Body. The World knew and told that She has passed away.

She wanted to walk into Her new supramental body along with Her old body. But that did not and could not happen. The cooperation that She deserved from the fellow human beings was not received. Someone who was close to Her on that day, did not render the needed assistance and She had to lie on Her bed, as She was medically ill. Her instructions were ignored and unheard. Her entreaties were not listened to or cared for. Someone failed to become a true representative of the aspiring mankind.

OOOOO

Medically, The Mother was ill. It was told that She was sick. Though, according to The Mother and Her followers Satprem and Sujata, She was really at the concluding stage of preparing and entering into a New Body, the Supramental Body. Many others heard of it — some believed it. Some could not believe it — some did not believe it.

The Mother had told Sujata of the New Body on 24-03-1972 :

For the first time, early this morning, I saw myself: my body. I don't know whether it's the supramental body or ... (what shall I say?) a transitional body, but I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was sexless: it was neither woman nor man.
It was very white. But that could be because I have white skin, I don't know.
It was very slender (gesture). Really lovely, a truly harmonious form.
That's the first time.
I hadn't the least idea, the faintest notion what it would look like, nothing, and I saw - I WAS like that, I had become like that. I thought Satprem should know, so he can note it down.
I don't know if I'll remember, that's why I am telling you. Because today is Friday and I won't see him till tomorrow. This way, I am sure I won't forget. You'll tell him, won't you?

Sujata: Yes, Mother.

The next day, the 25th March 1972, Satprem had asked The Mother about the New Body:
Sujata told me about the experience you had the other day, that vision you had of your body, the transitional body.

The Mother replied:
Yes, I WAS like that. It was me; I didn't look at myself in a mirror, I saw myself like this (Mother bends her head to look at her body), I was ... I just was like that.
That's the first time. It was around four in the morning, I think. And perfectly natural - I mean, I didn't look in a mirror, it felt perfectly natural……

The Mother revealed Her Agenda and Her Work before Satprem and Sujata, and they were told by Her of Her programme of creation and preparation of the New Body as a very important step in the Supramental Manifestation.

OOOOO

K D Sethna has said:

We are aware that the Supramental Body was already with Her, waiting to fuse with the human form She had worn for our sake. We are aware also that the lengthy struggle she recently went through was only the Yogic endeavour of the human form to open completely to the Supramental Body. Perhaps this form did enough and its exalted agony was needed no more to enable the Supramental Body to manifest. Perhaps that Body having assimilated the achievement of the other and thereby gained sufficient density for its subtle-physical substance, can now materialize itself on its own in a not too distant future.

OOOOO

What M P Pandit said is highly relevant :

A new body was under formation, the supramental body, in which She was to take Her embodiment as the end-result of the transformation of this body. The body was being prepared. She gave in “Notes on the Way” descriptions of this body, described how it looked. And about a year ago, She told someone, “I am trying to fuse this material body into that body but I have not been able to get the clue.” She said, “Nobody on earth has tried this, the secret is not given to me. On that point, She said, there was no help from above. She was searching.

Thereafter ……… one day it flashed to me that as soon as that luminous body was ready, the Mother would just walk into it without dying, “without dying” means not necessarily keeping the body, but without the gap in consciousness; keeping up the continuity of the personality, She would just cross in to that luminous body. It just flashed, and the way it came I thought it was more than just an idea: I noted it down in my diary. I looked up it the other day, it was dated the 24th of July 1973. I did not think it wise to speak of it to people except in my closest circle, which I did… …

Then on the morning of 17th November at about nine o’clock, a particular friend of mine — he has a certain grounding in occult experience, occult knowledge, and normally when we meet we exchange notes — told me, “I have seen the Mother’s body of light.” I got interested. “The new body is full of light but it is not dense enough to function is earth conditions. It is there, and as I was looking at it I got the feeling that the Mother would enter this body the moment it became dense enough to stand and function in the earth atmosphere, seen or unseen. But there is no question of revival of the material body.” And he added, “Those who are capable of seeing the Mother’s halo, aura, they will be able to see that luminous body.” It confirmed what I had perceived some four month’s earlier; I told him as much.

That evening at 7-25 p.m., as you all know, the Mother withdrew from her body. They say the cause was heart failure, but let me tell you the heart failure was not the cause, the heart failure was the result of her withdrawal. She had decided, the moment things were ready she walked into that body.

She has not passed away, She has just changed her body. Not changed in the manner of the Gita — soul changing bodies — consciously ; keeping the full personality she has gone into that body. And, as it was revealed to me.…, she will function in that body, work through those instruments who are open to her, expedite the remaining work — the working out of the consequences — but her activity will not be confined to the Ashram or to Auroville; for her the whole world is her Ashram….

OOOOO

A divine possibility failed due to the non-co-operation and disobedience of Man. The negative force and will prevailed for the time being and the Destiny of Mankind and the Evolution had to have a different Course. When the Old Form could not walk into the Supramental Body, a New Course was taken by divine possibility — the New Body must not have failed and must have assimilated the essence of the Old Form.


The Mother, in Her subtle body, walked into the New Body. That was the triumph of which the mankind did not know. She is continuing Her work of the Supramental Manifestation and Transformation through those instruments who are open to Her and to Her Action or Her Will, throughout the world, and it is not limited to the Ashram or to Auroville. Her work is now for the entire world and for the entire humanity

Barin Chaki
25-11-2007

Written on 17-11-2007,
Revised from 18-11-2007
To 20-11-2007

Pubished on 25-11-2007

On Satprem

Satprem: Life without Death

From Sandra ►

Sandra says :

I'm a bit stunned as I write this. I'm not an obituary writer, but here I am, for the third time in the past month-and-a-bit, writing about someone who died recently. I was just looking online for a link to Satprem 's book The Mind of the Cells for a girlfriend of mine who I chatted with today in the sunny garden here in Bonn. Another friend overheard us, and told us about his experience of being with Satprem in 1973, just after the death of Mirra Alfassa, The Mother.

And now, a few hours later, I read that Satprem died on the 9th of April this year.
I know virtually nothing about Satprem, other than he wrote The Mind of the Cells and other books ( e.g. Life Without Death, on my 'to read' list…) and that he was one of the few people who understood what The Mother was doing. What he shared in The Mind of the Cells lives in my own cells…. in my heart and mind and soul and body, always there, reminding me of so something rare and often forgotten – unseen or unknown even – & not only forgotten in my own consciousness, but in the thoughts and consciousness and life of so many of those around me.

OOOO

The Mind of the Cells is about The Mother's extraordinary 'experiments' in transformation and evolution through the body. What Satprem and the Mother explored has stayed with me like a light in the darkest tunnels of my own journey. I believe I 'left' my body (as much as was possible without actually going insane or dying) when I was seven, - and that my life from that point onwards has been a path of reconnecting to this body. I deeply sense and experience that this reconnection is not simply a 'getting back in'- it's wider than that, part of my own evolution – and because I'm in the middle of this journey ( or somewhere along a spectrum that may not be vertical), I can't quite express what is actually happening.I've always felt that I am here in a 'body' for a reason, that the wild and often extremely uncomfortable physical ride this body is on is not a 'mistake' or a problem. I believe that the evolution of consciousness, of being human - of becoming - is through this body; I believe that 'enlightenment' is not a process of disconnecting from the physical into some 'higher' more ethereal realm, rather it is a fully physical and felt experience (I have to say that this is more than a belief, it's a kind of knowing that is not about being 'right'). Reading The Mind of the Cells washed over me like a wave of warm ocean, curling me into its heart, saying Yes, what you experience is absolutely precise and on track.

OOOO

Thank you Satprem, thank you Mother Mirra.
I had the same thoughts about Satprem that I had about U.G. Krishnamurti - I hoped that 'one day' I would meet him. Both lived quite reclusively, out of the public eye, and I'm sad that I did not make a greater effort to sit with them in this life. I'm reminded to never take for granted what is here, and to reach out to all who have touched me, supported me, encouraged me, and tell them how grateful I am.

And, I loved what Barindranath Chaki wrote on his Satprem blog: “Satprem cannot die…He will be there, till the Work he has undertaken is done”. Perhaps this is why I'm writing this - so that the flame of Sri Aurobindo, The Mother and Satprem can be passed along - to anyone who is touched by anything I've written, to anyone who feels that the physical experience is absolutely integral to consciousness, then please, read these extraordinary people's books, share the flame. Let's live in the fire of life, exploring all its corridors and pathways, let us – hand-in-hand – walk where there are no roads, no maps, on and into this great adventure of the unknown.

OOOO

Added later:

“It happened in the deserted canyons near Pondicherry. I was sitting there quietly, when out of a hollow came three men. Instantly I knew: “They're coming to kill me.” I stayed where I was, without moving. And strangely without any effort or concentration, I suddenly felt as if emptied of myself, without any reaction, without fear, without anything, like a stone, but a conscious stone looking unconcerned at some kind of show, just as one can be both witness and actor in a dream. Except for its neutrality, the feeling was not really that of a rock, but rather that of a body, my body, as something utterly transparent and null, and a little indistinct. Nothing moved, there was not a quiver or a throb - and I had nothing to do with it, there was no “self-control” involved, no effort. Something had taken hold of me in a transparent immobility The three men were there: two in front, one behind. I didn't move. they talked amongst themselves. Then a kind of voice in me said, “Get up.” I rose, with my back to the canyon. One of them took off my watch, no doubt to simulate a robbery. The man behind came in front of me. I saw the killer raise his arm to push me into the canyon. I followed the movement of that arm, my eyes met the gold-coloured eyed of the killer. he lowered his arm, hesitated a moment as if he was not sure what to do , or exactly why he was there. It seemed that he too now watched the scene as if it did not make any sense, or as if he had forgotten what he had come for. He turned around, the others turned, around, and they left. Then they started to run as if panic stricken. And my heart suddenly remembered that it should have been frightened, that they had wanted to kill me.. and it started pounding like mad.The only thing I know is that had there been the slightest effort on my part, the slightest contraction or reaction to push those men back, even an inner refusal, a mere “no” inside, they would have killed me instantly: the opposition thus raised would have met and challenged their vibration and the reaction would have touched off the whole process. But there was nothing, not even a breath of reaction; I was like thin air, as it wore: the others vibration passed through me like a breeze, unobstructed. Can you kill a breeze? Some kind of contact is necessary in order to kill, you have to have a handle - here, there was no handle, for the was nothing, and since there was nothing, there was nothing!”

[ From Satprem: The mind of the cells ]

Sandra Jensen

[http://sandrajensen.zaadz.com/]

[As a comment on my blog Satprem, simultaneously published in Zaadz, Sandra says :
Thank you so much for this, dear Barindranath. I was just writing my own Satprem blog, only having discovered today that he died, and while I was researching him I found you here, what a gift.
Love,
Sandra]
~Barin Chaki~

A comment on 'Satprem'

From Juliette ►

juliette said...

Dear Mr Chaki

I don't know why since some days I was trying to remember the title of Satprem's book : the Sannyasin I have read more than thirty years ago on the land of India when I stayed for a visit in Auroville. This book was kind of a bible for me at that time, when I was opening it at any page I found a relevent answer to my quest to find truth in this life. This book was the seed to show me the way. Then after a while I gave that book to some one but still keeping strong inside the impact of it. Then as a sign, suddenly, some days ago, I remembered the atmosphere of this book but forgoten the title and wondering if Satprem was still alive. So I searched in Internet and found out from your article that he died ten days ago. What a coïncidence although I've rarely thought of him during those past years. I share with you the sadness of his lost as he is a human being of our time who brought light on the way of many people's life and I am very grateful to him. For all the best to you and to those who loved him.

Juliette
4:06 AM

The Supramental Manifestation

The Supramental Manifestation 3

From Mind to Supermind II

We have seen that according to Sri Aurobindo, the higher hemisphere of existence begins with Supermind, but one has to go across several mental worlds, which are clearly above the ordinary mind, where we generally dwell and which we believe to be the Mind. These are, as seen earlier, the levels of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind or Intuition, and Overmind, in an ascending order. And the supramental plane is beyond all these planes.
The Higher Mind is the first of the supra-rational levels or grades of existence, the first level of the Spiritual Mind or of the Superconscient. It is a stage of evolution beyond the rational mind, and is also an ascent to a plane above the level of pure thinking mind.
The Higher Mind has its origin in Overmind and, in an ulterior manner, in Supermind. The first decisive step beyond our normal human Intelligence, our ordinary mentality, is an ascent into the Higher Mind, which is not any more a mind of mingled light, obscurity or half-light. It has a large clarity of the Spirit.

About the Higher Mind, Sri Aurobindo has said:
Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind, -- but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin, -- as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness is dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge. [ The Life Divine ]

Because of the original identity of the Higher Mind with Overmind — and also with Supermind — it has an all-awareness, and it also carries the truths held in this identity. The Higher Mind has a capacity of a swift, victorious and multitudinous conception. The Higher Mind is also a greater mind of knowledge, and its Ideas have the self-power of realizing its conceptions.
In Evolution, our ordinary mind had a task to do: raising of the consciousness beyond matter and life, beyond ignorant animal hood. But as it came to enlighten and lead, it became engrossed and involved in darkness and ignorance.

An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
Captured and driven in Life's nescient grasp,
Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,
It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,
The natural privilege of unfallen gods,
Recalling still its old lost sovereignty. [Savitri]

Beyond our ordinary mind, which is fundamentally a principle of Ignorance, the Higher Mind is the first step, the first plane of existence. In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo refers to this plane as the Greater Mind, Thought and the Spirit of Mind.

For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
It is greater than its earthly instrument:
The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
Escapes on every side into some vast
That is a passage to infinity.
It moves eternal in the spirit's field,
A runner towards the far spiritual light,
A child and servant of the spirit's force. [Savitri]

The Higher Mind is the realm of the greater Thought. Here, there is no necessity of arriving at a proposition by logical reasoning (such as the one that must follow from the major and minor premises of a syllogism), a proposition that is a search and also is critical of oneself and one's errors. Here, there are no logical steps towards a conclusion, there is no mechanism of deductions and inferences, no linking together of ideas as in a chain in order to arrive at some knowledge, for the limping action of Reason is a movement of Ignorance in search of knowledge, and it protects its steps against error and erects “a selective mental structure for its temporary shelter” basing it on foundations which are already carefully laid but are never firm, not supported on a soil of innate awareness. The foundations are “imposed on an original soil of nescience.” [Words selected from The Life Divine ]

The Higher Mind is also beyond the mental intuition, “that other way of our mind at its keenest and swiftest, a rapid hazardous divination and insight, a play of the searchlight of intelligence probing into the little known or the unknown.” [Words selected from The Life Divine ]

It is therefore beyond the two conventional ways of reaching and finding Truth : logical reasoning, which is slow and limping, and intuition, which is quick but occurring at irregular intervals; having no pattern or order in time.

The Higher Mind is a Knowledge that formulates itself on a basis of self-existent all-awareness and manifests some part of its integrality, a harmony of its significances being put into thought-form. It can freely express itself in single ideas. Its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view. Here, the relations between ideas, between one truth and another are not established by logic; but they pre-exist and emerge as already seen in the integral whole. Here, there is an initiation into forms of an ever-present knowledge, which is till now inactive. This knowledge is not a system of conclusions from premises or data. But this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired knowledge. There is a great totality of truth known and experienced, but still this totality is capable of infinite enlargement, having no end to the aspects of knowledge.

Besides the aspect of cognition, the Higher Mind has also the aspect of will, of dynamic effectuation of the Truth. Here, this greater and more brilliant Mind works always on the rest of the being, “the mental will, the heart and its feelings, the life, the body, through the power of thought, through the idea-force.” [ The Life Divine ] It tries to purify, deliver and create through knowledge. The idea is put into the heart or the life as a force to be accepted and worked out. Heart and life become conscious of the idea and respond to its dynamisms. Their substance begins to change itself accordingly, and the feelings and actions become the vibrations of this higher wisdom, become informed with it and are filled with the emotion and the sense of it. The will and the life impulses are charged with its power, in a similar way. The idea works even in the body, and as a result, for example, the powerful thought and will of health replaces the faith of the body in illness and its consent to illness, or the idea of strength calls in the substance, power, motion, vibration of strength. The idea generates proper force and form and imposes it on our substance of Mind, Life or Body. In this way its working proceeds and it charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness, laying down a foundation of change, and prepares it for a superior truth of existence.

This distinction between cognition and action, between Idea and Will, between Chit and Tapas (Consciousness and Force), is maintained by Sri Aurobindo in all levels, even up to Supermind.
The presence and influence of the Higher Mind is often found in philosophers and thinkers, and it is less opaque and has more freedom. The background is no longer fully gray or with the gray borders on the blue. And the little bursts of light that descend are less quickly swallowed by the darkness of ignorance. The descending bursts of life are more intense, more abundant and frequent than in the ordinary mind. Joy lasts longer, love becomes wider. We become aware and conscious of true and causeless love and joy — we come to know them properly. The movements are less subject to the endless conditions of the lower levels of consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo speaks of ‘the Spirit of Mind’ and ‘the great stairs of thought,’ while referring to the Higher Mind, the Greater Mind.

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.
A gold supernal sun of timeless
Truth Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray
Through a silence quivering with the word of Light
On an endless ocean of discovery.
Far-off he saw the joining hemispheres.
On meditation's mounting edge of trance
Great stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights
Where Time's last ridges touch eternity's skies
And Nature speaks to the spirit's absolute. [Savitri]

Regarding the influence of the Higher Mind or the Greater Mind on our ordinary world of Death and Ignorance, we find the reference below:

Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
Exposed to omniscient immensities,
It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
Its speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,
Its force that strides invincibly through Time,
Its mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,
Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death. [Savitri]

In the realm of Ignorance, these higher forces of the planes of the Superconscient become limited. When the superior power of these higher planes of Mind is first perceived or experienced on earth, a natural misconception can easily arise regarding their vast possibilities. But in the lower world the situation is not the same as in their own realm.

Sri Aurobindo has said:
It has here to be emphasized that 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 in Matter they have to enter into a foreign and inferior medium and work upon it; they encounter there the incapacities of our mind and life and body, meet with the unreceptiveness or blind refusal of the Ignorance, experience the negation and obstruction of the Inconscience. On their own level they work upon a basis of luminous consciousness and luminous substance of being and are automatically effective; but here they have to encounter an already and strongly formed foundation of Nescience, --- not only the complete nescience of Matter, but the modified nescience of mind and heart and life. [The Life Divine]


When the Higher Mind descends, the ordinary mind, along with the lower nature, puts resistance. The descent of the higher Idea from the Higher Mind is possible only into the developed mental intelligence, but even there it has to overcome the heavy obstruction from a mass or system of formed ideas belonging to the mental plane and also the will to persistence and self-realization of these ideas. For all ideas are forces and have a formative or self-effective faculty greater or less according to the conditions. Thus there is a power of resistance readily formed which opposes or minimizes the effects of the descending Light, a resistance which may turn into a refusal, a rejection of the Light, or become an attempt to impair, subdue, cleverly modify or change or perversely deform the light, so as to make it suitable to the ideas of the Ignorance.

Unless one is very open and receptive to higher truths, one's preconceived ideas will obstruct and ruin everything. Not only any kind of belief that adheres to exact word or letters, but also philosophical and intellectual ideas and conceptions, which may seem to be all right on their own level, may cause resistance to the Higher Light.

Resistance is also put by the lower levels of the being. When the ideas, that are preconceived or already formed, are dismissed and are not allowed to persist any further, they still recur from outside, as they are still in force and currency in the universal Mind, or they may recede downwards into the vital, physical or subconscient parts and from there sweep back or rise again at the least opportunity to reconquer their lost sphere. Evolutionary Nature gives this right of persistence to things that were once established by her for bringing “a sufficient steadiness and solidity to her steps.” [The Life Divine ]

This "right of persistence" is a necessity of Nature for a progressive evolutionary manifestation in the world of "collision and struggle and intermixture of Forces".

There is resistance in the Vital and the Subconscious, in the lower levels of being, in the heart and life and body. The same phenomenon recurs here more intensely. The Higher Light does not meet the ideas here, but meets “emotions, desires, impulses, sensations, vital needs and habits of the lower Nature…” They are less conscious than ideas and, therefore, are blinder in their response and more obstinate and self-assertive.

Sri Aurobindo says :
This power of persistence, recurrence, resistance of established things in Nature is always the great obstacle which the evolutionary Force has to meet, which it has indeed itself created in order to prevent a too rapid transmutation even when that transmutation is its own eventual intention in things. [ The Life Divine ]

We have thus seen that the old nature and the old habits in matter and life and the ordinary mind pose stubborn resistance and obstructions to the Descent of the Higher Light. This has to be overcome, and for this purpose, most of the spiritual teachings prefer the ascetic path of renunciation and transcendence, without bringing any change or transformation to this world. But Sri Aurobindo has shown us the Way which is greater and nobler than renouncing and transcending the world, the Way of transformation of matter and the lower nature, with a view to further the Evolution towards the complete and integral manifestation of the Divine, of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in Matter, on earth, which will not be a Nirvana, a return to the Unmanifest.

The lower nature resists Transformation also. At each level of the Ascent, the resistance and the obstacle may progressively diminish, but they will be there. To enable the descent and working of the Higher Light — from the Higher Mind to the Supermind — without a heavy resistance and obstruction, the seeker has to acquire a deep quietude of the nature, a control and tranquility and even silence in his mind and life and body. Still then, the universal Ignorance and obscurity in the individual make of mind and life and body may create resistance and obstruction.
A psychic tranformation and in a greater degree a spiritual tranformation will reduce the hold of the Ignorance. But these influences do not altogether eliminate the resistance, obstruction and limitation. The original basis of Nescience will still be there, requiring always to be changed, enlightened, and diminished in its extent and action. The power of the spiritual Higher Mind will be modified and diminished at its entrance into our ordinary mind and as a result it will not be sufficient to remove all these obstacles. But it can make a first change, which will enable a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare the seeker for a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge and action. The Illumined Mind is the next greater Force.

Barindranath Chaki
24-11-2006

References :

The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo
Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness by Satprem
KHEPER — The Kheper Website of M Alan Kazlev

The Supramental Manifestation

The Supramental Manifestation 2

From Mind to Supermind I

According to Sri Aurobindo, the higher hemisphere of existence begins with Supermind. But before reaching Supermind, one has to pass through several mental worlds, which are distinctly above the ordinary mind — the ordinary mind, where we generally dwell and which we believe to be the Mind. These are, as we have seen earlier, the levels of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind or Intuition, and Overmind, in an ascending order. Obviously, these planes are not the supramental plane, which is beyond them. Sri Aurobindo has given these names to these planes of consciousness and has also described them in distinct terms.

These planes can be experienced by the people who are so capable. According to Sri Aurobindo, these four planes constitute the Superconscient, or the Super-consciousness, but again, these superconscient planes do not constitute the supramental plane: though, they definitely lead, in an ascending order, towards the Supermind.

It may be so that for a few persons, the Higher Mind or even the Illumined Mind does not seem to be super-conscious, as that may be a part of their waking consciousness. As evolution makes progress, the seeker ascends to these peaks of consciousness one after another and makes them part of their normal waking consciousness.

The Superconscient is our evolutionary future, just as the subconsciousness in our mental principle is our evolutionary past.

In this connection, Satprem says:

Each of them is a whole world of existence, vaster and more full of activity than the earth, and our mental language is ill-suited to describe them; we would need the language of the visionary or the poet — “another language,” said Rimbaud. This is what Sri Aurobindo did in Savitri, his epic poem to which we refer the reader.

A million lotuses swaying on our stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs toward some far unseen epiphany.

[Savitri]

OOOO

When we ascend to these planes of mind, our vision of the world gets transformed. We might have observed that the ordinary mind sees things step by step, in succession and in a linear way. It cannot see or understand or comprehend more than one thing at a time. It cannot take any leap, surpassing logic, as in such a situation, things would appear hazy, irrational or incoherent to our ordinary mind. When it accepts something as fact or as truth, then all that is different from that fact or truth is rejected as false. That is the reason of the problem that if we accept one philosophy or one religion, we discard others and there is clash and intolerance. The ordinary mind operates with all limitations, like a closed box. Satprem says: it works like a camera shutter, letting in one and only one image at a time. Anything that is not found on its momentary little screen belongs to the limbo of error, of falsehood and darkness. All things thus fit in an inexorable system of opposites — white or black, truth or error, God or Satan — and it plods along like donkey on a road, seeing one tuft of grass after another.

The ordinary mind relentlessly forms little pieces of time and space. The more there is descent in the levels of consciousness, the pieces of time and space get smaller and smaller. Whatever comes in front of its narrow and limited focus appears to be true, and other things are in error, are wrong and untrue. It has divided time past, present and future. It differentiates between truth and so-called falsehood, good and evil, and sees several opposites. It analyses, but has not ordinarily learned to make a synthesis. We see one colour and speak of black and white, and puzzle and ponder over the problem of various colours of life and reality in an effort to solve or understand it. The ordinary mind is incapable of having a true picture, a true understanding of Truth, of Reality.

But there is the thirst in us, the aspiration in us, for more and more understanding, more and more comprehension, more and more enlightenment. That is the Fire in us, which does not have its source in the ‘ordinary mind’: but it is an inextinguishable flame, an inextinguishable fire, which is burning in our psychic being, in our soul, and which does not depend upon any religion, any intellectual philosophy, any mental construction.

A disciple asked The Mother [Mira Alfassa] :

Each time that I try to rise a little, there is a setback.

The Mother replied :

As for your progress — it is because you are trying mentally and the mental is always a limitation to the consciousness. It is only as the aspiration from the heart and the psychic that can be effective. (And when you stop trying, you let me work in you and I know the proper way!)

[The Words of the Mother: Collected Works Vol. 14]

The Mother further said in another occasion :

It is only love that can understand and get at the secrets of the Divine Working. The mind, the physical mind especially, is incapable of seeing correctly and yet it always wants to judge. It is only a true humility in the mind, allowing the psychic to rule the being, that can save human beings from ignorance and obscurity.


Mind has become a field of errors, of ignorance and doubt and obscurity, of lies and falsehood. Mind wanders all the time. It is like a public square.

The Mother has said :

Some people call it a public square, because everything comes there, goes across, passes, comes back … All ideas go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very well organized, for usually ideas meet and knock into one another, there are accidents of all kinds.

She has further said :

In the human mind there is a morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, argument, skepticism.

And again, She has said :

It is a disease of the ordinary human intellect — which comes, moreover, from separation, division — to make a thing always either this or that. If you choose this, you turn your back on that; if you choose that, you turn your back on this.

It is an impoverishment. One must know how to take up everything, combine everything, synthetise everything. And then one has an integral realization.


OOOO

Sri Aurobindo says : Mind is only a preparatory form of consciousness.

Mind cannot see the whole, it sees the part only. The whole seems to the mind to be only the assemblage of several parts. Sri Aurobindo has said : Mind is a passage, not a culmination.

Sri Aurobindo says:

But first he met a silver-grey expanse
Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
It was a tract of dim and shifting rays
Parting Life's sentient flow from Thought's self-poise.
A coalition of uncertainties
There exercised uneasy government
On a ground reserved for doubt and reasoned guess,
A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.
At its low extremity held difficult sway
A mind that hardly saw and slowly found;
Its nature to our earthly nature close
And kin to our precarious mortal thought
That looks from soil to sky and sky to soil
But knows not the below nor the beyond,
It only sensed itself and outward things.
This was the first means of our slow ascent
From the half-conscience of the animal soul
Living in a crowded press of shape-events
In a realm it cannot understand nor change;
Only it sees and acts in a given scene
And feels and joys and sorrows for a while.
The ideas that drive the obscure embodied spirit
Along the roads of suffering and desire
In a world that struggles to discover Truth,
Found here their power to be and Nature-force.
Here are devised the forms of an ignorant life

[Savitri, Book II, Canto X]


OOOO


However, originally, Mind is a principle of Light. Mind has a purpose and a meaning. Sri Aurobindo again says :

Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
He came into a realm of early Light
And the regency of a half-risen sun.
Out of its rays our mind's full orb was born.
Appointed by the Spirit of the Worlds
To mediate with the unknowing depths,
A prototypal deft Intelligence
Half-poised on equal wings of thought and doubt
Toiled ceaselessly twixt being's hidden ends.

[Savitri, Book II, Canto X]

Whatever may be Mind’s imperfections, it had and has a special purpose in the evolutionary progress. Originally, Mind is a principle of Light amid darkness, an instrument of and from the Supermind, set to work for further evolutionary progress on earth.

Sri Aurobindo says:

Mind is not in its very nature an inventor of errors, a father of lies bound down to a capacity of falsehood, wedded to its own mistakes and the leader of a stumbling life as it too largely is at present, owing to our human shortcomings : it is in its origin, a principle of light, an instrument put forth from the Supermind and though set to work within limits and set to create limits, yet the limits are luminous borders for a special working, voluntary and purposive bounds, a service of the finite ever extending itself under the eye of infinity. It is this character Mind that will reveal itself under the touch of Supermind and make human mentality an adjunct and a minor instrumentation of the supramental knowledge. It will even be possible for the mind no longer limited by the intellect to become capable of a sort of mental gnosis, a luminous representation of the Truth in a diminished working extending the power of light not only to its own but to lower levels of consciousness in their climb towards self transcendence. Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind and what I have called the Higher Mind, these and the other levels of a spiritualised and liberated mentality, will be able to reflect in the uplifted human mind and its purified and exalted feeling and force of life and action something of their powers and prepare the ascent of the soul to their own plateaus and peaks of an ascending existence. This is essentially the change which can be contemplated as a result of the new evolutionary order and it would mean considerable extension over the evolutionary field itself.


But when we ascend in the planes of the Superconscient, from Mind to Supermind, through the four planes of higher consciousness, mentioned earlier, our vision and consciousness then widens, step by step, more and more from the narrow, limited, ignorant, linear consciousness, full of contradictions, to the global consciousness. Supermind is described by Sri Aurobindo as the global consciousness, as the higher hemisphere of consciousness. Hemisphere means half of the terrestrial globe. The higher Truth is not separated or isolated from the earth. The whole Truth is not without the lower half, the higher is not opposed to the lower, rather, it fulfils the lower Truth. The descent of the Supramental is for the fulfilment of the earth. We are to search and find the Infinite in the finite, the Eternal in the temporal, the Whole in the fraction. And that is the promise to be fulfilled by the descent of the Supramental Consciousness.

Satprem further says :

The ascent of consciousness is not only the story of the conquest of time, it is also the conquest of joy, of love, of the vastness of being.

From ordinary mind to the plane of Overmind — and even to the plane of the Supermind — it is the quality of light and the quality of vibrations that differ. And this quality of light and vibrations distinguishes one plane from the other. And if we look at the ordinary mind in its aspect of light from the Seer’s viewpoint, we find that the Light here has a sort of grayness, along with ‘a number of dark little spots’ or some obscure vibratory small nodes or knobs or knots. They move like a swarm of flies, flying from one person to another. Sometimes, there is a descent of a little burst of light, a little joy or a little love, into the grayness of the ordinary mind. According to Sri Aurobindo, this plane of ordinary mind is a ground of neutrality, which is thick and sticky, absorbing, which is subject to a number of conditions, which discolours everything and has an obscure gravitation pulling everything down.

We shall see next about the ascending planes of the Superconscient and our progress in those realms.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
16-11-2006

The Supramental Manifestation

The Supramental Manifestation 1

We, the human beings, are born in ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, out of ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, and are bearing and carrying in us the same ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness. Did the first Homo Neanderthal [1] , or rather the first group of Homo Neanderthals, ever had the capacity or the possibility of even dreaming of the present day world, or even the world of the times of the Vedas, or of the age when there was the Buddha on earth, or even when Jesus was traveling and walking on this earth, of dreaming and imagining that some Newton or Einstein or Hawkins, some Shakespeare or Shaw or Tagore, some Sri Ramkrishna or Swami Vivekananda, one Sri Aurobindo or Mira Alfassa would be born in this race?

That was and is the story of the human evolution — from the first group of Homo Neanderthal to the first Persons who realized and touched the Supramental Consciousness : Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa].

It was surely the Divine Intervention on earth that there was the appearance of the first group of Homo Neanderthals. Amid all ignorance and darkness and amid all animal and vital activities, the first group of rebels of the Light appeared. They wanted to break the chains, wanted to surpass the animal limits and habits, the animal way of instinctive but subjugated life. They started to stand erect and started using Mind, though initially in a small, rudimentary and limited degree. They started walking, talking, laughing, thinking though in a crude way. They began the human world — a world of Hope, of Aspiration, of Struggle against darkness and divisions and death, against Inconscience and Ignorance and Incapacity.
Sri Aurobindo said that this race, though “born into a world of ignorance and inconscience,” was “capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and an ascent into the light and power and bliss of a spiritual being and spiritual nature.”
That was a moment, when the first group of Homo Neanderthals appeared — a step towards the Future, at that point of Time, as early as 350,000 years ago.
Now, we have Sri Aurobindo, the Hope of Man, who has promised us of the New World, the New Horizon, and not only that, he has also taken, along with The Mother [Mira Alfassa], the First Steps towards the Next Future, the Illumined Future.

***

The Mother said : What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation ; it is a decisive action, direct from the Supreme.

During the Birth Centenary of Sri Aurobindo in 1972, The Mother gave us the following Message:
“Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.
“Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.”

The Mother gave us also other messages on Sri Aurobindo at that time, one of which I am quoting below:
“Man is the creation of yesterday.
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.”

On 30 January 1972, she further told us:
“Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavor to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.”

***

Supermind is not a higher type of Mind. It is not a more perfect mind. Every student of Sri Aurobindo knows it.

According to Sri Aurobindo, Mind is a “half-lit and diminished principle.” Generally, the word ‘Mind’ is used to mean the general and ordinary mental consciousness, including the vital and emotional aspects. The vital and emotional aspects of our consciousness, all our passions, cravings, hungers, sentiments etc belong to the vital being or the principle of Life in us, as per the definition given by Sri Aurobindo. The vital being or Life is different from Mind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo. Even our higher emotions, love, sympathy, patriotism, — all of them — belong to the vital being, but the higher vital being. When we mention of the heart, not the physical one, but the emotional center, we then refer to the inner higher vital. Mind generally refers to the principle of reason and logic, intelligence, memory, will, thinking, understanding etc. This is the “half-lit and diminished principle of mind.” However, Mind is also used in a higher and wider sense. In the wider sense, it refers to the higher ranges starting from the Higher Mind to the Overmind. Of course these ranges exclude Supermind. As I have stated, Supermind is not a higher mind. It is a Higher Consciousness, transcending all the stages and planes of Mind. In between the ordinary Mind and the principle of Supermind, according to Sri Aurobindo , there are four stages of Mind: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then, the Overmind.

To begin with, Overmind is the highest stage where the mental consciousness could reach, till the Manifestation of the Supermind. It is the Plane of the gods and goddesses, wherefrom several Avatars of the Supreme manifested and represented Him on earth. It is the Consciousness which was represented by Sri Krishna on earth, according to Sri Aurobindo. As Sri Aurobindo has stated, the Higher Mind is the first of the supra-rational levels or planes or grades of existence and consciousness, the first level of “Spiritual Mind”. It is an evolutionary stage beyond the rational mind. It is an ascent to a plane above the level of pure thinking mind, and there can be a descent also from this plane. Above the Higher Mind, there is a further and even more powerful and revelatory supra-rational level or plane of existence and consciousness, which is called the Illumined Mind. The Higher Mind prepares an integration of the being into a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual Light. Here, in place of the clear spiritual intelligence and the tranquil daylight of the Higher Mind, one finds “an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit.” And the characteristic action of ‘the larger conceptual-spiritual principle’ adds a fiery ardour of realization and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge to the consciousness. The Higher Mind has the characteristic of the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace, whereas the Illumined Mind has the feature of a play of lightnings of of spiritual truth and power breaking from above into the consciousness.

About the Intuitive Mind, Sri Aurobindo has said:

“Intuition is above the illumined Mind which is simply the higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration. … The Intuition is the first plane in which there is a real opening to the full possibility of realization - it is through it that one goes farther - first to Overmind and then to Supermind.”

Of course,there are mental, vital, subtle physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined Mind, and even from the Overmind, as stated by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo speaks of seven major planes of existence. He also suggests that between Mind and Supermind, or lower (finite, limited, ignorant) and higher (infinite, divine, perfect) creation, there is an important transitional or intermediate reality, which He calls the Overmind.

“At the source of …Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, – not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of 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. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.” [The Life Divine, p.278]

The Overmind is the plane of the great Gods, the individualized expression of the unitary Supramental Truth. These powers oversee the phenomenal world. It is the level where multiplicity first appears, and indeed is the principle that originally causes multiplicity.

“Overmind Energy (has the)…capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral…all-comprehending Unity (of the Supermind). It takes each aspect or power and gives it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance…” [The Life Divine, p.279]

Thus multiplicity emerges from Unity; the Archetypes emerge from the Unmanifest Absolute. Here we have the distinction between the Unmanifest and the Manifest Absolute or Godhead.

***

From Overmind, the next Ascension in the spiritual journey, is to Supermind.
It is the Ascent to Supermind and the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth makes the Next Evolution possible.

Sri Aurobindo has said:

“The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.”

Thus, as we have seen, Supermind is a principle which is out of reach of the common ordinary mind. But when Man reaches the higher regions of mind, namely the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then the Overmind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo, when Man reaches there, he can have the glimpses and the touch of Supermind. It may be very difficult, even appear to be impossible. But when the Supramental Consciousness is present on earth, things will be easier, much easier.
And now the Supermind is on earth, actively present on earth. I am quoting the oft-quoted message of the Mother from Mother's Agenda Vol.1:

FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION

(During the common meditation on Wednesday
The 29th February 1956)

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come', and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

***

The Mother has said in this regard:

“The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.”

Thus, we can see that Mind has reached the its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the supramental consciousness. This is the Truth. We should no longer remain limited within the ranges of our ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavor to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey to the New Creation taken up by the supramental consciousness.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
05-11-2006

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[1]——>

a. The Neanderthal : An extinct human species (Homo neanderthalensis) or subspecies (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) living during the late Pleistocene Epoch throughout most of Europe and parts of Asia and northern Africa and associated with Middle Paleolithic tools.[The Free Dictionary]
b. The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appear in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago. By 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they did not reach extinction in Asia until 30,000 years ago.[ Collected from Wikipedia ]
c. The most widely accepted view among current anthropologists is that Homo sapiens originated in the African savanna between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago, descending from Homo erectus, and colonized Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 years ago, and finally colonized the Americas by 10,000 years ago. They displaced Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis and other species descended from Homo erectus (which had colonized Eurasia as early as 2 million years ago) through more successful reproduction and competition for resources.[ Collected from Wikipedia ]
d. Homo erectus (upright man) is an extinct species of genus Homo. In 1890s it was first described as Pithecanthropus erectus based on a skullcap and a modern-looking femur (thighbone) found from the bank of the Solo River central Java.
Throughout much of the 20th century, anthropologists have debated the role of H. erectus in human evolution. Early in the century, due to discoveries on Java and at Zhoukoudian in China, it was believed that modern humans first evolved in Asia. This contradicted Charles Darwin's statements of African origins. However, during the 1950s and 1970s, numerous fossil finds from East Africa (Kenya) yielded evidence that the oldest hominins originated there. It is now believed that H. erectus is a descendant of earlier hominins such as Australopithecus and early Homo species (e.g., H. habilis). [Hominini is the tribe of Homininae that only includes humans (Homo), chimpanzees (Pan), and their extinct ancestors. Members of the tribe are called hominins (cf. Hominidae, "hominids") .]
Australopithecus shared several traits with modern apes and humans and were widespread throughout Eastern and Southern Africa from 4.4 million years to 1.7 million years ago. The available hominid footprints are remarkably similar to modern humans and have been positively dated as 3.7 million years old. Until recently, the footprints have generally been classified as Australopithicine because that had been the only form of pre-human known to have existed in that region at that time; however, some scholars have considered reassigning them to a yet unidentified very early species of the genus Homo.
Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus are among the most famous of the extinct hominids. A. africanus used to be regarded as ancestral to the genus Homo (in particular Homo erectus). However, some fossils assigned to the genus Homo have been found that are older than A. africanus. Thus, the genus Homo either split off from the genus Australopithecus at an earlier date or both developed from a yet possibly unknown common ancestor independently.
According to the Chimpanzee Genome Project, both human (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5-6 million years ago, if we assume a constant rate of evolution.
H. erectus originally migrated from Africa around 2.0 million years ago, and dispersed throughout most of the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa), reaching as far as Southeast Asia.
Fossilized remains dating to 1.8 and 1.0 million years old have been found in Africa, Europe, and in Indonesia and China in Asia. H. erectus remains an important hominin since it is believed to be the first to leave Africa. Some scholars believe that H. erectus is an evolutionary lineage, derived to have been the ancestor to modern H. sapiens.
Homo erectus has fairly derived (advanced) morphological features, and a larger cranial capacity than that of the newly found Homo habilis. The forehead (frontal bone) is less sloping and the teeth are smaller. Homo erectus would bear a striking resemblance to modern humans, but had a brain about 75 percent (950 to 1100 cc) of the size of that of a modern human's. These early hominines were tall, on average standing about 1.79 m (5 feet, 10 inches). The sexual dimorphism between males and females was almost the same as seen in modern Homo sapiens with males being slightly larger than females.
Homo erectus used more diverse and sophisticated tools than its predecessors. H. erectus first used tools of the Oldowan style and later progressed to the Acheulean style. The surviving tools from both periods are all made of stone. Oldowan tools are the oldest known formed tools and date as far back as about 2.4 million years ago. The Acheulean era began about 1.2 million years ago and ended about 500,000 years ago. The primary innovation associated with Acheulean handaxes is that the stone was chipped on both sides to form two cutting edges.
Homo erectus were probably the first early humans to fit squarely into the category of a hunter gatherer society and not as prey for larger animals. Anthropologists believe that H. erectus was socially closer to modern humans than the more primitive species before it.
The discovery of Turkana boy in 1984 has shown evidence that despite H. erectus's more human-like anatomy, they were not capable of producing sounds of a complexity comparable to modern speech.
H. erectus migrated all throughout the Great Rift Valley, even up to the Red Sea. Early humans, in the person of Homo erectus, were learning to master their environment for the first time. Attributed to H. erectus, around 1.8 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge, is the oldest known evidence of mammoth consumption. It is suggested that H. erectus may have built rafts and travelled over oceans.
Some dispute that H. erectus was able to control fire. The earliest (least disputed) evidence of controlled fire is around 300,000 years old and comes from a site called Terra Amata, which lies on an ancient beach location on the French Riviera. This site seems to have been occupied by Homo erectus. There are older Homo erectus sites that seem to indicate controlled use of fire, some dating back 500,000 to 1.5 million years ago, in France, China, and other areas. A discovery brought forth in March of 2004 stated that there is evidence for controlled fires in excavations in northern Israel from about 690,000 to 790,000 years ago.
Homo erectus remains one of the most successful and long-lived species of the Homo genus. It is generally considered to have given rise to a number of descendant species and subspecies. The oldest known specimen of the ancient man was found in Africa. Homo neanderthalensis came much later as descndants, followed by Homo sapiens, still later.



Barindranath Chaki
05-11-2006