The Next Evolution

The Next Evolution 4

When we look at the question of survival, as viewed by Darwin, we find that the fittest only survives. The principle of the survival of the fittest is the Way of Evolution. It is also observed by some, that the survival of animals is enhanced by the formation of groups. In human society also, it is seen that survival is enhanced by the formation of groups. It is found that all groups have a ‘core’ leader, and following such a leader means subservience both on the physical plane and the mental and philosophical plane also. It is further observed that subservience mentally and philosophically is a vital instinct for the survival and the mind does not work there. Ants have survived, as they are always in a group. These are scientific observations and they are true — but true within certain limitations.

Science has seen the past only and it does not look much into the future, and even it does, it is in a very limited way, limited within the senses and sense-bound limitation.

On the onward march in Evolution, especially in the Next Evolution beyond Man, such limits are passed. Whatever Darwin has told is true of a certain level — in Sri Aurobindo’s language, of the vital plane. That may also be true of the crude humanity in the rudimentary stage of the Homo Neanderthal, or even of the early stages of the Homo Sapiens.

But Man is on the Way towards a higher Evolution. Evolution has not reached is culmination with the human beings. It is going, and it will go farther.

From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution. But as we know, Man is not perfect. He lives with ignorance, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, chaos, disorder, aimlessness, unhappiness, sufferings, diseases and death. We live only in moments, having inherited a ‘brief animal' mind. We do not know our past, our future, or our destiny.

But civilized man, in spite of all his imperfections and incompleteness, has already passed and left behind the herd mentality, the group mentality, to a very great extent. And the Idealist in him is dreaming and aspiring for a larger life, more conscious and perfect and divine a life.

Sri Aurobindo and His spiritual collaborator The Mother [Mira Alfassa] speaks of the Next Evolution.Sri Aurobindo and His spiritual collaborator The Mother [Mira Alfassa] speaks of the Next Evolution. They have told of a New and Higher Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, and of the Advent of this Higher Consciousness. The Mother has also declared that the said Supramental Conscious is the Next plane of Consciousness that has to be evolved, for that is the Aim of Evolution. Evolution is the Manifestation of All that is ‘involved’ in Matter. And what is involved is nothing less than the Highest Principle of Existence, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, or in simple language, the Divine.

Matter is apparently Inconscient, and evolution from Matter to till the appearance of Man is through Ignorance. Man has been evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings. Yet he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has been evolved with Mind, and is still being evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are touched and partly used only by a few. However, these few persons let us believe that transcendence of the present state is possible. Our endeavor for self-discovery and world-discovery is also only half-fulfilled, partial and inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some, but the mass still gropes in darkness, and the followers have begun clashes, feuds and wars, and have the journey regressive and backward towards the primitive state of mind, though dressed and decorated with ornaments of modern superficialities.Blessed with an incomplete and imperfect mental consciousness that Nature has bestowed on him, Man lives with Ignorance in all walks of his life and existence. He is uncertain about the results of his actions or about the certainty of his thoughts, of his future achievements and even about his own survival or his purpose on earth or his destiny. Our history is filled with stories of our repeated bloodsheds, battles and massacres, including two World Wars. And instead of loving our earth, we have divided and sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. We live thus backwards towards a regression.We are not conscious that there is some higher aim and meaning for our life and existence. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We do not want to know beyond our nose and most of the time shut up our eyes, outer and inner.

However, that is only an aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, joy, for light and knowledge. And always with him there is Hope. Without hope, he cannot be. Hope is an eternal companion of man.

A beautiful, joyous, harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for Man as his evolutionary possibility and goal. This is his evolutionary Future. He cannot continue for ever as he is and has been now. He has to proceed ahead from the present square. Or else, the evolutionary forces of Nature - Supernature -will surpass him and choose some other means for fulfilment of the goal : ever-progressive manifestation of Consciousness.

That is our Future, preordained. We shall have to ascend. Despite all Darkness and Ignorance around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born in on this earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts, education, social activities, spirituality and yoga. We are not sure whether our present ignorant activities would lead us to extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the Mesozoic Era.

However, though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. And to all our endeavors for more than last fifty millennia, the inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration of the humankind has been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility, with the New Hope, that Sri Aurobindo has brought for us.

The Mother has said that the Supramental Consciousness has already descended on earth on the 29th February 1956. And that will lead the Evolution towards the Manifestation of the Supramental on earth, towards the New Creation, towards the Coming of the New Race, the Race of the Supramental Beings.

Supermind is term given by Sri Aurobindo for the Divine Truth Consciousness, the Logos, the Manifest Godhead, Existene-Consciousness-Bliss or Sachchidananda in manifestation. The Aim of Integral Yoga, the Integral System of Yoga given to us by Sri Aurobindo, is to bring down the Supermind into the terrestrial existence, which will put an end to the present imperfection of physical life and existence, and begin and establish the Divine Life on Earth, through an Evolution of harmony and perfection, an Evolution of Light and Truth towards a greater Light and a greater Truth. It will fulfil the Vedic prayer : Lead me from Falsehood to Truth, lead me from Darkness to Light, lead me from death to immortality [Asato ma sadgamaya, tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrtyormamrtam gamaya.]

The Advent of the Supramental Race is thus the goal and the aim and the inevitable result of the Next Stage of the Evolution. However, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo said that there will be a New Man, an intermediary being, the superman, before the coming of the pure Supramental Race.

The Mother has said : ‘He [the Superman] will still belong to the human species of animal origin by most exterior form, but who will transform his consciousness in a sufficient manner to belong, in his realization and activity, to a new race, a race of supermen.’

Obviously, the race of the supermen will not be the race of the supramental beings. With the supramental beings, the question of survival will no more be there. For, they will have the supramental body, which will be immortal. Its cells will be capable of renewing themselves and the body will be flexible and will master itself, so that the old age will never come in. The race of the supermen will definitely be able to master the body and will be able to live long enough so that they can finally transform and supramentalize their body.

The group-mentality or the herd-mentality and the question of thoughtlessly and blindly following the ‘core’ leader will no more be there.

Barindranath Chaki
06-02-2007

Towards the New Horizon

We are now on the Way towards the Advent of the Supramental Race on earth.

This earth is known to be a field of Evolution. According to Darwin , man is the consequence of an evolution, and evolution is the history of life on earth. But Darwin has stated nothing with reference to evolution after the appearance of Man — Homo Neanderthal or of Homo Sapiens at the latest. He told us nothing about further evolution after the appearance of man on earth, or even about the purpose of the human evolution. And his view was a scientific truth, limited to the epistemology of Science. Science finds the Truth, which is but only a partial aspect of the whole Truth; it does not go beyond the senses, beyond the apparent, even with the help of logic. It’s bases are the experiences of the senses.
Reason and logic are the means of finding Truth, but they are not the only means or the whole of the means. An integral seeker of the complete Truth, a true student of Philosophy, realizes this. There are other means.

Sri Aurobindo has said:

There are two allied powers in man : knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the Truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

OOOO

Science, as well as the human commonsense, has not seen beyond the mortal imperfect Man. However, is man the final word in Evolution, in the entire Manifestation in Nature on earth? Has Nature remained satisfied having reached through Evolution at some entity such as a human being, who is so incomplete, imperfect, ignorant and incapable? How can he be the last thing? Of course, the humankind has many lofty and high aspirations, Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail?

Man has to strive towards Perfection.
Man has to know himself and transcend himself.
Out of man, the superman shall emerge.

That is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother[Mira Alfassa].

That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men will have to evolve further beyond Homo Neanderthal, beyond Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, of life and impulses, and scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Superconscient planes and then the Supramental Consciousness, and realise his Dreams and Hopes, by bringing in the supramental race upon earth!

That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men will have to evolve further beyond Homo Neanderthal, beyond Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, of life and impulses, and scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Superconscient planes and then the Supramental Consciousness, and realise his Dreams and Hopes, by bringing in the supramental race upon earth!

OOOO

The Mother has said in this connection :

There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result ; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will be a man in the external form, and whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

These further steps beyond man, for transcending the limits of ignorance in man, for the advent of the supramental race is the next evolution.

OOOO

The Task before is to change the world.

But why? And how?

Why:

Some fifty thousand to more than a million years back, the early human beings started their journey on earth, definitely with hopes for Joy and Bliss, for satisfaction and fulfilment, for conquering diseases and Death, with inquisition and thirst for knowledge in their eyes and their fresh undisturbed intelligence. They marched onwards and created civilizations and cultures, created Arts and Literature and Poetry and Music, created the Society and all the social norms and rules and paraphernalia. Even they tried to solve all the problems and difficulties of life.

But in their attempts for doing so, they now find themselves in a world, which they have almost completely spoiled. Now, men and women and their world are ruled and conquered by darkness and ignorance, by sorrows and sufferings, by chaos and disorder, by battles and warfare and destructions, genocides and mass-murders, by incurable mental and physical ailments and diseases and untimely deaths, in spite of all their wisdom and knowledge, all their feasts and festivals and parties and merry-makings, all the assortments and arrangements of enjoyment and pleasure, in spite of all their prosperities and riches, in spite of all their medical and scientific researches and discoveries and preparations, in spite of all religions and worships, in spite of all their peace talks and preaching of Ahimsa or non-violence, in spite of all their civilizations and progresses. Mankind has lost all their hopes and aspirations, all their spontaneous inborn simplicity and clarity and peace.

So, we have to change the world.

And how:

We will change the world, never by preaching this and that religion. They are already fighting against each other for centuries. I do not mean to attack any religion; Persons who represented the Supreme Consciousness initiated them all. But we have added so much of falsehood, doubts, hatred, clashes and even bloodsheds into them, that they can seldom lead us to our Goal.

We will bring the change never by political changes and revolutions, by change of Governments or creating League of Nations or commonwealths or UNOs, however noble and lofty may be the Ideas behind.

We will make the change, never by changing external activities or forms of society or of life, not by keeping or shaving beards or hairs, not by changing dresses, not by changing political parties or social groups, or by changing religions. Never can we reach the Goal by trying to change others in a prototype, as the some have tried and failed.

We are to change ourselves, first.

Each of us is to change himself or herself.

If we prescribe to find the Ego and hunt it, and we really then go after the Ego, we will NEVER find it. Within there is Darkness, and the Ego is reigning there. While going after Ego, we will be lost in the Darkness. We shall follow the Light. We shall seek and find the Light within.

But before taking up the issue, I should clear some misconceptions, which are misleading and aiming to mislead.

The change is not easy. The change I am speaking of is not easy. Had it been so, it would not have been delayed by 50,000 years. All the religions, all the lofty social endeavours, including the French revolution or the Marxist revolution in Russia, have failed to change the human nature from what it is practically and what it should be. That is because the matter is very difficult. Why difficult? Because we are insincere, egoistic, driven intolerance and hatred and animal enmity and anger, and above all we fail to know and understand Truth in its entirety.

OOOO

Of this change, Sri Aurobindo says:

To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine.
[ Savitri ]

He says of the end of Death :

Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of ignorance.
[ Savitri ]


OOOO


Sri Aurobindo is Himself the Adventure of Consciousness, as described by Satprem, a disciple. And if one aspires and endeavours to follow the Light and the Words of
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa]and is inspired by Them and walks through the Way trodden by Them, one has to grow up as a sort of adventurer of Consciousness, a seeker of Truth. This is an Understanding, a Light that comes from above and grows within, more and more intuitively and yet satisfying all claims Reason, even surpassing the limits of Reason, the failures and falls of Reason. Following Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is not a religion, not any worship or puja, not a dogma, not a way of creating another group or any group. The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo is a clear and open Truth, universal and worldwide and limitless, accepting and acceptable to all human beings on earth for surpassing all their imperfections and limitations, for surpassing all difficulties and deficiencies and divisions, for surpassing darkness and death. The aim of this Adventure, the journey through the Unknown and the New was and is to reach The New Horizon, The New World, the Eternal Dawn of the Supramental World. We the human beings have to evolve into a New Race, surpassing all our human and animal limitations and imperfections and inconscience and ignorance and incapacities.

Let us aspire for marching, along with others, Towards The New Horizon, The New World. Hence, let us collect all that is luminous and golden in the fruitage of our journey through all the past millennia so far, since the beginning of the human journey, and march towards The New Horizon. It is not that we will leave this world and go elsewhere to find another planet in search of the New World. We are not to retire into some lonely forests or mountains or island. We will change this world. We see that this world, as it is now, is in an extremely bad state of affairs. Falsehood, hatred, selfishness, corruption, greed, deception, violence, cruelty, inhumanity, and greed for power and wealth - these appear to be the ruling forces now. All the noble Ideals or Ideas that sometimes prevailed on earth and inspired many of our noble ancients or our forefathers, are, as it were, lost. Look at history and the present day earth: ideologically, and in consciousness, men seem to have lost their height and depth. The entire human society is sitting on a heap of bombs. In Arts and culture and relationship, vulgarity has almost been ruling in place of beauty and love and fellow feeling. In the name of religion, the people fight each other, taking themselves farther away from the Divine, from spirituality. We may live for a definite purpose, higher than ordinary, which will bring us more fulfilment, more joy. The higher our purpose, the greater is the joy and fulfilment. The higher the Consciousness we aspire for and the wider your consciousness, our life then becomes more purposeful, the greater is then our joy. We may direct our endeavor, our way of life, towards limited personal happiness and satisfaction, or towards a greater and wider Joy and fulfilment, along with and for others, maybe along with the whole of mankind, for the entire mankind, towards the higher values of Truth, Light, Wisdom, Beauty, Creativity, Goodness, Love, Wideness, Harmony and Peace, Total Well-being. Our journey is Towards The New Horizon.

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo is the Pioneer to declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man must evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, towards becoming the supramental beings. That is the Will of the Divine, that is the design of Nature, of what He has termed as Supernature.

Sri Aurobindo has said :

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its checkered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.

The Mother has said :

A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being. Open yourself to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.

Further, The Mother has also said:

To leap into the new consciousness, the first condition is a mental modesty sufficient to be convinced that all one thinks one knows is nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned. All that one has learned externally must be only a foothold enabling one to rise towards higher knowledge.

Hence, let us aspire for and dream of marching Towards The New Horizon, The New World. My idea is not only to dream or be a visionary, but to spread this dream, this vision, this aspiration, and the bases of this philosophical and spiritual understanding given to us, throughout the people around the world, through my Blogs and Websites, including my website The New Horizon. I hope the Light and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother will inspire the people and change their attitude and approach, so that the Society can grow and march Towards The New Horizon, The New World.

[Simultaneously published by me, in barinchaki.sulekha.com with some adaptation, in the Community Towards the New Horizon in Orkut ]


Barin Chaki

30-1-2007

The Next Evolution

The Next Evolution 3

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.

The Mother

Sri Aurobindo is The Leader of the next evolution. He is the first Person to know and declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man has to evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, and then towards becoming a supramental being. That is the Will of the Supreme. That is the design of Nature, rightly speaking, of Supernature.

While Matter is apparently Inconscient, evolution from Matter to Man is through Ignorance. Though Man has been evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings, still he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has been evolved with Mind, is still being evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are touched and partly used only by a few. However, these few persons let us believe that transcendence of the present state is possible. Our endeavor for self-discovery and world-discovery is also only half-fulfilled, partial and inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some, but the mass still gropes in darkness, and the followers have begun clashes, feuds and wars, and have the journey regressive and backward towards the primitive state of mind, though dressed and decorated with ornaments of modern superficialities.

From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution. But as we know, Man is not perfect. He lives with ignorance, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, chaos, disorder, aimlessness, unhappiness, sufferings, diseases and death. We live only in moments, having inherited a ‘brief animal' mind. We do not know our past, our future, or our destiny.

Blessed with an incomplete and imperfect mental consciousness that Nature has bestowed on him, Man lives with Ignorance in all walks of his life and existence. He is uncertain about the results of his actions or about the certainty of his thoughts, of his future achievements and even about his own survival or his purpose on earth or his destiny. Our history is filled with stories of our repeated bloodsheds, battles and massacres, including two World Wars. And instead of loving our earth, we have divided and sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. We live thus backwards towards a regression.

We are not conscious that there is some higher aim and meaning for our life and existence. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We do not want to know beyond our nose and most of the time shut up our eyes, outer and inner.

However, that is only an aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, joy, for light and knowledge. And always with him there is Hope. Without hope, he cannot be. Hope is an eternal companion of man.

A beautiful, joyous, harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for Man as his evolutionary possibility and goal. This is his evolutionary Future. He cannot continue for ever as he is and has been now. He has to proceed ahead from the present square. Or else, the evolutionary forces of Nature - Supernature -will surpass him and choose some other means for fulfilment of the goal : ever-progressive manifestation of Consciousness.
That is our Future, preordained. We shall have to ascend.
Despite all Darkness and Ignorance around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born in on this earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts, education, social activities, spirituality and yoga.

We are not sure whether our present ignorant activities would lead us to an extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the Mesozoic Era.
However, though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. And to all our endeavors for more than last fifty millennia, the inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration of the humankind has been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility, with the New Hope, that Sri Aurobindo has brought for us.

To lead us towards the New Possibility, towards the conquest of Darkness and Ignorance and Death, towards the Advent of the New Light, of the Supramental Consciousness, of the New Race, the Supramental Race, that is the AIM of Sri Aurobindo. The humanity has to evolve into a race of supramental beings, or else he will be replaced by a race of higher beings, in order to give effect to the evolutionary progress: this is the necessity of Evolution.

This is what The Mother [Mira Alfassa] has said about our choice :
Men, countries, continents!
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss.

We need not forsake our normal life for this journey to the Future, nor should we discard the society and the social and material responsibilities, for reaching this Future. We can start the journey from where we are now, simply by changing our inner attitude and inner aspiration and our approach and activities.

Tena tyaktena bhunjeetha. [Ishopanishad].
By that renounced, thou shouldst enjoy. [Sri Aurobindo].

Sri Aurobindo says further :

A heavenlier passion shall upheave men's lives,
Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam,
Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire.
Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
Mortality's bond slaves shall unloose their bonds,
Mere men into spiritual beings grow
And see awake the dumb divinity.

Sri Aurobindo has given us a luminous Future ! Mere men will grow into spiritual beings, freed from darkness, ignorance, sufferings and death!!

Barindranath Chaki
15-11-2007

The Next Evolution

The Next Evolution 2

The progressive march from Man to Superman is the Next Evolution on earth. And that is inevitable.

Mind has reached its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the Supramental Consciousness. We should no longer remain limited within the ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavour to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey on the New Way of the Next Evolution, which has been taken up by the Supermind.

When Man emerged, either as the Homo Neanderthal or the Homo Sapiens, it was a great leap in the earthly evolution, from the dumb thoughtless state of the animal to the constructive, creative and expressive consciousness and state of the human. Man has in him a fire that never gets satisfaction with limits and narrowness and ordinary existence. He always dreams, hopes and aspires for something better, more divine, more perfect. This has now brought him to the Next Evolution. He will have to transcend himself and step towards Supermanhood.

Sri Aurobindo has stated:

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 recognize and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.

Thus what is needed on our part is the call from below, the burning Fire of Aspiration in us. The Aspiration should be collective, not in a few individuals here and there. If the humanity does not aspire for the evolutionary progress, Nature will take its own course to surpass Man and bring in the Supramental Race.

The Mother stated:

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 recognize it.

[Continued]

Barin

The Next Evolution

The Next Evolution 1

As we generally know, this earth is a field of Evolution. Evolution is the history of life on earth, which has been well said by Darwin. According to him, man is the consequence of an evolution. But Darwin has stated nothing with reference to evolution after the appearance of Homo Neanderthal, or of Homo Sapiens at the latest. He told us nothing about any evolution after the appearance of man on earth, or even about the purpose why man was evolved at all. And his view was a scientific truth, limited to the epistemology of Science. Science discovers and finds the Truth, which is but only a partial aspect of the whole Truth; it does not go beyond the senses, beyond the apparent, even with the help of logic. It is based on the experiences of the senses.
Reason and logic are the means of finding Truth, but they cannot be the only means or the whole of the means. An integral seeker of the complete Truth, even a true student of Philosophy, realizes this. There are other methods or means.

Sri Aurobindo has said in 'Thoughts and Aphorisms’:

There are two allied powers in man : knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the Truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping ; Wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

OOOO

Science, not to speak of the human commonsense, has not seen beyond the mortal imperfect Man. Is man the final word in Evolution, in the entire Manifestation in Nature on earth? Has Nature remained satisfied having reached at something through Evolution which is so incomplete, so imperfect, so ignorant and so incapable such as man? How can he be the last thing? Of course, Mankind has many lofty and high Aspirations and Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail? Man has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and transcend himself. Out of man, the superman has to emerge. That is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men would evolved further beyond the Homo Neanderthal, even beyond the Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Supramental Consciousness, and bring in the Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail? Man has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and transcend himself. Out of man, the superman has to emerge. The advent of the supramental race is THE NEXT EVOLUTION.
The Advent of the Supramental Race on earth is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men would evolved further beyond the Homo Neanderthal, even beyond the Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Supramental Consciousness, and bring in the supramental race on earth. This is the Truth Sri Aurobindo has brought for us. We have to live for this Goal, this Truth.

OOOO

The Mother has told :

There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result ; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will be a man in the external form, and whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

These further steps beyond man, for transcending the limits of ignorance in man, for the advent of the supramental race is the next evolution.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
25-12-2006

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