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02. ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம் - லைப் டிவைன்

ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம்

லைப் டிவைன்

ஆங்கிலம்: லெஸ்லி ஜேகப்ஸ்

திருத்தம்: ஸ்ரீ கர்மயோகி

 

XXVIII. Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya

(English Summary)

We must clear one point which we have till now left in obscurity, the process of the lapse into the Ignorance. In the original nature of Mind, Life or Matter nothing necessitates a fall from Knowledge. It has been shown that division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance. It is a division of individual consciousness from the cosmic and the transcendent, of which the individual consciousness is still an intimate part. In essence it is inseparable from them. It is a division of Mind from the supramental Truth, of which it should be a subordinate action. It is a division of Life from the original Force of which it is one energism. It is a division of Matter from the original Existence of which it is one form of substance. But how did this division come about in the Indivisible? By what self-diminishing has it come about? By what self-eff acing action of Consciousness-Force in the Being has it come about? All is a movement of that Force and therefore only by some such action can there have arisen the dynamic phenomenon of the Ignorance. That action must have obscured its own plenary light and power. But this problem can be treated in a more close examination of the dual phenomenon of Knowledge-Ignorance. Our consciousness is a blend of light and darkness. It is a half-light between the full day of the supramental Truth and the night of the material Inconscience. All we must note at present is its essential character. It is an exclusive concentration on one movement and status of Conscious Being, which puts all the rest of consciousness and being behind. It veils it from that one movement’s now partial knowledge.

Still one aspect of this problem must be immediately considered. It is the gulf created between Mind and the supramental Truth-Consciousness. For this gulf is considerable. We have found Mind in its origin to be a subordinate process of this Truth-Consciousness. There are two levels of consciousness. A transition from one to the other can be in the descending involution of Spirit into Matter. Or it can be the corresponding evolution in Matter of concealed grades leading back to the Spirit. If there are no gradations between these two levels, a transition seems highly improbable if not impossible. For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth. It gropes with difficulty to find it. It reaches only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea. It reaches only mind formations and sense formations. This is as if bright or shadowy photographs of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve. Supermind, on the contrary, is in actual and natural possession of the Truth. Its formations are forms of the Reality, not constructions, representations or indicative fi gures. No doubt, the evolving Mind in us is hampered. It is encased in the obscurity of this life and body. The original Mind principle in the involutionary descent is a thing of greater power. We have not fully reached it. It is able to act with freedom in its own sphere or province. It is able to build constructions, more minutely inspired formations. It can build more subtle and significant embodiments. In those, the light of Truth is present and palpable. But still that too is not likely to be essentially diff erent in its characteristic action. For it too is a movement into the Ignorance. It is not a still unseparated portion of the Truth-Consciousness. There must be somewhere an intermediate power and plane of consciousness. Perhaps it would be something more than that. It would be in the descending and ascending scale of Being. It might be something with an original creative force. Through that force the involutionary transition took place. It was from Mind in the Knowledge to Mind in the Ignorance. Through that again the evolutionary reverse transition becomes intelligible and possible. For the involutionary transition, this intervention is a logical imperative. For the evolutionary transition, it is a practical necessity. For in the evolution there are indeed radical transitions. They are from indeterminate Energy to organised Matter. They are from inanimate Matter to Life. They are from a subconscious to a perceptive, feeling and acting Life. They are from primitive animal mentality to conceptive reasoning Mind. Mind observes and governs Life and observes itself also. It is able to act as an independent entity. It can even seek consciously for self-transcendence. These leaps may be considerable. But they are to some extent prepared by slow gradations. That makes them conceivable and feasible with no immense hiatus in between. Between supramental Truth-Consciousness and Mind in the Ignorance, there is such an immense hiatus .

But, if such intervening gradations exist, they must be superconscient to human mind. The normal human mind does not seem to have any entry into these higher grades of being. Man is limited in his consciousness by mind. He is even hampered by a given range or scale of mind. What is below his mind, submental or nether to his scale, readily seems to him subconscious. It seems not distinguishable from complete inconscience. What is above it is to him superconscious. He is almost inclined to regard it as void of awareness. He regards it as a sort of luminous Inconscience. He is limited to a certain scale of sounds or of colours. What is above or below that scale is to him inaudible and invisible. In the same way it is with his scale of mental consciousness. It is confi ned at either extremity by incapacity. That marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no suffi cient means of communication even with the animal. The animal is his mental congener, though not his equal. He is even capable of denying mind or real consciousness to animals. This is because its modes are other and narrower than those with which he is familiar. He can observe submental being from outside. But he cannot at all communicate with it or enter intimately into its nature. Equally the superconscious is to him a closed book. It may well be fi lled only with empty pages. It seems as if he had no means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness. If so, they cannot act as links or bridges. His evolution must cease with his accomplished mental range and cannot exceed it. Nature in drawing these limits has written fi nis to his upward endeavour.

When we look more closely, we perceive that this normality is deceptive. In fact there are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself. It can tend towards self-exceeding. It does so through lines of contact or veiled passages. These passages connect it with higher grades of consciousness. They are grades of the self-manifesting Spirit. First, we note the place Intuition occupies in the human means of knowledge. Intuition is in its very nature a projection of the action of these higher grades. The action is projected into the mind of Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is largely hidden. It is hidden by the interventions of our normal intelligence. A pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity. For what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge. That point is immediately caught and coated over with mental stuff . It serves only as an invisible or very tiny nucleus of crystallization. It is in its mass intellectual or otherwise mental in character. Or else the flash of intuition is quickly replaced or intercepted. Before it has a chance of manifesting itself it is quickly replaced. It is replaced by a rapid imitative mental movement, insight or quick perception. This swift process of thought owes its appearance to the stimulus of the coming intuition. But it obstructs its entry or covers it with a substituted mental suggestion. The suggestion may be true or erroneous. But in either case it is not the authentic intuitive movement. Even so, this intervention from above shows a connection. This connection is between mind and what is above it. Behind all our original thinking there is a veiled, a half-veiled intuitive element. This fact is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it. It opens a passage of communication. It opens an entry into the superior spirit ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation. It reaches out to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the fi rst character of cosmic Self. Universality is non-limitation by the single point of view. It is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge. This tendency is therefore a widening. Even though rudimentary, it is a widening of these restricted mind areas. It is a widening towards cosmicity. It is a widening towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes. It is a widening towards that superconscient cosmic Mind. It must in the nature of things be the original mind-action. Our mind action is only a derivative and inferior process of it. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The phenomena of genius are really the result of such a penetration. It is veiled no doubt. It is veiled because the light of the superior consciousness acts within narrow limits. It usually acts in a special fi eld. It acts without any regulated separate organisation of its characteristic energies. It oft en acts indeed quite fitfully and erratically. It acts with supernormal or abnormal irresponsible governance. Also in entering the mind it subdues and adapts itself to mind substance. Thus it is only a diminished dynamis that reaches us. It is not all the original divine luminosity. That luminosity might be called the overhead consciousness beyond us. Still the phenomena of inspiration and revelatory vision are there. Their origin is unmistakable. Intuitive percep tion, intuitive discernment, surpass our less illumined normal mind-action. Finally, there is the vast fi eld of mystic and spiritual experience. Here the gates already lie wide open. They are open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits. They are open, unless, indeed, we turn away from their vistas. We may do so by an obscurantism that refuses to inquire. Or we may be attached to our boundaries of mental normality. In this way we may shut the gates. But in our present investigation we cannot afford to neglect the possibilities. These domains of mankind’s endeavour bring possibilities near to us. They bring added knowledge of oneself. They bring the knowledge of the veiled Reality. It is their gift to human mind. It is the greater light which arms them with the right to act upon us. It is the innate power of their existence.

There are two successive movements of consciousness. They are diffi cult but well within our capacity. Through them we can have access to the superior gradations of our conscious existence. There is fi rst a movement inward. Instead of living in our surface mind, we break the wall. The wall is between our external and our now subliminal self. This can be brought about by a gradual eff ort and discipline. Or it can be brought about by a vehement transition. Sometimes a forceful involuntary rupture will do it. The latt er is by no means safe for the limited mind. It is accustomed to live securely only within its normal limits. But in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being. We discover a soul, an inner mind. We discover an inner life, an inner subtlephysical entity. It is much larger in its potentialities. It is more plastic, more powerful than our surface mind. It is more capable of a manifold knowledge than our surface mind, life or body. It is more capable of a dynamism than the mind, life or body. It is capable of a direct communication with the universal forces. It can communicate with universal movements and objects of the cosmos. It is capable of a direct feeling and opening to them. It can have a direct action on them. It can even widen itself beyond the limits of the personal mind. It can widen beyond the personal life, the body. Then it feels itself more and more a universal being. It is no longer limited by the walls of our narrow mental, vital, physical existence. This widening can extend itself. It can widen to a complete entry into the consciousness of cosmic Mind. It can widen into unity with the universal Life. It can widen even into oneness with universal Matter. But that is still an identifi cation with a diminished cosmic truth. Or else it is an identifi cation with the cosmic Ignorance.

This entry into the inner being once accomplished, the inner Self is found. It is found to be capable of an opening. It is capable of an ascent upwards. It ascends up into things beyond our present mental level. That is the second spiritual possibility in us. There is a fi rst most ordinary result. It is the discovery of a vast static and silent Self. We feel it to be our real or basic existence. It is the foundation of all else that we are. There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana. It will be an extinction of both of our active being and the sense of self . It will be an extinction into a Reality that is indefi nable and inexpressible. But also we can realise that this self is not only our own spiritual being. It is also the true self of all others. It presents itself then as the underlying truth of cosmic existence. It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all individuality. It is possible to stop at a static realisation. We can regard the cosmic movement as a superfi cial play. Or we can regard it as an illusion imposed on the silent Self. It may be some supreme immobile, immutable status beyond the universe. But another less negative line of supernormal experience off ers itself. For there takes place a large dynamic descent. It is a descent of light, knowledge, power, bliss or other supernormal energies. They descend into our self of silence. We can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit. There its immobile status is the foundation of those luminous energies. In either case we have risen beyond the mind of Ignorance. We have risen into a spiritual state. In the dynamic movement, there is a greater action of Consciousness-Force. It may present itself simply as a pure spiritual dynamis. That dynamis would not be otherwise determinate in its character. Or it may reveal a spiritual mind-range. There mind would no longer be ignorant of the Reality. It is not yet a supermind level. But it is derived from the supramental Truth Consciousness. It is still luminous with something of its knowledge.

In the latt er alternative we fi nd the secret we are seeking. We fi nd the means of the transition. We fi nd the needed step towards a supramental transformation. For we perceive a graduality of ascent. We perceive a communication with a deeper and more immense light. It is a light and power from above. We perceive a scale of intensities. They can be regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of Mind. Or they are a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it. We are aware of a sea like downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge. It assumes the nature of Thought. We are accustomed to a process of thought. But it has a diff erent character. For there is nothing here of seeking. There is no trace of mental construction. There is no labour of speculation or difficult discovery. It is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge. It is from a Higher Mind that seems to be in possession of Truth. It is not in search of hidden and withheld realities. One observes that this Thought is much more capable than the mind. It is capable of including at once a mass of knowledge in a single view. It has a cosmic character. It is not the stamp of an individual thinking. Beyond this Truth-Thought we can distinguish a greater illumination. It is instinct with an increased power and intensity. It has a driving force. It has a luminosity of the nature of Truth-Sight. Its thought formula- tion is a minor and dependent activity. In this experience the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth becomes a reality. We can accept that image. We can compare the Higher Mind’s action to a composed and steady sunshine. The Illumined Mind’s energy beyond is like an outpouring. It is an outpouring of massive lightnings of fl aming sun-stuff . Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force. There is an intimate and exact Truth-vision and Truth-thought. There is a Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, and Truth-action. To these we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition. For want of a bett er word we have already used the word intuition. We have called intuition any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing. Yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement. It is a movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin. It imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character. It is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light. Our mind cannot directly communicate with it. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind. It is in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness. That Cosmic Mind is an original intensity. It determines all movements below it. It determines all mental energies. It does not determine Mind as we know it. It is an Overmind that covers this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance. It covers it as with wide wings of some creative Oversoul. It links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness. Yet at the same time it veils the face of the greater Truth. It veils this Truth from our sight with its brilliant golden Lid. It intervenes with its fl ood of infinite possibilities. It is at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking. The spiritual law of our existence is 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. It connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.

In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness. It is its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double. It is a screen of dissimilar similarity. Through it the Supermind can act indirectly on the Ignorance. The Ignorance’s darkness could not bear the direct impact of a supreme Light. The luminous Overmind corona was projected into the Ignorance. By that, the diff usion of a diminished light in the Ignorance was made possible. Through that projection, the contrary shadow of the Inconscience was made possible. The Inconscience swallows up in itself all light.

Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities. But it leaves it to formulate them according to an awareness of things. That awareness is still a vision of Truth. It is yet at the same time a fi rst parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind. It permits a free transmission. It allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees. But it automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The Supermind’s integrality keeps always the essential truth of things. It keeps the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together. It maintains in them an inseparable unity. It maintains between them a close interpenetration. It maintains a free and full consciousness of each other. But in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things. It embraces the totality. It uses the individual self-determinations. But it is not limited by them. It knows their oneness, and can realise it in a spiritual cognition. It does rely on that oneness for its security. Yet its dynamic movement is not directly determined by that oneness. Overmind Energy proceeds through a capacity of separation and combination. It separates and combines the powers of the integral indivisible Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power. It gives to it an independent action. In that action it acquires a full separate importance. It is able to work out its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakritiare the Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature. They are a two-aspected single truth in the supramental harmony. They are being and dynamis of the Reality. There can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage. There is the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas. In that they appear as two independent entities. Prakritiis able to dominate Purusha. It clouds its freedom and reduces its power. Purusha is reduced to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions. Purusha is able to return to its separate existence. There it abides in a free self-sovereignty. It does this by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. It is so with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality. They are One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality. Each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality. But each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole. Each is capable of its separate expression. And each develops the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness remains. It is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity. All possibilities of combination are there. The relations between the separated Powers and Aspects are freely organized. All interchanges of their energies and their actuality are always possible.

We can regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads. If so, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads. It releases them into action. Each is empowered to create its own world. Each world is capable of relation and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda diff erent formulations of the nature of the Gods. It is said they are all one Existence. The sages give diff erent names to them. Yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence. He is worshipped as one who is all the other Gods together. Or as if he contains them in his being. And yet again each is a separate Deity. Sometimes one acts in unison with companion deities. Sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition. They may act in opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together. It would be held as a harmonised play of the one Existence. In the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action. Each could have its own principle of development. Each could have its own consequences. And yet each could keep the power to combine with the others. They could combine in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force; the One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms. These forms of consciousness and knowledge follow out their own line of truth. It is the line of truth they have to realise. The one total and many sided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides. Each becomes an independent Idea-Force. Each has the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces. Each of these forces has the right to fulfi l itself. Or each has the right to assume, if needed, a hegemony. Each may take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights. Each can carry in itself its independent fullness. Each carries its sovereign extreme. The One Existence- Consciousness-Bliss has the character of teeming infi nite possibilities. This character is given to it by the Overmind. This can be developed into a multitude of worlds. Or it can be thrown together into one world. In that world the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation. It is the determinant of its process, its course and its consequence.

The Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix. Therefore the nature of a given world will depend on it. It will depend on the self-formulation of that Consciousness. That formulation will express itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being,that Consciousness has assumed a poise in him. His seeing of himself or the world he lives in will depend on that poise. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections. The sections are cut by the reason and sense. They are put together in a forma tion which is also sectional. The house it builds is planned to accommodate one formulation of Truth. But it excludes the rest or admits some only as guests in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition. It can hold any number of seemingly fundamental diff erences together. It can hold them in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites. It conceives an impersonal Existence. In that Existence person and personality are fi ctions of the Ignorance. Or they are temporary construc tions. Or, on the contrary, it can see the Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction. It sees the impersonal as only a means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers. They are powers of the one Existence. They can pursue their independent self-affi rmation. They can also unite together their diff erent modes of action. They can create diff erent states of consciousness. They can do this both in their independence and in their union . They can do so in their being. They can be all valid and capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence. The Impersonal Divine is Nirguna Brahman. The Personal Divine is Saguna Brahman. They are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person. The person is subordinated to it as a mode of expression. But, equally Person can be the reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature. Both aspects of manifestation face each other. They do so in the infi nite variety of conscious Existence. There are irreconcilable diff erences that present to the mental reason. The same are to the Overmind intelligence coexistent correlatives. There are contraries to the mental reason. The same to the Overmind are intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter. All things exist by material energy, go back into it. It concludes that Matter is the eternal factor. It sees Matter as the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind. It sees all existing by Life or by Mind. It sees all going back into the universal Life or Mind. It concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life- Force. Or it is a creation of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world as born of, existing by and going back to the Real-Idea. It goes back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit. Or it goes back to the Spirit itself. And it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fi x on any of these ways of seeing. But to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true. Each is true of the action of the principle it erects. It can see that there is a material world-formula. It can see a vital world-formula. It can also see a mental world-formula and a spiritual world formula. Each can predominate in a world of its own. At the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. To the Overmind view there is a normal and easily realisable creation. There is an apparent Inconscience. It conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence. The crea- tion is a self-formulation of Conscious Force. Our world is based on it. It holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy. It is a world of universal Matter. It realizes in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, and Spirit. Each of them in its turn takes up the others as means of its self-expression. There is a spiritual vision of Matter. In it, Matter proves to have been always a manifestation of the Spirit. Overmind is a power of origination. In the process of its executive dynamis it is an organiser. It organises many potentialities of Existence. Each affi rms its separate reality. But all are capable of linking themselves together. They link together in many diff erent but simultaneous ways. Overmind is a magician, a craft sman. It is empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation. It weaves a single entity in a complex universe.

This is a simultaneous development of multitudinous independent Powers. In this there is yet—or there is as yet— no chaos, no confl ict. There is no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The Overmind is a creator of truths. It is not a creator of illusions or falsehoods. The overmental energism or movement works out the truth. It works out the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force,Delight. It is liberated into independent action. The consequences of its reality in that independence are worked out. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth of being. It does not assert the others as inferior truths. Each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence. Each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be. Each Force concedes a place to all other forces. It concedes a place to their truth and consequences. No delight of separate fulfi lled existence denies the delight of other existence. No delight of separate experience condemns other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth. A vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit. Its energy is an all-dynamism. It is as well a principle of separate dynamisms. It is a sort of inferior Supermind. It is concerned predominantly not with absolutes. It is concerned with the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality. Or it is concerned with absolutes. It is concerned with these mainly for their power of generating pragmatic values. Although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral. Its totality is built up of global wholes. It is constituted by separate independent realities. They unite or coalesce together. The essential unity is grasped by it. It is felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation. But this unity is no longer, as in the Supermind, their intimate and ever-present secret. It is no longer their dominating continent. It is no longer the overt builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.

Our mental consciousness is separative and only imperfectly synthetic . We want to understand the diff erence between it and this global Overmind Consciousness. We may come near to it if we compare the diff erent views of activi- ties. One is strictly mental and the other an overmental view. To the Overmind,all religions would be true. They would be true as developments of the one eternal religion. All philosophies would be valid. Each would be valid in its own fi eld. It would be valid as a statement of its own universe-view. All political theories with their practice would be legitimate. They would be the working out of an Idea Force. That Idea would have its right to application. It would have its right to practical development in Nature’s play of energies. In our separative consciousness, these things exist as opposites. They are imperfectly visited by glimpses of catholicity and universality. Each claims to be the truth. Each taxes the others with error and falsehood. Each feels impelled to refute or destroy the others. It does so in order that itself alone may be the Truth and live. At best, each must claim to be superior. Each admits all others only as inferior truth-expressions. An overmental Intelligence would refuse to entertain this concep tion. It would refuse this drift to exclusiveness. It would allow all to live as necessary to the whole. It would put each in its place in the whole. Or it would assign to each its fi eld of realisation or of endeavour. This is because in us consciousness has come down completely. It has come down into the divisions of the Ignorance. Truth is no longer either an Infi nite or a cosmic whole. It no longer has many possible formula- tions. . It has a rigid affi rmation holding any other affi rmation to be false. It holds them to be false because diff erent from itself and entrenched in other limits. Our mental consciousness can approach towards a total comprehensiveness. It can approach a catholicity. But to organize that in action and life seems to be beyond its power. The individual or collec- tive evolutionary Mind throws up a multiplicity of divergent view-points. It throws up divergent lines of action. It lets them work themselves out side by side. Or it lets them work in collision or in a certain inter mixture. It can make selective harmonies. But it cannot arrive at the harmonic control of a true totality. Cosmic Mind must have such a harmony even in the evolutionary Ignorance. It must have a harmony, if only of arranged accords and discords. There is too in it an underlying dynamism of oneness. But it carries the completeness of these things in its depths. Perhaps it carries them in a supermind-overmind substratum. But it does not impart it to individual Mind in the evolution. It does not bring it or has not yet brought it from the depths to the surface. An Overmind world would be a world of harmony. We live in the world of Ignorance. It is a world of disharmony and struggle.

And still we can recognise in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya. It is not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge. It is yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. Each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line. It must carry out its complete consequences. If this is so, the principle of separation must also be allowed. It must be allowed its complete course. It must arrive at its absolute consequence. This is the inevitable descent, facilis descensus. Consciousness, admiadmitting the separative principle, follows this descent. It follows this till it enters, by obscuring infi nitesimal fragmentation, tucchyena. It enters into the material Inconscience. It is the Inconscient Ocean of the Rig Veda. And by its own greatness the One is born from that. Yet it is still at fi rst concealed. It is concealed by a fragmentary separative existence. It is concealed by a consciousness which is ours. In that consciousness we have to piece things together to arrive at a whole.

It is a slow and diffi cult emergence. In that, a certain semblance of truth is given to the dictum of Heraclitus. He declared that War is the father of all things. For each idea, force enters into collision with others. Each separate consciousness and living being collides with others. By the very necessity of its ignorance it does this. And it tries to live, grow and fulfi l itself by independent self-assertion. It does not try to grow by harmony with the rest of existence. Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness. It compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony. It compels us to strive for interdependence and concord. It compels us to strive for a diffi cult unity. There is in us concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and Reality. Only by their evolution the harmony we strive for can be realized. They must be dynamically realized in the very fi bre of our being. They must become all its self-expression. This must be not merely in imperfect att empts. It must not be incomplete constructions or ever-changing approximations. The higher ranges of spiritual Mind have to open upon our being and consciousness. Also that which is beyond even spiritual Mind must appear in us. This must be done if we are to fulfi l the divine possibility of our birth into cosmic existence.

Overmind in its descent reaches a line. This line divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance. It is the line where Consciousness-Force divides Mind. Consciousness- Force emphasizes the separateness of each independent movement. The separateness hides or darkens their unity. Each independent movement has been created by Overmind. The Force divides Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separa tion of Overmind from its supramental source. But it has been done with a transparency in the veil. That allows a conscious transmission. It maintains a certain luminous kinship. But here the veil is opaque. The transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Separated Mind acts as if it were an independent principle. Each mental being, each basic mental idea stands separately. Each power and force stands similarly on its separate self. It can communicate or combine with or contact others. But it is not with the catholic universality of the Overmind movement. It is not on a basis of underlying oneness. It is as independent units joining. They join to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity. But it is not aware of its own source. Its source and foundation are in the Spirit. It can only comprehend it by the intelligence. It cannot comprehend in any enduring experience. It acts in itself as if by its own right. It works out what it receives as material. It does this without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and the cosmic whole. The exception is for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication. There is a basic sense of identity which is no longer there. The mutual penetration and understanding that comes from this identity is no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance. They are the results of a certain conscious knowledge. But it is a partial knowledge. It is not a true and integral self-knowledge. Nor is it a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter. It reappears in the gross material universe. That arises from the fi nal lapse into the Inconscience.

In our subliminal Mind there is a larger power of communica tion. So in this Mind also, this larger power and mutuality still remains. There is a freer play of mentality. There is a freer sense than human mind possesses. The Ignorance is not complete. A conscious harmony, an interdependent organisation of right relations is more possible. Mind is not yet perturbed by blind Life forces. It is not yet obscured by irresponsive Matter. It is a plane of Ignorance, but not yet of falsehood or error. Or at least the lapse into falsehood and error is not yet inevitable. This Ignorance is limitative, but not necessarily falsifi cative. There is limitation of knowledge, an organisation of partial truths. But there is no denial or opposite of truth or knowledge. The organisation of partial truths is on a basis of separative knowledge . It persists in Life and subtle Matter. The exclusive concentration of Consciousness-Force puts them into separative action. But it does not entirely sever or veil Mind from Life. It does not veil Life from Matter. The complete separation does take place. But it takes place only when the stage of Inconscience has been reached. Our world of manifold Ignorance arises out of that tenebrous matrix. There are other still conscient stages of the involution. They are indeed organisations of Conscious Force. In them each lives from his own centre. Each follows out his own possibilities. And the predominant principle itself,whether Mind, Life or Matter, works out things on its own. It works them out on its independent basis. But what is worked out are truths of itself,not illusions or a tangle of truth and falsehood, knowledge and Ignorance. Consciousness-Force can exclusively concentrate on Force and Form. Then it seems phenomenally to separate Consciousness from Force. It can absorb Consciousness in a blind sleep lost in Form and Force. Then Consciousness has to struggle back to itself. It does so by a fragmentary evolu- tion. That necessitates error and makes falsehood inevitable. Nevertheless,these things too are not illusions. They have not sprung out of an original Non-Existence. They are, we might say, the unavoidable truths of a world born out of Inconscience. For the Ignorance is still in reality a knowledge seeking for itself. It seeks behind the original mask of Inconscience. It seeks and misses and fi nds. Its results are natural and even inevitable on their own line. They are the true consequence of the lapse. In a way, even, they are the right working of the recovery from the lapse. Existence plunges into an apparent Non-Existence. Consciousness plunges into an apparent Inconscience. Delight of existence plunges into a vast cosmic insensibility. These are the fi rst results of the fall. By a struggling fragmentary experience they return from the fall. By that, Consciousness is rendered into the dual terms of truth and falsehood. It is rendered into knowledge and error. Existence is rendered into the dual terms of life and death. Delight of existence is rendered into the dual terms of pain and pleasure. These are the necessary process of the labour of self-discovery. A pure experience of Truth, Knowledge, Delight would here be itself a contradic- tion. It would be a contradiction of the truth of things. It could only be otherwise if all beings in the evolution were responsive to the psychic element within. Or if they were responsive to the Supermind underlying Nature’s operations. But here there comes in the Overmind law. That law says each Force works out its own possibilities. This is a world where an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles. In such a world, the natural possibili ties would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness. These forces are impelled to maintain and live by the Ignorance. It is an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error. It is an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil. It is an egoistic struggle to enjoy. It is the parent of fragmentary joys and pains and suff erings. These are therefore the inevitable fi rst-imprinted characters. But they are not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, the secret realities must emerge. This is because Non-Existence is a concealed Existence. Inconscience is a concealed Consciousness. Insensibility is a masked and dormant Ananda. The hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfi l themselves. They must do so in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infi nite.

Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind has descended towards material creation. In that descent it has originated modifi ca- tions of itself. These modifi cations can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to us. Intuition is one such modifi ca- tion. With its penetrative lightning fl ashes of truth, Intuition lights up local points. It lights up stretches of country in our consciousness. By opening ourselves more widely, we can become ourselves also intuitive. First we can open in the inner being. Then as a result we can open in the outer surface self. We can open to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness. We can grow into them. We cannot limit ourselves to the intellect and sense. We can become capable of a more universal comprehension. We can become capable of a direct touch of truth in our very self and body. In fact fl ashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us. But this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial. We have still to begin to enlarge ourselves. We have to enlarge into their likeness. We have to organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, and even Supermind are principles inherent and involved. They are involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolu tion. And they are inevitably destined to evolve. But they are secretly present and actively occult. They are fl ashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind,Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed. And, even when they emerge, it is modifi ed. It is modifi ed by the medium, material, vital,mental in which they work. It is not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning. For if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy, we can see the stamp of inevitability. It is given by a supramental creator in all the development of life and mind. The play of the lines of possibility and their combination are the stamp of Overmind intervention. Life and Mind have been released in Matter. So too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge. They must emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above.

A divine Life in the manifestation is then not only possible. It is possible as the high result and ransom of our present life in the Ignorance. But, if these things are as we have seen them, it is the inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature’s evolutionary endeavour.

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book | by Dr. Radut