03. ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம் - லைப் டிவைன்

"ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம்"

லைப் டிவைன்

கர்மயோகி

XVIII. Mind and Supermind

Page No.159 / Para No.1:

We have been trying to form a conception of the supramental life. We were at pains to arrive at the essence of that life. That life is securely possessed by the divine soul in the being of Sachchidananda. That life is to be manifested by the human soul in this body. This is, in truth, the body of Sachchidananda. It is formed here into the mould of mental and physical living. This life appears to have no connection with the life we live. Life exists between mind and body. Body and mind are our normal existence. Mind and body are the two noble ends of our existence. What is conceived as supramental life appears more as a state of being than actual life that is lived. Maybe it is a state of consciousness. Or it is a state of active relation and mutual enjoyment. It is closer to the lives of disembodied souls. And it seems to be the experience of a world without physical forms. It looks to be a world where souls are differentiated, not bodies. It is a world of joyous infinities. Surely it is not a world of form.imprisoned Spirits. We know our existence. It is a world of form.trammeled force. It is a life of form imprisoned minds. It is one of limitation. The limitation arises from the form of the body.

Page No.159 / Para No.2:

We have striven for a conception. It is the conception of that infinite being. It is also a conscious-force and self-delight. Our world is a creation of That. Our mentality is a perverse figure of it. We have tried to give ourselves an idea of divine Maya. Similarly we tried about Truth-consciousness and Real-Idea. The Existence is universal and transcendent. Its force creates the universe. It creates by conceiving, forming, governing and ordering. The cosmos thus created is its manifested delight of being. There are four great divine terms above and three other terms below. Mind, life and body are the three. We should study the connection between the four above and three below. Apparently there is this undivine Maya. It is the root of all our striving and suffering. We have not scrutinized this. We need to know how these three precisely develop out of the other divine reality. That reality is divine Maya. Till we have done this, the world is not explained to us. It is to weave the missing cords of connection. Till then the doubt will persist. It is the doubt of a possible unification. It doubts the very possibility of a basis for their unification. We know the world has come forth from Sachchidananda. It subsists in His being. We conceive that He dwells in it as the Enjoyer and knowledge, Lord and Self. Our sensation, mind, force and being are dual terms. We know these are only the representation of His delight, His conscious force, and His divine existence. They are actually so much the opposite of what He really is. He supernally is. We cannot attain to the divine living as long as we dwell in its opposite here. We can only exalt this lower being into the higher status. Or we can exchange them. Our body can be exchanged for that pure existence. Life can be exchanged for that pure condition of conscious-force. Our sensation and mentality can be exchanged for that pure delight and knowledge. They live in the truth of the spiritual reality. It means we must abandon our earthly existence in favour of a divine living. We give up our limited mental existence. We get some pure state of the Spirit. Or we get some world of Truth of things. If such exists, it is divine Bliss, divine Energy, divine Being. In that case, perfection of humanity is elsewhere. It is not in humanity itself. It can have an earthly summit. It will be a fine apex of dissolving mentality. From there it takes a great leap into the formless being. Or it enters into the worlds beyond the reach of the embodied Mind.

Page No.160 / Para No.3:

What then is the reality? What do we call undivine? The four divine principles go into action. They create this universe of forms. It is a necessary action. This universe of forms is created inside the Divine existence. It is not outside it. This divine existence, conscious-force, and bliss is Sachchidananda. This is the domain of the working of the divine Real-Idea. We believe that there cannot be any real play of the higher divine consciousness in the world of forms. This is not a reasonable belief. These forms exist with their immediate supports. It has mental consciousness, energy of vital force. And it has formal substance. To us, these must necessarily distort that which they represent. This is not true and need not be true. There is another possible way. It may even be probable. The pure forms of mind, life and body may be found in the divine Truth itself. They are, in fact, subordinate activities of its consciousness. They are part of the complete instrumentation of the supreme Force. Mind, life and body must be capable of divinity. They work during the short period of one single life. All their potentials cannot be exhausted in this period. It is science that speaks so of the terrestrial evolution. These three living principles working in the body will not so exhaust themselves. They work as they do now because they are by some means separated in consciousness from their divine Truth. The expanding energy in humanity can abolish this gap. Then their present functioning will be converted. It would be naturally converted by the supreme evolution. It is a progress into that pure working which they have in their Truth-consciousness.

Page No.161 / Para No.4:

In that case a further possibility arises. Mind can manifest and maintain the divine consciousness in the human mind and body. The divine consciousness need not stop there. It can proceed further. Its conquests can increase. It can remould mind, life and body themselves into a more perfect image of its eternal Truth. Such a goal can be realized not only in the soul but in the substance of the being. It would be the kingdom of heaven on earth. The first of these victories is internal. It has been achieved in various degrees by many upon earth. The other is external. It was not more or less realized in the past alone. It is the first type for future cycles. It is still held in the subconscious memory of the earth-nature. It may be intended as the coming victorious achievement of God in humanity. This is earthly life. It need not be a wheel of half-joyous, half-anguished effort. This too can be attained. Thus the glory and joy of God can be made manifest upon earth.

Page No.161 / Para No.5:

If that is so, then it is possible to manifest and maintain divine consciousness in the human mind and body. In the end the divine consciousness might increase its conquests. It can even remould mind, life and body into a more perfect image of its eternal Truth. Such a realization begins in the soul and finally extends its kingdom of heaven upon earth to the substance of the human being. The first of these victories is internal. It has certainly been achieved by some in a greater or less degree. Maybe many have accomplished it upon earth. The other is external. It has never been realized in the past. It could have been the first type for future cycles. It is still held in the subconscious memory of the earth-nature. It may yet be intended as a coming victorious achievement of God in humanity. Today this earthly life is forever a wheel of half-joyous half-anguished effort. Its attainment of its full glory may be intended. There is hope for the joy of God made manifest upon earth.

Page No.161 / Para No.6:

Mind, Life and Body have their supreme sources. There they must exist in their integral completeness of the divine manifestation. There they are informed by the Truth and not cut off from it by separation. Presently we live in ignorance. This then is the problem that we have next to consider. For there they must already have their perfection. We are growing towards that perfection. We are only the first shackled movement of Mind. Mind is only evolving Matter. Matter is the involution in form of the Spirit. We are not yet liberated from those conditions and effects. It was a plunge of Light into its own shadow. The darkened material consciousness of physical Nature is created by it. The divine Real-Idea must hold the type of all perfection towards which we grow. So also the terms of our highest evolution. They must be there formed and conscious. It is for us to grow towards them. It is the pre-existence in the divine knowledge of our goal. Our human mentality names and seeks it as the ideal. The Ideal is an eternal Reality which we have not yet realized in the conditions of our being. It is not a non-existent ideal which is yet to be created. It is not as if the Eternal and Divine has not yet grasped the Ideal and only we the imperfect beings have glimpsed it and we are going to create it hereafter.

Page No.162 / Para No.7:

Mind, first, the chained and hampered sovereign of our human living. Mind, in its essence, is a consciousness. It measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole. It contains them as if they were a separate integer. The cut out parts exist only as parts and fractions. It is obvious. The ordinary relation with these parts for the Mind is its commerce. It feels it can deal separately with each one of them. It does not treat them as aspects of a whole. Mind knows they are not things in themselves. Still, Mind feels obliged to deal with them as if they are things in themselves. Otherwise, Mind cannot subject them to its own characteristics. This is an essential characteristic of Mind. It conditions the workings of all its operative powers. They are conception, perception and sensation. It does so even when it deals with creative thought. A man receives his salary. At once, at least some begin to think it is all by itself a separate entity. The salary is all his own, for him to possess. Once he possesses it, he can be creative. He can gamble the money as he chooses. To him his salary is a part that is a whole. Really one month.s salary is 1/360th reward for his entire career for one who serves for 30 years. It does represent a similar fraction of responsibility for his future. 1/360th of his family.s future welfare . son.s education, daughter.s wedding, family.s commitment to social functions, family health, etc. . is contained in that one month.s salary. The salary is a part of his whole career. It is a financial part. It is not a whole in itself. It does not admit of dimensions of dissipation to which it can be used. Those dimensions are not the real part of it. They are creative expressions of his dissipative personality, inadmissible in the scheme of salary or family. Mind conceives, perceives, senses things as if rigidly cut off from a background or a mass. Mind employs them as fixed units of the material given to it for creation or possession. All its actions and enjoyment deal thus with wholes that form part of a greater whole. These subordinate wholes are again broken up into parts. They are also treated as wholes for the particular purpose they serve. Mind may divide, multiply, add or subtract, but it cannot get beyond this mathematics. A family is an integral part of a village or community. The views of the village are the sum total of the views of these families. Suppose an issue arises and one family has a pronounced opinion about it. Its opinion has some value or impact on the village if the family expresses it in the assembly or sticks to it while being a member of the community. Thus it behaves as an integral part of the community. Suppose, the family chooses to treat itself as a whole outside the community and cuts itself out and takes itself out of the purview of the village, it is lost to the whole and it loses the privilege of being part of the whole. Going out of the village, the family may discuss its view in depth, analyse its parts, and give it political, philosophical, theoretical significances. All that is lost to the village. In fact, all is lost in every sense of the word to the whole, as well as the part. When the Mind tries to go beyond and tries to conceive of itself as a real whole, it loses itself in a foreign element. It falls from its own firm ground into the ocean of the intangible. It falls into the abysms of the infinite. There it can neither perceive, conceive or sense. Nor can it deal with its subject for creation or enjoyment. A family that has moved away from the village cannot meaningfully exert itself with respect to its views outside the village. Mind, of course, is free to conceive, perceive or sense the infinite. Or it may try to enjoy its possession of the infinite. It cannot lay its hands on it. It will only arrive at a figure of the infinite. Liberty, equality, fraternity could only come to the revolutionaries as a figure - no further unjust tax. Mind can touch a formless vast, not the real spaceless infinite. A child given freedom from the family and society and put on the road does not directly enter the infinite zones of freedom for the soul.s growth. It finds itself in a daze where all psychological supports are removed and it is left rootless. The moment Mind tries to deal with the situation of freedom, it tries to possess it as possession. This is its natural tendency. At once its inalienable tendency to delimitation arises. Thus Mind finds itself handling forms, images or words.

• The Rishi.s siddhi reduces itself to a mantra.
• The party.s policies turn into slogans.
• The part receives the whole as a symbol, figure, form or words.

To the mind infinity is a word or a figure. Mind cannot possess the infinite. It can only suffer it to possess it. The retailer cannot possess the manufacturer, not the volunteer can possess the party. They can allow the immense whole to possess them. It can only blissfully helplessly lie under the luminous shadow of the Real. It is cast down from the planes of existence beyond its reach. The possession of the infinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental planes. The retailer cannot possess the manufacturer unless he raises himself to the position of the manufacturer. Nor the knowledge of the infinite can come to the Mind except by an inert submission of Mind to the descending messages of the Truth-conscious Reality. There is no way the volunteer who shouts the slogans can know of the policies of his party except by reading the literature that comes down from the head office.

Page No.163 / Para No.8:

The above is an essential faculty of Mind. It is also an essential limitation that accompanies the Mind. They are the truths of Mind. It is this that fixes its real nature and action. They are swabhava and swadharma. Here is the mark of the divine fiat. It assigns Mind its office in the complete instrument of the supreme Maya. This office is determined by that which it is in its very birth. It is from the eternal self-conception of the Self-existent. That office is to translate always infinity into the terms of the finite. The lawyer is there in the court to translate the verbosity of the client into the terms of law. Mind does it by measuring off, limiting, depiecing. Actually it does this in our consciousness to the exclusion of the true sense of the infinite. Lawyers sometimes prepare the case of the client so well that it does not serve the interest of the client. Doctors looking at the disease and deciding on an operation are often totally divorced from the needs of the patient.s health. Mind only does this because its duty is to convert the infinite into the finite. Therefore Mind is the nodus of the great Ignorance, because it is that which originally divides and distributes. Mind is even mistaken for the cause of the universe. They also mistake Mind for the whole of the divine Maya. The divine Maya comprehends Vidya as well as Avidya, knowledge as well as Ignorance. Here is an obvious fact. The finite is only an appearance of the infinite. It is a result of the action of the infinite, a play of its conception. Therefore the finite cannot exist except by the infinite. The finite lives in the Infinite. It lives with the infinite as its background. The finite is the form of that stuff and action of that force. Therefore, there must be an original consciousness which contains both the finite and the infinite. It views both at the same time. That original consciousness is intimately conscious of all the relations of the one with the other. In that consciousness there is no Ignorance because there the infinite is known and the finite is not separated from it as an independent reality. It is just like the corporate headquarters contains the branch office and the regional office. It includes both these units. It is a subordinate process of delimitation . otherwise no world can exist. Mental consciousness is ever dividing and reuniting. Life.s consciousness is an ever divergent and convergent action. Matter is an infinitely divided and self-aggregating substance. They all come by one original principle and act. So, they come into phenomenal being. This subordinate process, He says, may be called the divine Mind. It is the process of the eternal Seer and Thinker. It is perfectly luminous. He is perfectly aware of Himself and all. He knows well what He does. He is conscious of the infinite in the finite. It is He who creates it there. It is the working of the Real-Idea. It is a subordinate process. Obviously it is not a separate process. Real-Idea is the Supermind. It must operate through what He has called the apprehending Supermind. It too is a movement of the Truth-consciousness.

Page No.164 / Para No.9:

That apprehending consciousness is the Prajnana. It places the working of the indivisible ALL before the consciousness of the same ALL. The indivisible ALL is active and formative. It is done as a process. What is placed before the ALL is the object of creative knowledge. The consciousness of the ALL is originative. It is cognizant as the possessor and witness of its own working. It is like a poet viewing the creation of his own consciousness placed before him. The creations are considered as if they are other than their creator and his creative force. Yet all the time, it is no more than the play of self-formation of his own being. It is in itself indivisible from its creator. Thus Prajnana makes the fundamental division. It leads to all the other divisions, the division of the Purusha from the Prakriti. Purusha is the conscious soul who knows and sees by his vision, creates and ordains. Prakriti is the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his knowledge and his vision, his creation and all-ordaining power. Both are one existence, one Being. The forms seen are created and multiple forms of that Being. They are placed by Him as knowledge before Himself as knower. It is placed by Himself as Force before Himself as .Creator.. Then the Purusha pervades the conscious extension of his being. Purusha presents at every point of himself as well as his totality. It inhabits every form. It regards the whole as if separately from each of the standpoints he has taken. He views and governs the relations of each soul-form of himself with other soul-forms from the standpoint of will and knowledge appropriate to each particular form.

Page No.165 / Para No.10:

Thus the elements of division have come into being. The aspects of the One are infinity, omnipresence and multiplicity. These aspects of the One that we find before the division are preserved in altered forms in the divided condition. Thus the infinity of the One becomes Time and Space. The translation is by an extension of the Self-conception. It is a self-conscious self-extension. The omnipresence translates itself into a multiplicity of the conscious soul. Sankhya calls it the many Purushas. The multiplicity of soul-forms has translated itself into a divided habitation of extended unity. These divided habitations are inevitable. Because the multiple Purushas do not each inhabit a separate world of their own.

They do not each possess a separate Prakriti building a separate universe. But they all enjoy the same Prakriti. It is natural, as being only soul-forms of the one, they preside over the multiple creations of His power. Yet they have relations with each other in the one world of being created by one Prakriti. The Purusha in each form actively identifies himself with each. He delimits himself in that and sets off his other forms against it in his consciousness as containing his other selves. They are identical with his being but different in relation, different in various extents, various ranges of movement and various views of the one substance, force, consciousness and delight. Each is equally deploying there at any given moment of Time. Or, it is so in any given field of Space. This is not a binding limitation in the divine Existence as it is perfectly aware of itself. This is not an identification to which the soul becomes enslaved and which it cannot exceed. Now we are enslaved to our self-identification with the body and that prevents us from exceeding it. So also we are unable to exceed our identification with our conscious ego. Here we are unable to escape from a particular movement of our consciousness in Time. It determines our particular field in Space. All this is granted. Still there is a free identification from moment to moment. We have our inalienable self-knowledge of the divine soul. It prevents us from fixing itself in an apparently rigid chain of separation and Time succession. Our consciousness seems to be fixed and chained in such a one.

Let us consider a human analogy for creation. Man is the individual society has created for the purposes of great efficiency. Society can be considered as a whole and be compared to the universe. In that case humanity will be its transcendent aspect. Humanity is the unorganized, widest mental existence on earth. Society is the organized human universe spread all over earth, next only to the theoretical mental existence, humanity. Society fulfils itself in the individual citizen and the individual citizen fulfils himself in the society. Society creates points of concentration known as individuals and first achieves its goal in them. When each such millions of individuals are so saturated by the intense power of universality, the lone individual aims at reaching transcendental status through universality. This is the process of creation but a reversal of ignorance occurs through ego for which Mind serves as the instrument. Such a reversal is crystallized in the Surface being which is the reversed version of the wider universal subliminal Mind. It is on the surface the infinite of the subliminal becomes the infinitesimal finite through the offices of Mind, Time and Ego. The dividing operation of the Mind enables the successive processive movements of Time which by an ignorant selfish motive are crystallized as ego.

Society creates its wealth in an individual so that it can create in agriculture what Nature produces or create new non-existing products through Mind and factory to be distributed by trade and commerce to all its members. The accumulated wealth of a single person turns into the capital of a business which is organized by a manager where individual workers carry out the instructions of the manager who after all makes the creative conceptions of the owner dynamic. So far it is national service through national production. Enters the ego, the surplus of the capital production becomes the profit of the owner. Manager.s dynamism gets separated from the owner.s conception and the worker.s execution. When the ego dissolves, a company becomes a productive unit of the society. In a company there are positive and negative sides of profit and loss. It is because of ego. Even if ego is not there, there can be a loss because of market conditions. It is not a loss to the nation, but the loss is confined to that unit of production which may dissolve. Its dissolution adds to the knowledge of the experience of the whole. We can tabulate the process of creation on one side and process of production on the other side. It may not have the one to one correspondence, but the parallel will not only be evident but will help us understand the process of creation better.

Intellect can handle only the concrete material parts of creation such as Maya, Sachchidananda, Supermind, Mind, etc. or the aim, plan and execution of the company, Maya, etc. have subtle parts that are not spiritual and causal parts that are spiritual and supramental. Intellect cannot grasp them. The subtle parts require insight and better still intuition and the causal parts integral experience. In a company production, sales, order, administration, profits are material parts which anyone with an intellect can understand. The sensitivity of local culture seen in the officers, staff and workers cannot be seen by a foreigner. They are subtle. Only a subtle local person can sense it. Market movements, government policies, global fashions essentially determine the sales of our company. No amount of cultural sensitivity of local traditions can make workers, managers, owners perceive that. One needs political experience, global vision, knowledge of social evolution which are in the causal plane. To take the analogy to a greater detail, though possible is not desirable because at every stage there is a reversal which tends to become complex. Until one has a comprehension that discovers the complexity as rich fullness and not a complication, such an attempt will not yield the desired results. We handle Sat and the creation that emanates out of it as we concern ourselves with organized society and neglect the humanity that is outside it. Asat remains outside. Creation includes that part also if we aim at integrality. An analogy or example is a process of mentalisation, an activity of the Mind. And as such it can handle only one part or one side. So, our parallels have a logical limit. It can move from insight into intuition, but is overwhelmed by integral experience.

Page No.165 / Para No.11:

Thus the depiecing is already there. Depiecing is the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings. A family of five children after wedding can set up separate houses. That will initiate the division. As the being is separated, so the will-of-being too is divided from the will-of-being. Separated, they act as separate forces. It is customary in a company for several sales teams to go out competing with each other destroying the prospects of the company. So too the knowledge-of-being is separated from the knowledge-of-being and behave as if they have emanated from different consciousness. After all, the separation or division is only apparent, .as if. because the divine soul is united, remains united and is not deluded. It is aware of all phenomena as its parts. It keeps hold of its existence in the reality of its being. The divine soul does not forfeit its unity. The divine soul uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge. It means it defines things subordinate to its awareness of infinity. The European countries were separate till EU came into existence. Now, too they are independent in several ways but underlying them all is the EU. The delimitation is not a demarcation that once and for all tears the one away from the other. It is delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential unity which is a totality. This must be distinguished from the pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation. (This is like gathering all the parts of a machine in a basket). It is not unity or totality of the Supermind. It is another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no division or limitation. The soul uses its defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power. A running machine enjoys its parts actively and cohesively cooperating with other parts. The soul of the machine is the design by which her parts are gathered into the form of the machine which releases the force of the engine.

Page No.166 / Para No.12:

Mind is an action of the Infinite. It divides as well as aggregates ad infinitum. Mind is infinite because it is only the subordinate action of the Supermind which is infinite. It reverses division into aggregation as love once generated cannot extinguish itself; it can only change its form. Here the direction changes, hence division becomes aggregation. It cuts up the being into wholes. Further the wholes are cut up till the vestige becomes atom and primal atoms. If it could, it would cut these primal atoms too till it touched nothingness. But it cannot because there is a saving knowledge of unity behind in the Supermind. The Supermind knows every whole, every atom to be a concentration of all-force, of all consciousness, of all being into phenomenal forms of itself. We now know the atom is a concentration of all-force. The phenomenal division of Matter into atoms reaches at its tether end the reality of being, consciousness or force. The unity is there fully preserved. The dissolution of the aggregate into infinite nothingness is to Supermind a return to its original unity of self-concentrating conscious-being. Whichever way its consciousness proceeds, by the way of infinite division or by the way of infinite enlargement, it arrives only at itself, at its own infinite unity and eternal being. A work takes some time. By efficiency we reduce the time. In practice a 40-fold reduction was seen in ship building. As the Time reduces, efficiency rises. Theoretically Time can reach zero when efficiency is infinite because it is from infinity Time arises. When the action of the Mind is consciously subordinate to the Supermind, Mind too knows the full reality of truth. The question of ignoring the truth does not arise. There is no real division, only an infinitely multiplied concentration into forms of being. There is an arrangement of the relation of those forms of being to each other. In this arrangement, division is a subordinate appearance of the whole process necessary to their spatial and temporal play. If a company has 1000 units, all of them appear fully divided. In fact, there is no division. The units need to function separately for their effective existence. You may divide to any extent. You may get down to the most infinitesimal atom. Or it may be the most monstrous possible aggregate of the worlds and systems. Still, you cannot get by either process to a thing-initself. All are forms of a Force which alone is real in itself, while the rest are real only as self-imagings of manifesting self-forms of the eternal Force-Consciousness. However much we divide the earth into individual land holding, the Earth remains undivided.

Page No.167 / Para No.13:

Wherefrom does the limiting Avidya proceed. We see there is no ignorance created by Mind. Avidya is the fall of mind from Supermind. Real division is only a consequence of that fall. What is the exact perversion of the supramental function that created division and ignorance? It proceeds from the individual soul viewing everything from its own standpoint excluding all others. It is an exclusive concentration of consciousness. It is an exclusive self-identification of the soul with a particular spatial and temporal action. Such an action is only a part of its own play of being. It starts from the soul ignoring the fact that all others are also itself. The truth is all other action is its own action; all other states of being and consciousness are equally its own. One particular moment in Time, one particular standpoint in space, one particular form it presently occupies are equally its own action. Exclusive concentration, concentration on the moment, the field, the form, the movement so as to lose all the rest. It has then to recover the rest by linking together the succession of moments. Similarly the succession of points of Space is linked. The succession of movements in Time, the succession of forms in Time and Space are linked so. It has thus lost the truth of the indivisibility of Time. So also, the indivisibility of Force and Substance is lost. It is an obvious fact that all minds are Mind taking many standpoints. All lives are one life developing many currents of activity. All body and form are one substance of Force and consciousness concentrating into much apparent stability of force and circumstances. But in truth all these stabilities are really only a constant whorl of movement repeating a form while it modifies it. They are nothing more. For the Mind tries to clamp everything into rigidly fixed forms. To it they are apparently unchanging or unmoving external factors. It does so because Mind cannot act otherwise. Mind can handle only a limited factor. Doing so, Mind thinks it has got what it wants. In reality, all is in a flux of change and renewal. There is fixed formation in itself and no unchanging external factor. Man is an object constantly on the move. A photo of his is a representation of a still posture of his at one given moment. It is no use understanding the whole man from one photo or several photos. Only the eternal Real-Idea is firm and unchanging. Life is not fixed. Mind tries to attribute fixity to what is not fixed. These truths Mind once knew and has now lost. It must rediscover them. Mind does know these truths, but all of them are held back in its consciousness in the secret light of its self-being. And that light to it is darkness because it has created the ignorance. All this is possible because the dividing mind has become the divided mentality. One who works in an office has no right to the results of his work. He is entitled to his salary only. Mind is like the officer who divides the office from itself and tries to possess his work as his own. This happened because Mind has become involved in its workings and in its own creations.

Page No.168 / Para No.14:

This ignorance is farther deepened in Man by his self-identification with the body. To us mind seems to be determined by the body. Mind is preoccupied with the body and devoted to the physical workings. Mind uses these physical workings for its conscious superficial action in this gross material world. Mind employs constantly the operation of brain and nerves. It is the mind that has developed brain and nerves in the course of its own development of the body. Mind is too absorbed in observing what this physical machinery gives it. It is unable to get back to its own pure workings. Its own pure workings are mostly subconscious to the mind. Still we can conceive of a life mind or life being. This life mind has got beyond the evolutionary necessity of this absorption. What the mind is not able to see, the life mind is able to see. It can even experience itself assuming body after body. It is not created in each body and ends with it. This life mind is only a physical impress of mind on matter. It is only a corporeal mentality that is so created. It is not the whole mental being. This corporeal mentality is our surface mind. It is merely the front which it presents to physical experience. Even in our terrestrial being, behind there is the subconscious or subliminal mind. It knows itself as more than the body. It is capable of a less materialized action. To this we owe immediately most of the larger, deeper and more forceful dynamic action of our surface mind. Our first realization is when we become conscious of it. To become conscious of it is to be aware of its impress on us. This is our first realization or the first idea of our inner being, Purusha.

People live in villages working on land. Urban citizens work in offices. This is physical work to earn their bread. Man.s real life is in his soul, next it is in his mind and last it is in his vital life as seen in his organized power in elections. When he handles money he sees this power. This is equivalent to the Pranamaya Purusha now described.

Page No.169 / Para No.15:

This life mentality may get free from the error of body. Still, it does not make us free from the whole error of mind. Originally the individual soul regards everything from its own standpoint. That is the error. This life mentality is still subjected to that error. It can see the truth only as it presents itself from outside. Or else the truth rises up from the temporal or spatial consciousness. They are forms and results of past and present experience. It is not conscious of the other selves except by the outward indications. They are indications given of their existence, indications of communicated thought, speech, and action, result of action or subtle indications. (They are not felt directly by the physical being). These indications are of vital impact and relation. Equally it is ignorant of itself. For it knows of itself only through a movement of Time. It learns of them through a succession of lives in which it has used its variously embodied energies. Our physical instrumental mind has the illusion of the body. This life mentality is the subconscious dynamic mind which has the illusion of life. In that it is absorbed, and concentrated, by that it is limited, with that it identifies the being. Here we do not yet get back to the meeting place of mind and Supermind. That is the point at which they originally separated.

Page No.169 / Para No.16:

But there is still another clearer reflective mentality behind the dynamic vital mentality. It is capable of escaping from this absorption in life. It views itself as assuming life and body in order to image out in active relations of energy. It is the energy it perceives in will and thought. It is the source of the pure thinker in us. It is that which knows mentality in itself. It sees the world not in terms of life and body but of mind. When we get back to it, we sometimes mistake it for the pure spirit as we mistake the dynamic mind for the soul. This higher mind is able to perceive and deal with other souls as other forms of its pure self. It is capable of sensing them by pure mental impact and communication. It is no longer only by vital and nervous impact and physical indications. It conceives too a mental figure of unity. In its activity its will can create and possess more directly in other minds and lives as well as its own. It does so indirectly as in ordinary life. Even this pure mentality does not escape the original error of mind. It is still its separate mental self. It makes it the judge, witness and centre of the universe. Through it alone it strives to arrive at its own higher self and reality. All others are .others. grouped to it around itself. When it wills to be free, it has to draw back from life and mind in order to disappear into real unity. There is still a veil created by Avidya between the mental and supramental action. An image of the truth gets through, not the Truth itself.

Page No.170 / Para No.17:

The veil must be rent. The divided mind must be overpowered. It must be silent and passive to supramental action. Then mind can get back to the Truth of things. There is a luminous mentality. It is reflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine Real-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is. We know in every way ourselves in others and as others, others as ourselves. We find the all as the universal self-multiplied One. We lose the rigidly separate individual standpoint. It is the source of all limitation and error. Still, we perceive all that we took for ignorance is truth. What the Mind in ignorance took for truth is indeed truth, but truth deflected, mistaken, falsely conceived. We still perceive the division, the individualizing, and the atomic creation. But we know them and ourselves for what they and we really are. And so we find that Mind is really subordinate action and instrumentation of Truth-Consciousness. Mind is a dividing instrument, not a divided one. This can act in knowledge as well as in ignorance. Acting in knowledge, Mind enables the totality to raise its level of creativity and enjoyment to far greater levels. Acting in ignorance Mind sets up separate houses and fosters competitions with others and become the crooked instrument of the Veda. In an office or court or a school, let us see how this analogy works. In a court where 8 judges have to listen to 40 cases from 80 lawyers, if all of them turn up simultaneously and start working, there will be a rich chaos organizing confusion. The Sirastar schedules the cases, courts, lawyers according to a time table so that each judge will listen to cases in sequence from the concerned lawyers. Acting in knowledge Mind divides the functions in Time and Space so that work can proceed smoothly and fruitfully. Acting in ignorance Mind becomes possessive and competitive. Each judge says, .This is my court and no other judge can enter here.. Each client says, .This is my lawyer who cannot appear for other cases.. It is the enveloping Master consciousness which enjoys self-experience. As long as Mind does not separate it, does not set up separate house, Mind is luminous. The moment Mind seeks its own benefit, it becomes crooked. Mind.s function is to hold each part apart so that the being in its universality remains untouched and conscious. In an organization it is necessary that each person must be able to function independently as a subordinate part of the whole so that he can grow to his full stature and contribute to the organization his maximum. It is this function Mind is given in knowledge. It has to receive the truth of things and distribute it according to the unerring perception of a supreme universal Eye and Will. Now we see the greater is the division, the greater is the delight of the whole. It has to uphold an individualization of active consciousness, delight, force, and substance which derives all its power, reality and joy from an inalienable universality behind. It amounts to individuality in front, universality behind. The One has the multiplicity. It has to turn that multiplicity into an apparent division. This division defines the relationships. It holds each off against the other. It permits the divided parts to meet again and join. A class in a school consists of 30 pupils. As a class it is a whole, but each pupil is an individual. When the school is over the class breaks into its individual parts and disappears only to reassemble the next day. Separation does not destroy its basic unity. It has to establish the delight of separation and contact in the midst of eternal unity and intermiscence. It has to enable the One to behave as if He were an individual dealing with other individuals but always in His own unity. And this is what the world really is. The apprehending Truth-Consciousness makes all this possible. The mind is the final action of this apprehending consciousness. What we call the Ignorance does not create a new thing and absolute falsehood. It only misrepresents the Truth. The Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge. It gives a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of opposition. It is in conflict with the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal manifestation.

Page No.171 / Para No.18:

The fundamental error of the Mind is, then, this fall from self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is that by which the soul conceives of its individuality as a form of Oneness and knowing itself as one concentration of the universal. Instead this fall makes it see the individual soul as a separate fact and it makes itself the centre of its own universe. This is the original error. All its particular ignorance and limitations are contingent results. Mind views the flux of things only as it flows upon and through itself. It thus makes a limitation of being. From that proceeds a limitation of consciousness. Therefore a limitation of knowledge follows. Hence a limitation of conscious force and will and therefore of power. They lead to a limitation of self-enjoyment and therefore of delight. It is conscious of things and knows them only as they present themselves to its individuality. And therefore it falls into an ignorance of the rest. Thereby it falls itself into an erroneous conception even of that which it seems to know. Since all being is interdependent, the knowledge either of the whole or of the essence is necessary for the right knowledge of the part. Hence there is an element of error in all human knowledge. Our will is ignorant of the all-will. It must fall into error of working and a greater or less degree of incapacity and impotence. The soul.s self-delight and delight of things ignores the all-bliss. By its defect of will and knowledge, it is unable to master its world. Therefore it must fall into incapacity of possessive delight. And therefore suffering is there. Self-ignorance is therefore the root of all the perversity of our existence. And that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation. Egoism is the form taken by the self-ignorance.

Page No.172 / Para No.19:

Ignorance and perversity are only distortions of truth. They are not the play of absolute falsehood. (Truth can be absolute, not falsehood. Falsehood has no such original status.) Ignorance is the result of mind viewing things in the division it makes, avidyayam antare. It should view itself and its divisions as instrumentation and phenomenon of the play of Sachchidananda. Man enjoying life in terms of health can last. Playing, exercise, good food, etc. can be enjoyable as well as health giving. Liquor, sex enable man to enjoy life but they will destroy health. If Mind gets back to the Truth it fell from, it becomes the final action of the apprehending Truth-consciousness. Then the relations it helps to create in that light and power will be relations of Truth and not of perversity. The Vedas called that deviation crooked. Truth is the divine being moving harmoniously in itself possessing its consciousness, will and delight. What we have is the warped and zigzag movement of mind and life. These are the contortions created by the soul once grown oblivious of the soul. It has to resolve back all error into truth. All our truth and error is a convulsive effort of sensation to realize immortality. We think our truth is heading towards immortality and our error is working in the opposite direction. The Truth is both are working in the same direction, the error supports the Truth in its struggle to reach immortality. So,

• Our right and wrong move towards immortality.
• Our power and weakness are a struggle of force to grasp capacity and strength.
• Thus our suffering is an endeavor to reach delight.
• Death is a process that ends in immortality.
• Our life and death are a constant effort of being to return to its original status.

159/1: We doubt the possibility of divine life on earth.

159/2: We must either exalt the lower faculties or exchange them with their purer forms.

160/3: Mind, life and body are separated from their original Truth by ignorance.

161/4: The internal conquest was achieved by many, not the external one.

161/5: The ideal of pure Mind, etc. are there or we mean to create them.

162/6: Mind deals with parts. It cannot possess the infinite unless it ascends.

163/7: Mind is a subordinate process of delimitation. It is really divine Mind. It is not a separate process.

164/8: The apprehending consciousness separates Purusha and Prakriti.

165/9: The Purusha rediscovers itself in each soul.form and refuses to lose its basic unity.

165/10: While the depiecing is there, Mind does not forfeit its unity.

166/11: The new factor of Avidya is created by Mind forgetting itself in its work.

166/12: Division leads to nothingness, the original state of Supermind.

167/13: Forgetting itself and identifying with Mind and Life, Avidya arises.

168/14: It is further deepened by its identification with the body. Releasing from it we see Pranamaya Purusha.

169/15: Pranamaya Purusha does not take us back to Supermind.

169/16: There is Manomaya Purusha. It is not our soul. It suffers from the mental error. It cannot break the veil between the Supermind and overmind.

170/17: Rend the veil, cease to reason, Truth awaits throned.

171/18: Fall from self-knowledge is self-ignorance the root of all perversity.

172/19: Distortion of the truth by ignorance makes Mind the crooked of the Vedas.

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