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The Supermind as Creator

  June 17, 2005

            Sri Aurobindo cites the example of the sun moving around the earth in talking about the inability of the senses to do the duty of the Mind. The idea that it is the earth that goes round the sun is an idea of the thinking mind, not the ocular sense that sees. The process of the Mind that arrived at that idea is thinking, maybe mathematical thinking. We see the sun. It is the eye that sees. The eye does not have the power of thinking. It is one of the senses. Our life is a vital life mostly. We see, hear, smell, touch, taste. These sensations give our life knowledge. On important issues, we sit down, withdraw from the senses and think and decide which job to accept, what course to choose, whether we can accept this alliance. These are all mental processes. Brain is the seat of Mind. Its higher version is subtle and its centre is between the brows. The world is created by the Supermind and not the Mind, says Sri Aurobindo. In this chapter he describes the Supermind and explains how the creation was made. It is an explanation offered to the Supermind in us as it is about the Supermind. As yet there is no centre in Man for that plane -- the Supermind. No wonder we don't understand. Mother says no one has understood His explanations about the Supermind. So, is there any use of our reading the book at all?

            Even in the beginning of the chapter He says that this difficulty exists, but it is not as if we have no real connection with this exalted plane. They are indirect, fragmentary. Mind understands by thinking. Above that lies insight and intuition. We often see these facilities flash in us. Without trying to think, i.e. disinheriting the active Mind, if we shift our emphasis to insight and intuition, His explanations will reach us. In the last para He says religions believe God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. It is not a knowledge they got by the thinking of Mind. It is a perception they had by insight and intuition. There are certain facts of life where a similar phenomenon occurs. They can be of some guidance.

            A political party is full of volunteers, workers, experienced leaders. But there is one who is a mass leader who alone attracts the crowed, for whose sake the people vote. The mass leader creates the party, the others run it or manage it. In a family there are a few members, sometimes several members, but one or two earn. All the income comes from the earning members. Others run the family. The others will never earn. They are not interchangeable qualities. The same difference exists between the self-employed entrepreneur and the salaried employee. The Supermind is like the earning member. Sri Aurobindo illustrates this principle through parts and the whole and goes on to say that even the sum of the parts will not be the whole, as the parts of a machine collected in a box will not be a machine. That faculty is not yet in us. We have to create it. Till then we have to be satisfied by an intellectual statement that does not shut out the higher faculties. When it is created it will lodge behind the heart, not in the heart. Hence the injunction to concentrate behind the heart.

            Now we see before us objects, walls, furniture, shops, moving men, trees, and birds all apparently not connected with each other. We get those impressions through our senses. When we shift to thinking in our Mind, still we do not see any connection between them. There is a lamppost; a man is passing nearby. Our Mind is unable to think of any relation between the man and the post. We know our left leg and right hand are parts of the same body. They are related. Body is a whole of which the leg and hand are parts. We do not see such a relationship between the moving man and the stationary post. In fact they really are related. Suppose we succeed in moving to the centre behind the heart, then we will see the man and the post are related as the leg and the hand are related. As the vision ripens, it becomes perfect. Then the Man ceases to be a man, he acquire a supramental form. Both are, to the supramental, the same form. In the Alipore Jail, Sri Aurobindo saw the jailors, the convicts, the iron bars, the branches of the tree were all one. He saw them as Narayana. He called it Narayana darsan. If a devotee should have the same vision, he will see the objects before him as Sri Aurobindo. It will be Sri Aurobindo Darsan. For the lack of a better word Sri Aurobindo called His vision Narayana Darsan. As Narayana is an overmental god and this was a Supramental vision, they will not go together. In the sense Narayana was born from the Supramental plane, it will be right. In that vision there will be no evil, as in the vision of Arjuna. It was of duality. Therefore Arjuna saw good as well as evil. In the Supramental vision there is only good.

The ideas in this chapter are

  1. Supermind can be indirectly known through its several relations with life.
  2. Vedic clues of Supermind.
  3. The Process of the One becoming the Many.
  4. Why Sachchidananda could not have created this world of ours.
  5. What prevents the Mind from being the creator.
  6. Mind understands its own analysis, not the thing it talks about.
  7. The three poises of consciousness.
  8. What is Supermind? Its six powers.
  9. Real-Idea, how it acts.
  10. Thought separates itself from the object and finally we too detach from the object.
  11. The Real-Idea is triune, not three in one.
  12. The difference between the Supermind and Mind.
  13. How the Supermind makes itself implicit and explicit.
  14. The insight of the tradition and its error.

In the previous chapter He explains Maya is the key to the world enigma. That key, He says, is to be turned in the lock of the universe which is Sachchidananda. Maya creates an active truth of an ordered being out of a static truth of an essential being. In other words,

  • from all is in all.
  • Maya creates all in each and each in all.

In the chapter on Brahma, Purusha, Ishwara, Maya is described as

  • conceptively creative, while Purusha is
  • dynamically executive, and Shakti is
  • conceptively creative and dynamically executive.

Also in the chapter on Maya, He goes on to explain that Mind has no power to create this world and a superior power is needed. And that superior power is Supermind. In this chapter, No.14, HE explains how it dynamically executes.

  • by conceptively creating. He ends saying "All Nature is Seer will that creates force and form."
  • It dynamic execution is how the Supermind draws the Many out of the One without losing the One in the process.

He also says the Infinite does not create; it only manifests what is already there. Brahman becomes substance in the universe by a self-extension. Mind and Life create Matter out of it. (p. 239). Here He says Supermind is the vast self-extension of the Brahman. It can contain Brahman in it and it can develop. Supermind, He says, has the powers of development, evolution and making explicit. In another part of the Supermind it has the powers of envelopment, involution and making implicit. One is the comprehending Supermind and the other is the apprehending Supermind. It is useful to note the first is in Timelessness and the second is in Time. Earlier, it is said it is Supermind that created Existence, Consciousness and Bliss out of the One that is Sachchidananda. The central emphasis falls on the aspect that it is a process of differentiation and not division. Supermind is also explained as the objective state of Sachchidananda - It is the nature of Sachchidananda. The same definition is used elsewhere for the difference in being and consciousness. All of them -- objectifying, nature, consciousness, are said to be extensions of the Being. When the Rishis said, ‘we know the One, we know the Many, but do not know how the One became the Many', Sri Aurobindo said it is by the decision of the One to objectify itself. Further, if the objectification is extension, it is outer extension. Then the inner extension is the subjective state. Here the subjective state is the comprehending Supermind in timelessness the objective state is apprehending Supermind in Time.

  • So creation is objectifying process.
  • Objectifying is self-chosen.

On Page 237, mind is explained as an extension of knowledge of the Being. On an analogy we can say Supermind is the extension of creative knowledge of Brahman.

It is better to think of all the processes of creation and examine whether they are in succession or simultaneous. What faculties are incident? and what is meant by a faculty in this context. Answering the last first,

  • A faculty is the capacity to move what is not in motion. Further more it has the capacity - or organisation - to move it as it intends.
  • Self-conception, Self-limitation, Self-absorption are the faculties listed.
  • It is difficult to say which are simultaneous and which are successive. Still we know the subjective precedes the objective, Timeless Time, Being Consciousness.
  • Spirit and Truth are from the Being.
  • Time and Space are from the Spirit.
  • Mind is from the Supermind.

By process of creation we mean the following:

Brahman - Sat* - Chit - Ananda.

Spirit - Truth (Subjective and objective states of Sat)

Time and Space similarly issue out of Spirit.

Self-Conscious Being splits into Atma, Purusha, Ishwara and their powers Maya Prakriti and Shakti.

Knowledge turns into Ignorance passing through 7 stages.

The lower triplicity of  Mind, Life and Matter are there.

At the Supramental level it is Real-Idea that creates.

1. all in each, and

2. each in all.

Beyond this the Transcendent, cosmos, universe and Individual are another gradation.

Consciousness by self-absorption becomes Superconscient and Inconscient.

One more definition is worth considering - Maya is the consciousness of Brahman. Supermind is the knowledge extension of Brahman.

The explanation of the 14 ideas mentioned earlier draws upon these descriptions in the book at several places. Better to keep it in Mind. Let us take the first idea.

1) Supermind can be indirectly known.

One assumption is based on all is in each and each is in all. One who looks for the ultimate knowledge can find it in any place because somewhere it is there in some form.

Supermind is revealed as genius, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, as great acts of courage. Wherever an impossible thing unexpected becomes possible, one can look for the touch of Supermind, if he is looking for it.

Even when you know it or are that, it is possible for one to be unconscious. Unconsciousness is all-pervasive, even through consciousness.

Though one has access to these regions, the door shuts at once. Work is needed to keep the door permanently open.

The principle here is even in lower planes the higher plane is accessible for those who take the greatest effort. It is available as a flash. To make it permanent, the entire atmosphere must be elevated to that higher level.

  • A one-time success at any level is always possible for a while.
  • Einstein says one must be able to explain even to a child if you understand it well.
  • Things are not difficult or easy. It depends on who listens and who explains. Men are all spiritually equal. So also on the surface life any man has all the knowledge he needs that includes the capacity to know the highest knowledge. The medium is unsuitable. There is no idea in The Life Divine that cannot be communicated to any illiterate person if only you know his idiom - the factor of conversion.

2) Vedic clues

The Vedas have not spoken anything explicitly. At best they were cryptic. It was their style for whatever reason. Their clues:

  • Vast all-comprehensiveness, luminous truth, harmony of being.
  • Truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being.
  • The Gods in their highest secret entity are powers of Supermind.
  • Light is here one with Force.

Some subordinate but important details:

  • truth vision, truth audition.
  • revelation, inspiration.

These large terms make one thing clear that it is not our mind.

It must be between our mind and Sachchidananda.

3) One becoming the Many.

a.      The one is above. The Many is below. The Many seeks in its mutable state something firm and immutable.

b.      The Many are drawn out of the One because it is there in potential. It draws out the Many without losing the One.

c.       It posits Something beyond the One and the Many. It is the Absolute. Our Knowledge of the Absolute will justify God and the world.

The hierarchy in the army, the functioning of a company are EXACTLY on these lines of producing the Many out of the One. In the army, no soldier can fire a single bullet without the order of the officer above. All decisions are taken above and passed on below. No order can be disobeyed. We see the soldier firing, but we do not see the soldier fires on the orders that finally originate from above. In a company we can liken the Board to the One Sachchidananda, the general manager to the Supermind and the worker to the Many. It may appear that the worker does what he wants or the manager or supervisor gives the orders.

The worker below and the Board above indicate that there should be a FOUNDER who is not bound by the Board or the labour.

Points No. 4 and 5 are simple.

6) Mind understands its own analysis.

            A man entering an organisation sometimes is able to conceive that it is there solely for his benefit. He is selfish. Should this attitude be contagious after a few generations, the ideal for which the organisation was originally created will be totally forgotten. Anyone trying to remind the members of the original ideal will be laughed at. They may not now remember it. Government departments are like that. It is natural that a member there conceives of the organisation ONLY in terms of his own benefit. Mind is like that.

            Non-earning members of the family who have long forgotten that someone is earning for them and taking it for granted will insist on their own requirements and will not be able to understand what is happening in the family. Paucity of funds and scarcity of material arise because the selfish member has forgotten that he is part of an organisation and he is there to work for it. He has assumed that the organisation is there only to meet all his needs.

  • Such a man understands only his needs.
  • Mind, like his, understands only its own analysis.

Point No. 7 is a mere statement of fact.

8)

  • Development, evolution, making explicit in the descent.

Envelopment, involution, making implicit in the ascent are the six powers of the Supermind.

  • Differentiation without division is a basic concept.

The father, the officer, the voter are the three functions of a citizen. He is one who has three aspects. There are not three persons. To see three aspects as three persons is an error mind commits.

  • Human personality creates in one the above six powers.

Point No. 9 is partially a repetition of the above ideas.

As the idea is from consciousness, so the Real-Idea is from the Being. Consciousness in its downward movement creates idea (knowledge) and will. As it is moving downward, they are separate. Being is the prior stage to consciousness. Therefore, its idea is Real-Idea. There will and knowledge are united. The officer commanding issues orders below to fire. A junior officer shouts out the order. The soldier fires. When the commanding officer wants to fire, he needs no orders. He fires.

10) Thought separates itself from the object.

A photo separates the form from the person. The photographer finds the photo more important. As a result he values the photo and he himself is now separated from the person whose photo he now has.

11) A statement of a simple description. 12), 13) and 14) are obvious.



* Along with Sat, Asat comes out, along with Chit and Ananda inconscient and insensibility also emerge.



story | by Dr. Radut