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CHAPTER
XV
The Supreme Truth-Consciousness
One seated in
the sleep of Superconscience, a massed Intelligence,
blissful and the enjoyer of Bliss.... This is the
omnipotent, this
is the
omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all.
Mandukya
Upanishad.¹
WE HAVE to regard therefore this all-containing, all-originating, all-consummating Supermind as the nature of the Divine
Being, not indeed in its absolute self-existence, but in its action as the Lord and Creator of its own worlds. This is the truth
of that which we call God. Obviously this is not the too personal and limited Deity, the magnified and supernatural Man of
the ordinary occidental conception; for that conception erects a too human Eidolon of a certain relation between the creative
Supermind and the ego. We must not indeed exclude the personal aspect of the
Deity, for the impersonal is only one face of existence; the Divine is
All-existence, but it is also the one Existent,—it is the sole Conscious-Being,
but still a Being. Nevertheless, with this aspect we are not concerned at
present; it is the impersonal psychological truth of the divine Consciousness
that we are seeking to fathom: it is this that we have to fix in a large and
clarified conception.
The Truth-Consciousness is
everywhere present in the universe as an ordering self-knowledge by which the
One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity. Without this
ordering self-knowledge the manifestation would be merely a shifting chaos,
precisely because the potentiality is infinite which by itself might lead only
to a play of uncontrolled unbounded Chance. If there were only infinite
potentiality without any law of guiding truth and harmonious self-vision,
without any predetermining Idea in the very seed of things cast out for
evolution, the world could be nothing but a teeming, amorphous, confused
uncertainty. But the knowledge that creates, because what it creates or releases
are forms and powers of itself and not
¹
Verses 5,6
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things other than itself, possesses in its own being the
vision of the truth and law that governs each potentiality, and along with that
an intrinsic awareness of its relation to other potentialities and the harmonies
that are possible between them; it holds all this prefigured in the general
determining harmony which the whole rhythmic Idea of a universe must contain in
its very birth and self-conception and which must therefore inevitably work out
by the interplay of its constituents. It is the source and keeper of Law in the
world; for that law is nothing arbitrary—it is the expression of a self-nature
which is determined by the compelling truth of the real idea that each thing is
in its inception. Therefore from the beginning the whole development is
predetermined in its self-knowledge and at every moment in its self-working: it
is what it must be at each moment by its own original inherent Truth; it moves
to what it must be at the next, still by its own original inherent Truth; it
will be at the end that which was contained and intended in its seed.
This development and progress of the
world according to an original truth of its own being implies a succession of
Time, a relation in Space and a regulated interaction of related things in Space
to which the succession of Time gives the aspect of Causality. Time and Space,
according to the metaphysician, have only a conceptual and not a real existence;
but since all things and not these only are forms assumed by Conscious-Being in
its own consciousness, the distinction is of no great importance. Time and Space
are that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time,
objectively as Space. Our mental view of these two categories is determined by
the idea of measure which is inherent in the action of the analytical dividing
movement of Mind. Time is for the Mind a mobile extension measured out by the
succession of the past, present and future in which Mind places itself at a
certain standpoint whence it looks before and after. Space is a stable extension
measured out by divisibility of substance; at a certain point in that divisible
extension Mind places itself and regards the disposition of substance around it.
In actual fact Mind measures Time by
event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the
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movement of event and the disposition of substance
and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes
Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal
force of Consciousness which in their intertwined
interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And
to a consciousness higher than Mind which should
regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not
contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of
Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an
eternal present. And to the same consciousness not
situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points
and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a
subjective and indivisible extension,—no less subjective than Time. At
certain moments we become aware of such an
indivisible regard upholding by its immutable self-conscious unity the
variations of the universe. But we must not now ask
how the contents of Time and Space would present themselves there in
their transcendent truth; for this our mind cannot
conceive,—and it is even ready to deny to this Indivisible any
possibility of knowing the world in any other way than that of
our mind and senses.
What we have to realise and
can to a certain extent conceive is the one view and all-comprehending
regard by which
the Supermind embraces and unifies the successions of Time and the
divisions of Space. And first, if there were not this
factor of the successions of Time, there would be no change or
progression; a perfect harmony would be perpetually
manifest, coeval with other harmonies in a sort of eternal moment, not
successive to them in the movement from past to
future. We have instead the constant succession of a developing harmony
in which one strain rises out of another that
preceded it and conceals in itself that which it has replaced. Or, if
the self-manifestation were to exist without the factor of
divisible Space, there would be no mutable relation of forms or
intershock of forces; all would exist and not be worked
out,—a spaceless self-consciousness purely subjective would contain all
things in an infinite subjective grasp as in the mind
of a cosmic poet or dreamer, but would not distribute itself through
all in an indefinite objective self-extension. Or again, if
Time alone were real, its successions
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would be a pure development in which one strain would rise out of another in a subjective free spontaneity as in a series of
musical sounds or a succession of poetical images. We have instead a harmony worked out by Time in terms of forms and
forces that stand related to one another in an all-containing spatial extension; an incessant succession of powers and figures
of things and happenings in our vision of existence.
Different
potentialities are embodied, placed, related in this field of Time and
Space, each with its powers and
possibilities fronting other powers and possibilities, and as a result
the successions of Time become in their appearance to
the mind a working out of things by shock and struggle and not a
spontaneous succession. In reality, there is a spontaneous
working out of things from within and the external shock and struggle
are only the superficial aspect of this elaboration. For
the inner and inherent law of the one and whole, which is necessarily a
harmony, governs the outer and processive laws of
the parts or forms which appear to be in collision; and to the
supramental vision this greater and profounder truth of
harmony is always present. That which is an apparent discord to the
mind because it considers each thing separately in
itself, is an element of the general ever-present and ever-developing
harmony to the Supermind because it views all things in
a multiple unity. Besides, the mind sees only a given time and space
and views many possibilities pell-mell as all more or less
realisable in that time and space; the divine Supermind sees the whole
extension of Time and Space and can embrace all the
mind's possibilities and very many more not visible to the mind, but
without any error, groping or confusion; for it perceives
each potentiality in its proper force, essential necessity, right
relation to the others and the time, place and circumstance both
of its gradual and its ultimate realisation. To see things steadily and
see them whole is not possible to the mind; but it is the
very nature of the transcendent Supermind.
This Supermind in its
conscious vision not only contains all the forms of itself which its
conscious force creates, but it
pervades them as an indwelling Presence and a self-revealing Light. It
is present, even though concealed, in every form and
force of
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the universe; it is that which determines sovereignly and spontaneously form, force and functioning; it limits the variations it
compels; it gathers, disperses, modifies the energy which it uses; and all this is done in accord with the first laws¹
that its self-knowledge has fixed in the very birth of the form, at the very starting-point of the force. It is seated within
everything as the Lord in the heart of all existences,—he who turns them as on an engine by the power of his Maya;²
it is within them and embraces them as the divine Seer who variously disposed and ordained objects, each rightly according
to the thing that it is, from years sempiternal.³
Each thing in Nature,
therefore, whether animate or inanimate, mentally self-conscious or not
self-conscious, is
governed in its being and in its operations by an indwelling Vision and
Power, to us subconscient or inconscient because we
are not conscious of it, but not inconscient to itself, rather
profoundly and universally conscient. Therefore each thing seems
to do the works of intelligence, even without possessing intelligence,
because it obeys, whether subconsciously as in the
plant and animal or half-consciously as in man, the real-idea of the
divine Supermind within it. But it is not a mental
Intelligence that informs and governs all things; it is a self-aware
Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from
self-existence: it is this Truth-Consciousness which has not to think
out things but works them out with knowledge according
to the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and
self-fulfilling Existence. Mental intelligence thinks out
because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not
know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by
step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that
exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its
grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.
This, then, is the first operative principle of the divine Supermind; it is a cosmic vision which is all-comprehensive,
all-pervading, all-inhabiting. Because it comprehends all things in
¹A Vedic expression. The gods act according to the first laws, original and therefore supreme, which are the
law of the truth of things.
²
Gita, XVIII. 61.
³ Isha Upanishad,
Verse 8.
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being and static self-awareness, subjective, timeless, spaceless, therefore it comprehends all things in dynamic knowledge
and governs their objective self-embodiment in Space and Time.
In this consciousness the knower, knowledge and the known are not
different entities, but fundamentally one. Our
mentality makes a distinction between these three because without
distinctions it cannot proceed; losing its proper means
and fundamental law of action, it becomes motionless and inactive.
Therefore, even when I regard myself mentally, I have
still to make this distinction. I am, as the knower; what I observe in
myself, I regard as the object of my knowledge, myself
yet not myself; knowledge is an operation by which I link the knower to
the known. But the artificiality, the purely practical
and utilitarian character of this operation is evident; it is evident
that it does not represent the fundamental truth of things. In
reality, I the knower am the consciousness which knows; the knowledge
is that consciousness, myself, operating; the known
is also myself, a form or movement of the same consciousness. The three
are clearly one existence, one movement,
indivisible though seeming to be divided, not distributed between its
forms although appearing to distribute itself and to stand
separate in each. But this is a knowledge which the mind can arrive at,
can reason out, can feel, but cannot readily make the
practical basis of its intelligent operations. And with regard to
objects external to the form of consciousness which I call
myself, the difficulty becomes almost insuperable; even to feel unity
there is an abnormal effort and to retain it, to act upon it
continually would be a new and foreign action not properly belonging to
the Mind. Mind can at most hold it as an understood
truth so as to correct and modify by it its own normal activities which
are still based upon division, somewhat as we know
intellectually that the earth moves round the sun and are able to
correct by it but not abolish the artificial and physically
practical arrangement by which the senses persist in regarding the sun
as in motion round the earth.
But the Supermind possesses
and acts always, fundamentally, on this truth of unity which to the
mind is only a
secondary or acquired possession and not the very grain of its seeing.
Supermind sees the universe and its contents as itself
in a single
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indivisible act of knowledge, an act which is its life, which is the very movement of its self-existence. Therefore this
comprehensive divine consciousness in its aspect of Will does not so much guide or govern the development of cosmic life
as consummate it in itself by an act of power which is inseparable from the act of knowledge and from the movement of
self-existence, is indeed one and the same act. For we have seen that universal force and universal consciousness are
one,—cosmic force is the operation of cosmic consciousness. So also divine Knowledge and divine Will are one; they are
the same fundamental movement or act of existence.
This indivisibility of the comprehensive Supermind which contains all
multiplicity without derogating from its own unity,
is a truth upon which we have always to insist, if we are to understand
the cosmos and get rid of the initial error of our
analytic mentality. A tree evolves out of the seed in which it is
already contained, the seed out of the tree; a fixed law, an
invariable process reigns in the permanence of the form of
manifestation which we call a tree. The mind regards this
phenomenon, this birth, life and reproduction of a tree, as a thing in
itself and on that basis studies, classes and explains it. It
explains the tree by the seed, the seed by the tree; it declares a law
of Nature. But it has explained nothing; it has only
analysed and recorded the process of a mystery. Supposing even that it
comes to perceive a secret conscious force as the
soul, the real being of this form and the rest as merely a settled
operation and manifestation of that force, still it tends to
regard the form as a separate existence with its separate law of nature
and process of development. In the animal and in
man with his conscious mentality this separative tendency of the Mind
induces it to regard itself also as a separate
existence, the conscious subject, and other forms as separate objects
of its mentality. This useful arrangement, necessary to
life and the first basis of all its practice, is accepted by the mind
as an actual fact and thence proceeds all the error of the
ego.
But the Supermind works
otherwise. The tree and its process would not be what they are, could
not indeed exist, if it
were a separate existence; forms are what they are by the force of
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the cosmic existence, they develop as they do as a
result of their relation to it and to all its other manifestations. The
separate law of their nature is only an application of the universal
law and truth of all Nature; their particular development is
determined by their place in the general development. The tree does not
explain the seed, nor the seed the tree; cosmos
explains both and God explains cosmos. The Supermind, pervading and
inhabiting at once the seed and the tree and all
objects, lives in this greater knowledge which is indivisible and one
though with a modified and not an absolute indivisibility
and unity. In this comprehensive knowledge there is no independent
centre of existence, no individual separated ego such as
we see in ourselves; the whole of existence is to its self-awareness an
equable extension, one in oneness, one in multiplicity,
one in all conditions and everywhere. Here the All and the One are the
same existence; the individual being does not and
cannot lose the consciousness of its identity with all beings and with
the One Being; for that identity is inherent in
supramental cognition, a part of the supramental self-evidence.
In that spacious equality of oneness the Being is not divided and distributed; equably self-extended, pervading its
extension as One, inhabiting as One the multiplicity of forms, it is everywhere at once the single and equal Brahman. For
this extension of the Being in Time and Space and this pervasion and indwelling is in intimate relation with the absolute Unity
from which it has proceeded, with that absolute Indivisible in which there is no centre or circumference but only the timeless
and spaceless One. That high concentration of unity in the unextended Brahman must necessarily translate itself in the
extension by this equal pervasive concentration, this indivisible comprehension of all things, this universal undistributed
immanence, this unity which no play of multiplicity can abrogate or diminish. “Brahman is in all things, all things are in
Brahman, all things are Brahman”, is the triple formula of the comprehensive Supermind, a single truth of self-manifestation
in three aspects which it holds together and inseparably in its self-view as the fundamental knowledge from which it
proceeds to the play of the cosmos.
But what then is the origin of mentality and the organisation
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of this lower consciousness in the triple terms of
Mind, Life and Matter which is our view of the universe? For since all
things that exist must proceed from the action of the all-efficient
Supermind, from its operation in the three original terms of
Existence, Conscious-Force and Bliss, there must be some faculty of the
creative Truth-Consciousness which so operates
as to cast them into these new terms, into this inferior trio of
mentality, vitality and physical substance. This faculty we find
in a secondary power of the creative knowledge, its power of a
projecting, confronting and apprehending consciousness in
which knowledge centralises itself and stands back from its works to
observe them. And when we speak of centralisation,
we mean, as distinguished from the equable concentration of
consciousness of which we have hitherto spoken, an unequal
concentration in which there is the beginning of self-division,—or of
its phenomenal appearance.
First of all, the Knower
holds himself concentrated in knowledge as subject and regards his
Force of consciousness as
if continually proceeding from him into the form of himself,
continually working in it, continually drawing back into himself,
continually issuing forth again. From this single act of
self-modification proceed all the practical distinctions upon which the
relative view and the relative action of the universe is based. A
practical distinction has been created between the Knower,
Knowledge and the Known, between the Lord, His force and the children
and works of the Force, between the Enjoyer, the
Enjoyment and the Enjoyed, between the Self, Maya and the becomings of
the Self.
Secondly, this conscious
Soul concentrated in knowledge, this Purusha observing and governing
the Force that has gone
forth from him, his Shakti or Prakriti, repeats himself in every form
of himself. He accompanies, as it were, his Force of
consciousness into its works and reproduces there the act of
self-division from which this apprehending consciousness is
born. In each form this Soul dwells with his Nature and observes
himself in other forms from that artificial and practical
centre of consciousness. In all it is the same Soul, the same divine
Being; the multiplication of centres is only a practical act
of consciousness intended to institute a play of difference, of
mutuality,
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mutual knowledge, mutual shock of force, mutual enjoyment, a difference based upon essential unity, a unity realised on a
practical basis of difference.
We can speak of this new
status of the all-pervading Supermind as a further departure from the
unitarian truth of things
and from the indivisible consciousness which constitutes inalienably
the unity essential to the existence of the cosmos. We
can see that pursued a little farther it may become truly Avidya, the
great Ignorance which starts from multiplicity as the
fundamental reality and in order to travel back to real unity has to
commence with the false unity of the ego. We can see
also that once the individual centre is accepted as the determining
standpoint, as the knower, mental sensation, mental
intelligence, mental action of will and all their consequences cannot
fail to come into being. But also we have to see that so
long as the soul acts in the Supermind, Ignorance has not yet begun;
the field of knowledge and action is still the
Truth-Consciousness, the basis is still the unity.
For the Self still regards
itself as one in all and all things as becomings in itself and of
itself; the Lord still knows his
Force as himself in act and every being as himself in soul and himself
in form; it is still his own being that the Enjoyer enjoys,
even though in a multiplicity. The one real change has been an unequal
concentration of consciousness and a multiple
distribution of force. There is a practical distinction in
consciousness, but there is no essential difference of consciousness or
true division in its vision of itself. The Truth-Consciousness has
arrived at a position which prepares our mentality, but is not
yet that of our mentality. And it is this that we must study in order
to seize Mind at its origin, at the point where it makes its
great lapse from the high and vast wideness of the Truth-Consciousness
into the division and the ignorance. Fortunately, this
apprehending Truth-Consciousness¹
is much more facile to our grasp by its nearness to us, by
its foreshadowing of our mental operations than the remoter realisation
that we have hitherto been struggling to express in our inadequate
language of the intellect. The barrier that has to be crossed is less
formidable.
¹ Prajñāna.
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