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CHAPTER
XVI
The Triple Status of Supermind
My self is
that which supports all beings and constitutes their existence....
I am the self which abides within
all beings.
Gita.¹
Three powers of Light
uphold three luminous worlds divine.
Rig Veda.²
BEFORE we pass to this easier understanding of the world we inhabit from the standpoint of an apprehending
Truth-Consciousness which sees things as would an individual soul freed from the limitations of mentality and admitted to
participate in the action of the Divine Supermind, we must pause and resume briefly what we have realised or can yet
realise of the consciousness of the Lord, the Ishwara as He develops the world
by His Maya out of the original concentrated unity of His being.
We have started with the assertion
of all existence as one Being whose essential nature is Consciousness, one
Consciousness whose active nature is Force or Will; and this Being is Delight,
this Consciousness is Delight, this Force or Will is Delight. Eternal and
inalienable Bliss of Existence, Bliss of Consciousness, Bliss of Force or Will
whether concentrated in itself and at rest or active and creative, this is God
and this is ourselves in our essential, our non-phenomenal being. Concentrated
in itself, it possesses or rather is the essential, eternal, inalienable Bliss;
active and creative, it possesses or rather becomes the delight of the play of
existence, the play of consciousness, the play of force and will. That play is
the universe and that delight is the sole cause, motive and object of cosmic
existence. The Divine Consciousness possesses that play and delight eternally
and inalienably; our essential being, our real self which is concealed from us
by the false self or mental ego, also enjoys that play and delight eternally and
inalienably and cannot indeed do otherwise since it is one in being with the
Divine Consciousness. If we aspire therefore to a divine life, we cannot attain
to it by any
¹ IX. 5; X. 20.
²
V. 29. 1.
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other way than by unveiling this veiled self in us,
by mounting from our present status in the false self or mental ego to
a
higher status in the true self, the Atman, by entering into that unity
with the Divine Consciousness which something superconscient in us
always enjoys,—otherwise we could not exist,—but which our conscious
mentality has forfeited.
But when we thus assert
this unity of Sachchidananda on the one hand and this divided mentality
on the other, we posit
two opposite entities one of which must be false if the other is to be
held as true, one of which must be abolished if the other
is to be enjoyed. Yet it is in the mind and its form of life and body
that we exist on earth and, if we must abolish the
consciousness of mind, life and body in order to reach the one
Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, then a divine life here is
impossible. We must abandon cosmic existence utterly as an illusion in
order to enjoy or re-become the Transcendent. From
this solution there is no escape unless there be an intermediate link
between the two which can explain them to each other
and establish between them such a relation as will make it possible for
us to realise the one Existence, Consciousness,
Delight in the mould of the mind, life and body.
The intermediate link
exists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it
is a principle superior to
mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and
unity of things and not like the mind in their
appearances and phenomenal divisions. The existence of the Supermind is
a logical necessity arising directly from the
position with which we have started. For in itself Sachchidananda must
be a spaceless and timeless absolute of conscious
existence that is bliss; but the world is, on the contrary, an
extension in Time and Space and a movement, a working out, a
development of relations and possibilities by causality—or what so
appears to us—in Time and Space. The true name of this
Causality is Divine Law and the essence of that Law is an inevitable
self-development of the truth of the thing that is, as
Idea, in the very essence of what is developed; it is a previously
fixed determination of relative movements out of the stuff
of infinite possibility. That which thus develops all things must be a
Knowledge-Will or Conscious-
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Force; for all manifestation of universe is a play
of the Conscious-Force which is the essential nature of existence. But
the
developing Knowledge-Will cannot be mental; for mind does not know,
possess or govern this Law, but is governed by it, is
one of its results, moves in the phenomena of the self-development and
not at its root, observes as divided things the results
of the development and strives in vain to arrive at their source and
reality. Moreover this Knowledge-Will which develops all
must be in possession of the unity of things and must out of it
manifest their multiplicity; but mind is not in possession of that
unity, it has only an imperfect possession of a part of the
multiplicity.
Therefore there must be a principle superior to the Mind which
satisfies the conditions in which Mind fails. No doubt, it
is Sachchidananda itself that is this principle, but Sachchidananda not
resting in its pure infinite invariable consciousness, but
proceeding out of this primal poise, or rather upon it as a base and in
it as a continent, into a movement which is its form of
Energy and instrument of cosmic creation. Consciousness and Force are
the twin essential aspects of the pure Power of
existence; Knowledge and Will must therefore be the form which that
Power takes in creating a world of relations in the
extension of Time and Space. This Knowledge and this Will must be one,
infinite, all-embracing, all-possessing, all-forming,
holding eternally in itself that which it casts into movement and form.
The Supermind then is Being moving out into a
determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself
and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial
extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in
its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as
Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also
self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time
and Space.
This, then, is the nature of the Divine Consciousness which creates in itself all things by a movement of its
conscious-force and governs their development through a self-evolution by inherent knowledge-will of the truth of existence
or real-idea which has formed them. The Being that is thus conscient is what we call God; and He must obviously be
omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Omnipresent, for all forms are forms of His
con-
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scious being created by its force of movement in its own extension as Space and Time; omniscient, for all things exist in
His conscious-being, are formed by it and possessed by it; omnipotent, for this all-possessing consciousness is also an
all-possessing Force and all-informing Will. And this Will and Knowledge are not at war with each other as our will and
knowledge are capable of being at war with each other, because they are not different but are one movement of the same
being. Nor can they be contradicted by any other will, force or consciousness from outside or within; for there is no
consciousness or force external to the One, and all energies and formations of knowledge within are not other than it, but
are merely play of the one all-determining Will and the one all-harmonising Knowledge. What we see as a clash of wills and
forces, because we dwell in the particular and divided and cannot see the whole, the Supermind envisages as the conspiring
elements of a predetermined harmony which is always present to it because the totality of things is eternally subject to its
gaze.
Whatever be the poise or form its action takes, this will always be the
nature of the divine Consciousness. But, its
existence being absolute in itself, its power of existence is also
absolute in its extension, and it is not therefore limited to one
poise or one form of action. We, human beings, are phenomenally a
particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and
Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we
know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation,
one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is
for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge;
all the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has
disappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true,
because it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the
Divine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so
limited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one
enduring poise even for all time. We find that in the principle
of Supermind itself it has three such general poises or sessions of its
world-founding consciousness. The first founds the
inalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to
support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in
Many; the third further modifies it so as to
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support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the
illusion of the separate ego.
We have seen what is the
nature of this first and primary poise of the Supermind which founds
the inalienable unity of
things. It is not the pure unitarian consciousness; for that is a
timeless and spaceless concentration of Sachchidananda in
itself, in which Conscious Force does not cast itself out into any kind
of extension and, if it contains the universe at all,
contains it in eternal potentiality and not in temporal actuality.
This, on the contrary, is an equal self-extension of
Sachchidananda all-comprehending, all-possessing, all-constituting. But
this all is one, not many; there is no individualisation.
It is when the reflection of this Supermind falls upon our stilled and
purified self that we lose all sense of individuality; for
there is no concentration of consciousness there to support an
individual development. All is developed in unity and as one;
all is held by this Divine Consciousness as forms of its existence, not
as in any degree separate existences. Somewhat as
the thoughts and images that occur in our mind are not separate
existences to us, but forms taken by our consciousness, so
are all names and forms to this primary Supermind. It is the pure
divine ideation and formation in the Infinite,—only an
ideation and formation that is organised not as an unreal play of
mental thought, but as a real play of conscious being. The
divine soul in this poise would make no difference between
Conscious-Soul and Force-Soul, for all force would be action of
consciousness, nor between Matter and Spirit since all mould would be
simply form of Spirit.
In the second poise of the
Supermind the Divine Consciousness stands back in the idea from the
movement which it
contains, realising it by a sort of apprehending consciousness,
following it, occupying and inhabiting its works, seeming to
distribute itself in its forms. In each name and form it would realise
itself as the stable Conscious-Self, the same in all; but
also it would realise itself as a concentration of Conscious-Self
following and supporting the individual play of movement and
upholding its differentiation from other play of movement,—the same
everywhere in soul-essence, but varying in soul-form.
This
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concentration supporting the soul-form would be the
individual Divine or Jivatman as distinguished from the universal
Divine
or one all-constituting self. There would be no essential difference,
but only a practical differentiation for the play which
would not abrogate the real unity. The universal Divine would know all
soul-forms as itself and yet establish a different
relation with each separately and in each with all the others. The
individual Divine would envisage its existence as a
soul-form and soul-movement of the One and, while by the comprehending
action of consciousness it would enjoy its unity
with the One and with all soul-forms, it would also by a forward or
frontal apprehending action support and enjoy its
individual movement and its relations of a free difference in unity
both with the One and with all its forms. If our purified
mind were to reflect this secondary poise of Supermind, our soul could
support and occupy its individual existence and yet
even there realise itself as the One that has become all, inhabits all,
contains all, enjoying even in its particular modification
its unity with God and its fellows. In no other circumstance of the
supramental existence would there be any characteristic
change; the only change would be this play of the One that has
manifested its multiplicity and of the Many that are still one,
with all that is necessary to maintain and conduct the play.
A third poise of the
Supermind would be attained if the supporting concentration were no
longer to stand at the back, as
it were, of the movement, inhabiting it with a certain superiority to
it and so following and enjoying, but were to project itself
into the movement and to be in a way involved in it. Here, the
character of the play would be altered, but only in so far as
the individual Divine would so predominantly make the play of relations
with the universal and with its other forms the
practical field of its conscious experience that the realisation of
utter unity with them would be only a supreme
accompaniment and constant culmination of all experience; but in the
higher poise unity would be the dominant and
fundamental experience and variation would be only a play of the unity.
This tertiary poise would be therefore that of a sort
of fundamental blissful dualism in unity—no longer unity qualified by a
subordinate dualism—
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between the individual Divine and its universal source, with all the consequences that would accrue from the maintenance
and operation of such a dualism.
It may be said that the
first consequence would be a lapse into the ignorance of Avidya which
takes the Many for the
real fact of existence and views the One only as a cosmic sum of the
Many. But there would not necessarily be any such
lapse. For the individual Divine would still be conscious of itself as
the result of the One and of its power of conscious
self-creation, that is to say, of its multiple self-centration
conceived so as to govern and enjoy manifoldly its manifold
existence in the extension of Time and Space; this true spiritual
individual would not arrogate to itself an independent or
separate existence. It would only affirm the truth of the
differentiating movement along with the truth of the stable unity,
regarding them as the upper and lower poles of the same truth, the
foundation and culmination of the same divine play; and
it would insist on the joy of the differentiation as necessary to the
fullness of the joy of the unity.
Obviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing
with the same Truth; the Truth of existence
enjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise
of the soul in enjoying it would be different. The
delight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the
status of the Truth-Consciousness and involve no lapse
into the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary
Supermind would only develop and apply in the terms
of the divine multiplicity what the primary Supermind had held in the
terms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of
these three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion. The
language of the Upanishads, the supreme ancient authority
for these truths of a higher experience, when they speak of the Divine
existence which is manifesting itself, implies the
validity of all these experiences. We can only assert the priority of
the oneness to the multiplicity, a priority not in time but in
relation of consciousness, and no statement of supreme spiritual
experience, no Vedantic philosophy denies this priority or
the eternal dependence of the Many on the One. It is because in Time
the Many seem not to be eternal but to manifest out
of the One and return into it as their
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essence that their reality is denied; but it might equally be reasoned that the eternal persistence or, if you will, the eternal
recurrence of the manifestation in Time is a proof that the divine multiplicity is an eternal fact of the Supreme beyond Time
no less than the divine unity; otherwise it could not have this characteristic of inevitable eternal recurrence in Time.
It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis
on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that
to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our
all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive
schools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the
unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the
divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of
real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this
error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that
the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the
One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual
soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert
the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the
experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness.
Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the
Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and
reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish
that difference. But the position that we have now
firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and
exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these
affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an
ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the
absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not
limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as
a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity
as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment
of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present
statement with these discussions or undertake the vain
labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the
absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite.
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