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CHAPTER
XXVIII
Supermind, Mind and the
Overmind Maya
There is a Permanent, a Truth hidden by a Truth where the Sun unyokes his horses. The ten hundreds (of his rays)
came together—That One. I saw the most glorious of the Forms of the Gods.
Rig Veda.¹
The face of Truth is hidden by a golden lid; that remove, O Fostering Sun, for the Law of the Truth, for sight. O Sun, O
sole Seer, marshal thy rays, gather them together,—let me see of thee thy happiest form of all; that Conscious Being
everywhere, He am I.
Isha Upanishad.²
The Truth, the Right, the Vast. Atharva Veda.³
It became both truth and falsehood. It became the Truth, even all this that is.
Taittiriya Upanishad.4
ONE point remains to be cleared which we have till now left in obscurity, the process of the lapse into the Ignorance; for we
have seen that nothing in the original nature of Mind, Life or Matter necessitates a fall from Knowledge. It has been shown
indeed that division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance, a division of individual consciousness from the cosmic
and the transcendent of which yet it is an intimate part, in essence inseparable, a division of Mind from the supramental
Truth of which it should be a subordinate action, of Life from the original Force of which it is one energism, of Matter from
the original Existence of which it is one form of substance. But it has still to be made clear how this division came about in
the Indivisible, by what peculiar self-diminishing or self-effacing action of Consciousness-Force in the Being: for since all is
a movement of that Force, only by some such action obscuring its own plenary light and power can there have arisen the
dynamic and effective phenomenon of the Ignorance. But this problem can be left over to be treated in a more close
¹ V. 62. 1. ²
Verses 15, 16. ³XII. 1. 1.
4 II. 6.
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examination of the dual phenomenon of Knowledge-Ignorance which makes our consciousness a blend of light and
darkness, a half-light between the full day of the supramental Truth and the night of the material Inconscience. All that is
necessary to note at present is that it must be in its essential character an exclusive concentration on one movement and
status of Conscious Being, which puts all the rest of consciousness and being behind and veils it from that one movement's
now partial knowledge.
Still there is one aspect
of this problem which must be immediately considered; it is the gulf
created between Mind as
we know it and the supramental Truth-Consciousness of which we have
found Mind in its origin to be a subordinate
process. For this gulf is considerable and, if there are no gradations
between the two levels of consciousness, a transition
from one to the other, either in the descending involution of Spirit
into Matter or the corresponding evolution in Matter of the
concealed grades leading back to the Spirit, seems in the highest
degree improbable, if not impossible. For Mind as we know
it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with
difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and
representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense
formations,—as if bright or shadowy photographs or films
of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve. Supermind, on the
contrary, is in actual and natural possession of the Truth
and its formations are forms of the Reality, not constructions,
representations or indicative figures. No doubt, the evolving
Mind in us is hampered by its encasement in the obscurity of this life
and body, and the original Mind principle in the
involutionary descent is a thing of greater power to which we have not
fully reached, able to act with freedom in its own
sphere or province, to build more revelatory constructions, more
minutely inspired formations, more subtle and significant
embodiments in which the light of Truth is present and palpable. But
still that too is not likely to be essentially different in its
characteristic action, for it too is a movement into the Ignorance, not
a still unseparated portion of the Truth-Consciousness.
There must be somewhere in the descending and
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ascending scale of Being an intermediate power and
plane of consciousness, perhaps something more than that, something
with an original creative force, through which the involutionary
transition from Mind in the Knowledge to Mind in the
Ignorance was effected and through which again the evolutionary reverse
transition becomes intelligible and possible. For
the involutionary transition this intervention is a logical imperative,
for the evolutionary it is a practical necessity. For in the
evolution there are indeed radical transitions, from indeterminate
Energy to organised Matter, from inanimate Matter to Life,
from a subconscious or submental to a perceptive and feeling and acting
Life, from primitive animal mentality to conceptive
reasoning Mind observing and governing Life and observing itself also,
able to act as an independent entity and even to seek
consciously for self-transcendence; but these leaps, even when
considerable, are to some extent prepared by slow
gradations which make them conceivable and feasible. There can be no
such immense hiatus as seems to exist between
supramental Truth-Consciousness and the Mind in the Ignorance.
But if such intervening
gradations exist, it is clear that they must be superconscient to human
mind which does not seem
to have in its normal state any entry into these higher grades of
being. Man is limited in his consciousness by mind and even
by a given range or scale of mind: what is below his mind, submental or
mental but nether to his scale, readily seems to him
subconscious or not distinguishable from complete inconscience; what is
above it is to him superconscious and he is almost
inclined to regard it as void of awareness, a sort of luminous
Inconscience. Just as he is limited to a certain scale of sounds
or of colours and what is above or below that scale is to him inaudible
and invisible or at least indistinguishable, so is it with his scale of
mental consciousness, confined at either extremity by an incapacity
which marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no sufficient means
of communication even with the animal who is his mental congener,
though not his equal, and he is even capable of denying mind or real
consciousness to it because its modes are other and narrower than those
with which in himself and his kind he is familiar; he can observe sub-
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mental being from outside but cannot at all communicate with it or enter intimately into its nature. Equally the
superconscious is to him a closed book which may well be filled only with empty pages. At first sight, then, it would appear
as if he had no means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness: if so, they cannot act as links or bridges and
his evolution must cease with his accomplished mental range and cannot exceed it; Nature in drawing these limits has
written finis to his upward endeavour.
But when we look more
closely, we perceive that this normality is deceptive and that in fact
there are several directions
in which human mind reaches beyond itself, tends towards
self-exceeding; these are precisely the necessary lines of contact
or veiled or half-veiled passages which connect it with higher grades
of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. First,
we have noted the place Intuition occupies in the human means of
knowledge, and Intuition is in its very nature a projection
of the characteristic action of these higher grades into the mind of
Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is
largely hidden by the interventions of our normal intelligence; a pure
intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity: for
what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge which
is immediately caught and coated over with mental
stuff, so that it serves only as an invisible or a very tiny nucleus of
a crystallisation which is in its mass intellectual or
otherwise mental in character; or else the flash of intuition is
quickly replaced or intercepted, before it has a chance of
manifesting itself, by a rapid imitative mental movement, insight or
quick perception or some swift-leaping process of thought
which owes its appearance to the stimulus of the coming intuition but
obstructs its entry or covers it with a substituted
mental suggestion true or erroneous but in either case not the
authentic intuitive movement. Nevertheless, the fact of this
intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking
or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a
half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to
establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it
opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior
spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind
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to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first
character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic
perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas
towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes,—towards that superconscient
cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a
derivative and inferior process. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The
phenomena of genius are really the result of such a penetration,—veiled, no doubt, because the light of the superior
consciousness not only acts within narrow limits, usually in a special field, without any regulated separate organisation of its
characteristic energies, often indeed quite fitfully, erratically and with a supernormal or abnormal irresponsible governance,
but also in entering the mind it subdues and adapts itself to mind substance so that it is only a modified or diminished dynamis
that reaches us, not all the original divine luminosity of what might be called the overhead consciousness beyond us. Still the
phenomena of inspiration, of revelatory vision or of intuitive perception and intuitive discernment, surpassing our less
illumined or less powerful normal mind-action, are there and their origin is unmistakable. Finally, there is the vast and
multitudinous field of mystic and spiritual experience, and here the gates already lie wide open to the possibility of extending
our consciousness beyond its present limits,—unless, indeed, by an obscurantism that refuses to inquire or an attachment to
our boundaries of mental normality we shut them or turn away from the vistas they open before us. But in our present
investigation we cannot afford to neglect the possibilities which these domains of mankind's endeavour bring near to us, or
the added knowledge of oneself and of the veiled Reality which is their gift to human mind, the greater light which arms
them with the right to act upon us and is the innate power of their existence.
There are two successive
movements of consciousness, difficult but well within our capacity, by
which we can have
access to
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the superior gradations of our conscious existence. There is first a movement inward by which, instead of living in our
surface mind, we break the wall between our external and our now subliminal self; this can be brought about by a gradual
effort and discipline or by a vehement transition, sometimes a forceful involuntary rupture,—the latter by no means safe for
the limited human mind accustomed to live securely only within its normal limits,—but in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing
can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life, an
inner subtle-physical entity which is much larger in its potentialities, more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold
knowledge and dynamism than our surface mind, life or body; especially, it is capable of a direct communication with the
universal forces, movements, objects of the cosmos, a direct feeling and opening to them, a direct action on them and even a
widening of itself beyond the limits of the personal mind, the personal life, the body, so that it feels itself more and more a
universal being no longer limited by the existing walls of our too narrow mental, vital, physical existence. This widening can
extend itself to a complete entry into the consciousness of cosmic Mind, into unity with the universal Life, even into a
oneness with universal Matter. That, however, is still an identification either with a diminished cosmic truth or with the
cosmic Ignorance.
But once this entry into
the inner being is accomplished, the inner Self is found to be capable
of an opening, an ascent
upwards into things beyond our present mental level; that is the second
spiritual possibility in us. The first most ordinary
result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel to
be our real or our basic existence, the foundation of all
else that we are. There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana both of
our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality
that is indefinable and inexpressible. But also we can realise that
this self is not only our own spiritual being but the true self
of all others; it presents itself then as the underlying truth of
cosmic existence. It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all
individuality, to stop at a static realisation or, regarding the cosmic
movement as a superficial play or illusion imposed on the
silent Self, to pass into
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some supreme immobile and immutable status beyond the universe. But another less negative line of supernormal
experience also offers itself; for there takes place a large dynamic descent of light, knowledge, power, bliss or other
supernormal energies into our self of silence, and we can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit where its immobile
status is the foundation of those great and luminous energies. It is evident in either case that we have risen beyond the mind
of Ignorance into a spiritual state; but, in the dynamic movement, the resultant greater action of Consciousness-Force may
present itself either simply as a pure spiritual dynamis not otherwise determinate in its character or it may reveal a spiritual
mind-range where mind is no longer ignorant of the Reality,—not yet a supermind level, but deriving from the supramental
Truth-Consciousness and still luminous with something of its knowledge.
It is in the latter
alternative that we find the secret we are seeking, the means of the
transition, the needed step towards
a supramental transformation; for we perceive a graduality of ascent, a
communication with a more and more deep and
immense light and power from above, a scale of intensities which can be
regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of
Mind or in a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it. We are
aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a
spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a
different character from the process of thought to
which we are accustomed; for there is nothing here of seeking, no trace
of mental construction, no labour of speculation or
difficult discovery; it is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge from
a Higher Mind that seems to be in possession of
Truth and not in search of hidden and withheld realities. One observes
that this Thought is much more capable than the mind
of including at once a mass of knowledge in a single view; it has a
cosmic character, not the stamp of an individual thinking.
Beyond this Truth-Thought we can distinguish a greater illumination
instinct with an increased power and intensity and
driving force, a luminosity of the nature of Truth-Sight with thought
formulation as a minor and dependent activity. If we
accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth,—an image which in this
experience becomes a reality,
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—we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a
composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind
beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff.
Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the
Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought,
Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can
give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have
applied that word for want of a better to any
supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as
intuition is only one special movement of
self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to
our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is
very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our
mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of
this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct
contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an
original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental
energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind
that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole
lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links
it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time
with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater
Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite
possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of
the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret
Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is
the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and
the cosmic Ignorance.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we
might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an
Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of
this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary
shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind
all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to
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an awareness of things which is still a vision of
Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line
divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission,
allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it
holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the
passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always
the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its
individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains
in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration
and a free and full consciousness of each other: but
in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind
is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it
embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations
without being limited by them: but although it knows their
oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic
movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not
directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an
illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the
powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending
Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an
independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and
is able to work out, we might say, its own world of
creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of
Nature, are in the supramental harmony a
two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can
be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the
other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant
distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in
which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to
dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing
it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to
return to its separate existence and abide in a free
self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material
principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the
Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine
Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power
of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent
entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the
possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic
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consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an
implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all
interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
If we regard the Powers of
the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases
a million
Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each
world capable of relation, communication and interplay
with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the
nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence
to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as
if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the
other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each
is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with
companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent
opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence.
In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play
of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these
three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have
its own principle of development and consequences
and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more
composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with
its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into
many independent forms of consciousness and
knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to
realise. The one total and many-sided Real-Idea is split up
into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the
power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force
is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the
right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony
and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of
Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and
each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme.
Overmind thus gives to the One
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite
possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of
worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly
variable
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outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence.
Since the
Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix,
the nature of a given world will depend
on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in
that world. Equally, for each individual being, his
seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will
depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has
assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in
sections cut by the reason and sense and put together
in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned
to accommodate one or another generalised formulation
of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or
dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global
in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental
differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the
mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives
an impersonal Existence in which person and
personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions;
or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary
reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or
means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence
these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their
independent self-affirmation and can also unite
together their different modes of action, creating both in their
independence and in their union different states of
consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable
of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and
consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal
consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine,
Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here
equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal.
Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of
expression; but, equally, Person can be the reality
with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of
manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious
Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences
present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as
coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are
to the Overmind intelli-
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gence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things
are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into
it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and
ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of
Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the
universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world
is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or
again it sees the world and all things as born of,
existing by and going back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the
Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an
idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of
these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each
way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each
view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it
can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula,
a mental world-formula, a spiritual world-formula, and
each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can
combine in one world as its constituent powers.
The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as
an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a
supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together
in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal
Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit,
each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its
self-expression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been
always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the
Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of
origination and in the process of its executive
dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence,
each affirming its separate reality but all capable of
linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a
magician craftsman empowered to weave the
multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a
complex universe.
In this simultaneous
development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or
Potentials there is yet—or there
is as yet—no chaos, no conflict, no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The
Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or
falsehoods: what is worked out in any given
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overmental energism or movement is the truth of the
Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent
action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that
independence. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole
truth of being or the others as inferior truths: each God knows all the
Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all
other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all
other forces and their truth and consequences; no
delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies
or condemns the delight of other existence or other
experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and
endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an
all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort
of inferior Supermind,—although it is concerned
predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the
dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or
with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or
creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things
is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global
wholes or constituted by separate independent realities
uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is
grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in
their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate
and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the
overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and
nature.
If we would understand the difference of this global Overmind Consciousness from our separative and only imperfectly
synthetic mental consciousness, we may come near to it if we compare the strictly mental with what would be an
overmental view of activities in our material universe. To the Overmind, for example, all religions would be true as
developments of the one eternal religion, all philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own
universe-view from its own angle, all political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea
Force with its right to application and practical development in the play of the energies of Nature. In our separative
consciousness, imperfectly visited by glimpses of catholicity and universality, these things exist as opposites;
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each claims to be the truth and taxes the others
with error and falsehood, each feels impelled to refute or destroy the
others
in order that itself alone may be the Truth and live: at best, each
must claim to be superior, admit all others only as inferior
truth-expressions. An overmental Intelligence would refuse to entertain
this conception or this drift to exclusiveness for a
moment; it would allow all to live as necessary to the whole or put
each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of
realisation or of endeavour. This is because in us consciousness has
come down completely into the divisions of the
Ignorance; Truth is no longer either an Infinite or a cosmic whole with
many possible formulations, but a rigid affirmation
holding any other affirmation to be false because different from itself
and entrenched in other limits. Our mental
consciousness can indeed arrive in its cognition at a considerable
approach towards a total comprehensiveness and
catholicity, but to organise that in action and life seems to be beyond
its power. Evolutionary Mind, manifest in individuals or
collectivities, throws up a multiplicity of divergent viewpoints,
divergent lines of action and lets them work themselves out
side by side or in collision or in a certain intermixture; it can make
selective harmonies, but it cannot arrive at the harmonic
control of a true totality. Cosmic Mind must have even in the
evolutionary Ignorance, like all totalities, such a harmony, if
only of arranged accords and discords; there is too in it an underlying
dynamism of oneness: but it carries the completeness
of these things in its depths, perhaps in a supermind-overmind
substratum, but does not impart it to individual Mind in the
evolution, does not bring it or has not yet brought it from the depths
to the surface. An Overmind world would be a world of
harmony; the world of Ignorance in which we live is a world of
disharmony and struggle.
And still we can recognise
at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of
Ignorance but a Maya of
Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even
inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action
must follow its independent line and carry out its complete
consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its
complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is
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the inevitable descent, facilis descensus, which Consciousness, once it admits the separative principle, follows till it enters
by obscuring infinitesimal fragmentation, tucchyena,¹
into the material Inconscience,—the Inconscient Ocean of
the Rig Veda,—and if the One is born from that by its own
greatness, it is still at first concealed by a fragmentary separative
existence and consciousness which is ours and in which
we have to piece things together to arrive at a whole. In that slow and
difficult emergence a certain semblance of truth is
given to the dictum of Heraclitus that War is the father of all things;
for each idea, force, separate consciousness, living
being by the very necessity of its ignorance enters into collision with
others and tries to live and grow and fulfil itself by
independent self-assertion, not by harmony with the rest of existence.
Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness
which compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of
interdependence, of concording of discords, of a
difficult unity. But it is only by the evolution in us of the concealed
superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and of the
Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for
can be dynamically realised in the very fibre of our
being and all its self-expression and not merely in imperfect attempts,
incomplete constructions, ever-changing
approximations. The higher ranges of spiritual Mind have to open upon
our being and consciousness and also that which is
beyond even spiritual Mind must appear in us if we are to fulfil the
divine possibility of our birth into cosmic existence.
Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth
from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which
it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the
separateness of each independent movement created by
Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an
exclusive concentration from the overmental source.
There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its
supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil
which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous
kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the
transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure.
Mind
¹
Rig Veda, X. 129. 3.
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separated acts as if it were an independent
principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force
stands
similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or
contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of
the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as
independent units joining to form a separate constructed
whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into
the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level,
no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own
source and foundation in the Spirit or can only
comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it
acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it
receives as material without direct communication with the source from
which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of
each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they
can get by contact and communication,—the basic
sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that
comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this
Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its
divisions and, although they are the results of a certain
conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral
self-knowledge, nor a true and integral
world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter
and reappears in the gross material universe which
arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience.
Yet, as in our subliminal
or inner Mind, so in this Mind also a larger power of communication and
mutuality still remains,
a freer play of mentality and sense than human mind possesses, and the
Ignorance is not complete; a conscious harmony, an
interdependent organisation of right relations is more possible: mind
is not yet perturbed by blind Life forces or obscured by
irresponsive Matter. It is a plane of Ignorance, but not yet of
falsehood or error,—or at least the lapse into falsehood and
error is not yet inevitable; this Ignorance is limitative but not
necessarily falsificative. There is limitation of knowledge, an
organisation of partial truths, but not a denial or opposite of truth
or knowledge. This character of an organisation of partial
truths on a basis of separative knowledge persists in Life and
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subtle Matter, for the exclusive concentration of
Consciousness-Force which puts them into separative action does not
entirely sever or veil Mind from Life or Mind and Life from Matter. The
complete separation can take place only when the
stage of Inconscience has been reached and our world of manifold
Ignorance arises out of that tenebrous matrix. These
other still conscient stages of the involution are indeed organisations
of Conscious Force in which each lives from his own
centre, follows out his own possibilities, and the predominant
principle itself, whether Mind, Life or Matter, works out things
on its own independent basis; but what is worked out are truths of
itself, not illusions or a tangle of truth and falsehood,
knowledge and ignorance. But when by an exclusive concentration on
Force and Form Consciousness-Force seems
phenomenally to separate Consciousness from Force, or when it absorbs
Consciousness in a blind sleep lost in Form and
Force, then Consciousness has to struggle back to itself by a
fragmentary evolution which necessitates error and makes
falsehood inevitable. Nevertheless, these things too are not illusions
that have sprung out of an original Non-Existence; they
are, we might say, the unavoidable truths of a world born out of
Inconscience. For the Ignorance is still in reality a
knowledge seeking for itself behind the original mask of Inconscience;
it misses and finds; its results, natural and even
inevitable on their own line, are the true consequence of the lapse,—in
a way, even, the right working of the recovery from
the lapse. Existence plunging into an apparent Non-Existence,
Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of
existence into a vast cosmic insensibility are the first result of the
fall and, in the return from it by a struggling fragmentary
experience, the rendering of Consciousness into the dual terms of truth
and falsehood, knowledge and error, of Existence
into the dual terms of life and death, of Delight of existence into the
dual terms of pain and pleasure are the necessary
process of the labour of self-discovery. A pure experience of Truth,
Knowledge, Delight, imperishable existence would here
be itself a contradiction of the truth of things. It could only be
otherwise if all beings in the evolution were quiescently
responsive to the psychic elements within them and to the Supermind
underlying Nature's
opera-
Page-287
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural
possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be
the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know
originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy,
parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not
the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the
Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must
emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation
from a dark Infinite.
Two things render that
culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the
descent towards material
creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially
with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up
local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can
bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our
comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner
being and then as a result in the outer surface self
also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by
growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive
and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but
capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct
touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of
enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but
this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have
still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and
organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially
capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even
Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and
involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in
the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly
present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in
the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and
Page-288
Matter. It is true that their action is concealed
and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material,
vital,
mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot
manifest itself as the Creator Power in the
universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and
Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution
necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every
step of the material energy we can see the stamp
of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development
of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and
their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life
and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must
in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from
the involution and their supreme Light descend
into us from above.
A divine Life in the
manifestation is then not only possible as the high result and ransom
of our present life in the
Ignorance but, if these things are as we have seen them, it is the
inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature's
evolutionary endeavour.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK
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