SECTION
FIVE
Planes and Parts of The Being
Men do not know
themselves and have not learned to distinguish the different parts of their
being; for these are usually lumped together by them as mind, because it is through
a mentalised perception and understanding that they
know or feel them; therefore they do not understand their own states and
actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface. It is part of the foundation
of yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the
different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge.
We are composed of many parts each of which contributes something to the total
movement of our consciousness, our thought, will, sensation, feeling, action,
but we do not see the origination or the course of these impulsions; we are
aware only of their confused and pell-mell results on the surface upon which we
can at best impose nothing better than a precarious shifting order.
The remedy can
only come from the parts of the being that are already turned towards the
Light. To call in the light of the Divine Consciousness from above, to bring
the psychic being to the front and kindle a flame of aspiration which will
awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on fire the vital being, is the way
out.
Each part of the being has its
own nature or even different natures contained in the same part.
Consciousness is not, to my
experience, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of personality to the
forces of Nature and amounting to no more than a seeing or interpretation of
these reactions. If that were so, then when the personality becomes silent and
immobile and gives no reactions, as there would be no
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seeing or interpretative action,
there would therefore be no consciousness. That contradicts some of the
fundamental experiences of yoga, e.g., a silent and immobile consciousness
infinitely spread out, not dependent on the personality but impersonal and
universal, not seeing and interpreting contacts but motionlessly self-aware,
not dependent on the reactions, but persistent in itself even when no reactions
take place. The subjective personality itself is only a formation of
consciousness which is a power inherent, not in the activity of the temporary
manifested personality, but in the being, the Self or Purusha.
Consciousness is
a reality inherent in existence. It is there even when it is not active on the
surface, but silent and immobile; it is there even when it is invisible on the
surface, not reacting on outward things or sensible to them, but withdrawn and
either active or inactive within; it is there even when it seems to us to be
quite absent and the being to our view unconscious and inanimate.
Consciousness is
not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and
creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions;
it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.
Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
Consciousness is
usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range
which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human
sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human
hearing all the gradations of sound – for there is much above or below that is
to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and
below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem
to it unconscious, – supramental or overmental and submental ranges.
When Yajnavalkya
says there is no consciousness in the Brahman state, he is speaking of
consciousness as the human being knows it. The Brahman state is that of a
supreme existence supremely aware of itself, svayamprakāśa, – it is
Sachchidananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Even if it be spoken of as
beyond That, parātparam,
it does not mean that it is a state of Non-existence or Non-consciousness, but
beyond even the
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highest spiritual substratum (the
“foundation above” in the luminous paradox of the Rig Veda) of cosmic existence
and consciousness. As it is evident from the description of Chinese Tao and the
Buddhist Shunya that that is a Nothingness in which
all is, so with the negation of consciousness here. Superconscient and subconscient are only relative terms; as we rise into the
superconscient we see that it is a consciousness greater than the highest we
yet have and therefore in our normal
state inaccessible to us and, if we can go down into the subconscient,
we find there a consciousness other than our own at its lowest mental limit and
therefore ordinarily inaccessible to us. The Inconscient itself is only an
involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya,
though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that
under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it – “an inert Soul
with a somnambulist Force.”
The gradations
of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the
subjective personality; rather the outlook of the subjective personality is
determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organised according to
its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.
It will be
evident that by consciousness is meant something which is essentially the same
throughout but variable in status, condition and operation, in which in some
grades or conditions the activities we call consciousness can exist either in a
suppressed or an unorganised or a differently
organised state; while in other states some other activities may manifest which
in us are suppressed, unorganised or latent or else
are less perfectly manifested, less intensive, extended and powerful than in
those higher grades above our highest mental limit.
It all depends upon where the
consciousness places itself and concentrates itself. If the consciousness
places or concentrates itself within the ego, you are identified with the ego –
if in the mind, it is identified with the mind and its activities and so on. If
the consciousness puts its stress outside, it is said to live in the external
being and becomes oblivious of its inner mind and vital
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and inmost psychic; if it goes
inside, puts its centralising stress there, then it knows itself as the inner
being or, still deeper, as the psychic being; if it ascends out of the body to
the planes where self is naturally conscious of its wideness and freedom it
knows itself as the Self and not the mind, life or body. It is this stress of
consciousness that makes all the difference. That is why one has to concentrate
the consciousness in heart or mind in order to go within or go above. It is the
disposition of the consciousness that determines everything, makes one
predominantly mental, vital, physical or psychic, bound or free, separate in
the Purusha or involved in the Prakriti.
Consciousness has no need of a
clear individual “I” to dispose variously the centralising stress, – wherever
the stress is put the “I” attaches itself to that, so that one thinks of oneself
as a mental being or physical being or whatever it may be. The consciousness in
me can dispose its stress in this way or the other way – it may go down into
the physical and work there in the physical nature keeping all the rest behind
or above for the time or it may go up into the overhead level and stand above
mind, life and body seeing them as instrumental lower forms of itself or not
seeing them at all and merged in the free undifferentiated Self or it may throw
itself into an active dynamic cosmic consciousness and identify with that or do
any number of other things without resorting to the help of this much overrated
and meddlesome fly on the wheel which you call the clear individual “I”. The
real “I” – if you want to use that word – is not “clear individual,” that is, a
clear-cut limited separative ego, it is as wide as the universe and wider and
can contain the universe in itself, but that is not the Ahankar,
it is the Atman.
Consciousness is
a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence – it is the energy, the
motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is
in it – not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness
arranging itself. For instance, when consciousness in its movement or rather a
certain stress of movement forgets itself in the
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action it becomes an apparently
“unconscious” energy; when it forgets itself in the form it becomes the
electron, the atom, the material object. In reality it is still consciousness that
works in the energy and determines the form and the evolution of form. When it
wants to liberate itself, slowly, evolutionarily, out of Matter, but still in
the form, it emerges as life, as animal, as man and it can go on evolving
itself still farther out of its involution and become something more than mere
man. If you can grasp that, then it ought not to be difficult to see further
that it can subjectively formulate itself as a physical, a vital, a mental, a
psychic consciousness – all these are present in man, but as they are all mixed
up together in the external consciousness with their real status behind in the
inner being, one can only become fully aware of them by releasing the original
limiting stress of the consciousness which makes us live in our external being
and become awake and centred within in the inner being. As the consciousness in
us, by its external concentration or stress, has to put all these things behind
– behind a wall or veil, it has to break down the wall or veil and get back in
its stress into these inner parts of existence – that is what we call living
within; then our external being seems to us something small and superficial, we
are or can become aware of the large and rich and inexhaustible kingdom within.
So also consciousness in us has drawn a lid or covering or whatever one likes
to call it between the lower planes of mind, life, body supported by the
psychic and the higher planes which contain the spiritual kingdoms where the
self is always free and limitless, and it can break or open the lid or covering
and ascend there and become the Self free and wide and luminous or else bring
down the influence, reflection, finally even the presence and power of the
higher consciousness into the lower nature.
Now that is what
consciousness is – it is not composed of parts, it is fundamental to being and
itself formulates any parts it chooses
to manifest – developing them from above downward by a progressive coming down
from spiritual levels towards involution in Matter or formulating them in an
upward working in the front by what we call evolution. If it chooses to work in
you through the sense of ego, you think that it is the clear-cut
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individual “I” that does
everything – if it begins to release itself from that limited working, you
begin to expand your sense of “I” till it bursts into infinity and no longer
exists or you shed it and flower into spiritual wideness. Of course, this is
not what is spoken of in modern materialistic thought as consciousness, because
that thought is governed by science and sees consciousness only as a phenomenon
that emerges out of inconscient Matter and consists of certain reactions of the
system to outward things. But that is a phenomenon of consciousness, it is not
consciousness itself, it is even only a very small part of the possible
phenomenon of consciousness and can give no clue to Consciousness the Reality
which is of the very essence of existence.
That is all at
present. You will have to fix yourself in that – for it is fundamental – before
it can be useful to go any further.
Consciousness is made up of two
elements, awareness of self and things and forces and conscious-power.
Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the
right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth; but
awareness by itself is not enough. There must be a Will and a Force that make
the consciousness effective. Somebody may have the full consciousness of what
has to be changed, what has to go and what has to come in its place, but may be
helpless to make the change. Another may have the will-force, but for want of a
right awareness may be unable to apply it in the right way at the right place.
The advantage of being in the true consciousness is that you have the right awareness
and its will being in harmony with the Mother's will, you can call in the
Mother's Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the vital are
not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal
effort and as the awareness and will and force of the mind and vital are
divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not definitive. It is
only in the supermind that Awareness, Will, Force are always one movement and
automatically effective.
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II
Sachchidananda is the One with a
triple aspect. In the Supreme the three are not three but one – existence is
consciousness, consciousness is bliss, and they are thus inseparable, not only
inseparable but so much each other that they are not distinct at all. In the
superior planes of manifestation they become triune – although inseparable, one
can be made more prominent and base or lead the others. In the lower planes
below they become separable in appearance, though not in their secret reality, and one can exist phenomenally
without the others so that we become aware of what seems to us an inconscient
or a painful existence or a consciousness without Ananda. Indeed, without this
separation of them in experience pain and ignorance and falsehood and death and
what we call inconscience could not have manifested themselves – there could
not have been this evolution of a limited and suffering consciousness out of
the universal nescience of Matter.
Supermind is between the Sachchidananda
and the lower creation. It alone contains the self-determining Truth of the
Divine Consciousness and is necessary for a Truth-creation.
One can of
course realise Sachchidananda in relation to the mind, life and body also – but
then it is something stable, supporting by its presence the lower Prakriti, but
not transforming it. The supermind alone can transform the lower nature.
It is the supramental Power that
transforms mind, life and body – not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports
impartially everything. But it is by having experience of the Sachchidananda,
pure existence-consciousness-bliss, that the ascent to the supramental and the
descent of the supramental become (at a much later stage) possible. For first
one must get free from the ordinary limitation by the mental, vital and
physical
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formations, and the experience of
the Sachchidananda peace, calm, purity and wideness gives this liberation.
The supermind
has nothing to do with passing into a blank. It is the Mind overpassing
its own limits and following a negative and quietistic
way to do it that reaches the big blank. The Mind, being the Ignorance, has to
annul itself in order to enter into the supreme Truth – or, at least, so it
thinks. But the supermind being the Truth-Consciousness and the Divine
Knowledge has no need to annul itself for the purpose.
In the supramental consciousness,
there are no problems – the problem is created by the division set up by the
Mind. The supramental sees the Truth as a single whole and everything falls
into its place in that whole. The supramental is also spiritual, but the old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind
and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat
(Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-existence, absolute and
eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane
proceeds to realise it in the supramental plane.
The supreme supracosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be
described as its power of self-awareness and world-awareness, the world being
known as within itself and not outside. So to live consciously in the supreme
Sachchidananda one must pass through the supermind. If one is in the supracosmic apart from the manifestation, there is no place
for problems or solutions. If one lives in the transcendence and the cosmic
view at the same time, that can only be by the supramental consciousness in the
supreme Sachchidananda consciousness – so why should the question arise? Why
should there be a difference between the supreme Sachchidananda version of the
cosmos and the supermind's version of it? Your
difficulty probably comes from thinking of both in terms of the mind.
The supermind is
an entirely different consciousness not only from the spiritualised Mind, but
from the planes above spiritualised Mind which intervene between it and the
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supramental plane. Once one passes
beyond overmind to supermind, one enters into a consciousness to which the
norms of the other planes do not at all apply and in which the same Truth, e.g.
Sachchidananda and truth of this universe, is seen in quite a different way and
has a different dynamic consequence. This necessarily results from the fact
that supermind has an indivisible knowledge, while overmind proceeds by union
in division and Mind by division taking division as the first fact, for that is
the natural process of its knowledge.
In all planes
the essential experience of Sachchidananda, pure Existence, Consciousness,
Bliss is the same and Mind is often contented with it as the sole Truth and
dismisses all else as part of the grand Illusion, but there is also a dynamic
experience of the Divine or of Existence (e.g. as One and Many, Personal and
Impersonal, the Infinite and Finite, etc.) which is essential for the integral
knowledge. The dynamic experience is not the same in the lower planes as in the
higher, in he intermediate spiritual planes and in the supramental. In these
the oppositions can only be put together and harmonised, in the supermind they
fuse together and are inseparably one; that makes an enormous difference.
The universe is
dynamism, movement – the essential experience of Sachchidananda apart from the
dynamism and movement is static. The full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and
the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness
than the supermind, because the instrumentation in all other (lower) planes is
inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static
experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of
the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the
consciousness of the other spiritual planes, even if it descends, can make no
radical change in the earth-consciousness, it can only modify or enrich
it. The radical transformation needs the
descent of a supramental power and nature.
One cannot speak
of two classes of Sachchidananda, for Sachchidananda is the same always – but
the knowledge of Sachchidananda and the universe differs according to the
degree of the consciousness which has the experience.
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The personal realisation of the
Divine may be sometimes with Form, sometimes without Form. Without Form, it is
the Presence of the living Divine Person, felt in everything. With Form, it
comes with the image of the One to whom worship is offered. The Divine can
always manifest himself in a form to the bhakta or
seeker. One sees him in the form in which one worships or seeks him or in a
form suitable to the Divine Personality who is the object of the adoration. How
it manifests depends on many things and it is too various to be reduced to a
single rule. Sometimes it is in the heart that the Presence with the form is
seen, sometimes in any of the other centres,
sometimes above and guiding from there, sometimes it is seen outside and in
front as if an embodied Person. Its advantages are an intimate relation and
constant guidance or if felt or seen within, a very strong and concrete
realisation of the constant Presence. But one must be very sure of the purity
of one's adoration and seeking—for the disadvantage of this kind of embodied
relation is that other Forces can imitate the Form or counterfeit the voice and
the guidance and this gets more force if it is associated with a constructed
image which is not the true thing. Several have been misled in this way because
pride, vanity or desire was strong in them and robbed them of the finer psychic
perception that is not mental and can at once turn the Mother's light on such misleadings or errors.
1. I mean by the
supracosmic Reality the supreme Sachchidananda who is
above this and all manifestation, not bound by any, yet from whom all
manifestation proceeds and all universe.
2. The
supramental and the supracosmic are not the same. If
it were so there could be no supramental world and no descent of the
supramental principle into the material world – we would be brought back to the
idea that the divine Truth and Reality can only exist beyond and the universe –
any universe – can only be half-truth or an illusion of ignorance.
3. I mean by the
supramental the Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which
the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also.
Its
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fundamental character is
knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is
known, but also the truth of manifestation is known, because this too is That –
sarvam khalvidam brahma, vāsudevah sarvam, etc. Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance
trying to know – supermind is the Knower possessing knowledge, because one with
it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the light of His own Truth,
the light of their true self which is He. It is a dynamic and not only a static
Power, not only a Knowledge, but a Will according to Knowledge – there is a
supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest direct its world of Light and
Truth in which all is luminously based on the harmony and unity of the One, not
disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise. The supermind therefore does
not transcend all possible manifestation, but it is above the triplicity of mind, life and Matter which is our present
experience of this manifestation.
4. The overmind
is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which
supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If
supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a
world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of
the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the
inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of
consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of
the universe of consciousness, parārdha, and the lower half, aparārdha. The higher half
is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the
supramental) – the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the
intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full
indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it,
divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities
of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of
consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief
Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it. To this action of
the overmind may be applied the words of the Upanishad, “The face of the Truth
is covered by a golden Lid”, or those of the Vedic rtena rtam apihitam. Here there is the working
of a sort of
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vidyā-avidyāmayī māyā
which makes possible the predominance of avidyā. It is by this
primitive divisional principle that the Mind is enabled to regard, for example,
the Impersonal as the Truth, the Personal as only a mask or the personal Divine
as the greatest Truth and impersonality as only an aspect; it is so too that
all the conflicting philosophies and religions arise, each exalting one aspect
or potentiality of Truth presented to Mind as the whole sufficient explanation
of things or exalting one of the Divine's Godheads above all others as the true
God than whom there can be no other or none so high or higher. This divisional
principle pursues man's mental knowledge everywhere and even when he thinks he
has arrived at the final unity, it is only a constructed unity, based on an
Aspect. It is so that the scientist seeks to found the unity of knowledge on
some original physical aspect of things, Energy or Matter, Electricity or
Ether, or the Mayavadin thinks he has arrived at the
absolute Adwaita by cutting existence into two, calling the upper side Brahman
and the lower side Maya. It is the reason why mental knowledge can never arrive
at a final solution of anything, for the aspects of Existence as distributed by
overmind are numberless and one can go on multiplying philosophies and
religions for ever.
In the overmind
itself there is not this confusion, for the overmind knows the One as the
support, essence, fundamental power of all things, but in the dynamic play
proper to it it lays emphasis on its divisional power
of multiplicity and seeks to give each power or Aspect its full chance to
manifest, relying on the underlying Oneness to prevent disharmony or conflict.
Each Godhead, as it were, creates his own world, but without conflict with
others; each Aspect, each Idea, each Force of things can be felt in its full
separate energy or splendour and work out its values,
but this does not create a disharmony, because the overmind has the sense of
the Infinite and in the true (not spatial) Infinite many concording
infinities are possible. This peculiar security of overmind is however not
transferable to the lesser planes of consciousness which it supports and
governs, because as one descends in the scale the stress on division and
multiplicity increases and in the Mind the underlying oneness becomes vague,
abstract, indeterminate and indeterminable and the only apparent
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concreteness is that of the
phenomenal which is by its nature a form and representation – the self-view of
the One has already begun to disappear. Mind acts by representations and
constructions, by the separation and weaving together of its constructed data;
it can make a synthetic construction and see it as the whole, but when it looks
for the reality of things, it takes refuge in abstractions – it has not the
concrete vision, experience, contact sought by the mystic and the spiritual
seeker. To know Self and Reality directly or truly, it has to be silent and
reflect some light of these things or undergo self-exceeding and
transformation, and this is only possible either by a higher Light descending
into it or by its ascent, the taking up or immergence of it into a higher Light
of existence. In Matter, descending below Mind, we arrive at the acme of
fragmentation and division; the One, though secretly there, is lost to
knowledge and we get the fullness of the Ignorance, even a fundamental
Inconscience out of which the universe has to evolve consciousness and
knowledge.
5. If we regard Vaikuntha or Goloka each as the
world of a Divinity, Vishnu or Krishna, we would be naturally led to seek its
place or its origin in the overmind plane. The overmind is the plane of the
highest worlds of the Gods. But Vaikuntha and Goloka are human conceptions of states of being that are
beyond humanity. Goloka is evidently a world of Love,
Beauty and Ananda full of spiritual radiances (the cow is the symbol of
spiritual Light) of which the souls there are keepers or possessors, Gopas and Gopis. It is not
necessary to assign any single plane to this manifestation – in fact, there can
be a reflection or possession of it or of its conditions on any plane of
consciousness – the mental, vital or even the subtle physical plane. The
explanation of it which you mention is not therefore excluded, it is quite
feasible.
6. It is not
possible to situate Nirvana as a world or plane, for the Nirvana push is to a
withdrawal from world and world-values; it is therefore a state of
consciousness or rather of super-consciousness without habitation or level.
There is more than one kind of Nirvana (extinction or dissolution) possible.
Man being a mental being in a body, manomaya purusa,
makes this attempt at retreat from the cosmos through the spiritualised
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mind, he cannot do otherwise and
it is this that gives it the appearance of an extinction or dissolution, laya, nirvāna;
for extinction of the mind and all that depends on it including the separative
ego in something Beyond is the natural way, almost the indispensable way for
such a withdrawal. In a more affirmative yoga seeking transcendence but not
withdrawal there would not be this indispensability, for there would be the way
already alluded to of self-exceeding or transformation of the mental being. But
it is possible also to pass to that through a certain experience of Nirvana, an
absolute silence of mind and cessation of activities, constructions, representations, which can be so complete
that not only to the silent mind but also to the passive senses the whole world
is emptied of its solidity and reality and things appear only as unsubstantial
forms without any real habitations or else floating in Something that is a
nameless infinite: this infinite or else something still beyond is That which
alone is real; an absolute calm, peace, liberation would be the resulting
state. Action would continue, but no initiation or participation in it by the
silent liberated consciousness; a nameless power would do all until there began
the descent from above which would transform the consciousness, making its
silence and freedom a basis for a luminous knowledge, action, Ananda. But such
a passage would be rare; ordinarily a silence of the mind, a liberation of the
consciousness, a renunciation of its belief in the final value or truth of the
mind's imperfect representations or constructions would be enough for the
higher working to be possible.
7. Now about the
cosmic consciousness and Nirvana. Cosmic consciousness is a complex matter. To
begin with, there are two sides to it, the experience of the Self free,
infinite, silent, inactive, one in all and beyond all, and the direct
experience of the cosmic Energy and its forces, workings and formations, this
latter experience not being complete till one has the sense of being
commensurate with the universe or pervading, exceeding and containing it. Till
then there may be direct contacts, communications, interchanges with cosmic
forces, beings, movements, but not the full unity of mind with the cosmic Mind,
of life with the cosmic Life, of body and physical consciousness with
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the cosmic material Energy and its
substance. Again, there may be a realisation of the Cosmic Self which is not
followed by the realisation of the dynamic universal oneness. Or, on the
contrary, there may be some dynamic universalising of consciousness without the
experience of the free static Self omnipresent everywhere, – the preoccupation
with and pleasure of the greater energies that one would thus experience would
stop the way to that liberation. Also the identification or universalisation
may be more on one plane or level than on another, predominantly mental or
predominantly emotional (through universal sympathy or love) or vital of
another kind (experience of the universal life forces) or physical. But in any
case, even with the full realisation and experience it should be evident that
this cosmic play would be something that one would finally feel as limited,
ignorant, imperfect from its very nature. The free soul might regard it
untouched and unmoved by its imperfections and vicissitudes, do some appointed
work, try to help all or be an instrument of the Divine, but neither the work
nor the instrumentation would have anything like the perfection or even the
full light, power, bliss of the Divine. This could only be gained by an
ascension into higher planes of cosmic existence or their descent into one's
consciousness – and, if this were not envisaged or accepted, the push to
Nirvana would still remain as a way of escape. The other way would be the
ascent after death into these higher planes – the heavens of the religions
signify after all nothing but such an urge to a greater, luminous, beatific
Divine Existence.
But, one might
ask, if the higher planes or if the overmind itself were to manifest their
consciousness with all their power, light, freedom and vastness and these
things were to descend into an individual consciousness here, would not that
make unnecessary both the cosmic negation or the Nirvanic
push and the urge towards some Divine Transcendence? But in the result though
one might live in a union with the Divine in a luminous wide free consciousness
embracing the universe in itself and be a channel of great energies or
creations, spiritual or external, yet this world here would remain
fundamentally the same – there would be a gulf of difference between the Spirit
within and its medium and stuff on which it acted, between the inner
consciousness and the
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world in which it is working. The
achievement inner, subjective, individual might be perfect, but the dynamic
outcome insufficient, disparate, a mixture, not a perfect harmony of the inner
and the outer, a new integral rhythm of existence here that could be called
truly divine. Only a consciousness like the supramental, unconditioned and in
perfect unity with its source, a Truth-Consciousness empowered to create its own
free determinations would be able to establish some perfect harmony and rhythm
of the higher hemisphere in this lowest rung of the lower hemisphere. Whether
it is to do so or not depends on the significance of the evolutionary
existence; it depends on whether that existence is something imperfect in its
very nature and doomed to frustration – in which case either a negative way of
transcendence by some kind of Nirvana or a positive way of transcendence,
perhaps by breaking the shining shield of overmind, hiranmaya pātra, into what is above it, would
be the final end of the soul escaping from this meaningless universe; unless
indeed like the Amitabha Buddha one were held by compassion or else the Divine
Will within to continue helping and sharing the upward struggle towards the
Light of those here still in the darkness of the Ignorance. If, on the
contrary, this world is a Lila of spiritual involution and evolution in which
one power after another up to the highest is to appear, as Matter, Life and
Mind have already appeared out of an apparent indeterminate Inconscience, then
another culmination is possible.
The push to
Nirvana has two motive forces behind it. One is the sense of the imperfection,
sorrow, death, suffering of this world – the original motive force of the
Buddha. But for escape from these afflictions Nirvana might not be necessary,
if there are higher worlds into which one can ascend where there is no such
imperfection, sorrow, death or suffering. But this other possibility of escape
is met by the idea that these higher worlds too are transient and part of the
Ignorance, that one has to return here always till one overcomes the Ignorance,
that the Reality and the cosmic existence are as Truth and Falsehood, opposite,
incompatible. This brings in the second motive force, that of the call to
transcendence. If the Transcendent is not only supracosmic
but an aloof Incommunicable, avyavahāryam, which one
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cannot reach except by a negation
of all that is here, then some kind of Nirvana, an absolute Nirvana even is
inevitable. If, on the other hand, the Divine is transcendent but not
incommunicable, the call will still be there and the soul will leave the chequered cosmic play for the beatitude of the transcendent
existence, but an absolute Nirvana would not be indispensable; a beatific union
with the Divine offers itself as the way before the seeker. This is the reason
why the Cosmic Consciousness is not sufficient and the push away from it is so
strong, – it is only if the golden lid of the overmind is overpassed
and opened and the dynamic contact with the supermind and a descent of its
Light and Power here is intended that it can be otherwise.
The Divine is everywhere on all
the planes of consciousness seen by us in different ways and aspects of His
being. But there is a Supreme which is above all these planes and ways and
aspects and from which they come.
The Divine can be and is
everywhere, masked or half-manifest or beginning to be manifest, in all the
planes of consciousness; in the Supramental it begins to be manifest without
disguise or veil in its own svarūpa.
I do not think exact correlations
can always be traced between one system of spiritual and occult knowledge and
another. All deal with the same material, but there are differences of
standpoint, differences of view-range, a divergence in the mental idea of what
is seen and experienced, disparate pragmatic purposes and therefore a
difference in the paths surveyed, cut out or followed; the systems vary, each constructs
its own schema and technique.
In the ancient
Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachchidananda. Or if you
speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit
plane and Ananda
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plane. The supermind could be
added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the upper
hemisphere. The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different
powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call overmind and the
other the true supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got
confused about Maya (overmind-Force or Vidya-Avidya),
and took it for the supreme creative power. In so stopping short at what was
still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation – even though the Vaishnava and Tantra yogas groped
to find it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest,
this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of
the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it
felt the overmind lustres descending, that this was
the true illumination, the Gnosis, with the result that they either stopped
short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only
Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some
immovable and inactive silence of the Supreme.
Perhaps, what
may be meant by supernals is rather the three fundamentals of the present
manifestation. In the Indian system, these are Ishwara, Shakti and Jiva, or
else Sachchidananda, Maya and Jiva. But in our system which seeks to go beyond
the present manifestation, these could very well be taken for granted and,
looked at from the point of view of the planes of consciousness, the three
highest – Ananda (with Sat and Chit resting upon it), supermind and overmind
might be called the three Supernals. Overmind stands
at the top of the lower hemisphere, and you have to pass through and beyond
overmind, if you would reach supermind, while still above and beyond supermind
are the worlds of Sachchidananda.
You speak of the
gulf below the overmind. But is there a gulf – or any other gulf than human
unconsciousness? In all the series of the planes or grades of consciousness
there is nowhere any real gulf, always there are connecting gradations and one
can ascend from step to step. Between the overmind and the human mind there are
a number of more and more luminous gradations; but, as these are superconscient
to human mind (except one or two of the lowest of which it gets some direct
touches), it is apt to
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regard them as a superior
Inconscience. So one of the Upanishads speaks of the Ishwara consciousness as susupti, deep Sleep, because it is only
in Samadhi that man usually enters into it, so long as he does not try to turn
his waking consciousness into a higher state.
There are in
fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its
parts: one is concentric, a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the
centre; another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps,
a series of superimposed planes with the supermind-overmind as the crucial
nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine. For this transition,
if it is to be at the same time a transformation, there is only one way, one
path. First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the
inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time
the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there
must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to
convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready
for the divine change. Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at
each stage of the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an
infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of the nature. Thus rising
beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive
consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or
through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and
through an intuitivised will, feeling, emotion,
sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater
overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience
everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and
body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation,
play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once
there – once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and
conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine
progression, even an infinite development is still possible.
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There is a world of Ignorance,
there are worlds also of Truth. Creation has no beginning and no end. It is
only a particular creation that can be said to have a beginning and an end.
You must remember that there are
reflections of the Higher worlds in the lower planes which can easily be
experienced as supreme for that stage of the evolution. But the supreme Sachchidananda
is not a world, it is supracosmic. The Sat (Satyaloka) world is the highest of the scale connected with
this universe.
That is the original Tapoloka in which the principle is Chit and its power of
Tapas, but there are other worlds of Tapas on the other planes below. There is
one in the mental, another in the vital range. It is one of these Tapas worlds
from which the being you saw must have come.
There is a vital plane
(self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a mental
plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together, – mental,
vital, physical, – are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere. They
have been established in the earth-consciousness by evolution – but they exist
in themselves before the evolution, above the earth-consciousness and the
material plane to which the earth belongs.
If we regard the gradation of
worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex movement;
the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lower react to the
higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something
that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has
evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience
to a pressure
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from the mental plane. It is now
trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental
plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher
world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and
corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it
were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has,
supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and
connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his
gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the
veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes
of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings.
What takes place in life has always behind it pre-existent movements and forms
in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes pre-existent
movements and forms in the occult mental planes. That is an aspect of things
which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we
progress in a dynamic yoga.
But all this
must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. It is an immense plastic
movement full of the play of
possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense
in the seeing consciousness. It cannot be reduced to a too rigorous logical or
mathematical formula. Two or three points must be pressed in order that this
plasticity may not be lost to our view.
First, each
plane, in spite of its connection with others above and below it, is yet a
world in itself, with its own movements, forces, beings, types, forms existing
as if for its and their own sake, under its own laws, for its own manifestation
without apparent regard for the other members of the great series. Thus, if we
regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, we see great ranges of it, (most
of it), existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world
and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a
corresponding manifestation in the physical formula. At most we can say that
the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane
creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of manifestation in the
physical world. But something more is needed to turn that
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static or latent possibility into
a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That
something may be a call from the material plane, e.g., some force or someone on
the physical existence entering into touch with a supraphysical
power or world or part of it and moved to bring it down into the earth-life. Or
it may be an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g., a vital being
moved to extend his action towards the earth and establish there a kingdom for
himself or the play of the forces for which he stands in his own domain. Or it
may be a pressure from above; let us say, some supramental or mental power
precipitating its formation from above and developing forms and movements on
the vital level as a means of transit to its self-creation in the material
world. Or it may be all these things acting together, in which case there is
the greatest possibility of an effective creation.
Next, as a
consequence, it follows that only a limited part of the action of the vital or
other higher plane is concerned with the earth-existence. But even this creates
a mass of possibilities which is far greater than the earth can at one time
manifest or contain in its own less plastic formulas. All these possibilities
do not realise themselves; some fail altogether and leave at the most an idea
that comes to nothing; some try seriously and are repelled and defeated and,
even if in action for a time, come to nothing. Others effectuate a half
manifestation, and this is the most usual result, the more so as these vital or
other supraphysical forces come into conflict and have
not only to overcome the resistance of the physical consciousness and of
matter, but their own internecine resistance to each other. A certain number
succeed in precipitating their results in a more complete and successful
creation, so that if you compare this creation with its original in the higher
plane, there is something like a close resemblance or even an apparently exact
reproduction or translation from the supraphysical to
the physical formula. And yet even there the exactness is only apparent; the
very fact of translation into another substance and another rhythm of
manifestation makes a difference. It is something new that has manifested and
it is that that makes the creation worth while. What for instance would be the
utility of a supramental creation on
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earth if it were just the same
thing as a supramental creation on the supramental plane? It is that, in
principle, but yet something else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the
Divine in conditions that are not elsewhere.
No doubt, the
subtle physical is closest to the physical, and most like it. But yet the
conditions are different and the thing too different. For instance, the subtle
physical has a freedom, plasticity, intensity, power, colour,
wide and manifold play (there are thousands of things there that are not here)
of which, as yet, we have no possibility on earth. And yet there is something
here, a potentiality of the Divine which the other, in spite of its greater
liberties, has not, something which makes creation more difficult, but in the
last result justifies the labour.
Most things happen in the vital
before they happen in the physical, but all that happens in the vital does not
realise itself in the physical, or not in the same way. There is always or at least
usually a change in the form, time, circumstances due to the different
conditions of the physical plane.
These perceptions are correct on the whole.
Each plane is true in itself but only in partial truth to the supermind. When
these higher truths come into the physical they try to realise themselves
there, but can do so only in part and under the conditions of the material
plane. It is only the supermind that can overcome this difficulty.
The heavenly worlds are above the
body. What the parts of the body correspond to are planes – subtle physical,
higher, middle and lower vital, mental. Each plane is in communication with
various worlds that belong to it.
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It is the external consciousness,
the inner consciousness, the superconscient that are meant.1 The
terms waking, dream, sleep are applied because in the ordinary consciousness of
man the external only is awake, the inner being is mostly subliminal and acts
directly only in a state of sleep when its movements are felt like things of
dream and vision; while the superconscient (supermind, overmind, etc.) is
beyond even that range and is to the mind like a deep sleep.
But why do you want to connect
these things with the soul? These four names2 are given to four conditions of transcendent
and universal Brahman or Self, – they are merely conditions of Being and
Consciousness – the Self that supports the waking state or sthūla consciousness, the Self that supports the Dream State or subtle consciousness,
the Self that supports the Deep Sleep State or Causal consciousness, kārana, and the Self in the supracosmic consciousness. The individual of course
participates, but these are conditions of the Self, not the Self and soul. The
meaning of these expressions is fixed in the Mandukya Upanishad.
These two sets of three names
each mean the same things. Visva or Virat = the
Spirit of the external universe, Hiranyagarbha or Taijasa
(the Luminous) = the Spirit in the inner planes, Prajna
or Ishwara=the Superconscient Spirit, Master of all things and the highest Self
on which all depends. The Mental cannot be Ishwara.
Virat is the outer manifestation
and if we take all that as Brahman without knowing what is behind the
manifestation we shall fall into the intellectual error of Pantheism, not
realising that the Divine is more than this outer manifestation and cannot be
known by it alone. In the vital we may fall into the error of accepting what is
dark and imperfect on the same terms as that which makes for the light and
divine perfection. There may be many other consequent errors also.
1 Vaiśvānara, Taijasa and Prājña in the
Mandukya Upanishad.
2 Vaiśvānara, Taijasa, Prājña and Kūtastha.
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III
By the supermind is meant the
full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place
for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and
knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement. Between the supermind
and the human mind are a number of ranges, planes or layers of consciousness – one
can regard it in various ways – in which the element or substance of mind and
consequently its movements also become more and more illumined and powerful and
wide. The overmind is the highest of these ranges; it is full of lights and
powers; but from the point of view of what is above it, it is the line of the
soul's turning away from the complete and indivisible knowledge and its descent
towards the Ignorance. For although it draws from the Truth, it is here that
begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out
as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one
descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division,
fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above. There is no longer
the essential, total, perfectly harmonising and unifying knowledge, or rather
knowledge for ever harmonious because for ever one, which is the character of
supermind. In the supermind, mental divisions and oppositions cease, the
problems created by our dividing and fragmenting mind disappear and Truth is
seen as a luminous whole. In the overmind there is not yet the actual fall into
Ignorance, but the first step is taken which will make the fall inevitable.
The supermind is the One Truth
deploying and determining the manifestation of its Powers – all these Powers
working as a
Page – 257
multiple Oneness, in harmony, without
opposition or collision, according to the One Will inherent in all. The
overmind takes these Truths and Powers and sets each working as a force in
itself with its necessary consequences – there can be harmony in their action,
but it is rather synthetic and mostly partial than inherent and inevitable and
as one descends from the highest overmind, separation, collision and conflict
of forces increase, separability dominates, ignorance
grows, existence becomes a clash of possibilities, a mixture of conflicting
half-truths, an unsolved and apparently unsolvable riddle and puzzle.
If the supermind were not to give
us a greater and completer truth than any of the lower planes, it would not be
worth while trying to reach it. Each plane has its own truths. Some of them are
no longer true on a higher plane; e.g. desire and ego were truths of the
mental, vital and physical Ignorance – a man there without ego or desire would
be a tamasic automaton. As we rise higher, ego and desire appear no longer as
truths, they are falsehoods disfiguring the true person and the true will. The
struggle between the Powers of Light and the Powers of Darkness is a truth here
– as we ascend above, it becomes less and less of a truth and in the supermind
it has no truth at all. Other truths remain but change their character,
importance, place in the whole. The difference or contrast between the Personal
and Impersonal is a truth of the Overmind – there is no separate truth of them
in the supermind, they are inseparably one. But one who has not mastered and
lived the truths of overmind cannot reach the supramental Truth. The
incompetent pride of man's mind makes a sharp distinction and wants to call all
else untruth and leap at once to the highest truth whatever it may be – but
that is an ambitious and arrogant error. One has to climb the stairs and rest
one's feet firmly on each step in order to reach the summit.
I do not understand. The Personal
Divine does not mean the
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Avatar. What I said was that the
scission between the two aspects of the Divine is a creation of the overmind
which takes various aspects of the Divine and separates them into separate
entities. Thus it divides Sat, Chit and Ananda, so that they become three
separate aspects different from each other. In fact in the Reality there is no
separateness, the three aspects are so fused into each other, so inseparably
one that they are a single undivided reality. It is the same with the Personal
and Impersonal, the Saguna and Nirguna, the Silent
and the Active Brahman. In the Reality they are not contrasted and incompatible
aspects; what we call Personality and what we call Impersonality are
inseparably fused together into a single Truth. In fact “fused together” even
is a wrong phrase, because there they were never separated so that they have to
be fused. All the quarrels about either the Impersonal being the only true
truth or the Personal being the only highest truth are mind-created quarrels
derivative from this dividing aspect of the overmind. The overmind does not
deny any in the aspects as the Mind does, it admits them all as aspects of the
One Truth, but by separating them it originates the quarrel in the more
ignorant and more limited and divided Mind, because the Mind, cannot see how
two opposite things can exist together in one Truth, how the Divine can be nirguno gunī; – having
no experience of what is behind the two words it takes each in an absolute
sense. The Impersonal is Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, not a Person, but a
state. The Person is the Existent, the Conscious, the Blissful; consciousness,
existence, bliss taken as separate things are only states of his being. But in
fact the two (personal being and eternal state) are inseparable and are one
reality.
It is hardly possible to say what
the supermind is in the language of Mind, even spiritualised Mind, for it is a
different consciousness altogether and acts in a different way. Whatever may be
said of it is likely to be not understood or misunderstood. It is only by
growing into it that we can know what it is and this also cannot be done until
after a long process by which mind
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heightening and illuminating
becomes pure Intuition (not the mixed thing that ordinarily goes by that name) and
masses itself into overmind; after that overmind can be lifted into and
suffused with supermind till it undergoes a transformation.
In the supermind
all is self-known self-luminously, there are no divisions, oppositions or
separated aspects as in Mind whose principle is division of Knowledge into
parts and setting each part against another. Overmind approaches this at its
top and is often mistaken for supermind, but it cannot reach it – except by
uplifting and transformation.
It is (sometimes directly,
sometimes indirectly) by the power of the overmind releasing the mind from its
close partitions that the cosmic consciousness opens in the seeker and he
becomes aware of the cosmic spirit and the play of the cosmic forces. It is
from or at least through the overmind plane that the original pre-arrangement
of things in this world is effected; for from it the determining vibrations
originally come. But there are corresponding movements on all the planes, the
mind, the vital, the physical even and it is possible in a very clear or
illumined condition of the lower consciousness to become aware of these
movements and understand the plan of things and be either a conscious
instrument or even, to a limited extent, a determinant Will or Force. But the
stuff of the lower planes always mixes with the overmind forces when they
descend and diminishes or even falsifies and perverts their truth and power.
It is even
possible for the overmind to transmit to the lower planes of consciousness
something of the supramental Light; but, so long as the supermind does not
directly manifest, its Light is modified in the overmind itself and still
further modified in the application by the needs, the demands, the
circumscribing possibilities of the individual nature. The success of this
diminished and modified Light, e.g. in purifying the physical, cannot be
immediate and absolute as the full and direct supramental action would be; it
is still relative, conditioned by the individual nature and the balance of the
universal forces, resisted by adverse powers, baulked of its perfect
result by the unwillingness of the lower workings to cease, limited either in
its scope or in its efficacy by the want of a complete consent in the physical
nature.
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