EWS #99: Towards the Supermind + Q&A on Spiritual Life
Jan 01, 2022
Topics:
Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste. Happy New Year everyone. We are happy to be back, continuing our series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Last time we covered the first of the two perfections of the integral yoga of self perfection. We will continue covering the third perfection of Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga. We are happy to be back and invite Sraddhalu. Namaste, Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:01:28):
Namaste and happy to be with all of you. And a happy new year to everybody. We have just completed what might be called a difficult year for the whole world where forces of censorship, thought control, suppression of individual liberties were on the ascendancy often using the cover of the pandemic but with very different objectives as Sri Aurobindo had described in great detail more than a hundred years ago - that the very first step of the world state will be to control free speech as a way of controlling freedom of thought. We are seeing this happening and as I have said repeatedly things will get a little worse before they get better but on our part as we enter a new year we have to hold in our consciousness, our vision and our ideal that which must be, not what is which must be defeated, but what must be, which is the advent of a new world based on a new and supramental consciousness. We have to consciously invoke the help of the Divine Mother, the divine Shakti within us, within our circumstances and on the world situation and this will be perhaps the most effective participation that we can make in this transition.
The theme itself is the supramental consciousness and its perfection which is the next in the series of our discussion. You will recall that over the last few sessions, we have been going through a survey of the framework of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga with the seven steps and four sub-steps in each of the seven. The very first was a kind of a preparatory purification, a liberation from the knots of lower nature by which our consciousness can be reasonably free to be able to act not only on our nature but also on our own deeper and higher possibilities of consciousness. The next step was the first of the six perfections, the perfection of equality - Samata Chatushtaya in Sanskrit as Sri Aurobindo wrote it. The next step, the next perfection was Shakti Chatushtaya which is the raising of all of our human potential towards its divine possibilities and we saw last time that it involves the full development of the four parts of our being, of our nature - body, prana, chitta and intelligence as well as the amplification of the four soul powers which infuse and give them their character, the opening to the four aspects of the Divine Mother and her energies which then work through us more and more directly. And the fourth sub-step was the perfection of the faith by which all within us now shifts from a lower, a lesser, and even a distorted erroneous faith to the higher, truer, and diviner faith. And this would complete the perfection of the divine energy which also gives us the possibility to participate and enjoy truly the completeness of this life, preparing it for its full divinisation. But at this point what has happened is all the powers have been amplified to the highest and opened to an action of the divine energy, the divine Shakti.
But there is one problem Sri Aurobindo points out, the divine energy, and I will use the word Shakti hereafter which is a more precise description, because it's not just a mechanical energy, it is conscious Divine Mother and Her creative power. As She pours, as her energy pours into us her knowledge, her power, her various capacities of consciousness, they still have to act through our existing limited, narrow, dark, bound, habitual mind and then through our emotions which are again similarly even darker and bound in their grooves and habits and then through our body which is even more subconscious and unconscious. The problem though is it is a divine knowledge, a divine power, a divine potential, but the medium through which it has to act, the material through which it has to act is so much inferior that it has to diminish itself to be able to act in this and cannot freely express the true character of its divinity. As an analogy, you must have seen sometimes we give little children toys. So a little piano with 7 or 10 keys, which makes at best a very clunky sound. And you give that little piece to a master pianist and say, now play a wonderful piece. And you can imagine it's impossible. Not only it is impossible, if he attempts it, what you get is a caricature, a complete distortion. Because something which requires three or four octaves is now reduced to a single octave and a sound which is not even a pure melody, but a clunky, bouncing, crude sound with no resonance, no depth, no richness. And after all that, the keys are so small that the fingers barely fit onto a key. While trying to hit one key, you end up hitting two or three even, because it's designed for little child's fingers. And it's an excellent analogy for what happens when the divine energy pours into us and tries to act through our mind, through our life energies and through our body. It must not only get similarly diminished and darkened, but more than anything else, it gets distorted. Even if the knowledge in its origin is pure and perfect, by the time it enters the mind, the mind warps it, limits it, and even falsifies it. Many ways by which it can falsify, simply by, for example exaggerating one aspect or picking a piece and then distorting it into the framework of what you were used to in your thought, in your habits. And although you may say I have opened to the action of the divine Shakti and the broad direction may be right, the instrument is so diminished, limited.
Sraddhalu (0:09:16):
And so the question Sri Aurobindo asks is this, well what is going to be the substance through which this divine possibility can now act? And if it has to be this limited mind, you cannot have a divine life in the body. Is it even possible for this to change? And of course Sri Aurobindo's assertion is yes. If you go to the more ascetic paths of yogas, they will say no, human nature is like the tail of a dog, you can keep trying to straighten it and it keeps bending because it's stuck in its habit, in its inertia. Sri Aurobindo says, yes there is a habit, there is an inertia, but that is only the habit of nature and as a habit it can be changed. If you were to fight it with your capacity, it would take substantially longer, but you could still do something. But with a divine capacity and a divine nature, the awakened divine nature now taking up the lesser, inferior, darkened nature, can recast it, reshape it, reprogram it. The means for this, he then picks up. As I've said before, I will not be summarising. What we have been covering in the last few weeks is practically in the Synthesis of Yoga, spread over about 25 chapters of the Yoga of Self-Perfection. Just the theme of equality is covered over three chapters. And I'm not even trying to summarise. I am only focusing on what it means for us in practice and in the form of the practice and I will highly recommend for those of you who really want to enter in depth in understanding this to read what Sri Aurobindo has written. And perhaps with this initial backdrop you will be able to appreciate, because otherwise one get lost in the complex and rich detail that he provides.
So the question now is, can this inferior material be made capable of a higher action? What will it mean for our mind to be able to open to a divine action? Obviously, the divine action itself is sourcing, originating from a grade which is far greater, not our mind. So the first point you realise, the way the divine knows itself as well as the universe, the power by which it creates, forms the universe, the bliss in which it lives are all Supra - that is transcending the mental. So a Supermind or a Supramental consciousness is the vocabulary Sri Aurobindo uses to describe, if we had to use the term from a human perspective, the mind of the divine, the creative power of the divine or the true nature of the divine omniscience and omnipotence and bliss. But what is that like? Even to understand it is somewhat beyond our mental capacity, but we can get a glimpse of it with certain associations and a very limited access that the mind has to a glimpse of infinity. And so Sri Aurobindo spends some time to prepare us to understand this. And of this I won't go into detail again. In fact, these chapters we have covered in great detail, line by line, in the series of lectures on the Synthesis of Yoga Which I don't know if all of these have been broadcast in the series on the YouTube channel, but they used to be broadcast earlier. But what I want to convey is this- just from an experiential perspective, from a practice perspective, how can we recognize the nature of the Supermind? Think of it this way: The one divine consciousness, one indivisible cannot be cut [its] also infinite. Whatever it conceives therefore is one and infinite. When it conceives of the universe, it is a oneness that it knows the whole universe as it is; an infinity of oneness that it knows the universe as and in everything in the universe that it can conceive of, it knows itself as infinity with an underlying oneness and when there is a series of details that it conceives a tree, a flower, a petal, a molecule, an atom, each is known as the whole infinity of the divine consciousness pouring on a special focus of concentration but always one entirely one with everything. The way it knows the universe and of course itself is also in a complete identity unlike our mind which knows by separation, by external observation and by cutting up into pieces so the working of that consciousness is the very opposite of our mind. Another feature of that consciousness is it never loses the sense of the infinite even when it dwells on a single atom; it knows it as the infinity concentrating on an atom but also infinitely linked to all atoms in the universe. We will dwell upon this a little more as we come to the details of the chatushtaya itself, even the sense of time is therefore eternity. And the chain of causality is infinitely rich and complete. So these are the characteristics of the Supramental consciousness.
Sraddhalu (0:15:00):
But the most important thing is because it is the source, the origin, and there is no other consciousness, there is no other knowledge. All subsequent experiences of consciousness or knowledge or power which are reduced and diminished and darkened are basically reductions of that. Now this is the key Sri Aurobindo catches. When the divine consciousness concentrates and then chooses to limit itself for a certain limited experience of finite appearance, of playing with finiteness, it forms what we call or experience as the human mind. The human mind is an instrument created by that consciousness of infinity and oneness to be able to play with finite pieces, to be able to experience finiteness, to be able to arrange and modify this game of finite. So it's a derived secondary power of the supermind. Now this is a brilliant insight because now your mind is like the tail end or a distorted reflection of the true working of the supermind. There is no irrevocable gap. There is in fact behind it the operation of the supermind always secretly working and if that was not possible, then we could never reach to it. Just as if you observe a monkey when challenged or a dog when challenged or any of the more developed animals, you can see them struggling to think and they have a certain thought process and even an intelligence which is not merely instinctive but actually momentarily rises into a state of thought and then lapses. And they watch you. They feel that you have that capacity and they try to absorb that quality from you. The human mind similarly has brief glimpses of something higher. It's not yet the supermind, but the first point of contact of its limitation in finite appearance, which we call intuition. Supermind is infinite, but a drop, a ray, a finite edge of light of the infinity touching your mind is the intuition. And we have brief glimpses of this, that the first point of contact with the supermind, but not truly supermind, a ray of it. And if this is possible for us, then in principle, through a process of further opening and rising we should be able to recover our own supramental consciousness, except we are evolutionary beings.
A divine being who is of a supramental character let's say, would participate in the oneness but would have a special focus of the work assigned. So the gods of a certain grade for example would have a special focus of their action. But we are rising from below as evolutionary beings. So for us we need and Sri Aurobindo uses this word, we need an organ to embody and to express. Just as in the physical body you have the brain which is an organ for the mind, the mind itself has in the subtle body a certain organic complexity and richness and subtlety as a, Sri Aurobindo uses the word organ or even machine, it's one of the most refined and subtle machines, but into that mental consciousness can there be something higher literally evolving out of it as a supramental equivalent of an organ through which then you would be able to experience a supramental consciousness and live in it embodied all the way into the physical. Is it possible? So he makes a very interesting observation. Our mind as it is has a problem. Because it is not capable of infinity. As we said it's an instrument created for finiteness but it can open to infinity and I want to read what he describes, what happens when it opens to this infinity. He says the the mind tends to become numbed it cannot hold. So I'm going to read from here: “the mind can reflect the infinite”, so we feel I am as if raised into something which is infinite, “or it can dissolve itself into infinity”, so we open ourselves, feel the presence of the infinity and let yourself lose, dissolve and opening out and you can begin to experience infinity but it becomes a blur, it becomes a blank, it becomes formless and at that point you can't think; you are just aware and aware in an infinity. So it can dissolve itself. “It can live in it by a large passivity”. Now having dissolved yourself, you can stay in this and then you can be with open eyes. You can act in the world but your mind is almost entirely passive. It can't function. If at all there is any thought or articulation, it's almost like an automatic working. You are not able to seize and act as an individual, at least not effectively. “Or it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way. A way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or lesser deformation. But it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite spirit acting in its own knowledge”. And so this is the problem of the mind.
Sraddhalu (0:21:00):
The question now is, if we have this possibility to rise and to open to something higher, how can that form in us? What is the process? What is the means? Sri Aurobindo has spent a lot of time on this question and shown the means by which it can be done the most rapid way possible. He has mapped out the fine gradations of transition of consciousness, given them distinctive names, described their characteristics, helped us to recognize those tendencies within us and then given us the means by which we can submit to those higher ranges and their action and allow those actions to increase. All of this we have covered in some detail, so I am not going to repeat this. It was covered in some detail in the evening's series, number 64 to 71, which were titled all on planes of consciousness, I think, and part 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 parts, I think. And there we discussed not only the ranges above what is called the higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind and then the supermind, but we highlighted the intuition. That's the link. That's the immediate next poise of consciousness to which our mind can open and of which it can become an instrument in preparation for it to open to infinity of the supermind. And the means to open to intuition, Sri Aurobindo has given detailed explanations and practices, four practices which we had touched upon in that earlier discussion and I will just briefly state here. First the ability to make your mind completely quiet in order to receive the higher knowledge. As long as your mind is active and disturbed and restless, you cannot receive the higher knowledge or as soon as it comes, it gets distorted by your activity. The second was an inward opening and a waiting for the higher intuition to initiate an action. The third method was to shift the centre of awareness itself, which is now largely in the head, to the centre above the head and the fourth method was to take all the present active faculties of the mind, intensify and raise them to their equivalent powers in the intuition, until it's as if you rise out of your mind itself. In all these a certain passivity to the influence of the intuition is necessary. As long as you think yourself into activity, you will never be able to rise into intuition and certainly not into supermind.
The Mother has made some pretty strong remarks about this in her classes in the evening, when she took classes with children and the sadhaks. Somebody asked, Mother, how can we rise into supermind or grow into supermind something like that, and she says, ah you want to do that? just try, it'll be interesting to see how you try. You cannot precisely because, well a monkey cannot think itself into intellect. What we can do is to become a quiet and open to its influence and it can then act to fill us, shape us and then lift us and transmute the substance of the mind itself by filling it with the higher light and so on. In fact, this upward opening is the primary method, Sri Aurobindo says, by which the Shakti works in us for this development. So in the Supramental consciousness for example when a flower is seen or known, the consciousness is infinite and you feel in the infinity as if from the whole universe your consciousness leans to embrace the flower and from the flower your consciousness widens out to connect to everything in the universe, in a unique distinct relationship at that moment. And it's not that just at that moment infinity coming in and flowing out, but at that moment, eternity of all the past influences and compulsions and events, chains of dependencies which have culminated in this flower and all the future chains of dependencies and possibilities flowing out of this flower in this moment. And all this is simultaneous, instantaneous, effortless, natural. This is how the Supramental consciousness would know flower. And still that's not enough. It would know flower inside out by being one with it. It would know it down to each molecule and atom and the very cause by which it gives off its smell and the very consciousness out of which the forms emerge. Even Sri Aurobindo says, and he said it's very difficult to describe because we have no equivalent, the flower form itself is felt to be secondary of the deeper spiritual cause and the originating impulse by which the divine forms the flower, which is then seen to be the true nature, the true character of the flower itself. And in each thing, in each object, in each event, in each relationship, such is the nature of that experience. That gives you a sense of the supramental consciousness and the nature of the supramental knowledge therefore also is this complete omniscience of what you could have imagined and more than you can imagine of the mind of God so to say. But here you get a glimpse, infinity and all infinities of relationships held instantaneously.
Sraddhalu (0:26:56):
But with it comes a power, a power to act because when it knows flower, it does not know flower as other than itself, it knows flower as within itself. In the infinity of its own consciousness it is holding flower, it becomes flower, it is flower inside out. And therefore, if you had to act on the flower, how would you act on your own fingers? you move them, well it can move or influence as it chooses inside out on the flower and not just on flower on any situation, circumstance, individual. And remember, past present and future are also simultaneously present and therefore the knowledge of things of the past would be similarly intimately known by identity and the knowledge of future possibilities similarly known in identity and of course in the present and action infused inside out from within that which you know yourself to be finally and in all, in each flow of energy to action, there is the underlying bliss which is also infinite. An ocean of bliss wider than the universe, beyond space and time, pouring into space and time and flowing into flower and out of flower into everything else. This is only a first glimpse of what your mind can conceive or recognize of the nature of the supramental consciousness. You see, it is so different and Sri Aurobindo says, as different as our mind is from the sense mind of an animal, at least as different, even more. And if you were to take a bird, this is an example Sri Aurobindo gives. Enter it, okay, bird, now you're going to train to develop your intellect, intellect for which you'll first have to let go of your very precise fixed instinctive behaviour patterns. You'll have to lose all that to be able to develop the freedom of the intellect and the bird will say, ‘no thank you, I'm going to run away from this very dangerous scary thing’. Even greater is the change for us so if you were to turn and say, I want to do that for which I have to lose my power of thought? No, that's too scary. Instinctively we shrink back to what is for us safe and secure.
Sri Aurobindo makes a very interesting comment and I want to read those words because they carry such deep depth and power. He says, “If an animal mind were called upon to leave constantly the safe ground of sense impulse, sense understanding and instinct for the perilous adventure of reasoning intelligence. It might well turn back alarmed and unwilling from the effort. The human mind would here be called upon to make a still greater change. And all the self-conscious and adventurous in a circle of its possibility might still hold this to be beyond the circle and reject the adventure”. Now he says, what's the condition? How can we be actually capable of that and joyously? He says, “In fact, the change is only possible if there is first a spiritual development on our present level of consciousness and it can only be undertaken securely when the mind has become aware of the greater self within enamoured of the infinite and confident of the presence and guidance of the divine and his Shakti”. Three things and you'll see all these three are implied in the first two perfections and represent the culmination of those. But they are also at the very centre of the very basis of the practice of the integral yoga and as we have been discussing the means for the first two perfections. So first, a spiritual development in our present level of consciousness. Obviously there has to be an inner psychic opening and a higher opening of consciousness. Ideally even a degree of opening to the intuition would be necessary before one can even speak of something of the nature of the supermind. Then you can undertake the journey securely only when the mind has become aware of the greater self within. And as you become conscious that behind you, supporting you, above you, filling the whole universe is the presence of the Divine, of the Divine Mother, the Divine Shakti or the divine consciousness as the divine Self and increasingly you become aware of that or are able to at least when you need to close your eyes lean back and open to this presence and rest in it, a familiarity grown with this has prepared you for an opening to a greater infinity and the true mind of the Self, which is the Supermind. But with that comes the heart's opening and then he uses this phase, enamoured of the infinite. You have to fall in love with this, ‘oh, this is so beautiful, it is so wonderful, I want to lean more and more into this, I want to live in this consciousness more and more’ and you're touching a first contact, but you must enjoy it, and you must want it. One of the very beautiful experiences we have when we first have a glimpse of the presence and its infinity is that it is seductive. It draws you, it draws you into itself. It's as if you want to enter more and more deep, you don't want to come out, you don't want to return to this. You want to immerse and lose yourself, which is the attraction of the ascetic, of course. And that would be an error to make it exclusive. But still, this is the nature of the experience that you want to.
Sraddhalu (0:33:06):
And if there has been a sufficient base of the psychic influence already set, then the relationship with the self is not one of withdrawal, but one of a joyous opening in order to receive, to hold, to serve and even to manifest. So enamoured of the infinite and finally, confident of the Presence and Guidance of the divine and his Shakti. And in this, you have already experienced by now to some degree that the working of the divine Shakti within you is all perfect. In fact, it is so precise, so wonderful, so extraordinary in its rapidity and complexity of skill that you begin to trust more and more. And you remember the last point of the previous perfection was the faith, the increasing trust with which all the parts of our mind, life energies and the body itself can begin to open and give yourself. And yes, that is a greater truth which I want to live by, which allows the full free action of the divine and His Shakti to begin to shape you and mould you, lift you to a higher consciousness and then pour into you the things, the light and presence of the higher consciousness. And so, securely undertaken only when these three things are fulfilled, that mind has become aware of the greater self within, enamoured of the infinite, and confident of the Presence and guidance of the Divine and His Shakti. Now, this you have seen is not far away. You have already the basic turn towards these things. All you need to do is to deepen it. But now you realise the importance of this for the greater work of a Supramental transformation. And now that you understand, you can give to it the necessary importance and value and the immersion and enjoyment. So recognizing now that all our mental faculties are really derived from the Supramental powers, what happens next?
Bit by bit as the movement of the ascent takes place and the descent, we find, which we have discussed before, so I'm not dwelling more on this, we find that our memory now begins to a higher Supramental memory. And everything new that you come to know, let's say today you just got some news, or you just read a new insight, you read a whole new field of knowledge through a book or listening to someone, something, something inside you says, Ah yes, it's as if I knew this before, but I had forgotten. Your mind begins to be reshaped into the mind of self-forgetful knowledge. That is, it's as if all knowledge was already there within you and every time something is acquired from outside, it awakens the memory of what was forgotten. Until eventually, that which was forgotten becomes more and more aware and comes to the front, preparing you, opening you to the nature of the mind of knowledge, of the Supermind. But it's not your Supermind, it's more an intuitive opening first. Through it then there will be the widening which will take you to the Supermind. And with each higher step of opening, a descent of that higher light, force, substance, one feels as if suffused by a light and presence hold it, receive it, contain it allow it to soak into you and that is what soaking in transforms the working of your mind substance, life energy substance and even your body cellular substance. Even if you don't feel it directly you will feel its effect on you, which is often the case many of us have, we just don't give it enough importance; you have had as if a special descent, a special presence, a special intimacy of contact with the Divine or the Divine Mother and you come out of that concentration and it feels as if everything within you feels like new, younger, fresher, somehow more aware, more awake. It's because of that contact infusing a new substance of a higher, deeper grade of consciousness. Hold that, become conscious of it, feel its glow in your body, in your hands, allow it to soak in. That's the transforming influence within you. Even as the movement of an upward opening and rising is a liberating influence which lifts you out of mind to still higher poises.
In the practical advice that Sri Aurobindo gave to sadhaks in the practice of this aspect of the sadhana, he spoke of three things openly. First is development of the intuition and the discrimination. Because the first edge of intuition entering acts within you as a discrimination. You sense, ah, something is not okay in this. Perhaps it's too exaggerated, perhaps it's incomplete, something is missing or it's not in right relation with everything else as a knowledge, as a piece, you sense it. This is the discriminative aspect of the intuition and then increasingly the intuition itself in the discrimination. If it is assisted by the psychic opening then the discrimination from the psychic influence is assisting, unified with this and very precise. If this is allowed to develop first and you learn to trust it over time then the further action of the powers of intuition can be very rapid. So these are two things he prioritises and then the third thing he says shift consciously the centre of thought to above head. You will still be in the mental consciousness but you are now in your subtle body And as you are more centred here <above head>, you are closer to the influence of the higher intuition and a finer grade of its influence can act in you than what acts when you are identified with the physical brain. And so the dulling effect is no more there and the higher influence now can act more freely. Although you are still in a mental awareness here, you're closer to and easier to open to something higher. You feel the finer grade of substance and presence. So these are three things which he has highlighted very openly, overtly.
Sraddhalu (0:39:56):
The text of the Record of Yoga, you remember we are following this structure with the Sanskrit keywords has of course four sub steps to this perfection. The perfection itself is called Vijnana Chatushtaya and Vijnana is the original Vedic term used for the Supramental consciousness. In later terms it has been highly, I would say reduced, to mean simply technical knowledge, specialised knowledge and today in Sanskrit it is used for science. But you see the original sense of it now reduced to physical science or just specialised knowledge. But the original sense, Vijnana is described in the Veda as the truth, the right, the vast, infinite. And so you know it is that and not this mental knowledge. So Vijnana Chatusthaya has four sub-steps. In Sanskrit, Jnanam, which is knowledge, but Sri Aurobindo describes or defines this as divine thought. It's as if your power of thought is lifted up into what he has described in the Synthesis of Yoga as a Supramental thought and it's interesting to see how that is different. It's a completely different way of knowing. The second sub step is tri-kala-drishti. Now in Sanskrit it means three, tri is three, kaala time, drishti, vision. The vision of the three times - past present future. In common usage because these words are easily thrown about in the yoga terminology today, so in common usage Trikala Drishti is considered to be a power to see the past or the future and of course the present. But it's not just that. Sri Aurobindo shows you that the true nature of Trikala Drishti is the Supramental time vision. That's the name of the chapter where he deals with this.
The way the Supramental consciousness visions space and time, of which in the mind you can have a first distorted reflection when the mind gets glimpses of the past, present or future, but it doesn't know it the way the Supermind knows it; It knows it in its terms. Or it can be further reflected into the vital consciousness wherein an instinct, for example, an animal feels a foreboding danger and runs away, knowing exactly which direction to run to avoid the danger. As you know, every time there is a natural disaster, animals never die. You have a tsunami, the fish don't die, the animals on land have run away unless they were caged in a zoo. Very interesting thing I heard recently. This was an interview of which I was informed, of the atomic explosion when the United States dropped first the atom bomb and then the hydrogen bomb in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War and they did it in a hurry because they needed to see how what effect it will have and if once the war ends, you'll never have an occasion to try it out on human beings. So although they knew Japan was about to surrender they rushed to drop these two bombs and then monitored in great detail what happens. So in the very first second a hundred thousand people were instantly evaporated. But those who survived who were farther away, they went through various other problems. But among the survivors, there was one lady who was living on the outskirts of the city and she remembers and narrates that every day they would have, because they were in the countryside, all the sounds of the birds, animals, insects, the rich sound. That day from morning on everything was silent and she noted it and said, what is this what has happened that all the insects are silent and all the birds are silent, and then the bomb came. Interesting. Even a human-made attack is sensed on some level by the animal instinct and they know. I have diverged a little bit from the narration, but this is to highlight there is an operation within us of the supramental knowledge reflected, distorted, limited, darkened and still it is there. And if it was not there, life would not survive. The supermind is always behind supporting and therefore it's possible to open to it.
Sraddhalu (0:44:59):
Even in the physical consciousness there is an equivalent of this knowledge of the time of the three kalas. So if you read literature of occultism you will find there are certain siddhis you can get and then with that siddhi the deity gives you power and the man looks at his nail and he sees like a television whatever he wants to see of the past present or future. So they will say this is trikala drishti. No, it's not; it is a much inferior television like perception, watching TV today of an up of something happening on the other side of the world or this webcast is not, is not the direct power of consciousness. The true trikala drishti is Supramental because the whole world is in itself in the past present and future and it only turns to know itself and the Supermind knows inside out completely and that's the true trikala drishti of which just as there is knowledge distorted on lower levels, powers distorted on lower levels, this also is distorted on lower levels. So this is the second sub step - trikala drishti, the Supramental time sense. Then comes the third sub step which is Ashta Siddhi, the eight Siddhis. Again a famous term in the yoga tradition which is associated with magical powers. Many of them acquired by mantras or by special occult practices but again those are distorted, reflected, inferior powers at best indicators or corresponding to the true power of the eight siddhis which belong to the Supramental consciousness. And I will, maybe I will dwell on this briefly.
So Sri Aurobindo articulates these as two siddhis of knowledge by which you can know what is happening everywhere. Why? because it's all within you, the universe is within you. Three siddhis of power, ways by which you can influence what you know. So I feel somebody is sick. In my consciousness, I hold the person. I feel the sickness in the person. And if I can feel the sickness, I can infuse my goodwill, my energy, my prayers, even a positive vitality or a spiritual energy to shift, to turn the tide of the sickness because I feel it, in some part of me I'm identified with it. So the power of action, two powers of knowledge, three powers of action and they're just variations, degrees. And then he says, three powers of being; in the very sense of your substantiality, you can make yourself larger as if heavier, more powerful, a kind of a power or strength which is not a muscular strength but of a consciousness and ability to be free of inertia in the very substance of your physical consciousness eventually and even to be able to refine the grade of physical consciousness to make it subtle and therefore immune to injury and so on. So these are natural to the Supramental consciousness when it takes up the lower levels of consciousness and reshapes them in its terms. But just because somebody has an equivalent power does not mean they have a Supramental consciousness. They are only operating on one of the very low grade reflected powers of the vital or mental domain. So the Ashtasiddhi also we understand from a Supramental view. And finally, the fourth sub-step is Samadhi. And Samadhi Sri Aurobindo describes as the ability to enter in concentration in all the planes of consciousness, all the worlds and all states. The full axis is open to you. And certain states which are only accessible in very deep state of concentration or trance but eventually should be made at least open in your waking state and so there's a whole integration; first an access to all states and all the worlds and then in an integration until you have access with eyes open with full engagement with the world in your physical body. So these these four are the sub steps which make for the perfection of the supramental consciousness in the human being.
Sraddhalu (0:49:18):
This may seem to be long, difficult, challenging and I would say impossible because you've seen the rationale of it challenging and you may say, oh yes, can I do it in one life? For Sri Aurobindo it took five years. From the point where he entered the full practice of his sadhana, let's say in 1909, by 1914 he was living in the Supramental consciousness. What he had not done then was to bring it down all the way into the physical. And that process again he says if he had to do it just for himself it would have been done long ago, but he had to do it linking himself with humanity and therefore there was the burden of humanity which had to be carried with that effort for that aspect of the descent and the linking all the way to the physical. They did in fact, both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, bring the Supramental down not only to transform the mind, not only the vital, but all the way to the subtle physical. The last step of the most material physical was all that remained and this is just to say that he did that with no help. Today we have his help, not only his help, the most important help, the most important responsibility of their mission was to bring that Supramental consciousness down into the world as an active power of evolution which was accomplished in 1956.
As you know, the Mother has recorded this in great detail subsequently therefore that power is active as an evolutionary power and accessible to us. Of course it's a power of infinity, we don't have access to infinity, but it's there waiting. To the extent that we are able to open to it, it can act through its reduced indirect means through the intuition and even through further reductions in the mind. But it is there actively pushing the situation in the world. Mother was asked what is the supramental doing? She says it is working constantly to hasten to make as rapidly as possible the change, but with the least damage. And that comes to them the big problem. To the extent that human consciousness resists and refuses change, there is the pressure which becomes painful. When we yield, we flow with the pressure and we are carried by this Supramental consciousness. The choice is ours. If we do nothing, she said, it will be through crashing circumstances as the pressure continues and breaks eventually the resistance. If we consciously participate, it can be a joyous, rapid flowering and awakening. Which will it be, is our choice. And I'm going to link it to what we began with about the year ahead. And I will complete with that at the end. But remember this, it is our choice whether this power which is here right now waiting to lift us into a supra-humanity, whether it will be able to do its work smoothly with our participation or it will do it by compulsion of crashing circumstances. But that's not all. Not all in terms of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did for us for this purpose, they did one more thing.
And this is perhaps the single most important thing of which Sri Aurobindo wrote in the last six months before he left his body. Maybe even less I think in the last four months before he left his body, he spoke about or wrote about what he called the mind of light. The Mother describes it as something that he was building for humanity and when he left his body, he transferred this mind of light which he had formed in himself, he transferred it straight into her. What is this mind of light? And he explains, our human mind is an instrument of limitations and therefore of ignorance. Whatever we may do, you open to higher knowledge, by the time you receive it and articulate it, it will get distorted into the mould which is finite, isn't it? So you can never experience a true divine life in a divine consciousness as long as you live in the mental consciousness. But to get to the Supramental consciousness, to be able to live in it and to be able to transform your mental consciousness enough for it to be able to freely flow to have a divine life for humanity is going to take too long. So Sri Aurobindo's extraordinary work was to take this action of the Supramental consciousness, link it to a fine grade, you see within the mental consciousness and the higher ranges of the mental consciousness is a grade, a fine grade that corresponds directly to the Supramental through which it can act in your mind and suffuse your mind with a light. That will allow your finite mind with a finite capacity to become filled with a Supramental consciousness and light enough that within the workings of finiteness you can still have the purity and the divinity, even if not complete, at least undistorted. Not ignorance, but full knowledge, but in a finite container. Is that even possible? And he says, yes, it's possible. Has it ever been done? No, never. Even in the evolution, this possibility has not yet been explored in the push of nature.
Sraddhalu (0:55:05):
And he worked on this, developing in himself, fusing this higher light into this grade, developing, organising this organ of the mind of light as an organ, forming it in himself and then through the Mother imprinting it into humanity. This is extraordinary work, the full scope of which we will never know in his words or even in the Mother's words. This is all we have to understand what it means but he does describe what it would do. It would allow us as human beings living in mind but opening to higher consciousness of intuition and Supermind to be able to embody the purity of the divine consciousness and divine knowledge within the finiteness of the human mind and therefore begin to participate in a life divine on earth in this very lifetime. This possibility is this great gift by the creation of this organ which is the mind of light. He has described how the mind of light begins first by coming into its own as a broad distributed scattered activity of tendencies coalescing to come into its own and then forming into its own individuality as a focus and then organising itself to develop further and fully amplify. I believe I have covered this also in those lectures from number 64 to 71 and it will be worth it for you if you are interested to review those in some detail with this background. But all this is to say that this is waiting for us, available for us to be attained in this lifetime. Do not have any wrong ideas or the lazy man's aspiration that says, Oh, one day in another lifetime. If you feel the call to realise the divine consciousness, to participate in the divinisation of human life and the supramental manifestation, if you feel the call to participate, you are ready for it. And whatever time it takes, whatever means, does not depend on your capacity, depends on Her, depends on your opening to Her and Her capacity, Her working in you. And so we must always think in terms of attaining in this very life. Do not worry how many years are left. Your goal should be to attain all that you can in this very life as if it has to be tomorrow. But he says with the patience that even if it takes a hundred years, a thousand years, but with the focus with the full enthusiasm that it has to be now, right now, tomorrow if, later.
So this I wanted to highlight the mind of light which is not mentioned in the Synthesis of Yoga. It is only mentioned in his those last writings which appears as a separate booklet called The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, where he discusses this. And he discusses there also the physical body and its transformation which also in the Synthesis of Yoga he has not discussed. In fact that is the next chatushtaya, the next perfection which we will touch upon next time, but only in this way the entire focus being on the practice aspect. Not so much the theory, not so much the full picture, not a summary of the chapters, but just the practical aspect. So this in sum are the four-fold perfection of the Supramental consciousness in us. The first is this opening, rising into the divine thought, the passage through the intuitive mind into the Supramental powers equivalent to our diluted or reflected powers of mind including a Supramental memory, Supramental thought, Supramental will and so on. He uses these terms. Second is the Supramental time vision which is opening out in a consciousness of infinity across space and time in an identity with all things. Third is the eightfold powers which open as a result, the two powers of knowledge, three powers of action and three powers of being which he describes as the Supramental senses and the Samadhi, the full access to all the domains, all the worlds, all the levels of consciousness, inward, upward, downward, everything accessible to you, initially of course in special concentration, eventually in full engagement with life. And such would be the third perfection of the Integral Yoga.
Sraddhalu (1:00:22):
Therefore now, for us in practice, to deepen our relationship with the divine consciousness, with the Divine Mother, open to their higher consciousness, invoke their light and force in our mind, in our life energies, in our emotions, in our body and Sri Aurobindo says down to the cells at least in intention to open and to receive in an invocation. And when there is this descent, the state of openness, the state of plasticity by which you say, shape me as you will, I will not be bound by my habits, by my limitations or expectations. You can't say, give me the higher knowledge in my way, no. Shape my mind so that I will think completely different, the way it is required for the higher knowledge, a whole new way of being and thinking letting go like the bird has to let go of its sense mind to open to reasoning mind, we let go of the reasoning mind; make it completely still and plastic inner joyous self-giving. This would be the internal sadhana and aligned with this the perception of the presence everywhere which familiarises us with the Presence and opening to the infinite and which allows us to experience the phrase that Sri Aurobindo uses enamoured of the infinite and confident of the presence and guidance of the divine and his Shakti. And so the sense of the greater Self within also comes with the leaning back into that presence, that awareness. And finally, with the circumstances in the world, we have a role to play. You may not have political power, you may not have administrative power, you may not even have individual power in circumstances like this. But the very least you can do, invoke this help within you, in the circumstances around you and in the world situation. At least as a conscious invocation, as a prayer, Divine Mother, let your light fill the world and awaken those who are sleeping and dispel the darkness which is being imposed. There must be an active participation in us to put ourselves on the side of the Divine against what opposes. It is a battle taking place within you but also outside you.
You will recall the prayer that the Mother gave. In English, it goes like this: “Make of us the hero warriors that we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born against the past that seeks to endure, so that the new things may manifest and we be ready to receive them”. It's a battle taking place within us, but also in external circumstances. You have to fight for what is right, what is true, what is a greater truth. Not engage with the trivial battles of likes and dislikes and personal differences, but for the greater truth, which represents the soul's freedom and the higher values of the higher consciousness, not your mental formations of what should be or should not be. But in this battle, it's a battle between the future that is trying to take birth against the past that is opposing and resisting. And we fight for the future and by aligning in consciousness with the greater higher values so that the new things may manifest and we be ready to receive them. This would be the attitude with which we would live every day to whatever extent you are able to. But just the intention already begins and if more of us invoke and call for that help and actively allow its influence to act in our lives even in brief touches, whatever form even as a reflected light, the action, the free action of the Mother's consciousness, the free action of the Supramental consciousness that is established, will begin to be direct or increasingly direct. And then we won't need to pass through crashing circumstances. We won't need to wait for a long time and go through a passage of suffering. The changes can be more rapid, smooth, effortless, even joyous and miraculous.
The nature of the supramental action, wherever it can act directly, is instantly things change, three characteristics: Instantly it changes; It changes on a large scale, because it's the consciousness of infinity; And it's so effortless as to be almost obvious. Once it has made the change, you say, yes, of course it had to happen and it's, that's the character of that miraculous action but it can happen every day if we allow it or to whatever degree we allow it. And this should be our conscious effort. Do not think of the Supramental as far away. It is right here, it is the very basis on which the soul universe is formed. It is within you the secret knowledge that supports your mind's intelligence working. It's not far away. It is within you, behind you, around you, within everything, supporting everything. And now brought in as an active power in evolution. And the mind of light as an organ, as a power, created, waiting to be infused into us. All that's required is your active opening and participation with aspiration, joyous self-giving to the Divine Mother. Think about it, review these ideas, reshape your thinking, your priorities and your efforts. The change is primarily internal but with massive results in the external. And all this is within our reach, made accessible to us by their efforts. We can take a moment to concentrate in gratitude for this gift, for this yoga, for this precious knowledge and all the work that they have done to make this possible for humanity.
Sraddhalu (1:08:00):
Thank you and Namaste.
Alina (1:08:04):
Thank you very much, Adalo. It was a very encouraging lesson for us to start the year. Thank you very much.