Supermind and Humanity
This is the fifth in the series of the last set of
eight articles Sri Aurobindo wrote during 1949-50 and it had appeared first in
the 21 February 1950 issue of the Bulletin d' Education Physique (Bulletin
of Physical Education). Sri Aurobindo has been all along yogically maintaining
that the supramental Light and Force must depend upon earth. But what would be
the consequences of this descent for humanity? In what way will the lot of this
race born of ignorance and inconsciennce change? But if Supermind is a supreme
creative Force its coming here is not going to be merely an addition of another
element in the working of the earth nature. There will be a possibility of
developing higher means and instrumentalities to pass over the last borders of
Ignorance into a higher knowledge. There would be, to begin with, “a new mental
being not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of Supermind but
able to climb consciously towards it and into it, training life and body to
reflect and hold something of the supramental light, power and bliss, aspiring
to release the secret divinity into self-finding and self-fulfilment and
self-poise, aspiring towards the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to
receive and bear the descent of the divine light and power, fitting itself to
be a vessel of the divine Life.”
Supermind and
Humanity
What then would be the consequence for humanity of the
descent of Supermind into our earthly existence, its consequence for this race
born into a world of ignorance and inconscience but capable of an upward
evolution of its consciousness and an ascent into the light and power and bliss
of a spiritual being and spiritual nature? The descent into the earth-life of
so supreme a creative power as the Supermind and its truth-consciousness could
not be merely a new feature or factor added to that life or put in its front
but without any other importance or only a restricted importance carrying with
it no results profoundly affecting the rest of earth-nature. Especially it
could not fail to exercise an immense influence on mankind as a whole, even a
radical change in the aspect and prospect of its existence here, even if this
power had no other capital result on the material world in which it had come
down to intervene. One cannot but conclude that the influence, the change made
would be far reaching, even enormous: it would not only establish the Supermind
and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an
uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and as an inevitable consequence
in the consciousness of man, the mental being and would equally bring about a
radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his
ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life. It would certainly
open to man the access to the supramental consciousness and the supramental
life; for we must suppose that it is by such a transformation that a race of
supramental beings would be created, even as the human race itself has arisen
by a less radical but still a considerable uplifting and enlargement of
consciousness and conversion of the body's instrumentation and its indwelling
and evolving mental and spiritual capacities and powers out of a first animal
state. But even without any such complete transformation the truth-principle
might so far replace the principle we see here of an original ignorance seeking
for knowledge and arriving only at a partial knowledge that the human mind
could become a power of light, of knowledge finding itself, not the denizen of
a half-way twilight or a servant and helper of the ignorance, a purveyor of
mingled truth and error. Mind might even become in man, what it is in
fundamental origin, a subordinate, limited and special action the Supermind, a
sufficiently luminous receptacle of truth, d at least all falsity in its works
might cease.
It could at once be objected that this would alter the
whole evolutionary order and its balance and leave an incurable gap its
completeness: there would be an unbridged gulf between in and the animal and no
way for the evolutionary nisus to a journey over it in the progress of the
consciousness from animality to divinity; for, some kind of divinity would be
involved in the suggested metamorphosis. It might be contended that the le
process of evolution is to add a new principle, degree or stage to the already
existing order and not to make any alteration in any previously established
feature. Man came into being but the animal remained the animal and made no
progress towards the half-humanity: all slight modifications of consciousness,
capacities or habits in domestic animals produced by the association with man
or by his training of them are only slight rations of the animal intelligence.
Still less can the plants move towards animal consciousness or brute Matter
become in the slightest degree, even subconsciously or half subconsciously,
aware of itself or responsive or reactive. The fundamental distinctions remain
and must remain unaltered in the cosmic order. But this objection presumes that
the new humanity must be all of one level; there may well be gradations of
consciousness in it which would bridge the distance between its least developed
elements and the higher animals who, although they cannot pass a semi-human
kind, might still progress towards a higher animal intelligence: for, certain
experiments show that these are not at all entirely unprogressive. These
gradations would serve the purpose of the transition quite as well as the least
developed humans in the present scale without leaving a gap so wide as to
disturb the evolutionary order of the universe. A considerable saltus can, as
it is, be observed separating the different orders, Matter and the plant, the
plant and the lower animals, one species of animals and another, as well as
that always existing and large enough between the highest animal and man. There
would therefore be no incurable breach in the evolutionary order, no such
distance between human mind and animal mind, between the new type of human
being and the old animal level as could not be overleaped or would create an
unbridgeable gulf for the most developed animal soul in its passage to the
least developed type of the new humanity. A leap, a saltus, there would be, as
there is now; but it would not be between animality and divinity, from animal
mind to Supermind: it would be between a most highly developed animal mind
turning towards human possibilities—for without that the passage from animal
to man could not be achieved—and a human mind waking to the possibility, not
yet the full achievement, of its own higher yet unattained capacities.
One result of the intervention of Supermind in the
earth-nature, the descent of the supreme creative Truth-Power, might well be a
change in the law of evolution, its method and its arrangement: a larger
element of the principle of evolution through knowledge might enter into the
forces of the material universe. This might extend itself from a first
beginning in the new creation and produce increasing effects in the order which
is now wholly an evolution in the ignorance and indeed starts from the complete
nescience of the Inconscient and proceeds towards what can be regarded even in
its highest attainment of knowledge as a lesser ignorance, since it is more a
representation than a direct and complete possession of knowledge. If man began
to develop the powers and means of a higher knowledge in some- thing like
fullness, if the developing animal opened the door of his mentality to
beginnings of conscious thought and even a rudimentary reason,—at his highest
he is not so irrevocably far from that even now,—if the plant developed its
first subconscient reactions and attained to some kind of primary nervous
sensitiveness, if Matter which is a blind form of the Spirit were to become
more alive with the hidden power within it and to offer more readily the secret
sense of things, the occult realities it covers, as for instance, the record of
the past it always preserves even in its dumb inconscience or the working of
its involved tees and invisible movements revealing veiled powers in material
nature to a subtler generalised perception of the new human intelligence, this
would be an immense change promising greater changes in the future, but it
would mean only an uplifting and not a disturbance of the universal order.
Evolution would itself evolve, but it would not be perturbed or founder.
It is difficult for us to conceive in theory or admit
as a practical possibility the transformation of the human mentality I have
suggested as a change that would naturally take place under the lead of the
supramental truth-consciousness, because our notions about mind are rooted in
an experience of human mentality in a world which starts from inconscience and
proceeds through a first almost complete nescience and a slowly lessening
ignorance towards a high degree but always incomplete scope and imperfect
method of only partially equipped knowledge which does not serve fully the
needs of a consciousness always pushing towards its own still immeasurably
distant absolute. The visible imperfections and limitations of mind in the
present stage its evolution here we take as part of its very nature; in fact
the boundaries in which it is still penned are only temporary limits and
measures of its still incomplete evolutionary advance; its defects of methods
and means are faults of its immaturity and not proper to the constitution of
its being; its achievement although extraordinary under the hampering
conditions of the mental being weighed down by its instrumentation in an earthly
body is far below and not beyond what will be possible to it in its illumined
future. For mind is not in its very nature an inventor of errors, a father of
lies bound down to a capacity of falsehood, wedded to its own mistakes and the
let of a stumbling life as it too largely is at present owing to our human
shortcomings: it is in its origin a principle of light, an instrument put forth
from the Supermind and, though set to work within limits and even set to create
limits, yet the limits are luminous borders for a special working, voluntary
and purposive bounds, a service of the finite ever extending itself under the
eye of infinity. It is this character of Mind that will reveal itself under the
touch of Supermind and make human mentality an adjunct and a minor
instrumentation of the supramental knowledge. It will even be possible for the
mind no longer limited by the intellect to become capable of a sort of mental
gnosis, a luminous reproduction of the Truth in a diminished working extending
the power of the Light not only to its own but to lower levels of consciousness
in their climb towards self-transcendence. Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind
and what I have called Higher Mind, these and other levels of a spiritualised
and liberated mentality, will be able to reflect in the uplifted human mind and
its purified and exalted feeling and force of life and action something of
their powers and prepare the ascent of the soul to their own plateaus and peaks
of an ascending existence. This is essentially the change which can be
contemplated as a result of the new evolutionary order and it would mean a
considerable extension of the evolutionary field itself and will answer the
question as to the result on humanity of the advent of Supermind into the
earth-nature.
If mind in its origin from Supermind is itself a power
of Supermind, a principle of Light and a power of Light or a force for
Knowledge specialised in its action for a subordinate purpose, yet it assumes a
different aspect when in the working out of this purpose it separates itself
more and more from the supramental light, from the immediate power and
supporting illumination of the supramental principle. It is as it departs more
and more in this direction from its own highest truth that it becomes a creator
or parent of ignorance and is or seems to be the highest power in a world of
ignorance; it becomes itself subject to ignorance and seems only to arrive at a
partial and imperfect knowledge. The reason of this decline is that it is used
by the Supermind principally for the work of differentiation which is necessary
if there is to be a creation and a universe. In the Supermind itself, in all
its creation there is this differentiating power, the manifestation of the One
in the Many and the Many in the One; but the One is never forgotten or lost in
its multiplicity which always consciously depends upon and never takes
precedence over the eternal oneness. In the mind, on the contrary, the
differentiation, the multiplicity does take precedence and the conscious sense
of the universal oneness is lost and the separated unit seems to exist for
itself and by itself as a sufficient self-conscious integer or in inanimate
objects as the inconscient integer. It should be noted, however, that a world
or plane of mind need tie a reign of ignorance where falsity, error or
nescience must have a place; it may be only a voluntary self-limitation of
knowledge. It could be a world where all possibilities capable being determined
by mind could manifest themselves in the successions of Time and find a true
form and field of their action, expressive figure of themselves, their capacity
of self-development, self-realisation of a kind, self-discovery. This is
actually what we meet when we follow in psychic experience the line of cent by
which the involution takes place which ends in Matter the creation of the
material universe. What we see here is not planes or worlds of the descent in
which mind and life can keep something of their truth and something of the
light of the spirit, something of their true and real being; here we see an
original inconscience and a struggle of life and mind and spirit to evolve out
of the material inconscience and in a resultant ignorance to find themselves
and grow towards their full capacity and highest existence. If mind succeeds in
that endeavour there is no reason why it should not recover its true character
and be once a principle and power of Light and even in its own way aid in the
workings of a true and complete knowledge. At its highest it might pass out of
its limitations into the supramental truth and me part and function of the
supramental knowledge or at least serve for a minor work of differentiation in
the consensus of that knowledge: in the lower degree below Supermind it might
be a mental gnosis, a spiritual or spiritualised perception, feeling, activity,
sense which could do the works of knowledge and not of ignorance. Even at a
still lower level it could be an increasingly luminous passage leading from
light to light, from truth to truth and no longer a circling in the mazes of
half-truth half-nescience. This would not be possible in a world where
untransformed mind or human mind burdened with its hampering disabilities, as
it now is, will still be the leader or the evolution's highest achievement, but
with Supermind for the leading dominant power this might well happen, and might
even be regarded as one result and an almost inevitable result of its descent
into the human world and its touch on the mind of humanity.
How far this would go, whether the whole of humanity
would be touched or only a part of it ready for the change would depend on what
was intended or possible in the continued order of the universe. If the old
evolutionary principle and order must be preserved, then only a section of the
race would pass onward, the rest would keep the old human position, level and
function in the ascending order. But even so there must be a passage or bridge
between the two levels or orders of being by which the evolution would make its
transition from one to the other; the mind would there be capable of contact
with and modification by the supramental truth and thus would be the means of
the soul's passing on upward: there must be a status of mind capable of
receiving and growing in the Light towards Supermind though not reaching it:
through that, as even now happens in a lesser degree through a dimmer medium,
the lustre of a greater truth would send down its rays for the liberation and
uplift of the soul in the ignorance. Supermind is here veiled behind a curtain
and, though not organised for its own characteristic action, it is the true
cause of all creation here, the power for the growth of truth and knowledge and
the ascension of the soul towards the hidden Reality. But in a world where
Supermind has made its appearance, it could hardly be a separate factor
isolated from the rest, it would inevitably not only create superman but change
and up-lift man. A total change of the mental principle, such as has been
suggested, cannot be ruled out as impossible.
Mind, as we know it, has a power of consciousness quite
distinct from Supermind, no longer a power devolved from it, connected with it
and dependent upon it, but practically divorced from its luminous origin, is
marked by several characteristics which we conceive to be the very signs of its
nature: but some of these belong to Supermind also and the difference is in the
way and scope of their action, not in their stuff or in their principle. The
difference is that mind is not a power of whole knowledge and only when it
begins to pass beyond itself, a power of direct knowledge: it receives rays of
the truth but does not live in the sun: it sees as through glasses and its
knowledge is coloured by its instruments, it cannot see with the naked eye or
,.ok straight at the sun. It is not possible for mind to take its and in the
solar centre or anywhere in the radiant body or even the shining circumference
of the orb of perfect truth and acquire or share in its privilege of infallible
or absolute knowledge. would be only if it had already drawn near to the light
of Supermind that it could live anywhere near this sun in the fun splendour of
its rays, in something of the fun and direct blaze of Truth and the human mind
even at its highest is far from that, it can only live at most in a limited
circle, in some narrow beginnings of pure insight, a direct vision and it would
take long for it, even surpassing itself, to reach to an imitative and
fragmentary reflection of a dream of the limited omniscience and omnipotence
which is the privilege of a delegated divinity, of the god, of a demiurge. It
is a power for creation, but either tentative and uncertain and succeeding by
good chance or the favour of circumstance or else, if assured by some force of
practical ability or genius, subject to flaw or pent within unescapable limits.
Its highest knowledge is often abstract, lacking in a concrete grasp; it has to
use expedients and unsure means of arrival, to rely upon reasoning,
argumentation and debate, inferences, divinations, set methods of inductive or
deductive logic, succeeding only if it is given correct and complete data and
even then liable to reach on the same data different results and varying
consequences; it has to use means and accept results of a method which is
hazardous even when making a claim to certitude and of which there would be no
need if it had a direct or a supra-intellectual knowledge. It is not necessary
to push the description further; all this is the very nature of our terrestrial
ignorance and its shadow hangs on even to the thought and vision of the sage
and the seer and can be escaped only if the principle of a truth-conscious
supramental knowledge descends and takes up the governance of the earth-nature.
It should be noted, however, that even at the bottom of
the involutionary descent, in the blind eclipse of consciousness in Matter, in
the very field of the working of the Inconscient there signs of the labour of
an infallible force, the drive of a secrect consciousness and its promptings, as
if the Inconscient itself were secretly informed or impelled by a Power with a
direct and absolute knowledge; its acts of creation are infinitely surer than
the workings of our human consciousness at its best or the normal workings of
the Life-power. Matter, or rather the Energy in Matter seems to have a more
certain knowledge, a more infallible operation of its own and its mechanism
once set going can be trusted for the most part to do its work accurately and
well. It is so that man is able, taking hold of a material energy, to mechanise
it for his own ends and trust it under proper conditions to do for him his
work. The self-creating life-power, amazingly abundant in its invention and
fantasy, yet seems to be more capable of flaw, aberration and failure; it is as
if its greater consciousness carried in it a greater capacity for error. Yet it
is sure enough ordinarily in its workings: but as consciousness increases in
the forms and operations of life, and most when mind enters in, disturbances
also increase as if the increase of consciousness brought with it not only
richer possibilities but more possibilities of stumbling, error, flaw and
failure. In mind, in man, we seem to reach the height of this antinomy, the
greatest, highest, widest reach and achievements of consciousness, the greatest
amount of uncertainty, defect, failure and error. This, we may conjecture, may
be because in inconscient Nature there is a truth of energy at work which
follows infallibly its own law, an energy which can walk blindfold without
stumbling because the automatic law of the truth is within it operating surely
without swerving or mistake when there is no external intervention or
interference. But in all normally automatic processes of existence there is
this law: even the body has an unexpressed knowledge of its own, a just
instinct in its action within certain limits and this when not interfered with
by life's desires and mind's errors can work with a certain accuracy and
sureness. But Supermind alone has the truth-consciousness in full and, if this
comes down and intervenes, mind, life and body too can attain to the full power
of the truth in them and their full possibility of perfection. This, no doubt,
would not take place at once, but an evolutionary progress towards it could
begin and grow with increasing rapidity towards its fullness. All men might not
reach that fullness till a later time, but still the human mind could come to
stand perfected in the Light and a new humanity take its place as part of the
new order.
This is the possibility we have to examine. If it is
destined to fulfil itself, if man is not doomed to remain always as a vassal of
the Ignorance, the disabilities of the human mind on which we have dwelt are
not such as must remain irredeemably in possession and binding for ever. It
could develop higher means and instrumentalities, pass over the last borders of
the Ignorance into a higher knowledge, grow too strong to be held back by the
animal nature. There would be a liberated mind escaping from ignorance into
light, aware of its affiliation' to Supermind, a natural agent of Supermind and
capable of bringing down the supramental influence into the lower reaches of
being, a creator in the light, a discoverer in the depths, an illuminant in the
darkness, helping perhaps to penetrate even the Inconscient with the rays of a
secret Superconscience. There would be a new mental being not only capable of
standing enlightened in the radiance of the Supermind but able to climb
consciously towards it and into it training life and body to reflect and hold
something of the supramental light, power and bliss, aspiring to release the
secret divinity into self-finding and self-fulfilment and self-poise, aspiring
towards the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to receive and bear the
descent of the divine light and power, fitting itself to be a vessel of the
divine Life.