01 - Message
02 - Perfection of the Body
03 - The Divine Body
04 - Supermind and the Life Divine
05 - Supermind and Humanity
06 - Supermind in the Evolution
07 - Mind of Light
08 - Supermind and Mind of Light
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Chapter 5
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 its fundamental
origin, a subordinate, limited and special action of the Supermind,
a sufficiently luminous receptacle of truth, and 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 in its completeness:
there would be an unbridged gulf between man and the animal and no way
for the evolutionary nisus to 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 true 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 a 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 alterations of the animal intelligence. Still less can
the plant 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 into a semi-human kind, might still progress towards a higher animal
intelligence: for certain experiments show that these are not 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 something 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 forces 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 of its evolution here we
take as part of its very nature; but 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 leader 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 surface 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 not
be 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 of being determined
by mind could manifest themselves in the successions of Time and find
a true form and field of their action, the 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 descent by which the involution takes place which ends in Matter
and the creation of the material universe. What we see here is not the
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 more 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 become part and function of the supramental knowledge or at
the 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 and 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
and 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 uplift man. A total change of
the mental principle, such as has been suggested, cannot be ruled out
as impossible.
Mind as we know it, as 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 look straight
at the sun. It is not possible for mind to take its stand in the solar
centre or anywhere in the radiant body or even on the shining circumference
of the orb of perfect truth and acquire or share in its privilege of
infallible or absolute knowledge. It would be only if it had already
drawn near to the light of Supermind that it could live anywhere near
this sun in the full splendour of its rays, in something of the full
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 a pure insight, a direct vision and it would take
long for it, even in 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 are signs of the labour
of an infallible force, the drive of a secret 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.
Bulletin - February 1950
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