Sri Aurobindo
What I received about the Supermind was a direct, not a derived knowledge given to me; it was only afterwards that I found certain confirmatory revelations in the Upanishads and Veda.
I know with absolute certitude that the supramental is truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable.
24th November 1950
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The Supramental is a truth and its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable.
I know with absolute certitude that the supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. 25 December 1934
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The advance from the Vedic Rishis to Sri Aurobindo
We have the phrase “growth of immortality” in the following passage, defined as the diffusion, the upholding and increase of “seven-headed thought” or the “thought of the Truth”, in all the principles of our being or all the “seven waters”:
“They held the truth, they enriched its thought; then indeed, aspiring souls (aryaḥ), they, holding it in thought, bore it diffused in all their being,” dadhann ṛtaṁ dhanayann asya dhītim, ād id aryo didhiṣvo vibhṛtrāḥ, (I.71.3). The image in vibhṛtrāḥ suggests the upholding of the thought of the Truth in all the principles of our being or, to put it in the ordinary Vedic image, the seven-headed thought in all the seven waters, apsu dhiyaṁ dadhiṣe, as we have seen it elsewhere expressed in almost identical language; this is shown by the image that immediately follows,—“the doers of the work go towards the unthirsting (waters) which increase the divine births by the satisfaction of delight,” atṛṣyantīr apaso yanti acchā, devān janma prayasā vardhayantīḥ. The sevenfold Truth-consciousness in the satisfied sevenfold Truth-being increasing the divine births in us by the satisfaction of the soul’s hunger for the Beatitude, this is the growth of immortality. It is the manifestation of that trinity of divine being, light and bliss which the Vedantins afterwards called Sachchidananda.
Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda: The Victory of the Fathers
Since the advent of the immortal Light to the Vedic Rishis, this ancient effort has advanced in its march of the “growth of immortality”. This growth, with the advent of Sri Aurobindo, the Avatar of Perfection, has become integral and taken hold of matter and body in its yoga of Transformation:
Mother puts into perspective the quest of the Vedic Rishis in context of the quest of subsequent Avatars:
Once I told you about an experience I had, I told you that every time a divine manifestation occurs (what is called an Avatar), there’s always a particular “angle of quest,” in the sense of an intense NEED urging men along the road of evolution towards the Goal, the Transformation, and each avatar saw from a particular angle, believing it to be THE Goal.1 When I had that experience, I saw it was the need for Immortality that drove the Vedic Rishis. It came back to me yesterday, and I noted it down:
(Mother reads a handwritten note)
The Vedic Rishis thirsted for Immortality,
Buddha wanted Permanence….
Then I looked, wondering, “And what was Christ’s path?”… Basically, he always said, “Love thy neighbor,” in other words brotherhood (but that’s a modern translation). For him, the idea was compassion, charity (the Christians say it’s the “law of Love,” but we’re not yet there—that will come much later). So I wrote:
Jesus preached Compassion….
Then I thought: now, Sri Aurobindo, it’s quite clear; for him, the goal was Perfection. Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would come—must come—in stages. He announced something the realization of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages. And I saw that what I find essential, indispensable (everything is there, everything finds a place, yet there is a kind of anguish—not a personal anguish but a terrestrial anguish), is Security. A need for Security—whatever you attempt, whatever you seek, even Love, even Perfection, it needs Security. Nothing can be achieved with the feeling that all opposing forces can come and sweep everything away. We must find the point where nothing can be touched or destroyed or halted. Therefore, it’s Security, the very essence of Security. So I wrote:
Sri Aurobindo promised Perfection
and to attain it, the first requisite,
what men need today,
is Security.
All the global trends that result in “peace movements” of one kind or another, are nothing but this: they are expressions of the quest for Security. My own experience is a supersecurity, which can be really found only in union with the Supreme—nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can give you security, except this: union, identification with the Supreme. That’s what I told you: as long as Sri Aurobindo was here in his body, I had a sense of perfect Security—extraordinary, extraordinary! Nothing, nothing could make a dent in it—nothing. So his departure was like… like a smashing of that experience.2 In truth, from the supreme point of view, that may have been the cause of his departure…. Though it seems to me a very small cause for a very big event…. But since in the experience that Security was taking root more and more, more and more firmly, and was spreading…3 Probably the time had not come. I don’t know. As I said, from a universal and everlasting (I can’t say “eternal”), everlasting point of view, it’s a small cause for a big effect…. We could say it was probably ONE of the causes that made his departure necessary.
Consequently, according to the experience of these last few days, the quest for Security is but a first step towards Perfection. He came to announce (I put “promise” deliberately), to PROMISE Perfection, but between that promise and its realization, there are many steps; and in my experience, this is the first step: the quest for Security. And it corresponds fairly well to the global state of mind.
The Mother, Mother’s Agenda: March 27, 1963
The Vedic period did not distinguish between the overmind and the supermind with the consequence that it was limited by the “overmind-Force” and could not evoke the Divine Mother’s supreme power:
The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call overmind and the other the true supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got confused about Maya (overmind-Force or Vidya-Avidya), and took it for the supreme creative power. In so stopping short at what was still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation—even though the Vaishnava and Tantra yogas groped to find it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest, this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it felt the overmind lustres descending, that this was the true illumination, the Gnosis, with the result that they either stopped short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some immovable and inactive silence of the Supreme.
(from Letters on Yoga I, Volume 22 of SABCL)
Sri Aurobindo went beyond the Vedic and post-vedic manifestation to the supermind and also got the key of TRANSFORMATION so that the idea of immortality could be accomplished for the soul along with the body. Thus, Sri Aurodindo’s Yoga is founded not on the gods but on the Divine Mother. Whereas in the Vedic Rishis were in contact with the Supreme only through the gods of the Overmind:
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme, is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this—he speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think it’s Vedanta): devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within. [Satprem subsequently asked Mother:
You almost seem to be saying that during the Vedic era there was no divine presence in man!
No, there wasn’t! They discovered it.
Humanity has undergone a spiritual evolution.
Vedism is in contact with the gods and, THROUGH THE GODS, with the Supreme; but it is not in direct contact with the Supreme – there is no inner, psychic con” tact. That’s what Sri Aurobindo says (I myself know nothing about it!). But with the Vedanta and the devotees of Krishna, it is the god within: they had a direct contact with the god within (as in the Gita).] Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History—the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT. But not many of them—they were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didn’t NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And that’s why…. How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasn’t that rapport with the Supreme (she just didn’t need it, she didn’t need anything). And it wasn’t that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated… and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
Most interesting.
Not at all the result of will or anything: she was simply engulfed.
In those movements of consciousness, in this state of consciousness, I am comfortable (Mother heaves a sigh). But it has taken me a lot of discipline to concentrate here [in the body]: there was always something, from my very childhood, that felt hemmed in, squeezed, really… oh! And with a sense of something so powerful that if it ever went into action (gesture of unleashing), it would smash everything.
Now it has been tamed.
(from Mother’s talk of June 30, 1962)
Sri Aurobindo sums up the “understanding and experience” accomplished prior to him in the following note:
OM TAT SAT
The highest interpretation hitherto made in human understanding and experience may thus be stated with the proviso that since it is human it must be incomplete.
TAT. That.
The Absolute Unmanifested—Parabrahman, Purushottama, Parameswara (holding in himself the Parâshakti and in her the All).
SAT. The Existent (I Am.)
The Absolute containing all the power of the manifestation. The Absolute is Parabrahman-Mahâmâyâ. The Absolute is Purushottama-Parâprakriti. The Absolute is Parameswara-Âdyâ (original) Parâshakti.
OM. The Word of Manifestation.
A The external manifestation (consciousness realised in the actual and concrete—seen by the human consciousness as the waking state.)
U The internal manifestation (intermediate—the inner, not the inmost being—consciousness realised in the inner potentialities and intermediate states between the inmost supramental and the external—seen by the human consciousness as the subliminal and associated with the dream state.)
M The inmost seed or condensed consciousness (the inmost supramental, glimpsed by the human consciousness as something superconscient, omniscient and omnipotent, and associated with the state of dreamless Sleep or full Trance.)
AUM Turiya, the Fourth; the pure Spirit beyond these three, Atman consciousness entering into Tat Sat and able to identify with it. Believed to be obtainable in its absoluteness only in absolute Trance—nirvikalpa samadhi.
All this (first in the Upanishads) is the viewpoint from the mental consciousness. It is incomplete because two things that are one have been left out, the Personal Manifestation and the name of the Mahashakti. The subsequent growth of spiritual knowledge has brought about a constant effort to add these missing elements.
When the hidden secret has been discovered and made effective, the human consciousness will be exceeded, the superconscient made conscient and the subconscient or inconscient which is the inevitable shadow of the superconscient filled with the true spiritual and supramental consciousness. The Trance, Dream and Waking States (all imperfect at present and either touched with obscurity or limited) become each completely conscious and the walls, gaps or reversals of consciousness that intervene between them are demolished.
Sri Aurobindo, Record of Yoga – II: Undated Notes, c. December 1926
All the prior understanding and experience was imperfect, was incomplete, as the two key things, which are a single supreme reality in its two poises, the inner Divine and the Divine Mother. Though the post-Vedic growth made a constant effort to add these keys to the paradox of life. But it is only with the coming of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that the experience became complete and perfect. The Divine Mother and the inner Divine of the Individual manifestation have been firmly established as the central and key realities in the Integral Yoga.
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude. ||15.7||
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone;
Space is himself and Time is only he. ||15.8||
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast
That to his divine measure we might rise;
Then in a figure of divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
Touching the moment with eternity. ||15.9||
This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine. ||15.10||
Our life is a paradox with God for key. ||15.11||
It is most significant to note that the “Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune” and the Divine Mother are the two who are one.
[#6768 by narendra published on Saturday, August 15th 2015, 3:25:00 am]
24 November 2024 at Auroville, thanks to Tine.
Their Feet
His Feet
The Winds of Wonder 
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