Zayin Neumann, M.A.

ULRICH MOHRHOFF

 

SRI AUROBINDO FOR GEBSERIANS

 

AGENDA OF AN INTEGRAL

CONSCIOUSNESS MUTATION/WORLD

TRANSFORMATION

 

TWO TALKS

XI ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL GEBSER CONFERENCE

 

Sri Aurobindo for Gebserians

by Ulrich Mohrhoff

For Sri Aurobindo, the dynamic link between the world and its Origin is supermind. The eternal function of this creative awareness is to develop into significant forms the infinite Quality-Delight which is Reality itself. All contrary appearances are due to the fact that supermind is still involved in mind as mind and life were once involved in life and matter, respectively. Having expounded the rationale of the impending supramentalization of mind, life and matter, Sri Aurobindo set out to liberate the Spirit's determinative self-knowledge locked up in the cells of the body and in their deterministic modes of functioning.

This paper is intended to introduce a Gebser-oriented audience to the life and work of Sri Aurobindo. The following statement by Jean Gebser explains why anyone interested in Gebser should be equally interested in Sri Aurobindo.

Be it noted that my concept of the formation of a new consciousness, of which I became aware by a flash-like intuition in the -winter of 1932/33, and which I began to put forward in 1939, largely resembles the world-scheme of Sri Aurobindo, who was then unknown to me. My own, however, differs from Sri Aurobindo's in that it appeals to the Western world only and does not have the profundity and the pregnant origin of his ingeniously presented conception. I see an explanation for this phenomenon in the fact that I was in some way brought into the extremely power fill spiritual field of force radiating through Sri Aurobindo.[l]

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta in 1872. His father, convinced of the superiority of European culture, did everything he could to prevent his son from becoming acquainted with the cultural and religious life of India. At the age of seven Sri Aurobindo was sent to Manchester with instructions for his new guardian not to let him receive any religious instruction, and not to allow him to make the acquaintance of any other Indian. Sri Aurobindo returned to India fourteen years later, after completing a thorough classical education at King's College, Cambridge. This was followed by thirteen years in the service of the Maharaja of Baroda, where he acted mostly as Vice-Principal of Baroda College. During this period Sri Aurobindo worked behind the scenes to establish a revolutionary movement. A certain commitment to revolutionary action had already begun to form in him at the age of eleven, when he read Shelley’s “The Revolt of Islam.” Soon after, newspaper reports of the mistreatment of Indians by Britons had canalized this general commitment into the idea of the liberation of his own country.

In 1905 the announcement by the British Government that Bengal would be partitioned provoked unprecedented agitation. Seeing improved prospects for open political action, Sri Aurobindo accepted an offer to become the first principal of the newly founded Bengal National College, went to Calcutta and plunged into the fray. Between 1905 and 1910 he acted primarily as a political journalist and as one of the

leaders of the radical wing of the Indian National Congress. In 1907 a warrant for sedition was served against him as editor of the journal Bande Mataram. He was aquitted, but the trial made headlines around the country and brought him to national attention. The Bande Mataram, Sri Aurobindo later recalled, was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for revolution.[2] Sri Aurobindo was the first Indian who had the courage to declare openly that the aim of political action in India was complete and absolute independence.

While his fame as a nationalist leader was at its height, Sri Aurobindo, who for some time had been on the look-out for a competent guru, met a yogin named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. During his stay at Baroda Sri Aurobindo had already become interested in Indian philosophy, and had turned with increasing frequency to the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Initially he had accepted the prevailing illusionistic interpretation of these scriptures, but soon he became convinced that this was not in accord with the texts. The Upanishads declared that everything was Brahman, not that everything except the world was Brahman. The main object of yoga according to the illusionists was to know Brahman-minus-the-world, to unite oneself with the original Reality transcending quality and form. Action in the world was regarded as inimical to this goal. Once Sri Aurobindo realized that, on the contrary, yoga was "skill in works", as the Gita put it, he began lo practice yoga in the hope of acquiring spiritual power for carrying out his political program.

When he met Lele, Sri Aurobindo explained to him that he wanted to practice yoga in order to obtain spiritual strength for his political work. They retired to a secluded place, and within three days Sri Aurobindo realized the state of consciousness which in India had come to be looked upon as the consummation of all spiritual seeking. In the absolute stillness of his mind there arose—I quote—the awareness of some sole and supreme Realitiy [3] which was attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world.[4] By a strange irony, Sri Aurobindo had been engulfed by the very experience that is the solid basis of the illusionistic philosophy which he had previously rejected. There was no ego, he recalls, no real world... only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indiscernible, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely and solely real. [5]

Sri Aurobindo lived in this selfless awareness of what he later identified as the passive Brahman for days and months before it began to admit other things into itself and realization added itself to realization. What was at first seen only as a mass of cinematographic shapes unsubstantial and empty of reality eventually became real manifestations of the One Reality. And this, he recalls, was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Infinity remained always, with the world or all zuorlds only as a continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.[6]

While his body at first continued to act as an empty automatic machine,[7] a new mode of action soon became evident. To quote from an autobiographical note written in the third person, something else than himself took up his dynamic activity and spoke and acted through him but without any personal thought or initiative.[8]

Before the two parted company, Lele told Sri Aurobindo to surrender to the guide within him. If he could do this completely, he would have no further need of a human guru. Sri Aurobindo accepted the advice. At least once, however, he took no heed of the inner guide. When a call came to him to put aside his political activity and go into seclusion, he was unable to accept it. About a month later he found himself in solitary confinement as an undertrial prisoner. It was not until a year and a day later that he was acquitted and released.

During his imprisonment, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual realization enlarged itself into an all-encompassing awareness of the Divine. The bars of the cell, the high prison walls, the thieves and the murderers, the magistrate and the prosecution counsel—all became forms of the omnipresent Godhead. The passive impersonal Brahman revealed its other side, the active and all-controlling personal Brahman. After his acquittal Sri Aurobindo carried on his political and journalistic activities for another nine months, but with a shift of emphasis. He no longer regarded the liberation of India as a goal in itself. If India must become a great and independent nation, it was to give to humanity the spiritual knowledge that a long line of Rishis, saints and Avatars had developed and perfected in the seclusion of the Indian peninsula.

One evening in 1910 Sri Aurobindo received an inner command to go to the French settlement of Chandernagore. This time he obeyed at once. About a month later he moved on to Pondicherry where he remained until his withdrawal from the visible world in 1950.

Sri Aurobindo originally thought to return to politics after completing his yoga in a year or two at most. But before long the magnitude of the spiritual work set before him became more and more clear to him.[9] It was no longer a question of revolt against the British government; he was now waging a revolt against the whole universal Nature.[10]

Between 1912 and 1920 Sri Aurobindo kept a detailed account of his yoga in a series of diaries. They bear out in detail a statement he made years later in a letter to a disciples he wrote that he had been testing day and night for years upon years his spiritual knowledge and force more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method.[11]

While still in jail, Sri Aurobindo had made the discovery of a series of higher planes of consciousness. In Pondicherry he concentrated his energy on the triple process of ascent, descent and integration: ascent to a higher plane, descent of the powers of the higher plane, and integration of the already established powers into the descending dynamism.

Before long, Sri Aurobindo's inner experiences surpassed anything dealt with

explicitly in the Gita or the Upanishads. However, when he took up the Rig Veda in

the original, he found his hitherto unexplained psychological experiences illuminated
with a clear and exact light.[12] And so it was that his experiences enabled Sri Aurobindo to recover, after millenniums, the lost secret of the Veda: the key to its spiritual symbolism.

Between 1914 and 1921 Sri Aurobindo brought out a philosophical review and wrote, under a continual deadline, all of the works upon which his reputation as a philosopher, Sanskrit scholar, political scientist and literary critic is based. For six and a half years he produced from scratch the yearly equivalent of two or three full-length books, but working on as many as seven simultaneously. His principal work in prose, The Life Divine, is regarded by some as one of the most important metaphysical treatises of the present century. Yet Sri Aurobindo not only emphatically denied being a philosopher but also asserted that his works were produced without the aid of thought. I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practicing Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically,[13] he wrote. Let us now take a brief look at this philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo adopts the Vedantic description of the original Reality in the triple terms of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss or Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sachchidananda). He also endorses the Vedantic concept of a hierarchy of non-evolving worlds coexistent with our evolutionary world. The dynamic link between Sachchidananda and the worlds is a determinative self-knowledge. That is to say, the consciousness by which Sachchidananda knows its determinations is also the power by which it determines, differentiates, multiplies and limits itself. In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, this determinative self-knowledge is called supermind.

In our evolutionary world supermind is still involved in mind, as mind had been involved in life, and life in matter. In fact, consciousness as we know it—mental consciousness—would not exist if supermind had not made itself implicit in mind, which is to say, in a subordinate mode of its own process. For if all is Sachchidananda manifesting itself through supermind, mind, as well as life, can be nothing but particular actions of the supramental knowledge-power.

Two poises of creative awareness coexist in supermind, one transcending individualization, the other supporting a multiple concentration of consciousness. In the latter, consciousness stands back from force, observing and directing it from the standpoint appropriate to each form. This secondary poise is the parent of mind, but it is not until consciousness loses sight of the primary poise, by a voluntary act of self-limitation, that mind as an effectively separate principle is born.

Thus while supermind looks upon itself as the one Conscious-Existence adopting a plurality of knowing and determining standpoints, mind experiences itself as a multiplicity of separate entities. And while supermind perceives each thing as the One Existence under a particular aspect, mind sees each thing as a separate integer. Supermind also transcends the distantiating perspective outlook of mind. It knows all because it is all, not at a distance but immediately, by identity. Its Self encompasses the world. Its vantage-point is coextensive with space. It likewise encompasses past, present and future time.

The creative action of supermind is primarily qualitative and infinite and only econdarily quantitative and finite. At its origin, mind is the agent of this secondary action—measuring, limiting, defining, individualizing. But when separated in its self-consciousness from supermind, mind becomes a prisoner of the quantitative and finite aspect of reality which it had helped to create.

Our world has been created by mind. In the past,[14] supermind has acted only indirectly, through the creative agency of mind. Life depends on mind to the extent that it may be defined as Sachchidananda7 s aspect of force operating from the standpoint and conformably to the disjunctive outlook of mind. Matter depends on mind to the extent that it may be defined as Sachchidananda's aspect of Existence as seen by mind and as shaped by life. The evolution of supermind therefore will bring with it not merely a new awareness of the same world, nor merely the revelation of a hitherto unperceived aspect of the world, but a radical transformation of the world.

In a phenomenological sense, the mutation of a new consciousness structure has always signaled the birth of a new world. Phenomenologically speaking, matter came into being with the mental structure, for mental consciousness, as defined by Gebser, is the first consciousness structure capable of consolidating images into self-existent objects from which the cognizant subject can be abstracted. Yet in an ontological sense, matter existed before the appearance of mental man, for the mental outlook has already been determinative before mind evolved. The supramental knowledge–power, on the other hand, has never before been determinative of our world.

In his philosophical writings, Sri Aurobindo is chiefly concerned with the large- scale evolution of consciousness, whereas Gebser supplies fascinating details of the evolution of human consciousness on a finer scale. For Sri Aurobindo the decisive evolutionary steps are life, mind and supermind; for Gebser they are *the magic, mythical, mental and integral structures. From the Aurobindonian point of view, nothing stands in the way of identifying the integral structure with supermind. Such an identification was explicitly endorsed by Gebser. But because of the different evolutionary scales envisaged, the evolution of supermind as expounded by Sri Aurobindo stands out as an even more radical proposition than the manifestation of the integral structure as set forth by Jean Gebser.

Just how radical it is may be inferred from the physiological changes that, according to Sri Aurobindo, are bound to result from supramentalization.

The present organization of the body is largely accounted for by matter's resistance to modifications of its laws. These laws are instruments of involution. In fact, the laws of particle physics known collectively as the Standard Model have been derived by me[15] from the following assumption: a universe governed by them is the realization of the maximal involution of the powers of Sachchidananda that is consistent with their progressive evolution. Accordingly, the laws of physics can apply strictly only where life and mind remain in latency.

Yet although life has the power of modifying these laws, that power is severely restricted. Matter resists. Hence the need for evolving the complex quasi-mechanical

instrumentation that accounts for most of the structure of the animal or human organism. There is a reason for this resistance; evolution was not meant to be a rapid transformation of matter back into Spirit. In this world, Sachchidananda has opted for a slow and difficult self-affirmation in conditions that appear to be its own opposites, for the joy of a challenging adventure. The poor susceptibility of matter's initial determinism to modification by life is one of the necessary adversities.

Matter's resistance has yet another consequence. Because of it, none of the dynamisms of consciousness-force manifested so far has been able to achieve a complete integration of the previously manifested dynamisms. This has lead to a hierarchical organization of the consciousness-force active in ourselves. Each level in this hierarchy is to some extent capable of modifying but not of fully assimilating the subjacent level.

The manifestation of the supermind will change all this. Any level of conscious ness-force touched by the supermind in its descent must perforce become fully integrated into the supramental dynamism. For while even the highest mental-spiritual force acts as one among other forces, the supermind is by definition the one and only force in the world. All other forces are its fragmented workings, which are automatically integrated into their parent dynamism wherever that manifests itself in its own right. That is why instead of adding one more level to our psychodynamic make-up, the manifestation of supermind will once again abolish its hierarchical structure. Even the interactions between the body’s constituent particles will become part of the supramental dynamism. Every aspect of the body—form, function, behavior—will be the visible side of an immediately effective act of consciousness. Obviously, there would no longer be any need for the body's intricate quasi-mechanical physiology. And eventually this would be abolished, too.

In 1926 Sri Aurobindo arrived at a turning point in his yoga. There is a highest mental plane bordering on the supramental to which he gave the name "overmind". The Isha Upanishad describes it as a "brilliant golden lid" obstructing the passage from mind to supermind. For years Sri Aurobindo had striven to negotiate this passage. Success came on the 24th of November of that year when the light and power of the overmind descended into his physical being. Subsequently Sri Aurobindo withdrew from outer contacts to concentrate on the more difficult task of enabling the supermind to descend, take possession of his body and for the first time act on matter directly. His withdrawal, however, did not prevent him from attending to world affairs, as may be gleaned from another third-person autobiographical note.[16]

There is... a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness.... It was this force which, as soon as [Sri Aurobindo J had attained to it, he used, at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world forces.... He put his spiritual force behind the Allies from the moment of Dunkirk when everybody was expecting the immediate fall of England and the definite triumph of Hitler, and lie had the satisfaction of seeing the rush of German victory almost immediately arrested and the tide of

 

 

war begin to turn in the opposite direction.... He had not, for various reasons,

intervened with his spiritual force against the Japanese aggression until it became

evident that Japan intended to attack and even invade and conquer India.... Sri

Aurobindo... had the satisfaction of seeing the tide of Japanese victory, which had till

then swept every thing before it, change immediately into a tide of rapid... and finally...

overwhelming defeat.

The progress made by Sri Aurobindo during his last 24 years is not well documented. However, the Mother, his spiritual peer and collaborator since 1920, carried on the work of supramentalization for another 23 years, and she left behind a detailed chronicle. I will offer a few glimpses of this extraordinary document of more than 6000 pages, called Mother's Agenda,[17] in a separate paper.[18]

Before concluding, I still have to say a few words about Sri Aurobindo's poetry and about his Integral Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri—almost 24,000 lines in blank verse—is of equal importance in the corpus of his works to The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga. Savitri was begun in 1915 and last revised in 1950. Sri Aurobindo wrote that Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative.[19] The result of this experiment is not only a poetic chronicle of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, but a rhythmical embodiment of his experiences that can awaken sympathetic vibrations in those who read it. Containing Sri Aurobindo's most detailed account of the geography of the inner worlds, it is an invaluable chart for the use of future explorers.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the poetry of the highest order comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of intuition and has the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind these and greater.[20] Savitri undoubtedly belong in this category.

It is still more difficult to do justice to the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo in a few lines. In the right view both of life and of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo wrote, all life... is a vast Yoga of Nature attempting to realise her perfection in an ever increasing expression of her potentialities.[21] In a more specific sense, yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes self-aware. The human being then consciously participates in its own self-exceeding, a participation which essentially consists in an aspiration to the creative power be hind evolution and in a surrender to its workings.

The action of this power has three main features. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but as determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates. In a sense, therefore, everyone has his or her own method of yoga. Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change.... Thirdly, the divine power in us uses all life as the means of this Integral Yoga.[22] This means that all inner and outer

experiences become so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the divine element in us and remove the obstacles to spiritual realization and supramental transformation.

 

Notes and References

The following biographical sources have been used: Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography,

New Delhi, 1989; A. B. Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry, 1978.

1.Jean Gebser, Der Unsichtbare Ursprung, Olten (Germany), 1970.

2. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL) Vol. 26, Pondicherry

1972, p.30.

3. On Himself, p. 87.

4. On Himself, p. 64.

5. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, Pondicherry 1970, p. 49.

6. Letters on Yoga, p. 50.

7. Nirodbaran, Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Volumes 2 & 3, Pondicherry 1985, p. 187.

8. On Himself, p. 86.

9. On Himself, p. 37.

10. A. B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, third edition/ Pondicherry 1982, p. 37.

11. On Himself, p. 469.

12. Sri Aurobindo. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10/ Pondicherry 1971, p. 37.

13. On Himself, p. 374.

14. This "past" ended on 29 February 1956, according to an announcement by Sri Aurobindo's

spiritual collaborator, the Mother.

15. See Ulrich Mohrhoff, Quanta and Vedanta, to be published. For an outline see the article "Did God Have a Choice?" in the 1992 issue of Gavesana, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry.

16. On Himself, p. 38f.

17. Mother's Agenda, 13 volumes. Institute for Evolutionary Research, 200 Park Avenue, New York,

publication in progress.

18. Ulrich Mohrhoff, Agenda of an Integral Consciousness Mutation/World Transformation

19. Sri Aurobindo, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, SABCL Vols. 28 and 29, Pondicherry 1970, p. 727f.

20. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, SABCL Vol. 9, Pondicherry 1972, p. 369f.

21. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vols. 20 and 21, Pondicherry 1971, p. 2.

22. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 41 f.

Agenda of an Integral Consciousness Mutation /

World Transformation

by Ulrich Mohrhoff

 

The manifestation of supermind presupposes the liberation of the consciousness presently locked up in the automatisms of the body, through the liberation of the body from its automatic mode of functioning. This work, which was begun by Sri Aurobindo, was carried on by the Mother who left behind a prodigious document[1] containing the minutiae thereof.

 

This paper is a sequel to Sri Aurobindo for Gebserians.[2] It is intended to offer glimpses of the process of supramental mutation/transformation as recorded by the Mother, as

much as possible through the Mother's own notes. Listen to this one:

It's as if the consciousness were no longer in the same position with respect to things, so they appear totally different. The ordinary human conscious ness, even the broadest, always occupies the center position, and things exist in relation to that center: in the human consciousness, you are in one point, and everything exists in relation to that point of consciousness. But now, the point is no longer there! So things exist in themselves.... My consciousness is within things; it isn't something that "receives."

(17 November 1971)

One could hardly wish for a better description of what Gebser has called the aperspectival consciousness. This decentralized consciousness, the Mother insisted, was not a "higher" consciousness superposed on mind and the submental levels: it was the consciousness of the body.

Now the body has the experience, and it's much more real. The intellectual attitude puts something unreal over our perception of things... whereas the body feels it in itself, it becomes it. Instead of the experience being scaled down to the measure of the individual, the individual widens to the measure of the experience.

(25 July 1970)

This experience of the body is above all characterized by oneness, by the abolition of all separation.

Now the body feels it is within things or within people or within an action. There are no more limits.... Before, each thing was separate, divided, unconnected with others, and very superficial.... It doesn't feel like that anymore. It mainly gives a feeling of intimacy, that is to say, there is no distance, no difference, no "something which sees" and "something which is seen".... And it always gives the impression of something without conflicts, without shocks, without complications, as if it were no longer possible to bump into anything.

(18 July 1962 and 31 August 1963)

It's the difference between a vibratory movement circulating within an identical field of action, and a movement from an outside source, touching you and getting a reaction.

(12 January 1962)

In the following excerpt the Mother alludes to an even more tantalizing aspect of oneness.

When I speak of oneness... I don't merely mean having the "sense" that all is one and that everything takes place within that One. What I mean by Oneness is that you can't distinguish between conceiving the action, the will to act, the action itself, and the result.... All is one, simultaneous. But how? It can't be explained—it simply can't! You can get a glimpse of the experience, but... ultimately, it's inexpressible.... At their maximum, at the height of their possibilities, human conceptions can express something or other of the over mind.

(6 October 1962)

Evidently, the supermind has little respect for the mind's categories. It even abrogates causality.

Our habitual state of consciousness is to do something for something.... There used to be a kind of mainspring, which had its raison d'etre and so persisted: do this to arrive at that, and this leads to that (it's more subtle, of course); but this mainspring suddenly seems to have been abolished. Now a kind of absoluteness prevails at each and every second, in each movement, from the most subtle, the most spiritual, to the most material. The sense of linking has disappeared: that isn't the "cause" of this, and this isn't done "for" that; there is no "there" one is heading towards—it all seems... an absolute—innumerable, perpetual and simultaneous. The sense of connection has gone, the sense of cause and effect has gone—all that belongs to the world of space and time.

(25 April 1961)

I have a feeling that to have access to the highest and purest power, the very notion of "result" must disappear completely—the Supreme Power has no sense of result at all.... The idea of something behind or ahead in time and so on is... it's rather a Truth changing from immutable Eternity into Eternity of manifestation.

(31 August 1962)

Here the Mother touches on the atemporal aspect of supermind. Supramental causality, if the word may still be used, does not connect events or conditions in time; it links timelessness to time. As all time is seen from the ever-present Origin, simultaneously, so all action proceeds out of it. The spatio-temporal nexus of causes and results is no longer needed: Each second has its own eternity and its own law, which is a law of absolute truth, as the Mother once said. (10 May 1958)

Supermind, as I have explained in Sri Aurobindo for Gebserians, is by definition the one and only force in the world. All other forces are its fragmented workings, which

are automatically integrated into their parent dynamism whenever that manifests itself in its own right. Supramental force is the wholly effective will-power of an infinite and integral consciousness, and whenever that manifests itself, all limitations of consciousness are automatically annulled. The forces active in the body are liberated from their blind, automatic modes of working, and the consciousness presently locked up in the cells and particles of our bodies, or in the determinisms governing their behavior, is released. This is why the supramental consciousness will be the consciousness of the body. But to liberate the force at work in the body from its automatisms is, in the Mother's words,

such a dreadful and gigantic fight against all the laws of nature, all the collective suggestions, all the earthly habits, that unless you are a fearless warrior ready to go though anything, you had better not start the battle.... All the automatic habits of millenniums must be changed into a conscious action directly guided by the supreme Consciousness.

(14 October 1953 [3] and 22 January 1966)

The following few notes concern this rather trying aspect of the process of supramentalization.

Every time the rule or domination of Nature's ordinary laws is replaced at one point or another by the authority of the divine Consciousness, that creates a state of transition that has every appearance of a frightful disorder and a very great danger.

(3 February 1968)

Everything has to be changed. It's no longer the heart that must pump the blood, it's no longer the stomach that must digest the food—the whole functioning has to be changed completely. And every single one of these cells tries to make sure that everything should work as usual!

(9 January 1963)

If it were a matter of stopping one thing and starting another, it could be done fairly quickly. But keeping a body alive, making sure it continues to function, while at the same time pursuing a new functioning and a transformation... that makes a kind of very difficult combination to realize....
In ordinary life, you think things, and then you do them—here it's just the opposite! You must first do things, and then you understand them, but much later. You must first do without thinking. If you think, you don't achieve anything; you are simply back in the old rut.

(6 October 1962)

The whole solid base that makes a corporeal person is gone, pftt, removed!...You see, everything we do, everything we know is based on a kind of semiconscious memory of things—that is gone. There is nothing any more. And it is replaced by a sort of luminous presence.... Things happen, they come effortlessly, just what is needed at just the right time. There is none of that baggage we constantly drag around with us: just the thing you need.

(4 May 1968)

Suddenly the body finds itself outside of all habits, all actions, reactions, consequences, etc.; and that's... {the Mother opens her eyes in wonder), then it

goes away. It's so new for the material consciousness that, for a minute, it panics.

(20 May 1970)

For years, the Mother witnessed the cells of her body oscillating back and forth between their old subconscious automatism and this new fully conscious spontaneity.

In one position everything flows like a river of quiet peace (it's truly marvelous): the whole creation, all of life, every movement and every thing is one single entity, and this body feels like a very homogeneous part of the whole, and everything flows like an endless river of smiling peace. And then, oops! You trip, and you find yourself again situated, you are in a certain place, at a certain moment in time; and then a pain here, a pain there....

(31 May 1962)

It's as though the consciousness were pulled or pushed, or placed, in a certain position, and then those improper functionings [of the body] appear instantly, but not as a consequence; the consciousness just becomes aware of their existence. And if the consciousness remains long enough in that position, there are what we usually call consequences; the improper functioning has consequences.... But if the consciousness regains its true position, it stops instantly.

(8 September 1962)

The Mother here touches upon an extremely subtle relationship between consciousness and fact. The improper functioning mentioned in this passage is at first not a fact but the misrepresentation of a fact: it is the new functioning as perceived by the old consciousness. However, if the consciousness persists in its old fragmented way of seeing, the functioning too becomes fragmented: the one and only force actually disintegrates into the usual congeries of forces, which are once more subject to their old laws. Yet one has only to regain the unitary consciousness and, with it, awareness of the one force behind all forces, for the now factually improper functioning to cease instantly, without anything to be remedied, without leaving a trace. The following two notes throw further light on this extraordinary phenomenon.

The education of the physical consciousness (not the body's global consciousness, but the consciousness of the cells) consists in teaching them, first, that there is a choice:... to choose the divine Presence, the divine Consciousness, the divine Power (all this without words).... It is a choice of every second between Nature's old laws, together with some mental influence and the whole life such as it is organized—a choice between that, the rule of that, and the rule of the supreme Consciousness.... And it's every second of the day (it's infinitely interesting), with practical examples—for instance, the nerves: If a nerve obeys this or that law of nature, together with the mental conclusions and all that—all that machinery—then the pain starts up; but if it obeys the influence of the supreme Consciousness, then a curious thing happens: it isn't like something getting "cured"; rather, it's as if it disappeared as a sort of unreality.

(26 June 1968)

What we call "concrete," a "concrete reality"—yes, what gives you the sense of a "real" existence—that particular sensation has to disappear and be replaced by.... It's beyond words.... It's all-light, all-power, all intensity of love at the same time, and a fullness! It is so full that nothing else can exist beside that. And when "that" is here, in the body, in the cells, it's enough to direct "it" onto someone or something, and everything falls immediately into place. So, in ordinary terms, it "heals": the illness is cured. No! it doesn't cure it: it cancels it! That's it, the illness is made unreal.... For it isn't the action of a "higher force" through matter, into others: it's a direct action, from matter to matter. What people usually call "healing power" is a great mental or vital power imposing itself despite the resistance of matter — that's not at all the case here! It is the contagion of a vibration. So it's irrevocable.

(12 July 1967)

At any moment, in any condition, the one Consciousness-Force can revert from its fragmented, unconscious and automatic mode of operation to its original unity: In stead of all the usual vibrations of the body, there is only one single vibration, as the Mother once observed. (11 May 1958) When this reversal to the wholly integrated and integrally conscious mode of operation takes place, all oppositions are immediately annulled: there no longer exists anything that could resist, anything that needed to be mastered or cured.

Nor are the effects of the reversal confined to the individual in which it takes place. When the forces at work in one body regain their unity, they also regain their unity with the forces at work in other bodies. It is therefore not surprising that many times the Mother experienced the illness of a disciple as if it had attacked her own body, and that when she put things in order in her own body, things fell back into order in the disciple's body as well.

For Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the eventual appearance of a new species of supramental beings is inevitable. This eventual appearance is a sufficient guarantee for the ultimate transformation of all terrestrial life into a thing of beauty to us as yet inconceivable. The Mother's notes also afford some tantalizing insights into the modus operandi of this transformation.

There is a constant divine order, and it's only the incapacity to perceive it that makes the present disorder and falsehood.

(10 July 1963)

With a certain attitude, everything becomes divine. Everything. And what is so wonderful is that when one has the experience that everything becomes divine, all that is contrary quite naturally disappears—quickly or slowly, at once or gradually. It means that becoming conscious that all is divine is the best means of rendering everything divine—you understand—of annulling the oppositions.

(16 October 1971)

For a moment, all of a sudden, I saw how... the Divine sees the world.... You can't describe how wonderful it is.... Naturally, this must begin with the consciousness, and then, gradually, the things will become such, that is to say be aware of themselves in the same way, as the Divine is aware of them.

(27 November 1971)

Let's recapitulate this. There is a consciousness, to which one can attain, in which everything is as it should be, the right thing in the right place at the right time. This consciousness, as both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have stressed, is intimately-linked with the supramental time perception in which past, present and future coexist. It also is a precondition for participation in the absolute power and freedom of Sachchidananda.

It is evident that there also is a consciousness in which things are not divine, an awareness of falsehood and disorder. This is our ordinary mental consciousness. And since what is responsible for the disorder is merely its incapacity to perceive the constant divine order, as the Mother said in one of these notes, the manifestation of the consciousness by which everything is seen as divine will be sufficient to remove the disorder, as she said in the subsequent note.

At this point one might jump to the conclusion that there is no need of any objective improvement, AIDS, war and famine notwithstanding, because to some divine consciousness everything already is as it should be; all that is required is to get hold of this divine consciousness. But the Mother also said the following: if the divine way of seeing manifests itself at certain points, the same way of seeing begins to awaken in what is seen. Things become aware of themselves in the divine way, and when that happens they become divine in the most objective manner. Evil does not merely cease to look evil; it ceases to exist. And yet it is a "mere" change of consciousness that inaugurates this objective change.

As long as we entertain the misconception of a single, unequivocal objective reality, we will not be able to understand how things can become what to some consciousness they already are. Nothing exists independently of consciousness. In defiance of the logical law of identity, one thing can be several things at a time because it can exist in relation to several types of consciousness. The tension of contrast between what is and what should be is fundamental to the mind's way of seeing and the mainspring of its way of acting. That everything is as at should be is true, but only for those who see the world in the supramental way. In their consciousness evil, which is so dismayingly real to us, is even now non-existent. In the following note, the Mother leaves us in no doubt about this.

What is this creation after all? Separateness and meanness and cruelty, and then suffering, decay and disease, death and destruction (all that is part of the same thing). Well, the experience I had was the unreality of those things, as if we had entered an unreal Falsehood, and everything disappears when we get out of it—it doesn't exist anymore, it no longer is. That's what is so frightening! All those things which are so real, so concrete, so terrifying for us do not exist! We've just... entered a Falsehood.

(31 May 1969)

Another time the Mother exclaimed:

Truly, the ordinary state... is consciously death and pain, while in the other state, death and pain appear absolutely... unreal!... Yet nothing has changed, except consciousness.... The world is the same—it is seen and felt in a totally opposite way.

(18 October 1969, 21 December 1968 and 25 December 1971)

Our difficulty in comprehending how everything can be as it should be has a counter part in the supramental consciousness:

When you leave the ordinary consciousness and enter the truth-consciousness, you actually wonder how there can be such things as pain, misery, death and all that; there's a kind of amazement; you don't understand how that can happen, once you're on the other side.

(18 July 1961)

It is certainly not the mind that can find the solution of this dilemma. The Mother once remarked:

I have the feeling that only the body is capable of understanding the creation, what we call the creation: the why and the how of it, both.

(18 October 1969)

It would be futile to ask whether the eventual abolition of suffering and evil will be so "objective" as to be real even to an unchanged consciousness, for there will be nothing and no one whose consciousness will be left unchanged.

Note that so-called inanimate things are not excluded. The evolution of a central nervous system was necessary for the manifestation of mind, which was a necessary preparation of matter for the first manifestation of supermind. But once supermind has manifested, this roundabout method can be dispensed with. The manifest super mind can directly liberate the supermind imprisoned in the deterministic forces sustaining matter.

If the Mother's experiences sometimes appear contradictory, it is because they are records of diverse modes of consciousness all of which are steps on the way to supramentalization. Once she observed:

The consciousness is on the way to where it is at once the vision of what should be and the capacity of realizing it.

(30 October 1971)

In another poise of consciousness the mental and supramental ways of seeing coexist, as it were, with the effect that disorder, evil and falsehood appear as a meaningless superimposition.

To me the two sides become visible at once: the true thing and its deformation; the event as it should occur and its deformation. Yet the event remains the same—the deformation is merely a sort of accretion, which is absolutely unnecessary and complicates things atrociously, for no reason. And also which gives a strong impression of falsehood: something without meaning or purpose, absolutely unnecessary and perfectly idiotic.... What was very clear and comes very often—very often—is the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact.

(10 July 1963 and 18 April 1961)

This particular mode of perception appears to be the negative complement of the other, the vision of what should be on the way to becoming a realizing power. In this case it is the vision of what should not be that engenders what may be called an "irrealizing power". A demonstration of this power took place during a riot directed against the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Here is the Mother's report:

The whole attack was seen as an absolute falsehood, without any element of truth behind. But at the same time I had a microscopic perception—absolutely precise and exact—of all the points of falsehood in the atmosphere of the Ashram which established the contact.... For instance, a brick hit my window... and at that moment I exactly saw in the consciousness of the people who were present the vibration of falsehood which had permitted that brick to touch there. And this, at the same time, simultaneously, over the whole town: I saw all the points, in everyone and everything, precisely the vibration of falsehood permitting the contact.... I perceived as clearly as the material objects both the vibration which established the contact with that formation of falsehood and the Vibration, this state which prevented the contact.

Since then, several people have told me their experiences. For example, X went out, he wanted to call the police and had to traverse the court (it literally rained stones), everybody shouted: "Go inside! Go inside! You are mad." But he went—not a stone touched him. And he had the feeling that it was impossible for them to touch him. It was like a demonstration of the difference in vibrations between the two states: the vibration which responds to the falsehood and the vibrations in whose presence there is no response, no possible contact—they are different worlds.

(19 and 24 February 1965)

Things that have been rendered divine by being seen in the supramental way can no longer be sources of "falsehood". But they could still be subject to the effects of falsehood. This is prevented by the effectivity of the mode of consciousness which sees falsehood as a meaningless accretion. By uniting the creative power of the super mind with the inability to perceive any reason whatsoever for the existence of the accretion, this way of seeing as it were "uncreates" the same, abolishes its reality. It so to say decants truth from falsehood by imparting to whatever is under the influence of truth an effective sense of immunity from falsehood.

The final result of the two processes—rendering things divine by becoming conscious that all is divine, and extricating them from the causal nexus of the false hood—will be the same, as we may gather from the following note:

The veil of falsehood... is responsible for everything we see here. If it were removed things would be altogether different—altogether. They would be as we perceive them when leaving the ordinary consciousness.

(18 July 1961)

The Mother concluded her account of the attack by saying that the two states—the one which responds to the falsehood and the other in which there is no possible contact with it—are two quite different worlds. She then added:

One is a world of truth and the other is a world of falsehood. And it is this world of truth which must come in front and take the place of the other.

On another occasion she said:

A trifle would suffice for passing from this world to the other, that is to say, for the other to become the real one. A little trigger would be enough, or rather a little reversal of the inner attitude.

(6 October 1959)

It could happen in a flash.

 

References

1. Mother's Agenda, 13 volumes. Institute for Evolutionary Research/ 200 Park Avenue, New York,

publication in progress.

2. Paper presented at the XI Annual International Gebser Conference.

3. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 5, Pondicherry 1976, p. 317.