Sri Aurobindo’s work is a unique earth-transformation.
Above the mind there are several levels of conscious being, among which
the really divine world is what Sri Aurobindo has called the Supermind, the
world of the Truth. But in between is what he has distinguished as the Overmind,
the world of the cosmic Gods. Now it is this Overmind that has up to the
present governed our world: it is the highest that man has been able to attain
in illumined consciousness. It has been taken for the Supreme Divine and all
those who have reached it have never for a moment doubted that they have
touched the true Spirit. For, its splendours are so great to the ordinary human
consciousness that it is absolutely dazzled into believing that here at last is
the crowning reality. And yet the fact is that the Overmind is far below the
true Divine. It is not the authentic home of the Truth. It is only the domain
of the formateurs, all those creative powers and deities to whom men have bowed
down since the beginning of history. And the reason why the true Divine has not
manifested and transformed the earth-nature is precisely that the Overmind has
been mistaken for the Supermind. The cosmic Gods do not wholly live in the Truth-Consciousness:
they are only in touch with it and represent, each of them, an aspect of its
glories.
No doubt, the Supermind has also acted in the history of the world but
always through the Overmind. It is the direct descent of the Supramental
Consciousness and Power that alone can utterly re-create life in terms of the
Spirit. For, in the Overmind there is already the play of possibilities which
marks the beginning of this lower triple world of Mind, Life and Matter in
which we have our existence. And whenever there is this play and not the
spontaneous and infallible working of the innate Truth of the Spirit, there is
the seed of distortion and ignorance. Not that Overmind is a field of
ignorance; but it is the borderline between the Higher and the Lower, for, the play
of possibilities, of separate even if not yet divided choice, is likely to lead
to deviation from the Truth of things.
The Overmind, therefore, does not and cannot possess the power to
transform humanity into divine nature. For that, the Supramental is the sole
effective agent. And what exactly differentiates our Yoga from attempts in the
past to spiritualise life is that we know that the splendours of the Overmind
are not the highest reality but only an intermediate step between the mind and
the true Divine.
(The Mother, ‘CWM’,
Vol. 3, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry)
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