From beyond the frontiers of form a new force
can be evoked, a power of consciousness which is as yet unexpressed and which,
by its emergence, will be able to change the course of things and give birth to
a new world. For the true solution to the problem of suffering, ignorance and
death is not an individual escape from earthly miseries by self-annihilation
into the unmanifest, nor a problematical collective flight from universal suffering
by an integral and final return of the creation to its creator, thus curing the
universe by abolishing it, but a transformation, a total transfiguration of
matter brought about by the logical continuation of Nature’s ascending march in
her progress towards perfection, by the creation of a new species that will be
to man what man is to the animal and that will manifest upon earth a new force,
a new consciousness and a new power. And so will begin a new education which
can be called the supramental education; it will, by its all-powerful action,
work not only upon the consciousness of individual beings, but upon the very
substance of which they are built and upon the environment in which they live.
In contrast with the types of education we
have mentioned previously, which progress from below upwards by an ascending movement
of the various parts of the being, the supramental education will progress from
above downwards, its influence spreading from one state of being to another
until at last the physical is reached. This last transformation will only occur
visibly when the inner states of being have already been considerably transformed.
It is therefore quite unreasonable to try to recognise the presence of the
supramental by physical appearances.
For these will be the last to change and the
supramental force can be at work in an individual long before anything of it becomes
perceptible in his bodily life.
To sum up, one can say that the supramental
education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an
increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the
nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of
the species above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end to the appearance
of a divine race upon earth.
-
‘Bulletin’, February 1952.
(CWM Volume
12, ‘On Education’, Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust 1978, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry)
The Mother Says:
"Before the untiring
persistence of your effort, an inner door will suddenly open and you will
emerge into a dazzling splendour that will bring you the certitude of
immortality, the concrete experience that you have always lived and always
shall live, that external forms alone perish and that these forms are, in
relation to what you are in reality, like clothes that are thrown away when
worn out. Then you will stand erect, freed from all chains, and instead of
advancing laboriously under the weight of circumstances imposed upon you by
Nature, which you had to endure and bear if you did not want to be crushed by
them, you will be able to walk on, straight and firm, conscious of your destiny,
master of your life."
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