The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 207

When you cross the borders of sattva, rajas and tamas and enter into this everything is basically incomprehensible but we can understand to some extent because of this reason that the elements of it are to some extent to be found in our ordinary consciousness.

Now the 2nd point that is made is that even the process which is described as to how to mount from our present consciousness to the higher level of consciousness, how the higher consciousness can be embedded into this lower movements of Prakriti. This whole process would normally be incomprehensible, just as the states of the consciousness of the higher level are difficult to understand but to some extent understandable because of the reason that I gave now.

Similarly, the process by which we can mount from here to there and the process by which that higher conscious can be embedded here would be normally incomprehensible and yet it is not entirely incomprehensible because that movement will be similar to some extent to the kind of movement that we experience in our bodily life, vital life and mental life. How we move from one level of consciousness to the other. We can examine how the child develops its movement of development of consciousness, it is within the limits of mental consciousness only but there are gradations in the mental consciousness. An educationist and a psychologist have made study of this as to how the child develops and therefore, how the child can be helped to develop. If you study the laws of the development of life from the body, mind from the life and development of mind from grade to grade, if you discover the laws of this development and if you try to understand them and if you understand them, then to some extent since this kind of law would be also operative there we can understand this process too.

We have in the succeeding paragraphs the description of the process by which we can rise into higher levels of consciousness, the process by which the higher levels of consciousness can come down to embed themselves into the lower consciousness and also the description of the various states of consciousness, which begin to manifest when we make this ascent from below.

The real ascent of supermind actually starts from the next paragraph, this is only the background. There is first in this movement a great emphasis on individuation. Let us try to understand this point. You will see that in the universal movement in ether or air there is a vastness and diffusion. In water for example there is more concreteness. Intermediate between the two is fire. It is fire which makes all forms stable; this is a specialty of fire. If you want to make any form stable you heat it that’s why welding, you use fire when you want to join two things. In water the forms appears much more clearly, but even then it is so liquid, the form is broken constantly. It is only in earth principle, prithvi that you find stable forms, which you call objects, in watery form there are no objects as such, its difficult, not that there are none, there are drops, there are the bubbles but they are so mobile they break immediately. It is only here in the case physical objects that you find stable objects. You can distinguish one object from the other. Something like individuation takes place, one object distinguished from the other object, so that this object its individuality is distinguished from the other object. And there are innumerable forms in this physical world, the principle of individuation manifests in a remarkable manner. You find that in the whole physical world two principles are manifest – commonness and individuation. The leaves of one tree are all common and the commonness is so great that you can distinguish the leaves of one species from the leaves of other species. The banana leaves are quite different from the palm leaves. So there is a commonness and yet individuation. All palm leaves are alike, all banana leaves are alike, there is commonness and yet each species is so distinguishable from the other. They are all common in the sense that they are all leaves; you can really see that they are leaves. There is something like commonness in all the leaves and yet there are different kinds of leaves. So that you can distinguish one from the other, this distinguishing feature is the individuation to some extent, but even in the case of every leaf of the same tree there is innumerable variety, every leaf of every tree is quite different from the leaf just on the same branch. If there are five leaves, each leaf is different from the other leaf that is a principle of individuation.