The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 308

There is a second aspect and that is the individual, in this process begins to live more and more inwardly. He begins to discover his inner life, his inner consciousness, inner body, inner mind and the psychic being. You remember once we have spoken of subliminal consciousness. Subliminal consciousness is this inner consciousness. It is a larger consciousness, vaster consciousness, the center of our life shifts from outer to the inner. This is the mark of any progress in yoga that you become less and less superficial, you become more and more inward, more ingathered, deeply interested in your inner life. Even Bhagavad Gita says the mark of the yogi is that he likes solitude automatically. Even when he is the company he remains still solitary or even when he partakes with others, he is not lost in superficiality, he doesn’t gossip. He does not mean that he loses humour, or wit, or anything of that kind but the superficiality is lost and even the outer life is lived as if is inner life. It has the same depths, same seriousness, same purposiveness, same sense of responsibility. Nothing happens in the outer life which is irresponsible, which is purely superficial, which is unpurposive. As Mother said that even in a joke you should not tell a lie because there is so much seriousness in your activities, it may be superficial joke but it must be expressive of the truth because your inner life is pursuer of the truth.

A stage is reached where the distinction between outer and inner altogether disappears. Your inner life becomes so deep and outer life is so much drenched with your inner life that to call that outer and to call this inner that whole wall is broken. Your whole life is an inner life this is the second condition. The third condition of ascent toward the Supermind is to recognize more and more the direct operation and experience of the law of evolution. We recognize that in any movement in which you are moving upwards there will be a rhythm and it is good to know that rhythm and the law of the rhythm. That law of the rhythm is the law of evolution.

What is that law, you have to recognize that in your movement upwards there is no direct jump from where you are to the highest. If there was no evolution you could do that but there is law of evolution and the law of evolution is that there is a gradual development. All evolution means a graded and gradual development from grade to grade and as you rise from one grade to the other, there is a further evolutionary law. By gradual steps you reach a certain peak of that particular grade and for some time you will be able to dwell in it, until this part of the law becomes firm in you. You rise upwards to a grade then there will be an effort automatically helpful to you, which will stabilize you on that certain height of that consciousness. Having become firm on that point you will develop activities appropriate to that grade. These activities will become more and more varied, more and more subtle, more and more complex. Just as for example we have evolved from animal consciousness to human consciousness. It is one grade; animal consciousness is one grade human consciousness is another grade. When you rise to the mental consciousness, which is the proper human consciousness then what happens? Your activities of the mind begin to develop, what are the activities of the mind, activities of observation, activities of judgment, activities of understanding, activities of analysis, activities of synthesis, activities of rational philosophy, activities of ethical action and activities of aesthetic, creativity and enjoyment these are the activities proper to mind of man. These activities will become more and more developed they will become more and more subtle; they will become more and more complex.

The same law applies when you go beyond mind, you reach a next grade. Having reached the next grade the activities appropriate to that grade will become more and more subtle, more and more numerous and more and more complex. Then there is a further movement of what is called integration, this was the movement first of ascent, stabilization of reaching that particular point of ascent then there is a movement of integration, you move downward. All that you were doing earlier will again be repeated, you might feel that you are falling down from the higher level. But actually it is not a fall it’s a natural tendency to integrate what is left behind, you have ascended. What was left behind is again taken up by the higher level of consciousness, you descend down gradually to lower and lower activities. During that period you might find that you are collapsing. You have lost the height which you had reached but what is happening actually is that you are embracing the lower in the light of the higher. At every stage you are giving the contagion of the higher to the lower. There is a kind of a decent and there is therefore, the process of integration it will be quite long. Then there is a further upward movement after integrating, you again move upwards but now in moving upward your peak point is not your earlier peak point. You will have made an ascent to another grade, the higher peak point. Again you multiply the activities of that peak point, make it more complex, more numerous, more subtle, having reached there, again you come down, again you move upward, this law of gradations is a part of evolutionary process. It is here therefore, we have to realize that whenever the higher descends into the lower, there is the modification of the higher, diminution of the power of the higher because you have come down. But the higher the power which you have reached the lesser the diminution therefore, constantly we move upwards until you reach the Supermind and when Supermind begins to integrate all the rest there is diminution. It can sovereignly integrate all the others. A very rapid progress takes place, what can be done in million years can be done in a hundred years that is the rapidity of that movement.

Now the question is what are the gradation that you come across between the Mind and the Supermind? Sri Aurobindo describes – first the gradation of the Higher Mind, then the Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind and then the Supermind. It is when the entire process is completed then you attain to Supermind and you are able to live in the Supermind. You reach that peak point then you bring down little by little on lower plains and that can be computed only when it descends right into the Inconcient, the lowest level and that is converted, transformed then there is the fixing of Supermind in the Inconcient base, transformation of the Inconcient into the Supermind that is the mark of the victory. It’s a long process of development, very, very long process, very difficult process. But if you know the law of evolution and likely experiences then we are guided properly.

What is the nature of these gradations, what is Higher Mind, what is Illumined Mind, what is Intuitive Mind, how to distinguish between them? This is an extremely difficult task because all these gradation are so alien to our present level of mentality that it is very difficult to understand them. So, I will suggest that you just read them even if you don’t understand them. It does not matter because these are pertaining to experiences of which we are not immediately capable but for the sake of some glimpse it may be useful, at least to know how humble we should be, because all these things are still to be conquered yet, and lot of work has to be done. So that we know that what we are doing is nothing as compared to what is to be done. I suggest that during the time that we not meet for some time, you read these passages from the book.