The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 501

As you know last time we were trying to do something that is impossible and we shall continue that impossible task, namely to try to understand, what is the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, Supermind. We had already crossed two barriers the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind and then we were trying to see.

What would be the nature of Intuitive Mind and once again we need to say that all these things that we are talking about may seem to be quite intangible to us. The more we study the more we come into contact even though the descriptions become easier for us to understand, gradually. It is only for that reason that we are dwelling upon these ideas. Let us try to see what is Intuitive mind. Intuition has a special characteristic, which is similar to touch in our ordinary experience of life. To see a thing and to touch a thing these two have different contents in our experience of knowledge. You might say that when you see a thing there is some kind of incompleteness. Until you take it, and touch it, and possess it, you feel much more concrete. This experience of concreteness is a special characteristic of Intuitive Mind. Remember that all these states of consciousness – Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind etc, are all instruments of knowing the invisible, therefore, when we say here is a concrete touch, it’s a concrete touch of the invisible.

The easiest example of the intuitive consciousness is the knowledge of your own personal existence. How do I know that I exist? Of course my body can be seen physically but I do not say that my body exists. When I pronounce the sentence ‘I exist’. It seems to be still something much more than the body when I say ‘I exist’. How do I know ‘I exist’? It is by a personal intimate experience which is inescapable. I can’t escape experiencing myself and therefore, I have no doubt about it. I can doubt everything in the world but I can’t doubt the fact that I exist. In any case you cannot doubt the experience which gives you a concrete touch with yourself. It’s not a physical touch with yourself that is one simplest examples of the intuitive consciousness. I intuitively experience myself. Knowledge by identity is the fundamental character of intuitive experience. You know because you are, you know that because you are That.

This experience can be deepened to such an extent that your concept of ‘I exist’ begins to include the whole universe and you begin to experience your identity with the whole universe. I escape from my narrowed limits; I become more and more enlarged. Just as at a lower level the mother feels the presence of the child. It’s a different body; the child is a different body. Existence of a child is different from your existence but you feel it is so large that the child is included in you personal experience.

Similarly if you become more expanded, if you have greater responsibilities then you vibrate with the totality of your responsibilities and you automatically come to know what is happening in the domain of your responsibilities. If you are very conscious, if you are very intimate and if this becomes enlarged on and on and on, the whole cosmos becomes a part of your domain. This is how the highest experience of which we had spoken, when we did the Isha Upanishad, ‘the Self is in All, and All is in the Self and the Self becomes All’. This experience is also an example of intuitive mind. It is our intuitive consciousness that experiences this. This is one of the highest experiences of the intuition.

But there is also a domain of the ordinary mind, where if you are a metaphysician then you can experience what may be called intellectual intuitions. You find that your intellectual exercise of any kind would not be possible, if you did not know intuitively ‘infinity and eternity’. These are the two terms are central to metaphysical thinking the concept of eternity, and the concept of infinity. This is not the moment to examine these two concepts but if we have time in due course, if we have second series we shall enter into metaphysics and we shall try to see how these two concepts, eternity and infinity are intuitively known to our intellect that is to say that they are not learned from outside They are seen inwardly and inescapably. This is the specialty of intuitive knowledge.

All intuitive knowledge is inescapable, inevitable. It is also what is called incorrigible. It’s a knowledge which can’t be corrected. In the very act of correcting you assert therefore, it is incorrigible. If you therefore, think very impartially on the train of metaphysical thinking then you will begin to perceive that no thinking is possible, not only metaphysical thinking no thinking is possible unless you already had in your mind an implicit knowledge, inescapable knowledge, incorrigible knowledge of eternity and infinity. These are two very important intuitions of intellect itself. To think is to think in terms of infinity. To think is to think in terms of eternity.

If the eternity were not present in your consciousness in some way or the other, you could not think of any time at all. All our concepts in the world, all that we are thinking is in the framework of space and time. If anybody says think in which the space and time are not involved, you will say it is impossible and you will notice that in all your thinking space and time are automatically involved; whether you know about space, whether you know about time, its independent of it. You can’t think of anything, unless you think in terms of space and time. Then if you ask yourself, what is space, what is time? You will find out that all space is infinity, all time is eternity. If you can’t think at all without space and time and if space implies automatically the concept of infinity and if time implies the concept of eternity, then it means that you can’t think without eternity and without infinity. This is actually the condition of our mind when we examine our mind, if you open out the operation of your mind you will find that in your mind at the back of every thinking process the concept of eternity and infinity are already present not, explicitly known to you but implicitly known to you. So that whenever you think more and more deeply, you will find all the time behind your thought was an implicit knowledge of eternity and infinity. You have also at the same time an intuition that space and time always point to something beyond themselves.