The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 503

The inner heart can open to the presence of something that is inwardly intimate with you. The presence of God for example can be experienced more easily through the heart by coming into contact with the presence, which is already present in your heart and by unity of your heart’s consciousness with that reality; you intuitively have the experience of the Divine. And the more you live in this consciousness, the lesser is the whirling our mind and the mind can be largely quieted, this is the second method.

The third method is that you invite the higher consciousness to come down, not silence your mind immediately, but you just invite. The higher consciousness exists whether we know it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, just as a small child may not be aware of the presence of father and mother, but father and mother are present. Similarly higher consciousness exists, the consciousness of eternity and infinity exists, if you therefore can invite it then it’s a method of simplicity, you just invite and then it presses down upon you, whether you like it or not. You suddenly become invaded by the inner consciousness, by the higher consciousness. As Mother said once that the real meditation is not when you try to meditate. Real meditation is when you cannot escape meditating, when meditation comes over you, it invades you, you suddenly become immobile. It is the rush of the higher into your being and then you simply have to give yourself to it, you cannot do anything else at that time. You are as it were taken into the arms of the infinity and you rest in the arms of infinity. You don’t need to make effort to become silent. Silence automatically comes to you. This is another method of developing intuitive mind.

The fourth method is that you undertake a comprehensive intellectual exercise. This is one of the most difficult processes but for some minds it would be perfectly legitimate and perfectly easy. Somebody who has lot of time and leisure and has time to think over everything that is possible to think over, and when you have thought over the whole thing as a result of that the mind become absolutely clear.

And when the mind becomes absolutely clear that clarity becomes intuitive consciousness, for example you take the book The Life Divine. If you have the patience and leisure to go through the whole of The Life Divine then all that can be thought about is comprehended. The Life Divine is one book in the world where everything that can be thought about is included. Every mode of thinking, every process of thinking, every question that has to be thought of intellectually, all that has been included in this book, so if you really go through this entire book then your mind becomes absolutely clear. There are no confusions left and that clarity is a state of intuitive consciousness and thereafter all the thoughts that come to you, they as it were come to you directly. These are the four methods by which you can develop intuitive mind and intuitive consciousness.

If you have read this chapter sufficiently, you will find that Sri Aurobindo says that intuition has four powers. It has the power of seeing, the power of hearing, the power of touching and the power of discriminating. The power of seeing is called revelation, the power of hearing is called inspiration, the power of touching is what you may call truly intuitive and the power of discrimination is what is called viveka, to discriminate one from the other rightly. And the specialty of these four powers is that it acts directly without groping.

In all our intellectual and mental thinking, we grope, we go from error to knowledge, or from error to error. But in the case of these four powers, whatever you see, is seen correctly. There is no mistake in this process whatever you hear, you hear correctly. The concreteness that you feel by touch of reality is a concreteness that is incorrigible, it can’t be corrected, it is so true and all the distinctions that you make by discrimination are exact and precise. Automaticity, directness, infallibility of the knowledge these characterize intuitive mind.

But this intuitive mind when it acts in our ordinary consciousness has one limitation. It is like a spotlight. The intuition throws light upon a spot and what is seen in that spot is correct, luminous, unmistakable, incorrigible, but that spot is a limitation. If you want to know the totality then spot light will not do because spot light will always give you light on a spot. So when you throw intuition on a spot it will be correct, but if it is not, if it has to answer a question upon that on which it has not thrown itself, it may not be able to answer you. This is the limitation of the intuitive mind. You have to put your light on a spot and if that is focused properly, you get the correct knowledge. You have therefore, to expand your scope of knowledge, your area of light. And that happens, when you go to Overmind.

In the Overmind you get global knowledge not spot light, it’s a global light. The entire area that is before you that entire area becomes visible and becomes known. The entire globe, the entire hemisphere for example, could be seen and embraced by the overmind. There is a kind of cosmicity which is found in the overmind consciousness. It is as if you move in the cosmos with the kind of surety and knowledge as you move in your own room, which is familiar to you. If you know this room quite well and you move in this room, everything is familiar and you can put everything in its proper place. Similarly, you can say the whole world is my home. The entire universe is my chamber and you move in it with all familiarity and in an unmistakable knowledge about everything that is the nature of the overmental consciousness.