The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 504

This domain is so far from our normal domain that one only needs to read some good descriptions of this consciousness and wait for a time when we can ourselves enter into this consciousness. So we shall not dwell too much on this because it will be so artificial. All these higher levels of consciousness – Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, when they operate upon our consciousness they usually take the form of words, the perceptions, the knowledge that is gained begins to be expressed in words. But the quality of these words is such that it discloses the reality in a manner in which it is almost miraculous for us. These words when they are presented to us in rhythmic manner, in poetry, we get what is called mantric poetry. The very words, when they are spoken, you feel there is something which is not normal and yet it expresses so correctly, so clearly. Sometimes the rhythm is powerful, sometimes the very words are powerful, sometime the style is powerful, the vision is powerful. But when all of them are combined together, the style, the rhythm, the vision, then it becomes so powerful that it begins to vibrate in your being and you are brought nearer to the opening of that very consciousness in you.

There are a few lines, which I will talk to you about taken from Savitri, Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, Savitri is full of mantric vibration. There is one passage on page 15, where Sri Aurobindo describes Savitri as a young woman. In her youth the kind of consciousness that she possessed, Sri Aurobindo describes. And he himself has in one of his letters said that this is an example of overmind intuition. A kind of expression, which came to him when Savitri was as it were seen, the truth of Savitri was seen in the overmental consciousness and expressed in the intuitive consciousness. I will give you just now these 15-20 lines and we shall read together just to feel some kind of an experience of this overmental consciousness.

Question: Can the intuitive mind and the overmind be divided. Is there a distinction?

Answer: Yes, as I told you intuitive mind is a spot light. There is a limitation of not only words but it will be much more powerful in the spot light. For example, there is a famous line of Shakespeare in Hamlet, ‘to be or not to be that is a question’. It’s not a mantric poetry but there is in it a very powerful expression. It’s such an expression that you really feel that although it is a very simple sentence, you might say it’s not even poetry but it’s a poetic expression, it’s a part of poetry of Shakespeare. When it is recited, it discloses something in you tremendously powerful. So powerful that even today, we feel that one of the moods of the human experience is expressed in this one line: ‘to be or not to be that is the question.’ Even Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind all this is what is called overhead consciousness. Overhead consciousness starts with the higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, supermind, overmind, all of them are over head consciousness. Anything that flows from mantra has got three important qualities, the climax of the style, climax of the vision of the truth and the climax of rhythm. When all three are combined together it becomes a mantra.

Question: The mantric would be confined only to the overmental consciousness or also in the intuitive mind?

Answer: On all, but it must be the climax of the vision. In the intuitive mind the climax of intuitive consciousness must be reached. Where ever a climax is reached, it begins to take the form of mantra.

Now read this towards the end of the page 15. (See Savitri)

All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven,
Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.

As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men’s lives.
A wide self-giving was her native act;
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
And gave a sense as of a greatened world:
Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,
Her high passion a blue heaven’s equipoise.
As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.
A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.
The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:
Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air,
Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath
Spiritual that can make all things divine.
For even her gulfs were secrecies of light.
At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
In her he found a vastness like his own,
His high warm subtle ether he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.
In her he met his own eternity.

These are the line I wanted to present to you, just to feel the experience of what Sri Aurobindo himself has said overmind intuition.