Problem of Knowledge - Problem of Causality, Change and Time - Problems of Knowledge and Sri Aurobindo's Concept of the Supermind

Problems of Knowledge and
Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Supermind

But our nature sees things through two eyes always, for it views them doubly as ideas and as fact and therefore every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine.

There is an ascending movement of knowledge which seeks to find its fulfilment in the attainment of the highest, completest and the most indubitable knowledge. In this search it rises higher and higher and on the way it stops at certain stations wondering at each whether it is not the terminus it wants to arrive at. The first such station at which it stops is the level of perception.

For a percept by itself is complete and of the facthood and of the immediate truth of which we have to refer to nothing outside it.

That there are percepts and that what is perceived is really perceived are indubitable facts and whatever higher knowledge there may be and whatever correction it may make in the knowledge by perception, it cannot abolish these facts except by denying them with the help of the idea of a mysterious Maya or of the inexplicable; but then such abolishing knowledge would not be the highest knowledge.

However, very soon it is found that perception is only a station on the journey, not a destination; for the reason that compares one percept with another finds a certain opposition between them; it finds that two given percepts concerning the same object are so opposed to each other that if one is true the other must be false; and within the field of perception itself there are no means to determine the final truth of either. And this gives rise to the doubt regarding the whole realm of perception. May it not be that all percepts are false? But the idea of falsity presupposes the idea of truth which in turn presupposes for the reason at least an existence of the truth. But when the field of perception itself is held in question we cannot

discover the existence of that truth while confined solely to that very field.

Or if we do not raise this extreme doubt we may arrive at an intermediary kind of doubt; for if we observe the percepts we find that they change according to the position that the subject takes with respect to the object of perception. And this gives rise to a doubt whether the percepts do not depend entirely upon the percipient. And this doubt is reiterated by the fact that in perception we perceive no necessity of the existence of the object so that of no object we can say it must therefore be existing even when perceptual contact is withdrawn. But as against this we also observe that we cannot perceive things at will, and if the objects depend upon the percipient the latter would not have to labour to understand the object; there would then be no questioning, no groping, no error with respect to the objects of perception.

It may be then that the objects exist independent of the percipient; and with respect to this hypothesis also two positions can be taken. According to the first position, objects are so independent of the perceptual

conceptual activity of the percipient that there is no correspondence between them and therefore what the percipient can know of the objects is not the objects as they are, the objects-in-themselves, but only his mental ideas about the objects, the mental categories which are a priori and underived from experience although elicited through senseexperience. These categories are purely mental and entirely inapplicable to objects-inthemselves and if an attempt is made to apply these categories to objects-in-themselves we are led to antinomy and opposition. But this view can hardly be substantiated by any perceptual evidence and therefore so long as we remain on the perceptual level we cannot decide upon this view.

The second alternative position returns to the primary certainty of sense-perception with which we began; it holds the reality of the objectivity of the object and its qualities and Space and Time and maintains that our knowledge of them is determined by them and not by the mental constitution of the percipient. But in view of the uncertainty of the knowledge by sense-perception it confesses that certainty of knowledge is not

possible and that the highest that we can attain to is approximation and probability. But if objectivity is real and can be so known by the percipient, the subject, then it is reasonable to suppose that objectivity and subjectivity are not opposed to each other; and since the object presents itself before the subject and can be known only by the subject, and since the subject can know, that is to say, enter into the object — for how else can it be known? — The ultimate stuff of the two should be identical. For then only knowledge is possible. Nevertheless, if the differentiation of the subject and the object persists we may suppose that identity is not opposed to
differentiation. The subject and the object then may be regarded as essentially identical and yet each as the same Identical presenting to the other for its self-revelation.

This indeed is a speculation and as of any other so of this there is no possibility of being certain on the perceptual-conceptual level. For here on this level we have no direct experience of this essential identity of the subject and the object, their revelation as the subjective and objective faces of the One. The object does not

reveal itself to the subject: the subject has to grope and attempt a difficult and practically unsuccessful entry into the object; the subject also retains its separation from the object and uses indirect means which maintain that separation rather than unite the two. The subject and the object are thus divided from each other and so certainty of knowledge is not possible at this level. Still we can note the conditions under which alone we can attain to the definite and indubitable knowledge of the objects which we as subjects attempt to know and yet fail to know. The first condition is that I, the subject, and the object should in some way be identical, that is to say, identical in the very stuff of being; for to know the object means to know the very essence of it, the object-in-itself; and if that essence of the object is fundamentally different from me, the subject, I shall never know the object. The second condition is that although this essential identity is indispensable, there should be real, that is to say, as opposed to illusory, differentiation of the subject and the object; for unless there is this differentiation I shall never know the object as object. And yet if, and this is the third

condition, I am to know the essentiality, the peculiarity, the very differentia of this differentiation of the object from me, the subject, I should myself be capable of throwing myself into that object and becoming that object, and still at the same time not losing my subjectivity, the essentiality, the peculiarity, the very differentia of my differentiation from the object—for otherwise once again I would cease to be the subject and thus would not know the object as object.

Whether these conditions are capable of fulfilment or not is a separate question, but this much at least is clear that since these conditions are not fulfilled as yet, the present conflict between rationalism and empiricism, subjectivism and objectivism and idealism and realism adds only to the uncertainty of our knowledge and therefore no final solution is possible on any one of these conflicting lines of thought. And in this uncertain state of knowledge if we are so determined as to deny any higher possibility, we may deny it; but then it would be dogmatism.

As a matter of fact, as we rise higher new fields of knowledge open before us. For if the

reason operating on sense-perception and sense-data disturbs the simple certainty of the percept, it also arrives by liberating itself from the occupation with sense-data at the metaphysical knowledge which gives us the certainty of the concepts of pure reason. These concepts are found to be the very stuff of the pure reason and therefore are undeniable for it; pure reason exists by them and to deny them would be to deny pure reason itself.

One such concept is that of the Infinite as the underlying Reality of the universe. To reason an absolute end or an absolute beginning is self-contradictory and therefore cannot be; there can be no limit which it can assign or fix in Space and Time before which there is nothing or after which there is nothing. Not only that, reason goes farther and looking at the Movement and finding there not the Stable and Permanent which alone can be the support of this Movement, it goes beyond the categories of Space and Time and comes to conceive an Existence-in-itself, timeless and spaceless, the Infinite, the Eternal, the Absolute to which the categories of quantity, quality, relation and modality do not apply.

This Reality, this Self-existence, says the pure reason, must be; and yet in positing this the reason points to something beyond itself; something of which it is certain and yet which it cannot and does not know. And reaching this utmost limit of its operation, it returns upon itself for a critical self-examination. And it finds that it fails to know the Whole, the Perfect, the Infinite because whereas the Infinite must be or rather is — for that which must be is for the pure reason — unitary, its own movement is piecemeal; it operates through cutting and dissecting the concrete into that and what and thus misses the unity. It applies the same method to all its concepts of Space, Time, Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality and finds that these concepts also betray the same self-contradiction with which it is itself ridden. These therefore cannot be real; the Real is that which goes beyond all these, the One without the second.

And then the inevitable question arises as to how all this movement, these things of perception, these categories of thought, this division and differentiation, the entire mass of the discord and disharmony that we call our ordinary existence — how all these are

reconciled with or contained by that Transcendental unitary self-existence that is the Infinite. Is it that they are not reconciled at all? For the world of our perception and thought by its inherent disharmony and discord appears to be fundamentally and essentially different from that other harmonious and unitary Absolute Reality. But this cannot be because if Reality is Infinite nothing can be outside it; all that is must be in it or must be That itself. Shall we then say that only That exists and all else is false, that is to say, an illusion, a false perception, an error of limited consciousness? But if That alone exists how did the false perception arise? And in whom did this false perception arise? It must be in That only for nothing else exists. But then we return to the original question still unsolved. The only answer that we are forced to give is that if the facts are what they are, all the discords of the world are somehow, inexplicably, contained in the Infinite, and when so contained and viewed as such from the point of view of the Infinite the present discord ceases; and then what we get is the allharmonious, perfect, unitary and unrelational Whole, the Absolute.

same perceptual-conceptual view of it. If so, we may suppose that the insuperable difficulty is not really in the problem but in the incompleteness of our premise. And this opens out a fresh line of approach.

For it may now be argued that if in the vision of the Infinite or rather in the unitary concrete experience of the Absolute all discords cease to be, then is it not because there was in reality no discord, and all the discord that we were imposing was not in fact but only in idea relative to our finite mode of seeing and thinking? In fact it may be that the fundamental categories of world-existence are not self-contradictory and therefore not the elements of discord which have to be resolved. For if they were not essentially in harmony with the Infinite, they could not have any existence whatsoever, not even a false and perceptual existence.

But this is a speculation and as of any other which attempts to fathom into the mystery of the as yet unknown Infinite, so of this we cannot be certain. For Reason does not stand at the origin of the determination of the universe; it is itself a determination and as yet

unable to see the primary relation between the Indeterminate and the determination; there is still a veil between it and its original source; and until the two aspects of knowledge — the knowledge of the Infinite and the knowledge of the universe — meet in a supreme act of knowledge, we would be encircling in vain to relate the two entities which are very largely to our Reason two words without precise meaning.

Still we can see and note down what could be the nature of that faculty or power, if there is any such, which alone could know with certainty what reason attempts to know and yet fails to know. Firstly, it must be identical with the Infinite; for to know the Infinite is to know the essence of the Infinite, the Infiniteitself; and if that essence were different from the essence of this power or faculty which attempts to know the Infinite, it will never know the Infinite. Secondly, it must itself be identical with that principle of differentiation which is responsible for the categories of world-existence. Thirdly, the subject, the knower, himself should be identical with the Infinite and the power or faculty of perfect knowledge; for otherwise he would not know

their uniqueness and the totality of the knowledge of the Infinite and the universe; and finally, the Infinite and that faculty of perfect knowledge should be the determinant and constitutor of the knower, the subject, for otherwise they would not know the determination of the subject and thus lack of completeness of knowledge which we demand of them.

Whether there is any such faculty or not or, if in existence, whether it is possible for us to have such a faculty is a separate question; but this much is certain that if we do not admit the possibility of such a suprarational or supramental faculty we shall never be able to be certain of the relation that this world holds with the Infinite. And in the absence of this certainty even whatever certainty that we have of the metaphysical knowledge would come to be seriously doubted and challenged. For there are always two ways of obtaining knowledge, through ideation and through experience; and unless we realise in experience what we idealise, our idealising will remain almost unreal to our need for experience. Therefore our need of experience also has a kind of reason which accepts not

the reason of ideas but the reason of facts and experience: to it therefore anything which is unrealisable is a meaningless word, a nonsense. So it is possible always to question the concepts of pure reason until they are realised. Thus the rationalistic philosophy in the West which denies the possibility of our having the realisation of the Infinite has come to be challenged by Positivism according to which metaphysical concepts are meaningless and therefore metaphysics is a non-sense. Positivism therefore turns back upon pure reason and returns to the primacy of sense-experience.

This in fact represents the present and immediate crisis of the Western mind; for this reaction of the sense-mind against the higher and nobler faculties has come at a time when that high certainty which was felt with respect to physical sciences has itself come to be questioned and scientific knowledge is being gradually regarded as only probable. It is thus a movement towards uncertainty, as never before. The Western mind has therefore to decide if it wants to rise higher to new vistas of experience and knowledge or to deny or thwart the persistent instinct or intuition in

man to realise the highest.

In fact the opposition between reason and experience is fallacious. For if we examine carefully, we find that just as sense-mind needs for its operation the presentation of sensible facts, even so pure reason also needs for its operation on them the presentation of its ideas. Thus the concept of the Infinite is not the product of reason, it is the very stuff of its being; and if we go still deeper we find that there is in us the faculty of intuition which gives its first intimations to reason of the existence of the Infinite. And the foundation of intuitional knowledge is conscious or effective identity between that which knows and that which is known. The possibility therefore of our having that intuitional knowledge is already implied in the very functioning of pure reason.

On the other hand, the positivist appeal to experience and verifiability is incomplete. For in the first place, sense-experience gives us no certain knowledge, and it can at the most arrive at tolerable probabilities; this would mean that not only metaphysical knowledge but in fact even the concepts of science are

little more than non-sense. In the second place, the refusal to admit the truths of pure reason is arbitrary since it is based upon an unfounded assumption that reason and truth are entirely divorced from each other. And finally, if we are impartial enough, we have to take note of supraphysical experiences; for then it becomes possible for us to see that we can enter through the inner consciousness into subtler planes of existence and even to the highest and supreme experience of the Infinite.

Thus the movement of knowledge must rise higher into the field of spiritual experience to see if it gets there what it seeks. And indeed once again we find in the spiritual field the same kind of, though intenser and wider, certainty of the facthood and of the truth of the experience as we got in the field of senseperception. As there, so here, the experience is complete by itself and for the facthood and truth of which we have to refer to nothing outside it; as there, so here, the fact that there are spiritual experiences and that whatever is experienced is really experienced is indubitable; and whatever higher knowledge there may be and whatever corrections it may

make in the knowledge by spiritual experience, it cannot abolish the facthood or truth of spiritual experience except by ignoring them; but then such ignoring knowledge would not be the highest knowledge.

But unlike in sense-experience, in spiritual experience the subject finds its final rest and so of all search of knowledge. The experience is found to be so total and integral that the spirit and reason feel justified in regarding it as the ultimate and final destination of all knowledge. The spirit knows then that the Truth and reason supports it; and there is no possibility of moving anywhere farther.

But if we look here for the fulfilment of the conditions of integral knowledge we find that all of them are not fulfilled in any single spiritual experience; where we find the identity of the subject and the object the differentiation between the two is absent, and vice versa. And this leads to variation in knowledge and claims which conflict with each other.

There are three fundamental experiences in terms of which we can translate roughly all the multitudinous varieties of spiritual experience. The first is one in which the

Subject finds itself as the inactive Witness Self or Purusha to which an entirely alien principle of active Nature or Prakriti presents its construction of the world as Object. The ultimate difference between Subject and Object or an ultimate dualism is a position which we have met before and reason has considered it to be untenable. But now in the light of this experience which has an inherent certainty and finality about itself, reason also comes to see that its reasonings were mere constructions, perhaps sufficient within themselves but having no relevance to the ultimate facts of existence; for experience shows that there is an ultimate dualism. And thus we get a dualistic philosophy armed with its own mental logic and its appeal to intuition and experience.

The second is the experience in which the Subject, the knower, merges himself completely into the pure and indeterminable eternal existence of the Infinite beside which there is nothing else, the experience of the Immutable and unqualified Absolute, the Nirguna Brahman. And then if we ask of the universe in relation to this experience we are told that that universe is a lie, an illusion, an

existence which in fact never existed except to false vision. This again is the position which we have met before and reason has found it to be untenable. But in the light of this experience which has an inherent certainty and finality about itself, reason also comes to see that its reasonings were mere constructions and that reason being itself ridden with selfcontradiction cannot really give us the truth; it finds now that its constructions have no relevance to the fact of supreme experience. And thus we get the philosophy of Illusionistic Monism which is armed with its own mental logic and appeal to intuition and experience.

And the third is the experience in which the Subject finds in the Object, the Infinite, the true Subject of himself as well as of the universe which in turn are found to be the objective self-determinations of the Infinite, the Saguna Brahman. In this experience we find a promise of greater knowledge of the Infinite as related to the universe, but here there is a lack of the experience of the identity of the terms of knowledge which prevents us from coming to any certain knowledge about the ultimate relation of these terms. But in the light of this experience, once again, reason

comes to see that its demand for complete knowledge is presumptuous and has no relevance to the final fact of experience. And thus we get the philosophy of Qualified Monism armed with its own mental logic and appeal to intuition and experience.

Had we to meet the one and the single realisation at the end and summit of every spiritual endeavour our reason would be obliged to accept the final test and authority of that experience however much it may disappoint the expectations of reason. For then reason would recognise its limitations and submit to the supremacy of knowledge by experience. But here we find that different roads lead us to different goals, different summits, and the reason which compares these experiences remains undecided between them.

It has however been argued that essentially these spiritual experiences point to the same Reality and that so many different philosophies are only so many different ways of stating the same Truth. But this argument errs by over-simplifying and therefore explaining away the real problem. It is true

that each of these philosophies speaks of the Being or the Infinite as the content of spiritual experience; but each gives a different and opposing account and this difference and opposition is clearly meant and upheld by the originators of these philosophies themselves.

Faced with this conflict, if we are to argue with each position that the other is invalid then we are led to three alternatives, namely, either that none is valid or that one of them or two of them are valid or that each one is valid. But none of these alternatives can be proved. For to prove we must be in possession of some such knowledge whose validity is not in question. This situation therefore pushes us to a greater and higher and more certain knowledge in the light of which this conflict could be resolved. For at this level we find as yet a limitation which prevents consciousness to look beyond its present occupying experience. It may be that the spiritual experience is not the plane of ultimate experience but of the penultimate’s. And the phenomenon of opposing spiritual experiences would point to a probability that the Infinite is so complex as to combine and harmonise apparently opposing principles. Indeed there

is nothing inconceivable in the fact that that which is really Infinite should have various faces of Itself each of which can be variously experienced and yet should give in each experience the sense of perfection. For may it not be that the Infinite is the original Mystery of which what appears to the limited mind as contradictories are really its equal and complementary truths?

But this is a speculation and unless we find a substantiating experience we cannot be certain about it. For here there is still something that escapes us. We are in search of the knowledge of the Infinite and the mystery of the origin of the universe, the action of the determining power of the Infinite and the process of self-determination of the Infinite. But here on the spiritual plane when we attain to the Infinite and attain identity with it the world disappears, determinations are found to be substanceless name and forms having no reality, and the subject, the knower, also merges into the unqualified oneness of the Infinite, the Nirguna Brahman. On the other hand, when we approach the Infinite in His creative activity, the subject, the knower, can enter into a relation with Him,

embrace Him, realise his truth as a portion of Him and realise also the truth of the universe as a determination of Him, but still the identity with Him which alone can give us the complete knowledge of Him, the subject and the universe, is still denied. There is still a veil between that Nirguna Brahman and this Saguna Brahman and we do not know as yet the principle which determines this differentiation and therefore in which we can hope to arrive at the ultimate all-comprehensive knowledge.

Still we can be certain that if these spiritual experiences are valid, they must be of an Infinite which is not a blank indeterminable but which by its own power of selfdetermination determines itself into various aspects of itself. If there is the Infinite, there cannot be anything alien to itself and therefore the power of determination also must be its own power; not only that but that Power must be in essence identical with the Infinite for then only can it effect the real determinations of the Infinite. To the cognition of this Power then there would be no opposition or conflict between these various aspects of the Infinite but, on the contrary, harmony between them and even ultimate oneness. And yet, thirdly,

we have to suppose that in each of these aspects there must be independent completeness; for otherwise we would be led to the illogical position that the perfection of the Infinite is broken in its determinations.

Whether there is such a power or not is a separate question; but if there is no such power we have no explanation of the conflict of spiritual experiences, no way to bridge and synthesise the truths of these spiritual experiences; if there is no such power we have no means to attain to the indubitable knowledge of the Infinite in its relation to the universe and the knower of this universe; and finally if there is no such power we shall not attain to the indubitable knowledge of the objects of this universe which our very physical senses demand of us to have. If there is no such power we shall have no certainty of any knowledge; we are left between conflicts without any hope of issue or solution.

But already in some of the ancient records of Knowledge such as the Veda and the Upanishad we find the description of the Supreme Reality which shows that the seers of those ages had ascended to a plane of

knowledge where these opposing experiences meet and fuse so as to give a synthetic and integral knowledge. In fact in India this synthetic knowledge has always remained and even when afterwards in the Age of Reason different schools of philosophy came into existence each with its own exclusive truth, efforts were made from time to time to recombine the divided aspects into some image of the old catholicity and unity. But for the past several centuries after the age of the Acharyas there has come about a stagnancy both in spiritual as well as philosophical fields. The exclusive philosophies of the Acharyas gave rise to endless controversy and in the absence of any higher synthetic experience no further development could take place. This stagnancy represents the inner crisis of the spirit of India; for it shows that when a decisive stage was reached when different spiritual experiences coming in a direct conflict showed the necessity of rising to a still higher place of experience where the conflict could be resolved, no such effort came forth.

This crisis still continues to a large extent because although we find now developments in the spiritual and philosophical fields, the

stagnancy of the past seems to have taken such deep roots that they have not been sufficiently understood or even noticed by the general philosophical and spiritual mind of the nation.

Nevertheless a leap has been taken and a higher ascent has been made. And the complete result of this supreme effort we find in Sri Aurobindo’s revelation of the existence and effective operation of the Supermind. And if we study this concept of the Supermind we find in it the answer to all our questions that have arisen in the course of our enquiry.

In the first place, we find that on the supramental plane the different and opposing truths arrived at by different spiritual experiences are in fact not opposed to each other but are complementary aspects of the Supreme Infinite Being; they are not illusory but real determinations of the Infinite; in the supramental consciousness these aspects meet and fuse into each other. The supermind sees these truths of the Infinite, and for the creation and as a basis of creation puts them forth. But this determination does not involve the division of perfection: “An independent completeness of identity,” says Sri Aurobindo,

“with each of the primal aspects and powers— not narrowing as in the mind into a sole engrossing experience seeming to be final and integral, for that would be incompatible with the realisation of the unity of all aspects and powers of existence—is a capacity inherent in consciousness in the Infinite….But the Supermind keeps always and in every status or condition the spiritual realisation of the Unity of all.”

This explains also why perfection is experienced in any given aspect of the Infinite. In fact we may suppose that all sense of perfection of any plane of experience is due to the indivisibility of the original Perfection of the Infinite. In all determinations the Infinite remains undivided. But at the same time it becomes clear that absorption in any single experience is a sign of limitation and has to be explained in terms of the operation of the dividing act of the Mind.

There are two aspects of the Supermind which render its knowledge of the Infinite and the universe infallible. The first is the fact of its being the self-awareness of the Infinite; the second is its being the power of self-

determination which is inherent in that selfawareness. Now when we speak of the selfdetermining power of the Infinite it should be clear to us that the Reason which still borrows the contents of its ideas by analogy from the facts of sense-experience commits a fallacy when it puts the Infinite and determination in irreconcilable opposition to each other. To it determination is a division which breaks the whole and thus destroys the perfection of the whole; to it therefore determination of the whole is a self-contradictory idea and therefore something that cannot be; and if the facts of experience compel it to regard the fact of determination as something ultimate, it takes resort to ‘somehow’ and ‘inexplicability’. To the Supermind, on the contrary, determination is not a division, but a selfmanifestation of the Infinite; necessarily therefore determinations pre-exist in the Infinite and to create, that is to say, manifest them, the Infinite has not to be broken; determinations are the eternal truths of the Infinite and the Supermind brings them forth and arranges them. The determination of the Infinite therefore is not to the supramental consciousness a mystery or an inexplicable

phenomenon but a fact of direct knowledge and execution. The phenomenon is not mysterious, it is the Reality itself which is to our limited mind a Mystery. It is this mystery which Reason has to accept, not the unaccountability of the phenomenon of the Infinite creating teeming finites ad infinitum. To the supramental consciousness the Supreme is not a rigid Indeterminable, an all-negating Absolute. And this the Supermind knows because it is itself the self-awareness of the Infinite and because it is itself the selfdetermining power of the Infinite.

This being so we can now be certain of what this universe is; we can be certain that the universe is not ultimately an illusion but a real self-determination of the Infinite; it is, in other words, an objective representation of Reality to itself effected by the instrumentality of the Supermind which mediates as what Sri Aurobindo calls the Real-Idea between the Infinite and the objective self-representation. For what is contained in the Infinite is simultaneously conceived, that is to say, idealised subjectively and realised, brought forth objectively by the Supermind. Therefore nothing in the universe is a mere idea without

any substance behind it; so not only subjective idealism but also the theory which reduces our world-experience to certain universal mental categories which are regarded as having no correspondence with the objects, that is to say, the substance of the objects, is fallacious.

For ultimately the subjective and the objective are only the two sides of a single vision, and there is therefore in the supramental cognition a complete correspondence between them. The conflict therefore between subjectivism and objectivism also is fallacious. On the supramental plane we come to know with certainty the original relation of the three terms of existence, the Infinite, the universe and the individual. It becomes certain here that the individual is at once identical in essence with the Infinite and yet in manifestation a concentration of the Supreme Consciousness of the Infinite; it is thus from the point of knowledge a self-objectivisation of the Infinite so that the Infinite can look at itself from the point of view of the individual. In this relation we find the primary conditions of complete knowledge entirely fulfilled: here there is a complete mutuality and identity of the terms of knowledge. The individual can

know the Infinite for it is in fact one with the Infinite, the Object-in-itself; but this identity does not abolish the differentiation of the individual so that the two terms can be known subjectively and objectively on the basis of identity. And the same relation holds true of the individual and the universe, the subject and the object. Here again the subject and the object are in essence identical with the infinite, and therefore the subject can know the essence of the object, the object-in-itself; moreover, the object is seen as an objective differentiation proceeding from the subject itself; and therefore it is possible for the subject to throw, to project itself into the object and know the essentiality, the peculiarity, the very differentia of the differentiation of the object from the subject and yet without losing its own subjectivity, the essentiality, the peculiarity, the very differentia of the subject’s differentiation from the object.

This then is the possibility when the movement of knowledge reaches the summit of being and experience. And having reached this summit it is again possible to come down and convert our lower instruments of knowledge and to fulfill them by uniting them

with their corresponding higher terms. Thus the spiritual knowledge can be heightened into the supramental; the reason can be converted into a form of the self-luminous intuitional knowledge; and our physical senses too can be so converted as to the physical means of supramental knowledge.