The Supermind and the Yoga of Works - Part 2

The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

Part 2                                

We must also keep in mind that the supramental change is a difficult, distant and an ultimate stage. It must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista. It can not be and must not be turned into a first aim or a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. Considerable amount of self-conquest and self-exceeding is needed in order for it to come into the view of possibility. It is achieved at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness. It should replace our ordinary view of things, natural movements and motives of life. One must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. At the next stage we have to go still deeper and discover our veiled psychic entity. Then in the light of this psychic entity and under its government we have to psychicise our inner and outer parts. We have to turn our mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul.

As a next stage we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety.  This is to be done by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. We can do it even concurrently with the earlier stage also. We need to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality. We need to dissolve the ego. We have to enter into the cosmic consciousness. Realise the self. Acquire a spiritualized and universalized mind, heart, life-force and physical consciousness. Only after passing through these processes the passage into supramental consciousness begins to become possible. Even then we have to face a difficult ascent. Each stage of this ascent is a separate arduous achievement. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated conscious evolution of the being. It can effect in a single life what in an unassisted Nature might take centuries and millenniums or many hundreds of lives. However we can not by-pass the stages necessary for the Evolution. Even the greatest rapidity and concentration of the movement cannot swallow up all the stages. It can not reverse natural process and bring the end near to the beginning. In other words, there are no short-cuts. This necessity is easily forgotten by the hasty and ignorant mind and a too eager force. They rush forward to make the Supermind an immediate aim. They expect to pull it down with a pitchfork from its highest heights in the Infinite. This is an absurd expectation. It is also full of danger. There is a danger that the vital desire may very well bring in an action of dark or vehement vital powers. They may hold out before it a promise of immediate fulfilment of its impossible longing. This is likely to result in a plunge into many kinds of self-deception. It will yield to the falsehoods and temptations of the forces of darkness, a hunt for supernormal powers. It will lead into a running away from the Divine to the Asuric nature. It will cause a fatal self-inflation into an unnatural unhuman and undivine bigness of magnified ego.

A large scale disaster out of this folly may not happen if the being is small and if the nature is weak and incapable. However it will still cause a loss of balance, mental unhinging and fall into unreason. It may also cause a vital unhinging and consequent moral aberration. It is also likely to result in a deviation into some kind of morbid abnormality of the nature. It should be particularly noted that in the Path of Integral Yoga the abnormality of any kind is not admitted. This is true even in the case of exalted abnormality. It can still not be admitted as a way to self-fulfilment or spiritual realisation. There should be no disturbance of the poise even when one enters into supernormal and supra-rational experience. The poise must be kept firm right from the summit of the consciousness to its baser levels. The experiencing consciousness must preserve a calm balance, an unfailing clarity and order in its observation. It is a sort of sublimated commonsense, It is an unfailing power of self-criticism as well as of right discrimination, co-ordination and firm vision of things. One must have an constant grasp on facts and a high spiritualized positivism. One can NOT go beyond ordinary nature into supernature by becoming irrational or infra-rational. It has to be done by passing through reason to a greater light of super-reason. This super-reason descends into reason. There it takes up into higher levels even while breaking its own limitations. At this stage the reason is not lost. It only changes and becomes its own true unlimited self. It becomes a coordinating power of the supernature. 

Based on Sri Aurobindo – Synthesis of Yoga

Pg 281 The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

30  May 2013