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The Supramental
Yoga
ALL Yoga
done through the mind alone or through the heart or the will or the vital force
or the body ends in some one aspect of the infinite and eternal Existence and
rests satisfied there, as the mind imagines for ever. Not through these alone
shall thy Yoga move, but through all these at once and, supremely, through that
which is beyond them. And the end of thy Yoga shall be the integrality of thy
entrance not into one aspect, but into all the Infinite, all the Eternal, all
the Divine in all its aspects indivisibly unified together.
Whatever is beyond mind and life
and body is spirit. But spirit can be realised even on these lower levels, in
the spiritualised mind, in the spiritualised life-force, even in the
spiritualised physical consciousness and body. But if thou rise not up beyond
the mind-level, then in these realisations the spirit must needs be modified by
the medium through which thou attainest to it, and its supreme truth can only
be seized in a reflection, partial even in widest apparent universality, and
the utmost essential integrality will escape thy seizure.
Rise rather into the supramental
levels and then all the rest shall remain a part of thy experience, but
wonderfully changed, transfigured by a supreme alchemy of consciousness into an
element of the supramental glory. All that other Yogas can give thee, thou
shalt have, but as an experience overpassed, put in its place in the Divine
Whole and delivered from the inadequacy of an exclusive state or experience.
The Supramental Yoga is at once an
ascent towards God and a descent of Godhead into the embodied nature.
The ascent can only be achieved by a one-centred all-gathering upward
aspiration of the soul and mind and life and body; the descent can only come by
a call of the whole being towards the infinite and eternal Divine. If this call
and this aspiration are
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there, or if by any means they can be born and grow constantly and seize all
the nature, then and then only a supramental uplifting and transformation
becomes possible. ,
The call and the aspiration are only
first conditions; there must be along with them and brought by their effective
intensity an opening of all the being to the Divine and a total surrender.
This opening is a throwing wide of all the nature on all its levels and in all
its parts to receive into itself without limits the greater divine
Consciousness which is there already above and behind and englobing this mortal
half-conscious existence.
In the receiving there must be no
inability to contain, no breaking down of anything in the system, mind or life
or nerve or body under the transmuting stress. There must be an endless
receptivity, an always increasing capacity to bear an ever stronger and more
and more insistent action of the divine Force. Otherwise nothing great or
permanent can be done; the Yoga will end in a breakdown or an inert stoppage or
a stultifying or a disastrous arrest in a process which must be absolute and
integral if it is not to be a failure.
But since no human system has this endless
receptivity and unfailing capacity, the supramental Yoga can succeed only if
the Divine Force, as it descends, increases the personal power and equates the
strength that receives with the Force that enters from above to work in the
nature. This is only possible if there is on our part a progressive surrender
of the being into the hands of the Divine; there must be a complete and
never-failing assent, a willingness to let the Divine Power do with us whatever
is needed for the work that has to be done.
Man cannot by his own effort make himself
more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself
into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise
the human receptacle.
For the powers of our mind, life and body are
bound to their own limitations and, however high they may rise or however
widely expand, they cannot rise above their natural ultimate limits or expand
beyond them. But still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down
a supramental Light, Truth and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot
do. If
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mind cannot by
effort become what is beyond mind, Supermind can descend and transform mind
into its own substance.
If the Supramental
Power is allowed by man’s discerning assent and vigilant surrender to act
according to its own profound and subtle insight and flexible potency, it will
bring about slowly or swiftly a divine transformation of our fallen and
imperfect nature.
This descent, this working is
not without its possibility of calamitous fall and danger. If the human mind or
the vital desire seizes hold on the descending force and tries to use it
according to its own limited and erring ideas or flawed and egoistic impulses,
- and this is inevitable in some degree until this lower mortal has learned
something of the way of that greater immortal nature, – stumblings and
deviations, hard and seemingly insuperable obstacles and wounds and suffering
cannot be escaped and even death or utter downfall are not impossible. Only
when the conscious integral surrender to the Divine has been learned by mind
and life and body, can the way of the Yoga become easy, straight, swift and
safe.
And it must be a surrender and an
opening to the Divine alone and to no other. For it is possible for an obscure
mind or an impure life-force in us to surrender to undivine and hostile forces
and even to mistake them for the Divine. There can be no more calamitous error.
Therefore our surrender must be no blind and inert passivity to all influences
or any influence, but sincere, conscious, vigilant, pointed to the One and the
Highest alone.
Self-surrender to the divine and infinite
Mother, however difficult, remains our only effective means and our sole
abiding refuge, – self-surrender to her means that our nature must be an
instrument in her hands, the soul a child in the arms of the Mother.
This divinisation of the nature of which we speak is a metamorphosis, not a
mere growth into some kind of super-humanity, but a change from the falsehood
of our ignorant nature into the truth of God-nature. The mental or vital
demi-God, the
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Asura, Rakshasa and Pisacha, – Titan, vital giant and demon, – are superhuman
in the pitch and force and movement and in the make of their characteristic
nature, but these are not divine and these are not supremely divine, for they
live in a greater mind-power or life-power only, but they do not live in the
supreme Truth, and only the supreme Truth is divine. Only those who live in a
supreme Truth-Consciousness and embody it are inwardly made or else remade in
the Divine image.
The aim of the
supramental Yoga is to change into this supreme Truth-Consciousness, but this
truth is something beyond mind and this consciousness is far above the highest
mind- consciousness. For truth of mind is always relative, uncertain and
partial, but this greater Truth is peremptory and whole. Truth of mind is a
representation, always an inadequate, most often a misleading representation,
and even when most accurate, only a reflection, Truth’s shadow and not its
body. Mind does not live in Truth or only seeks after it and grasps at best
some threads from its robe; the Supermind lives in Truth and its native
substance, form and expression; it has not to seek after it, but possesses it
always automatically and is what it possesses. This is the very heart of the
difference.
The
change that is effected by the transition from mind to Supermind is not only a
revolution in knowledge or in our power for knowledge. If it is to be complete
and stable, it must be a divine transmutation of our will too, our emotions,
our sensations, all our power of life and its forces, in the end even of the
very substance and functioning of our body. Then only can it be said that the
Supermind is there upon earth, rooted in its very earth-substance and embodied
in. a new race of divinised creatures.
Supermind at
its highest reach is the divine Gnosis, the Wisdom-Power-Light-Bliss of God by
which the Divine knows and upholds and governs and enjoys the universe.
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