In our journey as human beings so long, we have committed enormous mistakes and follies, we have seen tremendous cruelties and massacres, we have seen ourselves engrossed in ignorance and dissipation, and as a consequence, we have most of the time found ourselves dwelling in darkness, with lots of sufferings and chaos and obscurity. 
But there have always been some golden linings. Men have always tried to come out of this darkness, from this animal consciousness that they inherited from evolution. They have sought for Truth and Light and Love, for liberation from the bondage of death and diseases, of division and darkness. They have endeavored to bring joy and happiness amidst all sufferings and pains.
And there has always been the golden ray of Hope for men. At least some men have always burned the incense of Aspiration for progress, for all that is True, Good and Beautiful, all that is Divine, all that is from the Supreme. There has been some progress, in spite of all regressive movements. And there has always been some Descent from the Supreme Consciousness and Being amid this humanity living in darkness.
Hence, let us collect all that is golden in our harvest so far, since the beginning of the human journey, and march towards the New Horizon. It is not that we will leave this world and go elsewhere to find another planet in search of the New World. Nor should we become sannyasins or recluses. We need not retire into some forests or mountains. We will change this world.
We can see that this world, as it is now, is in an extremely bad state of affairs. Falsehood, hatred, selfishness, corruption, greed, deception, violence, cruelty, inhumanity, and hunger for power - these appear to be the ruling forces now. All the noble Ideals or Ideas that prevailed on earth and inspired many of our noble ancients or our forefathers, have, as it were, become obsolete. Look at history and the present day earth: ideologically, and in consciousness, men seem to have become pygmies. 
We have been seeing destructions and wars throughout this earth. : In India, in USA, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and earlier, elsewhere. We are seeing terrorists and suicide-bombers. The entire human society is sitting on a heap of bombs - atomic or non-atomic. In relationships, we can no more find beauty and love and fellow feeling. In Arts and culture, vulgarity has almost replaced beauty.
In the name of religion, the people fight each other, and they are taking themselves farther away from the Divine, from spirituality.
 
Sri Aurobindo has said:
 
“The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of evolution.”
 
This earth is an evolutionary field. Evolution is the history of life’s manifestation on earth. This has been well said by Darwin. According to him, man is the consequence of this earthly evolution. But he did not proceed beyond the appearance of Homo Neanderthal. He said nothing about evolution after the appearance of man upon earth, or about the reason why man was evolved at all. His view was a scientific truth, within the material viewpoint of Science.
 
As Sri Aurobindo has said, the time has come when evolution must surpass man. Man is not the perfect being, not the complete being. But he has the aspiration and dream for becoming perfect, for becoming complete. Evolution aims at ultimately manifesting That which is the Source of this Manifestation, the Supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss (in Sanskrit and other Indian languages called Sat-Chit-Ananda or Sachchidananda), the Divine. Out of Man shall manifest the Superman. Man has to become the Base, the Instrument for the Advent of the Superman. He has to grow into the Superman. The purpose of the appearance of man must now be fulfilled, and man’s surpassing himself will do that. Man has to collaborate with the new evolution, or the evolutionary forces will ignore him and go beyond him and find out its own means.
 
 No doubt, Science and logic stand guard against falsehood, superstition and ignorance. But Science discovers and finds only a partial aspect of the Truth. Reason and logic are not the only bases of Truth. And the integral seeker of the complete Truth, a true student of Philosophy realizes this.
Sri Aurobindo has said in ‘Thoughts and Aphorisms’:
 
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.
What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind and sees.
Reason divides, fixes details and contrasts them; Wisdom unifies, marries contrasts in a single harmony.
 
In fact, the last thing or the last stage will never come, as evolution will go on eternally, forever. But man has to proceed forward ahead, surpassing his present stage of incompleteness, imperfection. He has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and surpass himself. As it has been said earlier, the Superman shall emerge out of Man. Man has to surpass all the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and newer heights of Consciousness and ascend to Gnosis, the Supramental Consciousness, and then shall emerge on earth the supramental race. This is the Truth Sri Aurobindo has brought for us. We shall have to live for this Goal, this Truth.
The Mother gave us the following message on the 1st January 1967:
 
Men, countries, continents!
The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss.
 
Let us always remember that the choice is imperative. And that is the Destiny of this Earth. We have to live for the Future, to reach this Goal.
The Mother told us also:
 
Blessed are those who take a leap towards the Future.
 
She advised us:
 
Ever remain young. Never stop striving towards Perfection.
 
Further, she also told us: 
 
Man is the creation of yesterday.
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.
 
Let us march on towards the New Horizon, find the New Light, find the New Goal and live for this New World.
 
The Mother wrote on 25 September 1914, addressing the Divine Mother:
 
The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:
A new Light shall break upon the earth.
A new world shall be born,
And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.
 
Again, much later, She wrote, as the Divine Mother personified:
 
Lord, Thou hast willed and I execute:
A new Light breaks upon the earth.
A new world is born,
And the things that were promised are fulfilled.
 
And actually, the New World is born, and we will have to bring it out physically, materially, in the real possibility.
 
You can live in either in search of pleasure and enjoyment, or otherwise for a definite purpose, which will bring you more fulfilments, more joy. The higher your purpose, the greater is the joy and fulfilment. The higher the Consciousness you aspire for, and the wider your consciousness, the more purposeful your life becomes, the greater is your joy. We may orient our endeavor, our way of life, towards limited personal happiness and satisfaction, or towards a greater and wider Joy and fulfilment, along with others, for others also, maybe with the whole of mankind, for the entire mankind, for higher values of Truth, Light, Wisdom, Beauty, Creativity, Goodness, Love, Wideness, Harmony and Peace, Total Well-being.
We can close all our doors and windows and forget the world. And the World will forget us and leave us self-imprisoned. And we can also open all our doors and windows and run into the meadow in front and look at the sunrise and listen to the music of the wind or of the birds, or see the play of the squirrels, or look at the flowers around, or smile at our fellow human beings, who have also come out of their grooves. We can attune ourselves to the world.
We may sleep in darkness or remain half-asleep in twilight, or otherwise be in joyous contemplation in moonlight or start discovering our world in sunlight. It is as we may choose.
 
Sri Aurobindo says:
 
“Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when, the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.”
 
The divine moment continues. We may say that the moment that began with Sri Aurobindo continues till the accomplishment of his work: evolution of Man beyond himself into a higher Consciousness, leading to the Advent of the Supramental Consciousness.
When the divine moment continues, should we go on sleeping? Should we continue in meaningless circles? Should we not try to contribute to the Great Work, though our portions of contributions may be small, very small?
The New Horizon


Man

This earth is a field of Evolution. Evolution is the history of life on earth. This has been well said by Darwin. According to him, man is the consequence of an evolution. But Darwin has stopped with the appearance of Homo Neanderthal. He was silent about evolution after the appearance of man on earth, or even about why man was evolved at all.  And his view was a scientific truth, limited to the epistemology of Science. Science discovers and finds the Truth. But that is only a partial aspect of the whole Truth; it does not go beyond the senses, beyond the apparent. Its bases are experiences of the senses.
Reason and logic are the bases of Truth, but they cannot be the only bases or the whole bases. An integral seeker of the complete Truth, even a true student of Philosophy, realizes this.
 
Sri Aurobindo has said in 'Thoughts and Aphorisms’:
 
There are two allied powers in man : knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the Truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping ; Wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before
that liberation, I had only knowledge.

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false
appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.  Reason divides, fixes details & contrasts them; Wisdom unifies, marries contrasts in a single harmony.
 
Science, and even commonsense, has not seen beyond the mortal imperfect Man. Is man the final word in Evolution, in the entire Manifestation?
How can something so incomplete, so imperfect, so ignorant and so incapable such as man be the last thing? Will all the Dreams and Hopes of Mankind fail? He has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and surpass himself. Out of man, the superman will have to emerge. That is the goal of this Manifestation. That is purpose and goal of the Supernature, or else men would not evolved beyond the Homo Sapiens, nor would have been there any progress in human consciousness today on earth. Man has to surpass the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend to Gnosis, the Supramental Consciousness, and bring in the supramental race on the earth scene. This is the Truth Sri Aurobindo has brought for us. We have to live for this Goal, this Truth.
Man has to transform himself. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa] have spoken of the Triple Transformation : psychic, spiritual, and then supramental.
For explaining why He adopted the term "psychic being" Sri Aurobindo has stated as follows:
The word soul is very vaguely used in English- as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.
Regarding the psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation, Sri Aurobindo has said that they are “well within our conception” ; the perfection attained in the psychic transformation and the early stages of the spiritual transformation would be “ the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings”.
 
But about the supramental transformation, he states that it “ carries us into less explored regions”. It “ initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness”.
 
He further states : “The highest of these peaks or elevated plateaus of consciousness, the supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description.” [Relevant portions from Sri Aurobindo are quoted without any abridgement or distortion.]
 
Sri Aurobindo has further stated:
 
The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.  
 
The Mother has stated :
The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.
Thus, we can see that Mind has reached the its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the supramental consciousness. This is the Truth. We should no longer remain limited within the ranges of our ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavour to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey to the New Creation taken up by the supramental consciousness. This is the Truth.
The Mother has given us a message in 1967:
 
Men, countries, continents!
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss.
 
Let us always remember that the choice is imperative.
And that is the Destiny of this earth, of mankind. Man has to reach this Goal. We have to live for this Future.
 
The Mother gave us another message:
 
Blessed are those who take a leap towards the Future.
What is this Future?
 
The Supramental Manifestation on earth is the Future. This will be through the human beings, if they cooperate. If you cooperate, you serve the Truth. Or else, the Creative Force will pass by you, ignore you, and fulfill its Goal through some other means.
 
Supermind is not a higher mind. It is a Higher Consciousness, surpassing all the stages and planes of Mind. In between our ordinary Mind and the Supermind, Sri Aurobindo speaks of four stages of Mind: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then, the Overmind.  To begin with, Overmind is the highest stage where the mental consciousness could reach till the Advent of the Supermind. It is the Plane of the gods and goddesses. It is the plane, which the several Avatars of the Supreme manifested and represented on earth. It is the Consciousness of represented by Sri Krishna on earth, according to Sri Aurobindo. These planes need be defined and described further in details, but let us have patience ; we will look into this issue on another day.
 
The Mother has also advised us:
 
Ever remain young. Never stop striving towards Perfection.
 

She has also told us:
Man is the creation of yesterday. Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.
Sri Aurobindo 1
An Introduction 1
Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872, and was an Indian nationalist, scholar, evolutionary philosopher, poet, mystic, mahayogi, and a spiritual master. His disciples and followers and many others throughout the world believe that he was an avatar, an incarnation of the Absolute, the Supreme.
Sri Aurobindo spent his life - through his vast writings and through his own development - working for the freedom of India, for finding and showing the Way to the further Evolution on earth, and to bring down the Consciousness beyond Mind, that he named the Supermind to enable such progress.
Sri Aurobindo was a philosopher par excellence, a poet par excellence, a rare and superb visionary of evolution. But that is not the complete truth about Him. Further, He has been described as the Hope of Man. And Satprem, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Mira Alfassa, has described Sri Aurobindo as the Adventure of Consciousness. He was not only an Adventurer of Consciousness, but Himself the Adventure. Yes, He was an Explorer of Consciousness, and further, He was also the builder of the New World, basing on the New and a Higher Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, a much higher level of Consciousness, which was hitherto unmanifest, and which is discovered by Him. And He has shown us the Way, the Integral Way to the New Realisation, not of realising the Divine Consciousness and merging into It, transcending and leaving the Manifestation, the World and the Universe, forgetting the mankind and its past and present and future. He did not teach us to have Nirvana, or Moksha, or of reaching the Heaven and staying there forever hereafter. He did not ask us to return to the Source, to the Origin. He has given us a Way to discover and manifest and realise our own possibilities, our human and also our superhuman and divine possibilities, step by step. He tells us about transforming our individual existence and also the world, breaking all our personal and egoistic limits, becoming one with our earth, as vast as our earth. To divinise and supramentalise the world was ans is the Task he performed and asked us to perform.
As a philosopher, we find Him to be at the topmost level of Consciousness, denying none of the philosophical truths reached by the earlier philosophers, but by accepting and transcending and integrating them all in a new synthesis into one whole Truth.
As a poet, he shows us the Way to the Future Poetry, and His Poems were expressions of the Truth, which He saw and realised and lived, and which creations of highers planes of mind and Consciousness.
The Mother has said :
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation ; it is a decisive action, direct from the Supreme.
  
What is this Action from the Supreme? We may try to have some understanding of the Supreme and His Will and His Action.
The Infinite and One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the Ultimate Reality, whom we name as the Brahman, the Divine, the Supreme, God etc. He has three aspects, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual.
In the Transcendental mode, He is above all manifestation, above all the Universes, all the worlds. He is the Supreme Divine, the One, Indivisible, Infinite, Pure, and bears the eternal consciousness in Him, above all Time and Space.
The Supreme Divine is the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, as is told. He is, He is Existence, eternal existence, and can even become Non-Existence, beyond the apprehension of any manifested existence.   

In the Universal mode, He is one with the Universes, though above them and is their Creator. He is One who is the Manifestation, who is manifested, and He is the One who manifests. It is His Will that is manifested. The entire Manifestation is He, and it is His Leela, Play. He is both beyond it, and within it, and in each atom, each living being.
And He is also the Individual, Personal God. All the Avatars are but His Individual Manifestations.

The Supreme is with His Creative Force, the Mahashakti, whom we call the Divine Mother. They are One and Indivisible, and yet They are Two in Manifestation and even above Manifestation.

It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said, in limited human parlance, that He thought: “Ekoham, bahu syama.” [ I am alone, and shall become many.]  And the Existence-Consciousness became many, countless many, and each of the many is a Soul.
However, there was no Time, when Souls were created. They are eternal aspects of the Eternal Supreme. There was and is no time, when the Souls were not there, or when the Souls will no more be.
A soul, or the atman in Sanskrit, is a part and portion of the Supreme Consciousness, the Divine - a part who is one with the Whole, who can be the Whole also, who can unite with the Whole. In all living beings, there is a soul, who resides in the background, not easily known or realized. The soul presides over the living being, but somewhat inactively, in the background. The Soul does not generally participate in the Evolution.
In the Evolution from the animals to the human beings there has been generally no active role of the Soul, though the Divine Will was ever active. The Divine Will is the Source of the Action
A human existence is a part and portion of the Pure Existence, conditioned by all the inconscience (unconsciousness) and half-consciousness of our earthly and physical surroundings. Inconscience belongs to Matter. Or it seems inconscient to the half-awakened human being. Half-consciousness belongs to the animal world, the world of the vital consciousness, as per the definition given by Sri Aurobindo.
However, Man is not only an animal. He contains in him the Divine possibility. As is generally accepted by many of the philosophical and spiritual thinkers, all living beings have a soul. 
In Man, there is an active part or aspect of the Soul, which is termed by Sri Aurobindo as the Psychic Being, which participates in the Evolution of Man, in the onward journey of the human being on the Path of Evolution into the higher beings, the supramental beings, towards the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness, the next phase of the Evolution. The Psychic is not present in any other living beings, as there is no such evolutionary necessity.
Sri Aurobindo adopted the term “psychic being” for the word soul is vaguely used:
The word soul is very vaguely used in English- as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.
The Presence of the psychic being in man is the Promise that one day a new and higher Divine race shall emerge on earth and shall form the crown of the Evolution, shall be the apex of the Manifestation. The psychic being is a special term and it should not be confused with the other uses of the word in general.
In spite of the Presence of the psychic being, human beings are in general not yet conscious of his Goal, of his higher possibilities, of the Higher Existence on earth.
But there are persons, who are becoming conscious, maybe in an imperfect way, incomplete way, but they are being conscious, growing towards the New Becoming.
In the onward progression of Evolution, Time has now arrived, when Man has to transcend himself and further the Evolution in manifesting the Supreme Himself, as per the Will of the Supreme.
Man dwells only superficially in the Mind, mainly as a mental animal, not always a rational animal. But he is generally in the lowest rung of the mental principle, covered by some grossness, some darkness, some ignorance, more or less to a great extent.
Time has come that the scene and the situation has to be changed, uplifted, and man has to be established in his divine consciousness, with his divine possibilities. That is the Reason why Sri Aurobindo was / is here - on earth.
Sri Aurobindo has began the journey to the New World, for the entire mankind, scrapping all religions, all sectarianism, all divisions, all differences. Not theoretically, but in action, by discovering and ascending to the Supermind, by preparing for the Descent of the Supermind on earth, for the well-being and progress of the humanity. For this Descent, in the Course of this Descent, He sacrificed His own body on the Day of His physical withdrawal, on 5th December 1950.
 

The Mother met Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914.
The next day, on 30th March, She wrote :
Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certiude.
It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth ; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overwhelms with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.
My adoration is beyond all words, and my reverence is silent.
 
This prayer of the Mother is self-explanatory. It shows what She saw in Sri Aurobindo. Inspite of the fact thousands of beings are ‘in the densest ignorance', it matters little, as Sri Aurobindo was there on earth. When such a Being as Sri Aurobindo is / was on earth, Darkness will cease to be and will be transmuted into Light, and the Divine reign shall be there on earth. To Her, He was the Hope of Man. Through Him, the Divine has assured the world, the earth, that it shall be tranformed, and and the dream for a better, happier, diviner world shall be fulfilled.
  
During the period from 1905 to 1910, He became a leader of the Indian nationalist movement, and His younger brother Barin was diectly involved with the extremist activities of the group, known as Jugantar, an underground revolutionary organisation. Sri Aurobindo was one of the founders of the said organisation. During the period, He was also the editor of a nationalist Bengali newspaper Vande Mataram and, consequently, came into frequent confrontation with the British administration. In 1907, he was already regarded as the new leader of the Indian nationalist movement.
Sri Aurobindo was arrested on 2nd May 1908 in connection with the trial of Alipore Bomb Case. And He was acquitted on 5th May1909.For one full year He was in prison.
When there was the partition of Bengal in 1908,  it sparked an outburst of public anger against the British administration. It caused civil unrest, and a nationalist campaign was carried out by several groups of revolutionaries, led by Sri Aurobindo and others. The British took hard steps to incapacitate and render ineffective the activists and the consequences led to an event on April 30, 1908, as two revolutionary disciples, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford, a judge ill-famed for passing harsh sentences particularly against nationalists. However, the bomb thrown by them missed its target and instead landed in a horse carriage carrying two British women and  killed them.
The local police immediately raided a place owned by Sri Aurobindo where His younger brother Barin, along with many other activists, was imparting training to the revolutionaries. Sri Aurobindo was Himself arrested on charges of planning and supervising the attack and was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore for one full year. After an intense search, Khudiram Bose was arrested, but Prafulla Chaki shot himself, instead of falling into the hands of the police. The trial soon began. Khudiram Bose was hanged to death. Barin was also awarded the capital punishment, but on appeal, it was changed to life imprisonment.
During the trial, Chittaranjan Das, the Advocate for Sri Aurobindo, uttered the following sentences, which proved to be a prophetic speech :
My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History…
Sri Aurobindo was acquitted in 1909.
But still, the British Police were after Him. 
Sri Aurobindo then arrived at the then French colony at Pondicherry on 4th April 1910. Thus began a New Era for Him, and a New Era for the mankind, for theWorld.
Never did He leave Pondicherry again.
 
During the Birth Centenary of Sri Aurobindo in 1972, The Mother gave us the following Message:
Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.
Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.
There are other messages on Sri Aurobindo, given at that time by the Mother. One of the messages is also given below:
Man is the creation of yesterday.    
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.
And yet another, written on 1 January 1972:
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to a country but to the whole earth.  His teaching leads us towards a better future.
On 30 January 1972, she further told us:
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavor to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.
  
I have quoted The Mother, as She knew and understood Sri Aurobindo the best and in the most perfect way. More than half a century has passed away after Sri Aurobindo's departure, and yet His Life has still not touched the understanding of the great mass of humanity, and His message is not yet listened to by this mass. To some, He is just a saint from India, though His Touch, in consciousness, has created many saints, or better, many spiritual men, throughout the world. They are the spiritual people, without the guise of the saints or mahatmas.
Sri Aurobindo did not come to be known as a saint or a guru or a spiritual man. He came to announce “the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.” He was an Avatar, an emanation of the Divine, and He came with the special purpose of discovery of the Supramental Consciousness beyond the mental plane, of descent of the Supermind in His body, so that other people may follow His footsteps and further the achievement of the cause Descent of the Supermind on earth and of consequent manifestation of the supramental world on earth, the coming of the supramental beings on earth.
[Continued]
Barin
12-06-2006

What Sri Aurobindo represents III         
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death and the death of Ignorance.
 
                                    Sri Aurobindo : Savitri
 
 
The Mother [Mira Alfassa] said on 30th January 1972 :
 
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.
Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive.
 
 
It has already been stated that Sri Aurobindo has told us about the various planes of mind and about the Supermind and the Descent of Supermind on earth and of the Advent of the Supramental race on earth. 
 
The human race is born into a world of ignorance and inconscience but is also capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and of an ascent into the light and force and bliss of a spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature. The question now is about the consequence of this descent of Supermind into the earthly existence about for the mankind. The descent into the earthly existence of this supremely creative being and consciousness and power that the Supermind is will not only be a new feature or factor added to the human life and existence, or be put in its front, but it will also have consequences of importance deeply affecting the rest of earth-nature. Though the entire humanity, or even a major portion of the humanity in its present state of existence, may not have a transmutative emergence and rise into the New Race, the Supramental Consciousness and Force will definitely and surely exercise a great influence on mankind as a whole, even a radical change in its existence here on earth. The influence and the change it will bring would be far-reaching and even tremendous. It is not only that the Supermind will be established and a supramental race of beings will be manifested upon the earth, it will also bring about an elevating and transformative change in Mind itself and, inevitably in the consciousness of man, the mental being, and will also equally bring about a radical transformation in the principles and ways of his living, in the ways of his action and in the entire make-up and sense and music of his life and his physique. The access to the supramental consciousness and the supramental life will be open to man, because by such a transformation a race of supramental beings would be created. In the same way, the human race itself has come into being through a considerable elevation and expansion of consciousness and a change in the use of the body and through the evolution of the inherent mental and spiritual abilities and powers out of the animal. The human mind is a principle of an original ignorance that searches for knowledge but arrives only at a partial knowledge. The human mind is the indweller of “a half-way twilight” and it serves and helps of ignorance and it brings for us a combination of truth and error. The effect of the Supramental descent may, even without or before a complete transformation of the mind and the human existence turn the mind into “a power of light, of knowledge finding itself.” As Sri Aurobindo has said, the human mind may even become in man “a subordinate, limited and special action of the Supermind, a sufficiently luminous receptacle of truth”, as it is so in its origin. And all falsity in its action may cease to be.

The descent of Supermind, of the supreme creative Truth-Power, in the earth-nature, may bring a change in the law of evolution, its method and its arrangement: the principle of evolution through knowledge may enter into the forces of the material universe to a large extent.
 
The evolution now is wholly an evolution in Ignorance. It begins from “the complete nescience of the Inconscient” and proceeds towards only a lesser ignorance, even in the highest attainment of knowledge by mind. It is so, because mental knowledge is only a representation, not a direct knowledge.
 
When there is the descent of the Supermind, man will then begin to develop the powers and means of a higher knowledge. Even the developing animal may open its mentality to “beginnings of conscious thought and even a rudimentary reason,” and even the plant may develop its “first subconscient reactions” and attain some primary nervous sensitiveness. Even Matter, which is but a blind form of the Spirit, may become more alive with its inherent hidden power and may offer more readily to the new human intelligence, influenced by the Supermind, the secret sense of things, the occult realities it covers, for example, “the record of the past” always preserved in its dumb inconscience, or the working of its involved forces and invisible movements which reveal veiled powers in material nature. This would be a great change promising greater changes in the future. And it would mean only an uplifting of the universal order, and not a disturbance. “Evolution would itself evolve,” says Sri Aurobindo, but it would not stumble or be disturbed.
 
We have experienced the human mentality in a world which starts from inconscience and proceeds through an almost complete nescience and a slowly lessening ignorance towards a high degree of knowledge. But this is still a partially equipped knowledge and has always an incomplete scope and imperfect method, which does not serve fully the needs of a consciousness always pushing towards the goal of its own still distant absolute. This creates our notion about mind.
 
In the present stage of its evolution on earth, we see the imperfections and limitations of mind and accept them to be the part of its very nature. But in fact its present boundaries are only its temporary limits and measures of its still incomplete evolutionary progress. The shortcomings its of methods and means are there because it is still immature, and they are not there because of its constitution. MIND has definitely evolved much from the state of mind of the CAVEMEN, of the stage of the Homo Sapiens and the Homo Neanderthals. And MIND will definitely evolve further in the time to come, even before its being supramentalised.
 
In its evolution, the mental being has chosen to take the burden of the physical body and as well the vital consciousness, which have created conditions of great difficulties for the mind, and when compared to these difficulties, its achievement may seem to be great. But in comparison to its great possibilities, its achievement is far below the expectation. And indeed an illumined future is possible for Mind.
 
Because mind originally is a principle of light, an instrument put forth from the Supermind and is not “in its very nature an inventor of errors, a father of lies bound down to a capacity of falsehood, wedded to its own mistakes and the leader of a stumbling life”[Sri Aurobindo]. though at present it seems it to be so. Though now it works within limits and even creates limits, these limits are luminous borders for a special work by Nature, voluntary bounds with a special purpose, “a surface of the finite ever extending itself under the eye of infinity”[Sri Aurobindo]. This character of Mind will reveal itself when touched by Supermind and human mind will then grow into some minor instrument of the supramental knowledge. Possibly, the mind will no longer be limited by the intellect and will be capable of a mental gnosis, which will be a luminous but diminished reproduction of the Truth, it will extend the power of the Light not only to its own consciousness but to that of the lower levels,  when Man will ascend towards self-transcendence. All the Higher levels of Mind, from Overmind to Higher Mind will be able to reflect some of their powers in the ascending human mind and the purified and exalted feeling and vital force and action and thereby prepare the Ascent.
 
This is essentially the change which will be the result of the new evolutionary order, consequent of the descent of Supermind on earth, of the advent of Supermind into the earth-nature. We have earlier seen that this Descent has already occurred on earth on the 29th February 1956, as declared by the Mother.

Mind has its origin in Supermind and is itself a power of Supermind. It is a principle of Light and a power of Light and a force for a Knowledge specially active for a special purpose. But it assumes a different aspect in working out this purpose and separates itself more and more from the supramental light, from the power and illumination of the supramental principle. In this departure of Mind in this direction from its own highest truth, it becomes a creator of ignorance and appears to be the highest power in a world of ignorance. Subjected to ignorance, Mind seems only to arrive at a partial and imperfect knowledge. This decline is there, because Mind is used by the Supermind mainly for bringing the necessary differentiation, so that there is a creation, a universe. In Supermind, in all its creation there is this differentiating power, “the manifestation of the One in the Many and the Many in the One; but the One is never forgotten or lost in its multiplicity” and multiplicity “never takes precedence over the eternal oneness”[Sri Aurobindo]. However, in Mind, the differentiation, the multiplicity does take precedence, and the sense of the universal oneness is lost. The separated unit appears to exist for itself and by itself, and forgets the True Origin.
 
However, the plane of mind need not be a world of ignorance where falsity, error or nescience must have a place. It may be only a voluntary self-limitation of knowledge.
“It could be a world where all possibilities capable of being determined by mind could manifest themselves in the successions of Time and find a true form and field of their action, the expressive figure of themselves, their capacity of self-development, self-realization of a kind, self-discovery.” [Sri Aurobindo]
 
In psychic experience the line of descent is found by which the involution takes place and ends in Matter and the creation of the material universe. However, in the psychic experience, what is found is an original inconscience where life and mind and spirit struggle to evolve out of the material inconscience and ignorance to find themselves and grow towards “their full capacity and highest existence”[Sri Aurobindo]. If mind is successful in that endeavour, it can also find back its true character and once more become a principle and power of Light and even help in the working of a true and complete knowledge. At its highest, it may transcend into the supramental truth and become a part and function of the supramental knowledge, and in the lower degree below Supermind it may grow a mental gnosis, a spiritual perception, feeling, activity, sense which serve knowledge and not ignorance. It can be an increasingly luminous way leading from light to light, from truth to truth, no longer circling in “the mazes of half-truth and half-nescience” [Sri Aurobindo]. This is not possible, where mind is not transformed, as it now is, as is still be the leader and the highest achievement of the evolution. But when Supermind descends on earth and is the leading and dominant power here, this will certainly and inevitably happen.

 
 
In this connection the Mother has further said:
A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being.
Open yourself to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.
To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.
The Mother has also given us a simple but essential and indispensable advice:
To leap into the new consciousness, the first condition is a mental modesty sufficient to be convinced that all one thinks one knows is nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned.
All that one has learned externally must be only a foothold enabling one to rise towards higher knowledge.

Ref: The Supramental Manifestation on Earth by Sri Aurobindo.
[Continued]
Barin
29-08-2006

Supermind1
 
We, the human beings, are born in ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, out of ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, and are bearing and carrying in us the same ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness. Did the first Homo Neanderthal [1] , or rather the first group of Homo Neanderthals, ever had the capacity or the possibility of even dreaming of the present day world, or even the world of the times of the Vedas, or of the age when there was the Buddha on earth, or even when Jesus was traveling and walking on this earth, of dreaming and imagining that some Newton or Einstein or Hawkins, some Shakespeare or Shaw or Tagore, some Sri Ramkrishna or Swami Vivekananda, one Sri Aurobindo or Mira Alfassa would be born in this race?
 
That was and is the story of the human evolution — from the first group of Homo Neanderthal to the first Persons who realized and touched the Supramental Consciousness : Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa].
It was surely the Divine Intervention on earth that there was the appearance of the first group of Homo Neanderthals. Amid all ignorance and darkness and amid all animal and vital activities, the first group of rebels of the Light appeared. They wanted to break the chains, wanted to surpass the animal limits and habits, the animal way of instinctive but subjugated life. They started to stand erect and started using Mind, though initially in a small, rudimentary and limited degree. They started walking, talking, laughing, thinking though in a crude way. They began the human world — a world of Hope, of Aspiration, of Struggle against darkness and divisions and death, against Inconscience and Ignorance and Incapacity.    
Sri Aurobindo said that this race, though “born into a world of ignorance and inconscience,” was “capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and an ascent into the light and power and bliss of a spiritual being and spiritual nature.”  
That was a moment, when the first group of Homo Neanderthals appeared — a step towards the Future, at that point of Time, as early as 350,000 years ago.
Now, we have Sri Aurobindo, the Hope of Man, who has promised us of the New World, the New Horizon, and not only that, he has also taken, along with The Mother [Mira Alfassa], the First Steps towards the Next Future, the Illumined Future.
 
***
The Mother said : What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation ; it is a decisive action, direct from the Supreme.
During the Birth Centenary of Sri Aurobindo in 1972, The Mother gave us the following Message:
“Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.
“Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.”
The Mother gave us also other messages on Sri Aurobindo at that time, one of which I am quoting below:
“Man is the creation of yesterday.”
“Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.”
On 30 January 1972, she further told us:
“Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavor to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.”
***
Supermind is not a higher type of Mind. It is not a more perfect mind. Every student of Sri Aurobindo knows it.
 
According to Sri Aurobindo, Mind is a “half-lit and diminished principle.” Generally, the word ‘Mind’ is used to mean the general and ordinary mental consciousness, including the vital and emotional aspects. The vital and emotional aspects of our consciousness, all our passions, cravings, hungers, sentiments etc belong to the vital being or the principle of Life in us, as per the definition given by Sri Aurobindo.

The vital being or Life is different from Mind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo. Even our higher emotions, love, sympathy, patriotism, — all of them — belong to the vital being, but the higher vital being. When we mention of the heart, not the physical one, but the emotional center, we then refer to the inner higher vital.
Mind generally refers to the principle of reason and logic, intelligence, memory, will, thinking, understanding etc. This is the “half-lit and diminished principle of mind.” However, Mind is also used in a higher and wider sense. In the wider sense, it refers to the higher ranges starting from the Higher Mind to the Overmind. Of course these ranges exclude Supermind.

As I have stated, Supermind is not a higher mind. It is a Higher Consciousness, transcending all the stages and planes of Mind. In between the ordinary Mind and the principle of Supermind, according to Sri Aurobindo , there are four stages of Mind: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then, the Overmind.

To begin with, Overmind is the highest stage where the mental consciousness could reach, till the Manifestation of the Supermind. It is the Plane of the gods and goddesses, wherefrom several Avatars of the Supreme manifested and represented Him on earth. It is the Consciousness which was represented by Sri Krishna on earth, according to Sri Aurobindo.

As Sri Aurobindo has stated, the Higher Mind is the first of the supra-rational levels or planes or grades of existence and consciousness, the first level of “Spiritual Mind”. It is an evolutionary stage beyond the rational mind. It is an ascent to a plane above the level of pure thinking mind, and there can be a descent also from this plane.

Above the Higher Mind, there is a further and even more powerful and revelatory supra-rational level or plane of existence and consciousness, which is called the Illumined Mind. The Higher Mind prepares an integration of the being into a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual Light. Here, in place of the clear spiritual intelligence and the tranquil daylight of the Higher Mind, one finds “an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit.” And the characteristic action of ‘the larger conceptual-spiritual principle’ adds a fiery ardour of realization and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge to the consciousness. The Higher Mind has the characteristic of the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace, whereas the Illumined Mind has the feature of a play of lightnings of  of spiritual truth and power breaking from above into the consciousness.

About the Intuitive Mind, Sri Aurobindo has said:  
“Intuition is above the illumined Mind which is simply the higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration. … The Intuition is the first plane in which there is a real opening to the full possibility of realization - it is through it that one goes farther - first to Overmind and then to Supermind.”

Of course,there are mental, vital, subtle physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined Mind, and even from the Overmind, as stated by Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo speaks of seven major planes of existence. He also suggests that between Mind and Supermind, or lower (finite, limited, ignorant) and higher (infinite, divine, perfect) creation, there is an important transitional or intermediate reality, which He calls the Overmind.

“At the source of …Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, – not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.”
[The Life Divine, p.278]

The Overmind is the plane of the great Gods, the individualized expression of the unitary Supramental Truth. These powers oversee the phenomenal world. It is the level where multiplicity first appears, and indeed is the principle that originally causes multiplicity.
“Overmind Energy (has the)…capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral…all-comprehending Unity (of the Supermind). It takes each aspect or power and gives it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance…” [The Life Divine, p.279]

Thus multiplicity emerges from Unity; the Archetypes emerge from the Unmanifest Absolute. Here we have the distinction between the Unmanifest and the Manifest Absolute or Godhead.
 
***
From Overmind, the next Ascension in the spiritual journey, is to Supermind.
It is the Ascent to Supermind and the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth makes the Next Evolution possible.
Sri Aurobindo has said:
“The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.” 
Thus, as we have seen, Supermind is a principle which is out of reach of the common ordinary mind. But when Man reaches the higher regions of mind, namely the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then the Overmind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo, when Man reaches there, he can have the glimpses and the touch of Supermind. It may be very difficult, even appear to be impossible. But when the Supramental Consciousness is present on earth, things will be easier, much easier.
And now the Supermind is on earth, actively present on earth. I am quoting the oft-quoted message of the Mother from MOTHER’S AGENDA Vol.1:
FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION
(During the common meditation on Wednesday
The 29th February 1956)
This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the door, I knew and willed in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come’, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
And then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.
***
The Mother has said in this regard:
“The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.”
Thus, we can see that Mind has reached the its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the supramental consciousness. This is the Truth. We should no longer remain limited within the ranges of our ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavor to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey to the New Creation taken up by the supramental consciousness.
[Continued]
 
 HYPERLINK "http://barin.zaadz.com/blog" Barindranath Chaki
05-11-2006
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