Chapter XXVIII: Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya – Synopsis – II

Overmind Vs Evolutionary Mind (Para – 10)

• The poise of consciousness assumed in Man is mental consciousness which sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense admitting only partial truths.
• Overmind consciousness is global in its perception. It can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences and yet it can reconcile them together. Our mind cannot reconcile opposing truths like, for example,the Personal Divine and the Impersonal Divine.
• Mind takes up one idea exclusively and centres all its conclusions around that one idea. It fixes itself on one Truth and excludes all others. For example, our mind fixes itself on Matter or Life-Force or Mind or Spirit exclusively on one aspect.
• On the contrary Overmind perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle on which it is based. Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit and thus, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to be a manifestation of Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation.

Overmind is creator of Truths not illusions (Para 11)

• In the Overmental plane though there are multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentialities of the Divine Reality there is simultaneous development of each of them. In this plane there is no chaos and conflict; there is no deviation from Truth or Knowledge.
• Overmind creates truths, not illusions or falsehoods. Overmental energisms works out the truth of the many facets of the Divine Reality. Here there is no exclusiveness of each truth; there is no asserting of each truth being the sole truth of being and considering the others inferior truths. Each God, each idea, each force, delight of each separate existence admits the other.

Overmind as inferior Supermind

• Unlike the Supermind, Overmind is predominantly not concerned with the absolutes but concerned with the dynamic potentials of the independent aspects or pragmatic truths of Reality.
• The essential unity is grasped by Overmind and felt to be the basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation. But unlike in Supermind, this essential unity is no longer their intimate and ever-present secret and is not their dominating continent. Yet we can call the Overmind as a sort of inferior Supermind.

Mental view of things Vs Overmental view of things (Para 12)

• Overmental Consciousness is global. Our mental consciousness is separative and only imperfectly synthetic. For example, to the Overmind all religions would be true as developments of the one eternal religion. All philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own universe-view from its own angle. All political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea Force. Each Idea Force has its right to application and practical development in the play of energies of Nature.
• In our mental consciousness these different religions, differing philosophies, political theories exist as opposites. Each claims to be the truth and taxes (accuses) the others with error and falsehood. What we perceive as Truth in our mind is nothing but a rigid affirmation and we reject any other affirmation as false because it is different and deeply rooted in other limits.
• Our Mind can make selective harmonies but it cannot arrive at the harmony established as a result of a true totality.

Why is our Mind ignorant? – The Inevitable descent (Para 13)

• Overmind is the original cosmic Maya – the power that made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. In Overmind the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence. This is the inevitable descent because the consciousness once it admits the separative principle plunges into material Inconscience by obscuring and infinitesimal fragmentation.

Emergence from Inconscience, Struggle & Harmony

• The Consciousness which had plunged into material Inconscience makes a slow and difficult emergence. Each idea, force, separate consciousness, living being by the very necessity of its ignorance enters into collision with others. Each tries to live and grow and fulfil itself by independent self-assertion and not by harmony with the rest of existence. Yet the underlying Oneness compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of interdependence.

Evolution of concealed powers and opening to higher ranges

• Only by the evolution of the concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth in us and the Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for can be dynamically realised. To make this happen, the higher ranges of spiritual Mind(Overmind) have to open upon our being and consciousness and also that which is beyond even the spiritual Mind i.e. the Supermind must appear in us.

Opaque Line dividing the Cosmic Truth & the Cosmic Ignorance (Para 14)

• Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance. It is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force to divide Mind from the overmental source by an exclusive concentration and separation of each movement.
• In a similar separation of Overmind from Supermind there is a luminous kinship maintained between the two which was made possible by a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission from the Supermind to the Overmind. But the veil separating the Overmind and the Mind is opaque making the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind occult and obscure.
• Mind, separated from Overmind, acts as if it were an independent principle. If it communicates or combines with or contacts others, it is done as independent units joining to form a separated constructed whole not done with the catholic universality of the Overmind movement. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance.

Cosmic Mind is not yet a plane of falsehood & error (Para 15)

• The cosmic Mind is a field of cosmic ignorance. It comprehends its own unity at this level but it is unaware that its own source and foundation is in the Spirit. It works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source (Supermind) from which it receives it.
• The Cosmic Mind though separated from the Overmental source still has a larger power of communication and mutuality. The exclusive concentration to the point of ignorance of other minds is not yet found at this level. It is a plane of Ignorance but it is not yet a plane of falsehood and error. In the conscient stages of involution there are no illusions or mixture of truth and falsehood.

Evolution from Inconscience necessitates error

• But by an exclusive concentration on Force and Form, Consciousness-Force seems phenomenally (in real world) to separate Consciousness from Force; or the consciousness is absorbed in a blind sleep lost in Form and Force. The Consciousness has to struggle back to itself by a fragmentary evolution which necessitates error and makes falsehood inevitable. They are the unavoidable truths of a world born out of Inconscience.

Results of the fall & results of the rise

• Existence plunging into an apparent Non-Existence, Consciousness plunging into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of existence plunging into a vast cosmic insensibility are the first results of the fall. In the process of recovery, the Consciousness in its evolution, renders itself into the dual terms of truth and falsehood, knowledge and error, the Existence renders itself into the dual terms of life and death, the Delight of existence renders itself into the dual terms of pain and pleasure.

Pure experience of Sat-chit-ananda would be a contradiction

• In our lower triple world, there is the Overmind law of each force working out its own possibilities. Here all beings in the evolution are not passively responsive to the psychic element within them or to the Supermind underlying Nature’s operations. Therefore, a pure experience of Truth, Knowledge, Delight, imperishable existence would be in this world a contradiction of the truth of things.
• The following are the inevitable first-imprinted characters though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence:
  – emergence of Forces of Darkness. These forces are driven to maintain the Ignorance by which they live.
  – an ignorant struggle to know which can create falsehood and error.
  – an ignorant struggle to live causing wrong and evil.
  – An egoistic struggle to enjoy which causes fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings.
  
  
• The Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience is a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility is a masked and dormant Ananda. Therefore, these secret realities must emerge. In this the hidden Overmind and Supermind also must fulfil themselves in the end.

Emergence of Divine Principles (Para 16)

• The emergence of Divine principles can be achieved with ease by two things. One, the Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself especially the plane of Intuition. Intuition in penetrative lightning flashes lights up the stretches of the dark regions in our consciousness. This can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our understanding.
• In order to make ourselves more receptive to such interventions from above we still have to begin to enlarge ourselves, aligning ourselves with the higher ranges.
• The higher principles of Overmind, Intuition and Supermind are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. Their action is concealed behind them.
• As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too from Life and Mind these greater powers of the concealed Godhead (Overmental and Supramental powers) must emerge from the involution. Their supreme Light must descend into us from above. This is the second thing that would facilitate the emergence of Divine Powers.
• As a high result and as a ransom of our present life in the Ignorance, manifestation of a divine Life is not only possible but it is the inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature’s evolutionary endeavour.

                                                                    END OF BOOK ONE