He does not say anything about the instrument-aspect

Re: Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies

by RY Deshpande on Thu 14 Dec 2006 07:27 PM PST Profile Permanent Link

In the Supermind both the comprehensive and apprehensive aspects are together, the subjective and the objective without any cleavage. If one stands out in a certain case, the other is also present with it. The separation starts appearing down below, with the Overmind, “Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity”.

Perhaps from there downward we begin to have the other twelve faculties the Upanishad lists. Sri Aurobindo describes four spiritual planes—Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, and the Higher Mind. We have their elaborate descriptions in The Life Divine and also in Savitri Book Ten Canto Four. But he does not say anything about the instrument-aspect, how finally they become the physical instruments, such as the eye, ear, etc. Maybe with a closer look we could find correspondences of the Upanishadic terms with what is given by Sri Aurobindo.

In one place in The Life Divine, (pp. 329-30) Sri Aurobindo talks of the supramental reason also. “…the being and action of the Infinite must not be… regarded as if it were a magic void of all reason; there is, on the contrary, a greater reason in all the operations of the Infinite..."

And again: The Life Divine, pp. 945-46. A consciousness that proceeds by sight, the consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker...