Invisible seeds of the new world were perhaps sown at that time

Re: 13: Nature a Conscious Front of God by RY Deshpande on Mon 04 Jun 2007 05:50 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link The Supramental Time Vision, trikāladŗşţi, in the Yoga of Self-Perfection

Vijnana Chatusthaya consists of Jnana, Trikaladrishti, Ashtasiddhi, and Samadhi as its four elements. Sri Aurobindo has presented the first two in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, in part IV of The Synthesis of Yoga when it was serialised in the Arya. But as the publication of the monthly ceased in January 1921, the last two remained uncovered. It is obvious that Sri Aurobindo intended to write about these two elements also, as can be observed from the opening passage he had already drafted around that time; in fact he wanted to revise the entire part at a later stage, but it didn’t happen.

In any case, these first two elements, Knowledge and the Supramental Time Vision themselves give us some great idea about the kind of possibilities that exist in their vast luminous extent. Thus the transition from mind to supermind entails two features: in it is the scope and reach of acquiring a superior instrument of thought and knowledge; but, and more importantly, it effects the conversion of the whole consciousness, opening it more and more to the supramental. In it is also born the supramental thought, will, sense, feeling. The working of these faculties begins with the mind, mind proceeding to the formation of the luminous mind, it eventually becoming wholly intuitivised.

The final stage of the change comes “when the supermind occupies and supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinct with its powers. Man then becomes wholly the superman.” Obviously, the last cannot happen unless there is the ‘archetypal’ support available for it to come into existence in the evolutionary unfolding. There is the necessity of the new creation being present in the transcendent, the bright mother to bring out issues in this play of manifestation. It must precede the appearance of the superman on the earth. Sri Aurobindo’s whole work, although it has several subsidiary objectives as aspects of its overall dynamics, of its pragmatism, is concerned chiefly with it, with the gnostic race, and it is to that he was throughout committed. Here we may ask quite a pertinent question, as to when could have been seen the possibility of the new creation, of the birth of the new world for the superman to arrive on the earth.

It is interesting to note that, if the Sapta Chatusthaya belongs to the very early period of Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual pursuit, perhaps when he was in the Alipore jail, then that possibility of forming the new world in the Divine’s Will could be traced back to that formative period, the Chatusthaya having direct connection with it. In his Uttarpara speech, dated 30 May 1909 after the release from the jail, he says that the Gita was placed in his hand by its author himself and that its author had taken charge of his work fully, that he was to do His work. In it the invisible seeds of that possibility, of the new world, were perhaps sown at that time, without making the thing explicit. Could it not be that that was the avataric work he was to do?

Interestingly, the phrase “a new world” appears for the first time in what the Mother wrote on 25 September 1914, just within six months of her meeting Sri Aurobindo on 29 March 1914:

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.

Forty-two years later, what was promised got fulfilled; a new world was born in the earth’s subtle physical—because it was already created in the transcendent. The long work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the intervening period was to establish conditions for its realisation, for its materialisation as a distinct event in the evolutionary process. Let us quickly run through the chapter Towards the Supramental Time Vision of the Synthesis:

All being, consciousness, knowledge moves, secretly for our present surface awareness, openly when we rise beyond it to the spiritual and supramental ranges, between two states and powers of existence, that of the timeless Infinite and that of the Infinite deploying in itself and organising all things in time...

When this mind of knowledge becomes a part of the physical’s mind, the certainty of the gnostic race becomes an aspect of the evolutionary growth from knowledge to greater knowledge, from light and force to higher light and force. In this way the Supramental Time Vision, trikāladŗşţi, in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, the Adhyatmayoga of the Supreme in its will creates a new world poised for appearance on the earth. RYD