This article appeared in the August 1950 issue of the Bulletin of Physical Education and explains what exactly Sri Aurobindo meant by the phrase ‘Mind of Light’. It is relatively a new coinage and has a specific connotation in his yogic terminology. We do not have its occurrence anywhere else, not even in his letters written in response to the queries of the disciples in the 1930s. There is a phrase in Savitri, though, which describes the nature of the young girl Savitri, that she was one with the greater Nature even in the acceptance of the mortal birth by her: a mind of light, a life of rhythmic force, even the body instinct with hidden divinity was there that prepared an image of the god about to arrive. But the loaded association the phrase had in his last pieces of writings is of a different kind. The Savitri draft pertaining to this book, The Book of Birth and Quest, was written around 1945, after the completion of the first three Books of the Epic between 1942 and 1944. So the phrase has to be understood in terms of the latest yogic developments which were rapidly taking place during those last few years, 1945-1950.

Sri Aurobindo’s yoga-tapasya had by now advanced to such an extent that even his physical started responding to the supramental light and force, started receiving it, a thing which was not steadying until then. Sri Aurobindo had by now firmly established in himself, in his very physical, a transformative superconscient power which he called the Mind of Light. Later the Mother defined it as the physical’s mind, the mind of the physical, the body’s mind, opening to the Supramental. In fact, it was this Mind of Light which Sri Aurobindo made as a parting gift to the Mother; this was very early in the morning at the time of his passing away on 5 December 1950, when she was standing by the side of his bed almost for half an hour. During their first meeting he had given to her the silent mind as the first gift. Between these two gifts was the diamond-bright yoga-tapasya that changed the entire course not only of the world events, but of the very evolutionary process. In it a new element entered into operation—the Mind of Light. We shall serialize under the present head a few postings related with this Mind of Light and try to see the kind of progress made towards the physical transformation.

We may en passant look into the very pregnant phrase that appears in the third line of Savitri—“the huge foreboding mind of Night” standing across the path of the divine Event. If the mind of Light is the physical’s mind receiving the supramental, we may interpret the mind of Night as the physical’s mind formed by the Inconscient. At one stage, at the mysterious beginning of things, this mind of Night was absolutely essential. It is that which could hold back, steady the inconscient material creation from the all-swallowing power of the Non-Being’s Emptiness. Matter survived the Hunger of the Void because of the firmness of form it rendered to it. But now it is that very firmness which poses itself as the mighty obstacle across the path of the divine Event, the prospects coming into view for a superior manifestation.

In the present article Sri Aurobindo explains the role of the Mind of Light shaping a new humanity as a necessary step towards the fuller manifestation of the Gnostic or the Supramental Race. The first descent of the Supermind in the form of Mind of Light carrying in it the supramental inevitability in evolution is the firm gain in the earth-process. In its inevitable ascent it is the beginning of a new gradation, marking a stage of humanity embodying more and more of spirituality. It will gather itself out of the vast sea of Ignorance and assemble its constituent elements; its next step will be to build up its shapes and types till the joining with the Supermind’s is accomplished. The uncertainty which was left in Savitri’s dream or swapna experience when she had just set herself on the Yoga-path gets full resolved in this formulation: the uncertainty was in relationship with the three alternatives she saw, whether this world be led to a new world or a new world is discovered or an entirely new world is created.

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