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. (Savitri, p. 367) 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
~ RYD
Mind of Light
A new humanity means for us the appearance, the
development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality
would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in
its knowledge bound to the ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural
possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a
perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance.
Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light,
a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and
manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its
mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance.
At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the
new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as
the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations
of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it
or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of
the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human
being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being
into those highest power of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene
between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps towards the
greater and more luminous principle. This like others in the evolution might
not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound but from the
very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating
from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the
eventual outcome. The first gleamings of the new Light would carry in
themselves the seed of its highest flamings; even in the first beginnings, the
certainty of their topmost powers would be there; for this is the constant
story of each evolutionary emergence: the principle of its highest perfection
lies concealed in the involution which precedes and necessitates the evolution
of the secret principle.
For throughout the story of
evolution there are two complementary aspects which constitute its action and
are necessary to its totality; there is hidden in the involution of Nature the
secret power and principle of being which lies concealed under the veil cast on
it by material Nature and there is carried in that Nature itself the inevitable
force of the principle compelling the process of emergence of its inherent
powers and characters, the essential features which constitute its reality. As
the evolutionary principle emerges, there are also two constant features of the
process of the emergence: there are the gradations by, which it climbs out of
the involution and manifests more and more of its power, its possibilities, the
force of the Godhead within it and there is a constant manifestation of all
types and forms of its being which are the visible, indicative and efficient
embodiments of its essential nature. There appear in the evolutionary process
organised forms and activities of Matter, the types of life and the living
beings, the types of mind and the thinking beings, the luminosities and
greatnesses of the spiritual principle and the spiritual beings whose nature,
character, personality, mark the stages of the ascent towards the highest
heights of the evolution and the ultimate largest manifestation of what it is
in itself and must become by the force of time and the all-revealing Spirit.
This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the
multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each
gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it:
the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers point to more
perfected forms and greater powers beyond them and each emergence of
consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a
greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate
godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable.
Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying
living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into
conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind
founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance,
truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and
now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a
truth-conscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a
gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage
in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must
carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending
humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality,
capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine Life.
In the birth of the mind of Light
and its ascension into its own regognisable self and its true status and right
province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very
nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the
first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance,
assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types however
imperfect at first and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the
border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the
second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light
taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its
subordinate portion or its delegate. In each of these stages it will define its
own grades and manifest the order of its beings who will embody it and give to
it a realised life. Thus there will be built up, first, even in the Ignorance
itself, the possibility of a human ascent towards a divine living; then there
will be, by the illumination of this mind of Light in the greater realisation
of what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human
being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness
and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life.