This is absolutely the last of Sri Aurobindo’s articles published in the 24 November 1950 issue of the Bulletin of Physical Education. In it the absolutely last sentence dictated by Sri Aurobindo is the following: “It is in this series of the order of existence and as the last word of the lower hemisphere of being, the first word of the higher hemisphere that we have to look at the Mind of Light and see what is its nature and the powers which characterise it and which it uses for its self-manifestation and workings, its connection with Supermind and its consequences and possibilities for the life of a new humanity.” In it the last phrase is “the life of a new humanity”. It is significant that absolutely the last line in Savitri Sri Aurobindo dictated around 15 November 1950, just three weeks before his withdrawal, is very assertive of the work that Savitri the radiant daughter of Aswapati has been entrusted with: “But leave her to her mighty self and Fate,” tells Narad to the royal parents, particularly her mother Malawi. Preparing the world for the arrival of a new humanity is the foremost task she has to attend to, confront Fate in the midst of all the conflicting forces operating here. Savitri is at it and she has to work out the complex modus operandi in the pragmatics prevailing in the circumstances at this point of time.

It is in that sense we see the importance of the Mind of Light, it preparing a new humanity that will open to the Gnostic or Supramental possibilities. While at the moment the details have been left unspecified, the indications are sufficiently vivid in their implications. The working of the covert Supermind in the material world prepares the Mind of Light to receive in evolution directly the Supermind proper for its full dynamic play here. It is the concealed Supermind in, or behind, the gross and stiff physical’s mind receiving the superconscient Supermind which alone can bring the certitude of the fully transformed divine life upon earth. New humanity is an intermediate stage in that process, this humanity governed by the Mind of Light: it is the well-prepared humanity with the physical’s mind ready to receive the Supramental proper. Sri Aurobindo found it expedient as an intermediate stage before the fuller and truer divinization of life on this mortal globe of ours becomes a realized fact.

Sri Aurobindo makes it abundantly clear: “The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind [marking] a transitional passage by which we can pass from Supermind and superhumanity to an illumined humanity. For the new humanity will be capable of at least a partly divinised way of seeing and living because it will live in the light and in knowledge and not in the obscuration of the Ignorance.” In any case, it is a faculty wherein is the unmistakable action of light, of truth, of knowledge, and where there is no place for inconscience, ignorance, error to exist. Sri Aurobindo asserts: “It proceeds from knowledge to knowledge.” The beauty is, with it, even this material world receives on it the stamp of truth and it is that which gives us confidence in it.

In my copy of the 1952 edition of The Supramental Manifestation I have a comment in pencil which runs as follows: It looks as though the Mind of Light is Sri Aurobindo’s creation in the sense that he felt its necessity and brought it into operation. Earlier in the 1930s he spoke of vast tracts between Overmind and Supermind, but they had remained until then unexplored. Never did he on previous occasions mention anytime anything about the Mind of Light, neither in letters nor in conversations. If it were a pre-established plane in the evolutionary ladder he would have certainly spoken about it. He saw the great difficulty in bringing down the Supermind directly in the earth-nature and therefore the focus of his yoga-tapasya in the 1940s was essentially fixed in solving this problem. As a part of that modus operandi he brought down a power of Supermind close to the earth making it a station for higher operation. The Mind of Light became the physical receiving the supramental. This is a new station, a stage created by him for the higher transition or evolution. A possibility of new humanity has been worked out. This power of Mind of Light he made directly operative in himself. He established it in his own body-consciousness. At the time of passing away he gave it as a parting gift to the Mother. His supreme sacrifice is to fix the unmanifest supramental Light permanently on the earth. Having fixed it, he shifted his own station from the earthly physical to the subtle physical invoking the further descent. The Mother speaks of the enormous power he himself gained after the withdrawal from here. The supramental Descent of 1956 was a direct consequence of this action of his. So that is the great contribution: creating and establishing the Mind of Light as a part of the evolutionary process. That is the path into the higher hemisphere of Knowledge he has opened out when physically present here. It became supramentally dynamic in the earth’s subtle-physical in 1956.

On one occasion Amal Kiran happened to borrow my copy of the book and, quite understandably, read my comments and notes at various places in it. Not only that; he himself added his remarks. There is this observation in the above against which he has made a comment in pencil in the margin: “As a part of that modus operandi he brought down a power of Supermind close to the earth making it a station for higher operation. The Mind of Light became the physical receiving the supramental.” Amal writes: “This is in line with my article but hardly in line with Sri Aurobindo’s articles.” True enough. But this is our way of understanding Sri Aurobindo, and that is the best we can do. Even as we grow more and more in him, that understanding also grows; that is the best of ours and it is wonderful that we agree in it—and of course this best need not necessarily be the last; it should not be.

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