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. ~ RYD

Supermind and Mind of Light

The essential character of Supermind is a Truth-Consciousness which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it. It may indeed, especially in its evolutionary action, keep knowledge behind its apparent consciousness and bring it forward as if from behind the veil; but even then this veil is only an appearance and does not really exist: the knowledge was always there, the consciousness its possessor and present revealer. This too is only in the evolutionary play and on the supramental plane itself the consciousness lives always in an immediacy of knowledge and acts by a direct immediacy of knowledge. In Mind as we see it here the action is very different; it starts from an apparent absence of knowledge, a seeming ignorance or nescience, even, in material Nature, from an inconscience in which any kind of knowing does not seem at all to exist. It reaches knowledge or the action of knowledge by steps which are not at all immediate but rather knowledge at first seems utterly impossible and foreign to the very substance of this Matter. Yet, in the blindness of Matter itself there are signs of a concealed consciousness which in its hidden fundamental being sees and has the power to act according to its vision and even by an infallible immediacy which is inherent in its nature. This is the same Truth that is apparent in Supermind but is here involved and seems not to be. The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, in which the secret of this connection becomes evident and palpable.

The Truth-Consciousness is not only a power of knowledge; it is a being of consciousness and knowledge, a luminous many-sided dynamis and play of the omniscient Spirit; in it there can be a spiritual feeling, a spiritual sensation, a spiritual essentiality of substance that knows and reveals, that acts and manifests in an omniscience which is one with omnipotence. In Mind this Truth-Consciousness and these workings of the Truth-Consciousness can be there and even though it limits itself in Mind and has a subordinate or an indirect working, its action can be essentially the same. There can even be a hidden immediacy which hints at the presence of something absolute and is evidence of the same omnipotence and omniscience. In the Mind of Light when it becomes full-orbed this character of the Truth reveals itself though in a garb that is transparent even when it seems to cover: for this too is a truth-consciousness and a self-power of knowledge. This too proceeds from the Supermind and depends upon it even though it is limited and subordinate. What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place. It proceeds from knowledge to knowledge; we have not yet crossed over the borders of the truth-conscious into ignorance. The methods also are those of a self-luminous knowing and seeing and feeling and a self-fulfiling action within its own borders; there is no need to seek for something missing, no fumbling, no hesitation: all is still a gnostic action of a gnostic power and principle. There has been a descent from full Supermind into Mind, but this Mind though a self-limited is not yet an agnostic consciousness unsure of itself or unsure of its workings; there is still a comprehending or an apprehending consciousness which goes straight to its object and does not miss its mark or have to hunt for it in the dark or in insufficient light: it sees, knows, puts its hand immediately on things of self and things of Nature. We have passed into Mind but mind has still not broken its inherent connection with the supramental principle.

Still there is an increasing self-limitation which begins even with Overmind: Overmind is separated by only a luminous border on the full light and power of the supramental Truth and it still commands direct access to all that Supermind can give it. There is a further limitation or change of characteristic action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition, from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what I have called the Higher Mind: the Mind of Light is 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.

Still, again there will be a difference between the superhuman and the human, a difference in nature and power but a difference especially in the access and way of admission to the Truth-Consciousness and its activities: there may indeed be two orders of its truth, direct and half-direct, immediate and near or even only a reception at a distance. But this we must consider afterwards; at present it is sufficient to mark certain differences in the descending order of gnostic mind which culminates here. We may say that there is a higher hemisphere of our being in which Mind luminous and aware of its workings still lives in the Light and can be seen as a subordinate power of the Supermind; it is still an agent of the Truth-Consciousness, a gnostic power that has not descended into the mental ignorance; it is capable of a mental gnosis that preserves its connection with the superior light and acts by its power. This is the character of Overmind in its own plane and of all the powers that are dependent on the Overmind: the Supermind works there but at one remove, as if in something that it has put forth from itself but which is no longer entirely itself but is still a delegate of the Truth and invested with its authority. We are moving towards a transitional border beyond which lies the possibility of the Ignorance, but the Ignorance is not yet here. In the order of the evolutionary descent we stand in the Mind of Light on that border and a step downward can carry us beyond it into the beginnings of an ignorance which still bears on its face something of the luminosity that it is leaving behind it. On the other hand, in the ascending order of the evolution we reach a transition in which we see the light, are turned towards it, reflected in our consciousness and one further step carries us into the domain of the Light. The Truth becomes visible and audible to us and we are in immediate communication with its messages and illuminations and can grow into it and be made one with its substance. Thus there is a succession of ranges of consciousness which we can speak of as Mind but which belongs practically to the higher hemisphere although in their ontological station they are within the domain of the lower hemisphere. For the whole of being is a connected totality and there is in it no abrupt passage from the principle of Truth and Light into their opposite. The creative truth of things works and can work infallibly even in the Inconscient: the Spirit is there in Matter and it has made a series of steps by which it can travel from it to its own heights in an uninterrupted line of gradations: the depths are linked to the heights and the Law of the one Truth creates and works everywhere.

Even in the material world which seems to us a world of ignorance, a world of the workings of a blind and inconscient Force starting from inconscience and proceeding through Ignorance and reaching with difficulty towards an imperfect Light and Knowledge, there is still a secret Truth in things which arranges all, guides towards the Self many contrary powers of being and rises towards its own heights where it can manifest its own highest truth and fulfil the secret purpose of the universe. Even this material world of existence is built upon a pattern of the truth in things which we call Law of Nature, a truth from which we climb to a greater truth until we emerge in the Light of the Supreme. This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the step of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for, what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery. This Knowledge is the covert Supermind which is the support of the creation and is leading all towards itself and guides behind this multitude of minds and creatures and objects which seem each to be following its own law of nature; in this vast and apparently confused mass of existence there is a law, a one truth of being, a guiding and fulfilling purpose of the world-existence. The Supermind is veiled here and does not work according to its characteristic Jaw of being and self-knowledge, but without it nothing could reach its aim. A world governed by an ignorant mind would soon drift into a chaos; it could not in fact come into existence or remain in existence unless supported by the secret Omniscience of which it is the cover; a world governed by a blind inconscient force might repeat constantly the same mechanical workings but it would mean nothing and arrive nowhere. This could not be the cause of an evolution that creates life out of Matter, out of life mind, and a gradation of planes of Matter, Life and Mind culminating in the emergence of Supermind. The secret truth that emerges in Supermind has been there all the time, but now it manifests itself and the truth in things and the meaning of our existence.

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.