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<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&nbsp;</p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal'><font size="4">Sri Aurobindo</font></b><i><o:p><font size="4">&nbsp;</font></o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:4.3pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>I</p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>From a certain
standpoint Sri Aurobindo's message is very simple, almost self-evident. The sum
and substance of all he says is that man is growing and has to grow in
consciousness till he reaches the complete and perfect consciousness, not only
in his individual but in his collective, that is to say, social life. In fact,
the growth of consciousness is the supreme secret of life, the master key to
earthly evolution.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.75pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Sri
Aurobindo believes in evolution. Creation, according to him, has a purpose and
man moves to a goal. That is nothing else than the unfolding of consciousness.
Originally all was Matter, only dead Matter. At a certain stage out of Matter
came Life: what was or appeared to be dead became alive. Thus the plant world
was born-the first .primeval stirring of consciousness, a consciousness vague,
blind, practically unconscious, yet moved by a newly acquired or awakened
pulsation. There was again a period of gestation and incubation bringing out at
the end a rudimentary Mind, a first conscious consciousness: so the animal was
born. Consciousness is clearer and freer here, emerging into formulation: it is
now instinct or sensibility and in its higher grades infused with a streak of
spontaneous thinking. Sensuous mentality gave birth to Mind proper, that is thought,
reflection and man appeared. A fully awakened consciousness, consciousness that
can turn round upon itself is the characteristic marking out human consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Such
then are the stages in the progression of consciousness; they are clearly
observable and admitted practically on all hands. Only Sri Aurobindo points out
two crucial characters<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page
– 351<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>of this movement. First:
Matter, Life, Mind-Intelligence – these are not distinct or separate entities,
one coming after another, the succeeding one simply adding itself to the
preceding, coming we do now know from where. Not so, for something cannot come
out of nothing. If life came out of Matter, it is because life was there hidden
in Matter Matter was secretly housing, was instinct with life. That only can
evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because
Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther
remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness
proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence
the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of
gradation is linked together indissolubly and the binding reality that runs
through all is consciousness, overt or covert. It is indeed consciousness that
lies at the root of existence – the basic substance, Matter is nothing but
consciousness become unconscious; and the whole scheme or processus of the
cosmos is the increasing manifestation and expression of that consciousness.
Secondly, the other character is that at each cross-over, there is not only a
rise in consciousness but also a reversal of consciousness, that is to say, the
level attained turns back upon the preceding levels, influencing and moulding
them as far as possible in its own mode and law of existence. When life
appeared in Matter, wherever there was material life, the matter thus taken up
by life behaved differently from dead matter: an organic body does not not
follow the strict mechanicallaws of inanimate bodies. Likewise a life endowed
with mind has a different functioning than mere life. And a body which houses a
life and mind, which has, as it were, flowered into life and mind moves and
acts in another way than an inert body or even a vitalised body. Man's
intelligence and reason have reoriented or tend to reorient his vital instincts
and reactions, even his bodily functions and forms. A conscious regulation,
even refashioning of his life and body is the very essence of human
consciousness, the urge of his nature, instead of a spontaneous <i>laissez-faire
</i>movement of pure vitality or the mechanical go-round of the material base.
These three major provinces or layers of consciousness – Matter, Life and Mind – 
man has taken up into himself and in the light of his consciousness</p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 352</span></p><hr>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&nbsp;– his<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp; </span>Intelligence – has studied and
classified them arranging them serially as the well-known sciences of Physics
Biology and Psychology.<span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Now,
Sri Aurobindo says, evolution marches onward and will rise beyond mind to
another status of consciousness which he calls Supermind. <span
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'>In<b> </b></span>the earthly scheme there
will thus manifest a new type, a higher functioning of consciousness and a new
race or species will appear on earth with this new consciousness as the ruling
principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the
animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will
come inevitably.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Standing
on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental
intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will
be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent of his
successor, man. But certain characteristic signs, rudimentary or fragmentary
movements of the higher status are visible in the mental consciousness even as
it is: the ape likewise was not without a glimmer of Reason and logic, even the
faculty of ratiocination that seems to be the exclusive property of man. There
is, for example, a movement we call Intuition, so different from Reason to
which even Scientists and Mathematicians acknowledge their debt of gratitude
for so many of their discoveries and inventions. There is also the other
analogous movement called Inspiration that rules the poet and the artist
disclosing to them a world of beauty and reality that is not available to the
normal human consciousness. Again, there is yet another group of human beings
at the top of the ladder of evolution – mystics and sages – who <i>see </i>the
truth, possess the truth direct through a luminous immediacy of perception,
called Revelation. Now, all these functionings of consciousness that happen
frequently enough within the domain of normal humanity are still expressions of
a higher mode of consciousness: they are not the product or play of Reason or
logical</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>intelligence which marks the
character, the differentia of human consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>But,
as at present, these are mere glimmers and glimpses from elsewhere and man has
no command or control over them. They are beyond the habitual conscious will,
they come and go as<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 353<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>they like, happy
visitations from another world, they do not abide our question and are not at
our beck and call. The Supermind, on the contrary, is in full possession of
that consciousness of which these are faint beginnings and distant echoes. The
Superman will be born when man has risen above his mind and emerged into the supramental consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>One
thing needs to be pointed out here: it is that man is expected to consciously
transcend himself and deliver this supermanhood, for it is to be a conscious
process, a labour of the wakeful will. That is the great difference which the
new transition has brought in. So long evolution was a spontaneous and
apparently unconscious process, moving slowly and inadvertently as things in
nature normally move. Man rose out of the animal: he simply found himself man
one day, there was no conscious effort, no previous knowledge of the change on
the part of the animal undergoing the change Likewise the animal came out of
its plant origin spontaneously and unwittingly: the plant too evolved out of
the inert and inanimate matter through a natural process of slow mutation. But
now at the stage of manhood consciousness has become fully conscious,
self-conscious, and therefore its further ascension cannot but be conscious,
ever more conscious, the result of deliberate energising. This is a process of
self-transformation. It has. a method, a technique, a whole system of its own.
The growth of consciousness, its culture and transformation is the end and
purpose of all true education: its highest consummation, its supreme
perfection is what is intended by Yoga, the mystic's system of inner
discipline.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>We say,
then, supramentalisation of consciousness is the goal Nature is aiming at and
man striving for: it is the next step that earth and man are taking in their
evolutionary urge. Man, however, represents a very crucial stage – he is the
dividing line between two hemispheres – two modes of consciousness, two types
of creation. As I have said, up to man it is a natural spontaneous unreflecting
unconscious evolution: with man it is conscious, deliberate, wilful evolution.
What was being done behind the veil in ignorance will now be done openly in
full knowledge. The very first result will be the shortening of the time
factor. The conscious process increases the tempo, telescopes into decades or
years a process or development that<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 354<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>would take centuries or
more otherwise; in man a growth is achieved in one life that would normally
need several lives. The other characteristic result is that when the Supermind
establishes itself, there is no more ignorance, it is all light and knowledge.
Till the mental range, even at its highest heights it is a mixture of light and
darkness, of knowledge and ignorance: there is always an element of doubt,
uncertainty or partial perception: there is a groping, a trial and one moves at
best from greater darkness to lesser shade. With the Supermind all that
changes: the Superman lives always in the full daylight, in the zenith
consciousness, in the plenitude of knowledge. He moves from light to light,
knowledge to knowledge, no longer bound to the division and duality inherent in
the present human consciousness. It may be that man may not at a bound reach
the peak of the Supermind: for there are<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;
</span>lower ranges, voluntary limitations of the Light, less absolute
formulations of the perfect being through which man will have to pass for a
greater enrichment of his nature and for the establishment of other orders of
luminous existence upon earth. Sri Aurobindo has, in this connection, spoken of
the Overmind and the Mind of Light. But these too lie beyond the border of
mental twilight and are domains of Light, own delegates of Supermind. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>It
may not be out of place here just to mention a few characters proper to this supramental over-border consciousness. First of all, it is the seat and organon
of complete knowledge: knowledge here is not the result of the deductive and
inductive process of reason, it does not balance pros and cons and out of
uncertain possibilities strike out an average probability: it is direct,
straight, immediate, certain and absolute. Knowledge here comes by identity –
the knower and the known are one<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp; </span>and
what is known is therefore self-knowledge, Secondly, the will too is not an
effort or striving and struggling, but the spontaneous expression of the
self-power of the consciousness; willing means achieving, one wills the
inevitable truth for, knowledge and will too are one. Thirdly, it is the status
of perfect delight, for one has passed beyond the vale of tears and entered the
peace that passeth understanding, one has found that Joy is the source of
creation and the truth of existence is held in Ecstasy.
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 355<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:14.85pt;
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</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:13.9pt;
line-height:150%;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:200.85pt;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; margin-bottom:0'>It is in other words at bottom the Vedantic status of
Sat-chitananda (perfect Being, Consciousness-energy and Beatitude), but
individualised serving as the basic reality of the world-life and existence: it
is this that seeks to manifest and embody itself in its own dharma-supreme
law-in and through the physical forms and modes of that life and existence.
Beyond this it is not possible here to enter into the further mysteries of the
Arcanum.<span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.2pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:dashed 12.0pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Lastly, another point and we have done. It is that all
human efforts in the past in any realm or domain towards a higher life has been
contributory to this supreme consummation that Sri Aurobindo envisages as
coming or sure to come. It is very often asserted that human nature is
irremediable and although we may try at a little amelioration of his
instinctive life, especially as a social being, there can be no permanent or
radical cure of the original sin of Ignorance and Inconscicnce with which his
earthly nature is branded. Reformers, idealists, even saints and sages have
seen and sought to counter the evil – some tried to get rid of it, others round
it: but it is still there, as rampant as ever, apparently with no effect upon
it. For one thing, evil was sought to be cured by its opposite, the good, but
the good that belongs to the level of consciousness to which evil too belongs.
In other words, we tried to deal with the world and treat it with the force of
the Mind, even though in some cases, the mind was a high or even the highest
spiritual mind. To touch the roots of the malady that extend into our deepest
fibres, our most material being, dead inconscience, one must rise to the very
source of consciousness, the creative truth-consciousness: the Supermind alone
can transform the earth, transfigure the earthly life. In the second place, the
past attempts did not all go in vain: they were preparations, the first
ground-work, on various levels and in various domains of human life and
consciousness where the light infiltrated, to whatever extent it may be and
things, and forces were shaken and reshuffled to admit of other forces and
inspirations; if nothing else, at least the possibility was created.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Sri
Aurobindo's aim, we have said, is not an individual fulfilment, however
glorious and successful it might be, and not merely the fulfilment of one limb
only of the individual however deep and high. Sri Aurobindo embraced the whole<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 356<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>man and the whole society.
A fulfilled life in society upon earth – the highest and completest life
possible, not only possible but inevitable to the human being-that is the work
for which he laboured. Man's mind and intelligence, his life energy, his
body-form are all taken up, purified of the lower<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>formulation, remoulded into the mode and
pattern of the supramental truth-consciousness: he becomes a complete, integral
perfect being expressing and embodying in all his limbs and movements the
supreme reality made of utter truth<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>and
knowledge and power and delight. This being his individual life, his collective 
or social life too would figure the same pattern. A new society in which men 
have found their soul and soul function is a harmonious, a unitary body, com<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>posed of individuals who by
living each one in his self live in<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>all
and living in all each one lives in his self. Likewise, an aggregate of such
societies – a society of nations, as it is already called somewhat in a
prophetic vein, – will also be an inherently harmonious and unified, even a
unitary body too, since all these larger units will express through their
corporate life each in its own special way the glory and greatness of the<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Divine Consciousness. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>In
this global reconstitution of the earth life, Sri Aurobindo gives India a great
role – a mighty destiny and a heavy responsibility. For he considers India as
the repository of the spiritual consciousness, the Guardian of Truth, as the
Veda says, and in the new age of world unification her national being will act
as the spearhead breaking into the old-world formations and signalling the
shape of things to come.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
10.8pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>II</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:10.8pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&quot;The poet of
patriotism, the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity&quot; he was,
in the famous words of his advocate and friend and follower who stood for him before
the bar of History for his cause, and not merely before a British Court of<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Justice. Indeed he was all that, but today
we have to add another epithet and complete the description. For he is now the
builder of the Life Divine. This was indeed the secret Truth that worked in him
from behind and gave to these</p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 357<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>earlier preoccupations the
reality and the beauty they attained and the fullness of their significance. He
worked for human evolution, that was his life' mission. He thus formulates the
stages of human evolution:</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in;text-align:justify;text-indent:
.25in;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&quot;Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three
strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled,
we yet strive for the perfection of the second, to wards the third we are
reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted&quot;.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:10.05pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>But
the supreme secret lies in Vishnu's fourth stride, from humanity to divinity.
That is the goal of the evolution and that furnishes also the key to the
solution of the problem. Whether in the matter of the family or the nationality
or humanity in general there has been a stalemate, a stagnation, even a
frustration; an effort towards progress seemed to lead more towards conflict,
disharmony, away from what is beautiful and good and happy. That is bound to
be. Man must reach his very highest and deepest, his absolute itself before he
can arrive at perfection in the lower and the relative. Man must exceed himself
if he is to fulfil himself. A new connotation has to be found for family and
nationality and even humanity. That connotation, Sri Aurobindo says, is
divinity.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.8pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>We
must understand however that there is divinity and divinity. There is a
divinity that suffers, supports and transcends all that is existent. For it is
the all-reality, all-consciousness, the ever-present and omnipresent Immutable
behind the mutabilities of creation. That does not take part in the cosmic
struggle, the universal urge of progress forward. Apart from the divinity that
suffers, there is a divinity that shapes – and is shaped at the same time,
shapes from behind and is shaped itself in front. This dynamic Divine Sri
Aurobindo calls the supramental Divine or the incarnate Divine Mother.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:10.05pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>In
the inevitable course of evolution man is something that will be surpassed, not
in the sense that he will be rejected and thrown out as an unnecessary element,
like some of the prehistoric animals, no, he will still be at the head of
earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into
a divine creature.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 358<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:12.0pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:
11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-bottom:0'>As at present man is a mental being, that is to say,
it is his mind – his reason and intellect – that governs him and it is through
that faculty that he governs the world. But mind is not the highest or the most
powerful faculty in him, nor the last term of his consciousness. Beyond the
mind there rise other powers of consciousness, tier upon tier, and man can go
there, live there or bring them down into his normal life and change it into
their pattern. The highest of these Sri Aurobindo calls the plane of
Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind. It is the supreme luminous Power – the
Light of lights – towards which the creation moves and by which the creation is
moved in secret. It is the heart-centre of fulfilled harmony.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Man
has been striving through his lesser powers, through the grace of the lower
gods since his advent upon earth to arrive at a reconstruction of his life and
surroundings. That is why he has never attained the full measure of success.
Indeed a period of success or progress was always followed by a period of
decline and retrogression, a so-called golden age by an age of iron. As a
matter of fact today humanity finds itself terribly enclosed in a cage of iron
as it were. The earth has become too small for his soaring capacities and multitudinous
necessities – he is already thinking of a place in the moon! That is only the
sign and symbol of an inner impasse to which he has arrived. The anguish of the
human soul has reached its acme: the problems, social, political, educational,
moral it is facing have proved themselves to be totally insoluble. Yes, he has
run into a cul-de-sac, where he is caught as in a death-trap. No ordinary
rational methods, half-way nostrums can deliver him any more. All the outer
doors and issues are now closed for him; the only way is to turn inward, there
lies the open road to freedom and fulfilment. That is the way to transcendence
and surpassing. To attempt any other way is not only to try the impossible but
to head straight towards doomsday.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
time then is now, for the time is ripe. It will not do to say that the way
proposed is beyond the reach of the common man. He has neither the capacity nor
the knowledge nor even the inclination or impulse to surpass himself, to do
anything non-human. First of all, as I said, if man is to survive in any form,
this is the only way and there is no second. Next, what do we know of the
capacity and impulsion even of the common<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 359<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>man? Even in
a smaller scale and on the material level, have we not seen to what tremendous
acts of heroism he can rise automatically, through what travails – tapasya – of
concentrated effort he agreed to pass, simply because the occasion demanded
it? Man's secret soul is greater than all the limitation of his outward frame.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>That
does not mean that the entire human race will wholly change over to the new
life. All, without exception, are not expected to come up to the highest level
of fulfilment. <i>But </i>that is not required, for the beginning at least. It
is always the few pioneers, a select group of forerunners that form the
foundation of a new creation A first snowball perhaps, but it moves and gathers
others on the way and builds up larger and larger collectivities. At all crises
of evolutionary cycles such beings inevitably appear, they are thrown up by
Nature or they tome down from above and incarnate; especially it is so when
Nature proposes to take a leap and not merely trudge and crawl.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:127.4pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>It is the fulfilment of Nature that has to happen and is
happening, the fulfilment of the inferior Nature in and through the higher
divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till
now, till almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life,
any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with
Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed
Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an enemy of the Spirit. But today the
wheel seems to have turned full circle. The Spirit recognises the body as its
counterpart and visible form, welcomes the body as its earthly figure and
expression. The old antinomy has become obsolete, because the body too on its
side recognises that it has not the structure and character that millennial
ignorance gave it. The material particles that constitute the physical body are
found to be after all not inert masses but quantas of energy, of luminous
energy. The spiritual Light above demands nothing better for its earthly home.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>This
is symbolical of the collaboration that Nature is now offering to the Spirit. A
new substance, made of light-energy emanating from Consciousness-Force, is now
slowly-permeating the earth atmosphere, as the Mother declares and it is this<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 360<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-bottom:0'>that will
serve as the basis of the new creation and give it its law and constitution. A
new world built out of knowledge and vision and luminous power is destined to
come, for man is no longer in love with his ignorance, but a divine afflatus is
possessing him.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:258.75pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The new world has to be based on new foundations. The old
world was built from outside with superficial cheap elements that lower Nature
offers easily and profusely. It is body's needs, vital hungers assembled and
arranged according to a plan supplied by mind's ideas and notions under the
directive and compulsion of the ego, the sense or consciousness of one's
separate individual existence as against others. The new world will start from
the soul, the luminous divine element in man which is one with all and grow
from within outward. It is as if the foundations are laid not below, but above
– the tree of existence would branch out not from below upwards, but from above
downward, in the image given by the ancient Rishis of India. The individual will
therefore be not primarily a body housing secondary – or as it is sometimes
called epiphenomenal – movements such as those of the mind and the vital
limited and largely conditioned by it. The individual will primarily be a
consciousness, a focus of energy-consciousness existing and acting in union and
communion with all other similar individual foci, for all form one single
undivided entity. The body and life and mind are moulded in the substance and
rhythm of that sovereign consciousness. The hard egoism or self-centred ness,
the gross animality that seem to be the very constitution of the human
individual are dissolved into the soul's radiant urges. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:258.75pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The individual can be and is to be fulfilled in and
through his soul – the presiding consciousness that has at its disposal the
mind, the vital and the body as its instruments and means of expression, but
which till now, because of an evolutionary necessity of growth and development,
acted more as an obstruction or a veil than as an aid or a channel. When in
the new consciousness the individual attains its soul-status, in other words,
its divinity, then a reshaping and recasting of the lower limbs becomes
possible and even inevitable. The soul-status means freedom, harmony, purity,
knowledge, power, delight and immortality, absolute and inalienable.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:258.75pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:
none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page
– 361<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:12.0pt;
mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:258.75pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:
none'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.7pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>As
individuals grow in this line, the social structure too is altered and
transmuted. The harmony and fullness that individuals present are automatically
represented in the collective grouping. Instead of a battling competitive
society we have not merely a cooperative but a unitive community striving in a
common aspiration towards a single unique achievement. For all individuals know
and feel that they are but various limbs of the same organism, luminously and
unfailingly functioning each in its and for its own appointment-expressing
differently the one Light supreme.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.75pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>And
nations that are finding so difficult, almost impossible, to form a comity,
that are in their disparate tendencies driving towards a catastrophe, perhaps
annihilation, shall undergo a sea-change. The nation, the national being is
also a reality, a divine reality that has to come to its own – that is to say,
its own soul. For there is a collective soul, as well as an individual soul. It
is the presiding deity, the norm of consciousness and being that works out the
growth and evolution of a collectivity that has found a common life. This
collectivity is also enlarging itself in wider and wider commonalty. As we see
actually today the nation is tending towards and growing into the supranation
or Commonwealth or Federation as it is termed politically.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
conception of the <st1:country-region><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
of the world is taking possession of the human mind; it is being applied and
larger and more integrated collective groupings than the nation are developing;
they may ere long become familiar realities. Such formations moving towards and
effectuating the one indivisible humanity open out the possibility towards a
superhumanity which will have to base itself on a new principle of organisation;
for that must be a new mode of consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Even
the family, the first unit of collective formation in humanity that has
attained a fulfilled status, is yet capable of a remodelling, a transmutation
in the higher supramental consciousness. The family instead of being built upon
blood-relationship may surely have a different foundation in soul-kinship, in
affinity of consciousness, comradeship in life-work. It means a total
revolution, a reversal of nature, the roots being above instead of being below,
as already referred to.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Such
far-reaching changes may well be called for and inevitable if mankind is to be
radically cured of all the illnesses of<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 362<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:12.0pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>which it is
till now a natural prey The full health of a divine body in its individual as
well as its collective and global functioning is assured only when the human
being is lifted out of its mental sheath and established in the supramenal
status.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>It
is an adventure for the heroic soul, for the vanguards of humanity; but its
fruition will spread abroad a benefit that even the common level shall share,
even those that denied shall offer their accession and adhesion.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 363<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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