object:13.04 - A Note on Supermind
book class:Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation A Dream Of Surreal Science
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Light of LightsA Note on Supermind
A Note on Supermind
I
Supermind is not a function, an extended function of the mind as someone seems to have presumed. Is Life then a function, an extended function of Matter? Is Mind also in its turn" a function, an extended function of Life? With equal reason one might conclude that God is an extended function of man and even Heaven an extended function of Earth!
A Sanskrit wit in trying to portray a pig for the benefit of one who has never seen the animal said (in joke or in earnest, one does not know): a pig is an elephant reduced or a mouse enlarged; it would be equally cogent or correct to say that the mind is the Supermind in reduced proportions or that the Supermind is the mind in enlarged proportions. One may "also remember in this connection Aesop's story of the boasting frog who wanted to inflate or blow himself into the size of a bull and blew himself up and burst into fragments in the attempt. The fate of the mind is likely to be the same if it attempted to magnify itself to the measure of Supermind.
However far the mind may be stretched, it cannot reach the Supermind. It is not a question of degree, but of kind, norm and quality. Even so, Matter, however subtilised, de-materialised remains Matterpulverized into infinitesimal particles at the farthest limits of the material universeit, does not abandon its material nature, it does not become Life. So again with regard to Life: Life-force, however extended or subtilised, does not acquire the mental power and become Mind. Matter evinces Life-power only when life is injected into it, Life exits somewhere else, exists by itself. In the same way Life betrays mental power when Mind is injected into it, mind is by itself something else. The difference, we may say, using a philosophical jargon, is not merely epistemological but ontological. These categories are, in fact, not derivative phenomena but self-existing Reals (noumena). Perhaps the word 'Supermind' itself is somewhat responsible for a misconstruction and misunderstanding. Supermind does not mean a "superior mind", it means beyond mind, away from mind, unreachable for mindaprpya manas saha.
Supermind is not a function: It is a reality, the reality itself, the fundamental substance that underlies the world and its formulations of Mind, Life and Matter. It is that secret Energy of Consciousness and Being that lies as the seed and sprouts up and gradually expresses itself in its variant poises of mounting potency. These poises are not mere functions: a function is just the expression or operation of an already acquired or established power. It is a deducible conclusion from known and given data, the data and the conclusion are of the same basic nature, that is commensurable entities. Life and Matter are however not commensurable entities nor, Mind and Life. Even so the Supermind and Mind do not belong to the same category of objective reality. If that was so, one could very justifiably and in high seriousness proclaim in Sri Aurobindo's words those radiant lines, bursting, as it were, with a suppressed laughter:
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A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation A Dream Of Surreal Science
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