"THE MIND OF LIGHT" IN SRI AUROBINDO'S PHILOSOPHY AND YOGA "

AN ATTEMPT AT A SCHEMATIC SUMMARY

1)"The Mind of Light" is a coinage of Sri Aurobindo's, applicable not to all the levels of mental being where Light (Divine Knowledge) has open play in various degrees, but only to the human mental level — which we may designate broadly as the physical-mental — when its ignorance essentially ceases and it becomes a plane in which, even within all measures and limits, withholdings and gradualities, there is no obscurity at all: everything is a self-chosen process of Light.

2)Ignorance of the human physical-mertal cannot essentially cease by the descent of the "overhead" grades of Spiritual Mind, which are — from below upwards — Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. For, the descent of these grades, even of Overmind, can never be complete when made under their own power. The physical-mental always dilutes their Light. It dilutes it because of two factors. First, this Light is not absolutely sovereign, and ignorance itself has resulted inevitably by the lessening or, rather, by a crucial poise-change of Supermind's Light which harmonises or fuses unity and multiplicity. In the grades of Spiritual Mind, multiplicity is in the forefront and unity, although not concealed as in the lower planes, is only in the background. These grades, therefore, are impotent to. remove ignorance radically. On their own levels there is no ignorance as such, but under their own power they are bound to fail to reproduce completely in the physical-mental their own state of Light. What their descent can do is to prepare the descent of Supermind. The second factor making for dilution of the Spiritual Light is that the physical-mental partakes of the evolution from the Inconscient where everything arises out of a total submergence of Himself by the Divine for the stupendous experiment of self-manifestation

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from His own opposite, as it were. Nothing except the full Dynamic Divine which is Supermind has the competence to deal successfully with the clinging original darkness due to that submergence.

3)After Overmind has done its utmost by descent under its own power, Supermind descends. By its descent it brings about in essence the end of ignorance in the physical-mental, and the state it creates by that radical change is the Mind of Light. The Mind of Light is Supermind openly itself in human Mind-terms.

4)The first form the Mind of Light takes seems an added last rung of the luminous ladder of Spiritual Mind. It appears to stand below Higher Mind in quality of Light. But it is superior to all degrees of Spiritual Mind, even Overmind, if its quality of Light is compared to the quality the grades of Spiritual Mind have achieved in the physical-mental in their descended forms. It is in terms of descent and embodiment that a proper comparison can be made between the state that is this Mind and the grades of Spiritual Mind. In such terms this Mind outshines them all from the very beginning, for it is the Supermind's own manifestation.

5)That manifestation develops a second and greater form, which is a completely descended Spiritual Mind — an entire embodiment by Spiritual Mind of itself, which under its own power it could not achieve. The full conversion of the physical-mental into the Light of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, which these grades could not formerly bring about, is done now by them on the basis of Supermind's establishment in the physical-mental. This conversion constitutes a mental Gnosis like what Spiritual Mind is in its overhead status, but with two differences. It is a mental Gnosis embodied. And it is a mental Gnosis which Supermind has assumed or put forth without a crucial poise-change as in Spiritual Mind.

6)The third form of the Mind of Light goes farther than such mental Gnosis. It embodies the Supramental Gnosis free from any frontal appearance of Spiritual Mind. Not,

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however, all of the Supramental Gnosis, for the Mind of Light expresses that in the Supermind which is the divine counterpart of all Mind — "Divine Mind", as Sri Aurobindo calls it. It is specifically the third strand of the Supermind's three-stranded unity. In this strand the projecting, confronting, apprehending power which the second strand brings forth is developed to its extreme, restraining still more, without yet relegating to the background, the constituting, pervading, comprehending power which is the first strand and from which the second is a development.

7)Yes, the third form of the Mind of Light establishes in the body the third strand of the Supermind and prepares the establishment of the whole Supramental Gnosis, with itself in prominence as its Inherent power of making pragmatic divisions and fixing pragmatic relations between seemingly independent centres. But we must not forget that all the forms assumed by the Mind of Light are a manifestation of the Supermind's third strand. What the third form does is merely to release to the utmost the supramental magnificence which was released a little by the first and more by the second. All are degrees of one and the same apocalypse of something in the supreme Truth.

8)The Mind of Light in its plenary form, leading on to the fullness of what we may call the Life-force of Light and the Body of Light, would constitute the Intermediate Race between the Human and the Supramental Races. The Supramental Race would be a directly manifested line of Divine Beings who have never gone through the process of earthly evolution: they would be the Supermind humanised, as differentiated from Humanity supramentalised. Humanity would be supramentalised by a natural means of spirituali-sation; the Supermind would be humanised by an occult means of materialisatipn developed by Humanity when it has supramentalised itself. The two achievements would be complementary aspects of the complete manifestation of the Divine upon earth — the crowning vision of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and the all-consummating goal of his Yoga.

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