Identifying With a Power of the Spirit Greater Than the Mentality - Sri Aurobindo

17/02/2017.

As long as the human individual remains locked into the mentality, the powers of knowledge and will and the implementation of action in the vital and physical world are limited, obscured and under the control of the mechanism of Nature. The issue then arises for the seeker as to whether there is any poise or standpoint that brings about the complete mastery and control over the nature, and if so, how to attain that poise.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Nevertheless, there is somewhere an absolute control, a real Ishwara. He is aware of it and knows that if he can find it, he will enter into control, become not only the passive sanctioning witness and upholding soul of her will, but the free powerful user and determiner of her movements.”

What is required is a shift of the standpoint outside the frame of the mentality into a divine standpoint that exists independently of the mental consciousness. There are experiences along the way which validate this idea. “Sometimes he finds himself using it, but as a channel or instrument; it comes to him from above. it is clear then that it is supramental, a power of the Spirit greater than mental being which he already knows himself to be at the summit and in the secret core of his conscious being.”

The method then must involve transferring the identification of the Self from the ego-self bound up in mind, life and body to this divine Self. “He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, a channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection.”

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