Science and Spirituality - Theme of the Synthesis of Science and Spirituality or rather Supramental Spirituality

IV.B Theme of the Synthesis of Science and Spirituality or rather Supramental Spirituality

IV.B.1 Meeting of Science and Spirituality: Third Position
(From a Conversation of the Mother, dated 24-05-1962)

... I thought for a time, a very long time, that if Science went to its furthest possible limits (if this is conceivable), it would join up with true Knowledge. In the study of the composition of matter, for example — by pressing the investigation further and further on — a point would be reached where the two would meet. But when I had that experience of passing from the eternal Truth-Consciousness to the consciousness of the individualized world, [See conversation of May 13] well ... it appeared impossible to me. And if you ask me now, I think that this possibility of Science pushed to its extreme limits joining up with true Knowledge, and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the ma­terial world are both incorrect. There is something else.

And more and more these days, I find myself facing the whole problem as if I had never seen it before.

Both paths may be leading towards a third point, and that third point is what I am at present ... not exactly studying; I am rather in quest of it — the point where the two paths merge into a third that would be the TRUE thing.

But in any case, if it could be absolutely total (there's an "if " here), objective, scientific knowledge pushed to its extreme limits would certainly bring you to the threshold. That's what Sri Aurobindo means. But he also says it's fatal, because all those who went in for that knowledge believed in it as an absolute truth, thus closing the door to the other approach. In this respect it is fatal.

From my own experience, though, I could say to all those who believe EXCLUSIVELY in the spiritual approach, the ap­proach through inner experience, that this — at least if it's exclu­sive — is equally fatal. For it reveals to them ONE aspect, ONE truth of the Whole — but not THE Whole. The other side seems

This "something" is what we are seeking. And perhaps not merely seeking — we may be taking part in the MAKING' of it.

We are being made use of in the manifestation of this "something."

Something none can yet imagine, for so far it hasn't come into being. It is an expression yet to come.

That is all I can say.

(silence)

This is exactly the state of consciousness I am living in now It's as if I were facing the same eternal problem but ... from a NEW POSITION.

These positions — the spiritual and the "materialist" (if you can call it that) positions — which consider themselves exclusive (exclusive and unique, and so each one denies the other's value in the name of Truth) are inadequate, not only because neither one will accept the other, but because even accepting and uniting them both won't solve the problem. Something else is needed, a third position that isn't the result of these two but something still to be discovered, which will probably open the door to total Knowledge.

Well, that's where I stand.

More I can't say — that's as far as I have come.

One might wonder how to participate practically in this...

This discovery?

That... Ultimately, it's always the same thing. It's always the same: realize your own being, enter into conscious contact with the supreme Truth of your own being, in WHATEVER form,

* Italics by the Compiler

Who knows? Perhaps the very multiplicity of approaches will yield the Secret – the Secret that will open the door.⁵³

* * *

IV.B.2 Evolution and Projection of the Divine Body on the Earth: Towards the Experiential Proof of the Synthesis of Science and Spirituality or of Supramental Spirituality

• The Divine Body

A DIVINE life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. But what will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from the limited and imper­fect physicality within which we are now bound? What will be the conditions and operations of its life, still physical in its base upon the earth, by which it can be known as divine?⁵⁴

• Transformation of the Body: A Condition of total transformation

If it is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that we must envisage it, an evolution out of our human imperfection and ignorance into a greater truth of spirit and nature, by what process or stages can it grow into manifestation or rapidly ar­rive? The process of the evolution upon earth has been slow and tardy—what principle must intervene if there is to be a transfor-

It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth consciousness, and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supra-mental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-conscious­ness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omni­scient light and omnipotent force of the spirit to conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must to that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.

It might be that a psychological change, a mastery of the na­ture by the soul, a transformation of the mind into a principle of light, of the life-force into power and purity would be the first ap­proach, the first attempt to solve the problem, to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could not be the complete and radical change needed; it would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a di­vine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character and this

• Stages of Transformation: All humanity not to rise in a bloc into the Supermind

It might be also that the transformation might take place by stages; there are powers of the nature still belonging to the mental region which are yet potentialities of a growing gnosis lifted beyond our human mentality and partaking of the light and power of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the nat­ural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentiali­ties of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could bring down to the mind only a partial divinity or raise the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into the complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness. Still these levels might become stages of the ascent which some would reach and pause there while others went higher and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine existence. It is not to be supposed that all humanity would rise in a block into the supermind; at first those only might attain to the highest or some intermediate height of the ascent whose inner evolu-

• The human body to reach a more perfect form

In any case these would be beginnings only and could not constitute the fullness of the divine life upon earth; it would be a new orientation of the earthly life but not the consummation of its change. For that there must be the sovereign reign of a supramental truth-consciousness to which all other forms of life would be subordinated and depend upon it as the master prin­ciple and supreme power to which they could look up as the goal, profit by its influences, be moved and upraised by some­thing of its illumination and penetrating force. Especially, as the human body had to come into existence with its modification of the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious spirit. While the capacity for taking up and subli­mating all the activities of the earth-life capable of being spiri­tualised must be there, a transcendence of the original animality and the actions incurably tainted by it or at least some saving transformation of them, some spiritualising or psychicising of the consciousness and motives animating them and the shedding

This destiny of the body has rarely in the past been envis­aged or else not for the body here upon earth; such forms would rather be imagined or visioned as the privilege of celestial beings and not possible as the physical residence of a soul still bound to terrestrial nature. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a spiritualised conscious body, cinmaya deha; there has been the conception of a radiant or luminous body, which might be the Vedic jyotirmaya deha. A light has been seen by some radiating from the bodies of highly developed spiritual persons, even extending to the emis­sion of an enveloping aura and there has been recorded an ini­tial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so great a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been either

It is the past evolution of the body and especially its animal nature and animal history which seems to stand in the way of this consummation. The body, as we have seen, is an offspring and creation of the Inconscient, itself inconscient or only half conscious; it began as a form of unconscious Matter, developed life and from a material object became a living growth, developed mind and from the subconsciousness of the plant and the initial rudimentary mind or incomplete intelligence of the animal de­veloped the intellectual mind and more complete intelligence of man and now serves as the physical base, container and instru­mental means of our total spiritual endeavour. Its animal char­acter and its gross limitations stand indeed as an obstacle to our

• Animal body: its limitations

Still the inconveniences of the animal body and its animal nature and impulses and the limitations of the human body at its best are there in the beginning and persist always so long as there is not the full and fundamental liberation, and its incon­science or half-conscience and its binding of the soul and mind and life force to Matter, to materiality of all kinds, to the call of the unregenerated earth-nature are there and constantly op­pose the call of the spirit and circumscribe the climb to higher things. To the physical being it brings a bondage to the material instruments, to the brain and heart and senses, wed to materi­ality and materialism of all kinds, to the bodily mechanism and its needs and obligations, to the imperative need of food and the preoccupation with the means of getting it and storing it as one of the besetting interests of life, to fatigue and sleep, to the satisfaction of bodily desire. The life-force in man also is tied down to these small things; it has to limit the scope of its larger ambitions and longings, its drive to rise beyond the pull of earth and follow the heavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart's ideal and the soul's yearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and the physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things with the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and glories that can only have their full play in heavens beyond, on higher planes of existence, but not here; it afflicts the idea and aspiration with the burden of doubt, the evidence of

The difficulty is dual, psychological and corporeal: the first is the effect of the unregenerated animality upon the life, especially by the insistence of the body's gross instincts, impulses, desires; the second is the outcome of our corporeal structure and organic instrumentation imposing its restrictions on the dynamism of the higher divine nature. ⁵⁸

• • •

The divine life must always be actuated by the push towards perfection; a perfection of the joy of life is part and an essential part of it, the body's delight in things and the body's joy of life are not excluded from it; they too have to be made perfect. A large totality is the very nature of this new and growing way of existence, a fullness of the possibilities of the mind transmuted into a thing of light, of the life converted into a force of spiritual power and joy, of the body transformed into an instrument of a divine action, divine knowledge, divine bliss. All can be taken into its scope that is capable of transforming itself, all that can be an instrument, a vessel, an opportunity for the expression of this

• Change of the Physical Organs

... it may well be that the evolutionary urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body, suksma §arira, of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it, would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole mate­rial body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might go so far that these organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too obstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw aside their use altogether. If that happened they might waste by at­rophy, be reduced to an insignificant minimum or even disap­pear. The central force might substitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic trans­mitters rather than what we know as organs.⁶⁰

• Necessary forms and instrumentations of Matter must remain

This might well be part of a supreme total transformation of the body, though this too might not be final. To envisage such changes is to look far ahead and minds attached to the present form of things may be unable to give credence to their possi­bility. No such limits and no such impossibility of any neces­sary change can be imposed on the evolutionary urge. All has not to be fundamentally changed: on the contrary, all has to be preserved that is still needed in the totality, but all has to be perfected. Whatever is necessary for the evolutionary purpose

for the increasing, enlarging, heightening of the consciousness, which seems to be its central will and aim here, or the progres­sion of its enabling means and preserving environment, has to be kept and furthered; but what has to be overpassed, whatever has no longer a use or is degraded, what has become unhelpful or retarding, can be discarded and dropped on the way. That has been evident in the history of the evolution of the body from its beginning in elementary forms to its most developed type, the human; there is no reason why this process should not intervene in the transition from the human into the divine body. For the manifestation or building of a divine body on earth there must be an initial transformation, the appearance of a new, a greater and more developed type, not a continuance with little modifications of the present physical form and its limited possibilities. What has to be preserved must indeed be preserved and that means whatever is necessary or thoroughly serviceable for the uses of the new life on earth; whatever is still needed and will serve its purpose but is imperfect, will have to be retained but developed and perfected; whatever is no longer of use for new aims or is a disability must be thrown aside. The necessary forms and in­strumentations of Matter must remain since it is in a world of Matter that the divine life has to manifest, but their materiality must be refined, uplifted, ennobled, illumined, since Matter and the world of Matter have increasingly to manifest the indwelling Spirit.

The new type, the divine body, must continue the already de­veloped evolutionary form; there must be a continuation from the type Nature has all along been developing, a continuity from the human to the divine body, no breaking away to something un­recognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and in part perfected. The human body has in it parts and instru­ments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still further perfected, their limitations of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their capacities of cognition and dynamic action carried beyond

• Development of the Divine Body

[It is only the projection of the Divine Body on the earth with

A study of this account is indispensable for any student, par­ticularly for any scientist, whose very work consists of inquiry and exploration.

The projection of the Divine Body has not yet taken place, but high approximations have been reached, and they can give us a sound ground for the eventual synthesis of Science and Supramental Spirituality.

For arriving at that eventuality, we (the scientists and spiritual seekers) have to strive at what the Mother has spoken of as the "Third Position", and we have, therefore, included the full text of the Mother's statement of May 24, 1962.⁵³

We can confidently speak of this eventuality because the most indispensable condition for that eventuality has already been fulfilled, namely, that of the "Permeation of the Supramental Consciousness in the large groups of the cells of the Mother's body". Thus the Supramental Consciousness has been fixed in Matter irreversibly — a momentous achievement of our Age of Crisis.]