“The Supramental Manifestation and World Change” – Nolini Kanta Gupta

I HAVE been asked what difference the presence of the Supermind will make, in what way will it change the trend of events and how, since the Supramental manifestation, life has to be reviewed. I am asked to give practical examples. I do not know what this means, but here is what I have seen in a somewhat mathematical mood. Although the mathematical language is quite foreign to me, still I may call it a mathematical mood, that is to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem.

I believe you have done sufficient mathematics to know the complexity of combinations that arises when you take as your basis some elements out of a sum total. To make it clearer I shall give you an example — but without using the terms you have been taught at school — from the letters of the alphabet. There are a certain number of letters. Now, if you want to calculate or know the number of combinations possible with these letters, taking all the letters together and organising them in as many ways as you can, as you have been taught, you will find that it runs into a fantastic figure.

Similarly, take the material world and come down to the most minute particle — you know scientists have arrived at things that are absolutely invisible and incalculable — and take this particle as your basis and the material world as the total and, further, imagine a Consciousness or a Will playing with these particles, making all sorts of possible combinations, never repeating the same combination. Of course, mathematically they say that the number of particles is finite and therefore the number of combinations also is finite, but this is purely theoretical, and theory does not interest us. Coming to the practical, even if you suppose that these combinations follow each other in such a manner and at such a speed that the change from one to another is hardly perceptible, it is clear that the time needed for the working out of all these combinations would be, apparently, infinite. That is to say, the number of combinations would be so immense that practically no end could be assigned to it.

Now imagine, as I have just asked you to do, that really there exists a Consciousness, a Will manifesting these combinations successively and indefinitely, never repeating twice the same thing; then we must come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity, and if the universe is new at each moment of eternity we are forced to admit there is nothing absolutely impossible; even further, what we call logical is not necessarily the true, and the logic or what might almost be called the fancy of the Creator has no limit to it.

Therefore, if for some reason (which it is difficult to express) a combination is not followed up by that which is nearest to it, but another one freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, all our external certainties and all our surface logic would fall to the ground.

For, the problem is much more complicated than you imagine. It is not merely on one plane, in one domain, that is to say, what may be called the surface of things, that there is this almost infinite quantity of elements allowing combinations eternally new. There is more than that, there is what may be termed depth, that is to say, other dimensions.

Creation is the result not only of combinations on the surface but also of combinations in the depths of this surface: in other words, there are psychological factors. But I am looking at it from the purely mathematical standpoint; although I do not speak the mathematical language, it is still a mathematical conception. Here is then the problem.

Each time a new element is introduced into the sum total of possible combinations, it is as it were a tearing of its limits; the introduction of something that effaces the past limits, brings in new possibilities into play, multiplies indefinitely the old possibilities. You had, for example, a world as the ancient knowledge found it, with twelve layers of depth or successive dimensions. Now suppose in this world of twelve dimensions suddenly other dimensions were precipitated; all the old formulas would be changed immediately and the whole possibility according to the old unfolding would be, one cannot say increased, but supplemented by an almost infinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a manner that all the old logic would become illogical in the presence of the new logic.

I do not speak at all of what the human mind has made of the universe, because that is a reduction to its own dimension. I speak of the fact as it is, of the sum total of combinations that realise themselves successively according to an order and a choice which evidently escape wholly the human consciousness, a sum total to which man has somewhat adapted himself and has at last succeeded in giving an expression that links itself to something tangible, after a great effort of study made through the centuries.

It is evident that the modern scientific perception is much nearer to something that corresponds to the universal Reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age; there is not a shadow of doubt about t4at. But even this will be completely transcended, surpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe and has not been studied so far.

This change, this sudden mutation in the universal elements will very certainly bring a kind of chaos in our perceptions, but out of it a new knowledge will arise. That, in a most general way, will be the result of the New Manifestation.

From a more restricted, external and limited point of view I shall speak now of things which are not within my own experience, but which I have heard being spoken about. It is said, for example, that one finds now a larger number of what they call child prodigies. Personally, I have met none, so I cannot say what exactly is “prodigious” in these children. However, as the stories go, there is a new type or types of consciousness which appear surprising to the ordinary human consciousness. It is such examples, I suppose, that you would like to have in order to understand what is happening.

Indeed it is quite possible that things are happening now which people are not accustomed to meet with. But that is a question of interpretation. The only fact I am sure of is what I have just told you, that the quality, the quantity and the nature of the possible universal combinations are about to change to such an extent that it will stagger all those who deal with life. Let us wait and see.

I may add one word, a practical word, to what I have already said; it is an illustration of a detail, but it will be a kind of reply to some other questions put to me some time ago about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, inevitable consequences in the material world, more particularly from the point of view of health: we are told that if some precautions are not taken, if we do not eat as we should, if we do not follow certain rules, necessarily there will be consequences.

True. But if you look at the thing in the light of what I have told you — that there are no two universal combinations that are alike — then how can you establish laws and what is the absolute truth of such laws?

There is no such truth. For, if you are logical, that is to say, with a little higher logic, how can you say that a thing repeats itself, since there are no two things, no two combinations, no two universal manifestations that are the same? The “sameness” could be only an appearance, not a fact. The mind sets up rigid laws, and when it does that, you do not cut yourself off from the apparent surface existence, for the surface, in a very obliging manner, seems to satisfy these laws. But that is an appearance, and it does cut you off from the creative Power of the Spirit, cut you off from the true Power of Grace. You can understand that if, by your aspiration and your attitude, you bring down a higher element, a new element — which now we may call the Supramental — into the existing combinations, you can all on a sudden change their nature and then all these so-called necessary and inexorable laws become absurdities. It is you, with your conception, your attitude, your acceptance of certain so-called principles, it is yourself who shut the door against the possibility of what you call miracles. They are not miracles, if you know how they come about, but evidently for your consciousness they have the look of the miraculous.

It is you who say with a logic that appears quite reasonable: “If I do this, necessarily this will happen,” or “If I do not do this, this other thing will surely come about,” and that is how you put, as it were, an iron curtain between yourself and the free action of the Grace.

How good would it be to imagine that the Supreme Consciousness, essentially free, that presides over the universal manifestation, is fanciful in its choice and that it makes things succeed each other, not according to a logic that is accessible to the human thought, but according to another kind of logic, the logic of the unforeseen!

Then there would be no limit to the possibilities, the unexpected and the wonderful. And one could hope for the most splendid, the most delightful things from this Will, sovereignly free, playing eternally with the elements, ceaselessly bringing forth a new world that would have logically nothing to do with the world that went before. Don’t you think it would be the happiest of things? We have had enough of the world as it is.

All this I am telling you so that each one of you may put as few barriers as possible against future possibilities. And that is my conclusion.

I do not know if I have made myself understood or not, but I suppose a day will come when you will know what I have wanted to say.

Originally published in “The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part 9”, 1958, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press