The Supramental Consciousness was known to the Vedic seers who had a glimpse of it through the brilliant curtain of the Overmind. There is sufficient indication such as in the Isha Upanishad that they did aspire for the ‘golden lid’ to open so that the earthly life could be governed directly by the higher Truth making earth and heaven equal and one. However, this profound and tremendous Vedic lore was lost as the typal spiritual age of the Vedas was followed by the mental and intellectual, heroic and vital, and eventually the dark ages of Kali where man labours under the spell of matter. The Iron Age was an invitation to discover and activate the Supramental truths discovered upon the summits of the mental skies into the most physical and material field. But by then the secret of the Vedas was lost and an other-worldliness, the wide and strong spiritual impulse frustrated by the obscurity and iron grip of the dark ages started turning away from the earth through the narrow doors of an other worldly escapism. This too had its purpose. However, it left such a strong stamp upon the inner being of humanity that spirituality became almost synonymous with an other-worldly mukti. It needed a colossal spiritual effort to break the escapist tendency, the dark spell of the iron age and rekindle the original aspiration of man towards terrestrial perfection. Answering to earth’s need we see the coming of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who not only unlocked the great secret but also took the work initiated by the Vedic seers further towards its logical culmination and supreme consummation.
The average Swamiji is still under the spell due to the later other worldly interpretation of the great Wisdom. The traditional interpretation still holds the mind under its sway. Yet there are more and more Swamis and more importantly aspirants who are beginning to awaken to this new aspiration. They are the hopes of the future while the too traditional are entrenched in the fixed boundaries of understanding and experience. But such is the case always. Whenever something new comes, a new revelation, a new possibility it meets the resistance of the past. Yet eventually the future takes over and the tide of Time rides over the past despite all the resistances. Has it not been the history of all forward spiritual movement? The Avatar bringing the tidings of a new dawn, the Rishi experiencing a new realisation, the yogi finding a new path towards the Infinite invariably meet with the resistance from firm established ideas and rigid dogmas and fixed lenses. Rama, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Yajnavalkya, Shankaracharya, Socrates, Sri Ramakrishna all met with a similar resistance until the truth they brought took firm roots in the human soul. Of course, man still corrupted the fruit it was meant to bear by paying only lip service to the truth brought down or converting it into fixed formal institutionalised religion. Hopefully this will not happen this time since the Supramental is too vast and cannot be reduced to a narrow one-sided formulation.
Perhaps human consciousness is still too small to comprehend it and human will – too weak to undertake the tremendous venture. However all this is only a matter of time. Sri Aurobindo beautifully reveals in Savitri:
“Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.
When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.
A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.
In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a force of the Eternal’s power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.
A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.”
