The Magical Carousel, Chapter III, Mind

Pom-pom dries his tears and Val bends down on all fours to examine the bird that is transporting them.  He is a gay creature with blue feathers and a tuft of yellow plumes on top of his head, carrying them along in a most distracted manner.

Finally it seems they have arrived at their destination, for the bird deposits his load in a very strange land indeed!  A land in the air with clouds forming landscapes and a hubbub of people rushing to and fro, all carrying books under their arms and walking in two’s.  They have scholarly faces and are very busy chatting and chatting away to each other.

For a long while Val and Pom-pom study their surroundings.  They realise the cage is locked and after much indecision and talk about whether they should enter this land, they finally put their diverse opinions in accord and decide to try the third key.  Bending down close to the lock of the cage they see a symbol and the number 3.

Val inserts the key and to their greatest joy the door opens:  they are free!

The children rush out and are about to dash off when Val remembers her picture-book.  Just before the cage vanishes she returns to fetch it and puts it under her arm as they hop off down the cloud road.

The people around do not seem very interested in the children; they walk hurriedly and most of them have their noses in books.  There is quite a lot of noise because all are reading out loud and making such a racket.  Val wonders how they can concentrate on their studies, for surely they are studying very seriously.  The children are curious to know where everyone is going because the whole place seems to be moving toward something.  The only problem is that the direction always changes and they find that many times these people are moving in circles.  In spite of themselves Val and Pom-pom are obliged to enter the movement and they both agree it would be a good idea to find out where everyone is off to.  Pom-pom runs down the road to sort of scout around, when he hears voices above the general hubbub saying:

“Where’s your other half?”

“How dare you walk around alone!”

“What sort of primitive creature are you?”

He rushes back to Val and they cling to each other not daring to move for fear of doing something wrong and arousing the ill will of these creatures.  Finally the indignant voices quiet down.

“Psst!”

Val and Pom-pom remain in their state, undecided as to what to do.

“Psst!” they hear again, and then another more insistent,

“Pssssssst!”

They turn around to see two young gentlemen, standing arm in arm with books in their free arms, dressed very fancily with high collars and shiny boots with spats, fine fitted coats and lovely silk cravats.  Both have wonderful heads of yellow wavy hair topping their foreheads above sharp, alive, blue eyes.

“Come here”, they say in union.

Val and Pom-pom hesitantly approach the couple and coming closer they soon lose all fear because the manner of the two is so pleasant that they are encouraged to communicate with them.  Pom-pom boldly asks why everyone is in two’s and why they always speak together.

“Two!  What do you mean two?  I am one.  I mean, one and one make two and it takes two ones to make a two, so I am one and one in two therefore one!  How about you?

“Well, he’s just my brother,” explains Val, rather embarassed.

“Oh, me too, a twin,” they reply in unison.  “Allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Geof/Frie.”  They say the name in perfect timing so as to make it sound one.  “However, please tell me why you haven’t yet learned to speak together.  How can you stand such a crazy split?”

Val begins to wonder who’s really crazy the twins or they! She doesn’t know what to say or how to say it since she could never manage to talk with Pom-pom, who always says silly things anyway.  Nevertheless, she starts relating all their adventures through Aries and Taurusland which delight the minds of Geof and Frie.

After listening to the tale the Twins reassure them:

“Have no fear.  You have come a long way in ignorance but finally here in Geminiland your education will begin.  You will learn to complement each other and the outward results will be to speak in unison.  After all, two minds are better than one, even if they are separate.  And words, dear friends, ah, you will learn the excitement of words!”

“Is that what everybody is studying?” asks Val.

“They’re preparing for the yearly examination.  It’s May 21st, a very important time here.  Come along and you will see.”

Off they go, with Val and Pom-pom trailing after the Twins down the road.  Their steps are quick and it takes quite an effort for the children to keep up with them.

They approach a very imposing building that seems to be just where all the population is going.  Hundreds of people are entering in a great rush and busily scanning the books held in their free arms.  Certainly there was never a school with such confusion!  Geof and Frie lead the children into a very large lecture hall almost completely filled and each takes a seat.  The Twins – as all the other couples – are seated with one arm entwined in the other’s.

In come the Professors, rather thin, with huge spectacles and a thousand and one twitches.  They are very nervous sorts.

Roll call is taken:  Hum/Phry, Ron/Ald, Hora/Tio, Lio/Nel, Frank/Lin, and so on.  After this the work begins and each couple is tested.  With most remarkable skill the two professors speak in perfect unison about entirely different subjects, and with the same facility the students answer, one to the questions of the first professor, the other to the questions of the second, simultaneously and in exact coordination.  Meanwhile the classroom is in an uproar because the rest of the students are preparing other lessons; some are studying mathematics, others history, some are memorising verbs in the strangest languages.  Yet nothing seems to distract the concentration of these creatures and they all appear so capable of doing a hundred things at once.

Geof and Frie are questioned, one in Greek and the other in Latin, then in Physics, Chemistry, and so on.  The children find them so clever, much more than the other students.  They are very proud to have them for friends.

“Val/Pom-pom!  Val/Pom-pom!” two voices shout out.  “What a ghastly name.  Who bears such a ridiculous name?”

Bang-bang!  Bang-bang!  The Professors rap their desk in indignation.  Geof and Frie push the children to their feet and for the first time the whole room falls into an attentive silence.

The Professors exclaim:  “Well, let’s be quick now.  You’re the last one on the list and examinations are coming to an end.  Can you write?”

“Yes/No,” respond the children, not in perfect time nor in accord, for Pom-pom of course can’t write – not very well at least.

“Repeat that please.  Can you write?” straining an ear to make sure they hear properly.

“No/Yes”, again not agreeing.

The whole class breaks out into ripples of laughter.  The Professors rap their desk and order returns.

“There has obviously been some mistake.  You can rectify this by properly answering the following question:  how many lives does a cat have?”

“One/Nine”.  We mean Nine/One!”  they respond.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong!  This will never do.  We, you said, you said WE!  Failure, failure,” and at these cruel and disheartening words the Professors are ready to dismiss them when Geof and Frie come forth to plead for another chance.  It is almost the end of the term, June 21st, with just a short time left to examine, but the Professors consent.  They ask for the book Val carries and agree to question them only on what they have been studying.  The Twins pass the book down the rows of students until it reaches the teachers’ hands.  Opening the book, the Professors gasp in horror:

“Pictures,” they exclaim, “a picture book! This is the cause of their maladjustment and ignorance.  An over-stimulation of the emotions and not of the intellect!  Disastrous.”

“Valie, what are they talking about?” whispers Pom-pom.

“I think they mean we cry too much.  Ssssh.”

“Silence up there!  Class,” continue the Professors, “these are feeling not thinking beings.  Can you see what such a stimulus can cause:  complete mental chaos, inability to coordinate and adapt, and a general disorder of the cerebral-nervous system,” proclaim the Professors as they twitch and fidget . . . “And what’s more, even their physical development has been affected, for one is bigger than the other.  “AND”, they continue solemnly, “I have the vague suspicion – though I prefer to leave the matter in doubt – that one is a girl and the other is a boy!”

Sounds of amazement come from the class and tension rises, sometimes dying down, then it begins again.  In fact, there is always this continuous feeling of up and down, up and down.

“There is only one thing to do for these unfortunate beings.  They must stay in this class until the next yearly examination period, working on the proper methods to become one well-conditioned, well-adjusted mental being, and let us presume that by that time their performance will be satisfactory.”

Pom-pom cries out:

“We can’t stay here!  We have to leave, right now.”

The Professors are silent a moment.  They have a very grave air about them. Finally they speak:

“No hope, there’s no hope.  Bring the certificate.”

One pair of students comes forward with a roll of parchment which the Professors prepare, and which says:

The document is rolled up and handed to the children.  The crowd makes sounds of approval; however, it is clear they are becoming bored with the matter and seem anxious to get on with their other affairs.

The children are accompanied to the entrance of the institution by Geof and Frie and a winged messenger is summoned to carry them off.  When he appears the children realise it is the same bird who carried them before.

He cleverly snatches them up, one in each of his claws and they depart, with Val carrying the certificate.  She and Pom-pom turn to wave a last farewell at Geof and Frie, only to find the Twins nonchalantly waving their handkerchiefs while talking to a group of students about preparations for the evening’s annual ball, already forgetting the two little folk who are by now far off in the distance.

The bird whistles a tune as he flies and seems in a gay mood.  He is obviously always in the clouds for in his distraction he loses his way many times and constantly changes direction.  At last he seems to hit the right course and with a decisive plunge begins descending, while the two children dangle in the grasp of his claws.  Down and down they go and the farther they descend the darker it becomes.  Down they go into the unknown, down into the night.

***********

The Magical Carousel, Chapter III, Mind

A Marriage of Minds

After completing the article, ‘Mind and the Supramental Creation: The Mind of Light’, I received an interview with the biologist, Roger Sperry, from the August 1983 issue of OMNI. In 1981, Sperry received the Nobel Prize for his revolutionising contributions to brain research. In the light of what I had just written, his statements in this interview were extremely interesting and merit some discussion. Apart from the fact that his work has helped to carry science to the discovery of certain functions of the human instrument which parallel aspects of my own vision in this sphere, the factor that interests me most is the light this throws on a concurrent pace between science and spirituality. In addition, Sperry’s comments offer the opportunity to discuss the areas which for science are yet obscure in brain/mind functioning.

I should also like to draw the readers’ attention to certain portions of my book, The Magical Carousel, written in March of 1970. The correspondence between what I wrote then and the brain/mind research that Sperry reveals was in progress at that very time is stimulating.  Though this research was largely unknown to me when I wrote The Magical Carousel, in Chapter 3 I described aspects of the mind and brain in much the same light as Sperry and others have done on the basis of their scientific research. My descriptions were born exclusively from the insight into certain keys contained in the zodiacal hieroglyphs, via yogic experiential methods. Some of these insights are known to students of astrology and form the body of its ancient tradition. However, my contribution has been a unified vision of the zodiac, on which basis I have been able to reveal that it is a detailed blueprint of the stages of evolution of consciousness, in particular in the human species. Included in this vision is the role of the body as an evolving instrument for manifesting this underlying consciousness. By a comparison of certain aspects of The Magical Carousel and Sperry’s discoveries, it is possible to show once more that the seers who passed down the zodiacal hieroglyphs were well aware of the manner in which the 12-part division of the ecliptic in relation to our method of measuring time on the planet, provides us with clues to human evolution and the progressive unfolding of a higher, unified consciousness. I have called this 12-part division, the Map of the Manifestations; or, in other places, the horoscope of the Divine Mother.

The Mother's Symbol

In this context, it is most significant that the symbol the Mother adopted for herself precisely conveys all the details of that 12-part division that has reached us through zodiacal wisdom. Her symbol here reproduced has 12 outer petals which are the 12 zodiacal signs or the division of our ecliptic into 12 parts, corresponding to the months of the year; the three concentric circles are the energy flows or Qualities, as they are called in astrology, Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable (Creation, Preservation and Destruction); and the four inner petals correspond to the elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water. In this we have an example of the manner in which symbols are used to convey a wealth of knowledge in one simple geometric form. To ‘read’ such a symbol, however, requires a lengthy discipline and preparation.

As all students of astrology know, the third zodiacal sign, Gemini, deals with the mind and the brain. However, The Magical Carousel brings out certain aspects of their functioning which were not known previously. For example, the focal point of Chapter 3 concerns the new discoveries for which Roger Sperry has received numerous awards. In this brief discussion, I would like to demonstrate how ancient wisdom was aware of the split-brain activities of the cerebral left and right hemispheres. For those who have read The Magical Carousel, this review will prove especially interesting.

In offering its readers an introductory description of Roger Sperry’s work, OMNI‘s interviewer describes his discoveries of the split-brain properties: ‘…it was as if two minds resided in one brain. Each half of the cerebrum was capable of learning, remembering, feeling thoughts completely unknown to the other.’

In The Magical Carousel odyssey through the zodiacal sign/lands, the children Val and Pom-pom, the main characters of the story, come to the land/sign Gemini in Chapter 3. There, in this ‘land of mind’, the children encounter the twins, Geof and Frie (Geoffrey), in separate bodies but whose minds function in unison, yet with a curious feature that reveals the existence of the two hemispheres of the brain, left and right. As Sperry and his colleagues discovered on the basis of surgical intervention, the two hemispheres when disconnected, reveal a dual nature; the right hemisphere is not cognisant of what the left is doing, and vice-versa, when certain connecting and central neural passages are severed. Accordingly, the twin creatures Val and Pom-pom meet in Gemini-land display this very same characteristic, since they are the personification of the sign’s overall significance; lower mind and brain. The following passage from The Magical Carousel offers an example:

(Val and Pom-pom) turn around to see two gentlemen, standing arm in arm with books in their free arms, dressed very fancily with high collars and shiny boots with spats, fine fitted coats and lovely silk cravats. Both have wonderful heads of yellow wavy hair topping high foreheads above sharp, alive, blue eyes.

‘Come here,’ they say in unison.

Val and Pom-pom hesitantly approach the couple and coming closer they soon lose all fear because the manner of the two is so pleasant that they are encouraged to communicate with them. Pom-pom boldly asks why everyone is in two’s and why they always speak together.

‘Two!  What do you mean two? I am one. I mean, one and one make two and it takes two ones to make a two, so I am one and one in two and therefore one! How about you?’

‘Well, he’s just my brother,’ explains Val, rather embarrassed.

‘Oh, me too, a twin,’ they reply in unison. ‘Allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Geof/Frie.’ They say the name in perfect timing so as to make it sound one.‘However, please tell me why you haven’t yet learned to speak together. How can you stand such a crazy split?’

The point made in this passage is that though the functions are distinct and in a sense independent of one another, there is nonetheless an overall unity maintained, which in part is provided by mind. It is this unifying element that Sperry discovered when in the mid-Sixties he finally found that mind was above the brain in the hierarchy of consciousness.

In 1980, a report appeared in newspapers throughout the world which I would like to quote in full. Had this report appeared prior to writing The Magical Carousel and not ten years later, readers would surely have thought that I had modelled the Gemini twins on this real life pair, who, in an astounding manner, behave just as Geof and Frie do, almost as if they were their feminine counterparts, with the same initials too!

‘Identical twins Greta and Freda Chaplin have the scientific world and general public intrigued and psychiatrists and social workers baffled.

‘The 37-year-old twins are so alike in the way they think, act, dress, look and live that experts say they genuinely appear to share one mind between the two bodies.

‘They do everything together, scream or sulk if parted and most uncannily  –when under stress– they talk in unison speaking the same words simultaneously in identical voice patterns that create a weird echo effect.

‘Doctors say they have never before encountered a case like it and believe the twins may be linked by telepathy.

They first became news last July [1980] when they appeared before a magistrate at their home city of York in Northern England on a charge of breach of peace.’ (Associated Press)

(From:  The Indian Express, 6 December 1980)

The fantasies and intuitions of my right-brain hemisphere do not seem to be so fantastic after all!

In this chapter of The Magical Carousel, the hemisphere that is prominent is the left, which controls linguistic abilities, among other things. Geof and Frie (Greta and Freda?) indicate this in the following dialogue:

‘Have no fear. You have come a long way in ignorance but finally here in Geminiland your education will begin. You will learn to complement each other and the outward results will be to speak in unison. After all, two minds are better than one, even if they are separate. And words, dear friends, ah, you will learn the excitement of words!’

In continuing their odyssey, the children come to the next land/sign, Cancer, and there the emotions prevail, which is the sphere that comes under the aegis of the right hemisphere. In Taurusland also, this aspect is stressed (‘pictures, not words!’). But the theme of The Magical Carousel is to present a purview of the integral nature of the development of the human species, whose evolution will ultimately produce a creature of higher and lower functions integrated into one harmonious whole. Thus, when the first 9 sign/lands have been experienced by the children, the final 3 provide the elements for unifying the consciousness and being. The land of Sagittarius (the 9th sign) is the sign of higher mind and the opening to planes above mind which command the lower. But again there is a dual aspect to Sagittarius. Its pictograph is the Centaur, half-man, half-horse. This duality, in contrast to the separately embodied Twins of Gemini, is contained in one form, thus providing the clue to the nature of the two hemispheres in the human brain that control precisely the activities which are symbolised in the two features of the Centaur: man-half, mind; horse-half, vital.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspects of Sperry’s research concern the question of the causal role of mind in the brain. Prior to his discoveries, all commands and controls were thought to originate in the brain itself. Sperry revolutionised this by the concept of mind as the higher causal factor:  ‘The key realisation was that the higher levels in brain activity control the lower. The higher cerebral properties of mind and consciousness are in command. They envelop, carry, and overwhelm the physiochemical details. They call the plays, exerting downward control over the march of nerve-impulse traffic. Our new model, mentalism, puts mind and mental properties to work and gives them a reason for being and for having evolved in a physical system.’ Sperry then goes on to define ‘mentalism’, the concept his research introduced in the Seventies. He uses the aphorism, ‘the whole is greater than, and different from, the sum of its parts’. Mind is an ‘emergent property’, in effect greater than the sum of the parts which it commands and, according to Sperry, from which it has evolved.

‘Since each side of the surgically divided brain is able to sustain its own conscious volitional system…the question arises, Why, in the normal state, don’t we perceive ourselves as a pair of separate left and right persons instead of the single, apparently unified mind and self that we all feel we are?

‘In wrestling with the split-brain problem I realised that…interaction with, and response to, objects and other inputs requires that emergent consciousness have a causal impact on brain activity. The normal bilateral consciousness can be viewed as a higher emergent entity that’s more than just the sum of its right and left awareness and supersedes this as a directive force in our thoughts and actions.’

The interviewer aptly sums it up in this way:

‘So the two hemispheres normally function together as an integrated whole, and the mind as a bilateral unit then arbitrates and integrates the activities within each hemisphere, making decisions that are carried out as physical or chemical events in either or both sides.’

The results of his research brought Sperry to a mental and vital integration which was criticised in scientific quarters as a return to animism. In this interview Sperry defends his position, saying that he would revive vitalism ‘in a modified form’. The point he makes is clear: …this ‘changed scientific interpretation…includes mental and vital forces that science has traditionally renounced. Not only does it include mind, the historic antithesis of matter, but it also puts mind over matter in the hierarchy of causal control. It offers a different right-brain picture of reality.’

In the light of what I have written in ‘Mind and the Supramental Creation’, it is evident that the human brain, consisting as it does of two hemispheres, is thereby equipped to serve as the instrument into which mental commands are transmitted that correspond to the two major aspects of being – mental and vital – which in their combined interaction serve to distinguish the human species from the rest of the animal kingdom. The activities of the right hemisphere are intuitional, emotional, visual-spatial and non-verbal. These attributes concern properties of the vital being, one of the four planes of consciousness that comprise our material reality in which these subtle dimensions and forces are operative. The left-brain controls, among other things, linguistic ability, logic, reasoning, and so forth. Investigations by yogic methods reveal these functions to be connected to the mental plane and being.

The human brain thus consists of these two clearly defined and separate control panels or relay stations, as it were. The higher graded mental consciousness is the causal agent that uses this dual instrument to carry out its commands in a body that is distinguished from other forms of life due to this balance of mind and vital. These are the features that animate and give intelligent life to our species, via our physical bodies. The physical is merely the instrument that these forces use; the brain is equipped with dual hemispheres that serve as the material transmitters to allow our bodies to enact the commands of these parts of the being, received from the more subtle dimensions. The result is a form of unity, of integration. But only in its elementary stage, for the present human species is in transition to a finer poise.

Sperry decries reductionism (the trend of reducing everything to atoms and elementary particles), and the excessive focus science places on a mechanistic materialism, which has left no room in its perspective for the other right-brain aspects of the human being. His conclusions, he affirms, result in the fact that ‘we are free of the kind of mechanistic materialist forces with which science used to saddle us. We are lifted above these into a higher realm with a different kind of control – a control unequalled in freedom anywhere else in the known universe.’ But he continues by describing mentalism as ‘strictly a one-world, this world answer’. He opposes any mystical implication in his findings. For Sperry, mind and consciousness are emergent properties that have their origins in the process of evolution:  ‘Everything indicates that the human mind and consciousness are inseparable activities of an evolving, self-creating cerebral system.’

It is in this area that we are forced to part ways with Sperry, since practice of the integral and supramental yogas  provides us with different answers. The factor that he seems to overlook is the involutionary phenomenon. The truth of our world is both evolutionary and involutionary, constant and simultaneous in their interaction. When scientists like Sperry come to appreciate this concurrent, interwoven activity of the Supreme Consciousness in its universal deployment, they may come to find the answers to many of the questions that still hound them in their research and remain elusive. Some, of course, are attempting to present cosmological models which do incorporate this dual action, like the physicist, David Bohm, with his ‘implicate order’, or Arthur Young’s ‘reflexive universe’.

In Sperry’s words, ‘In any non-living thing the spacing and timing of the material elements of which it is composed make all the difference in determining what a thing is.  Science has specific laws for the molecules [of which a thing is composed] but no such laws for all the differential spacing and timing factors, the non-material patterns or form factors that are crucial in determining what things are and what laws they obey. These space-time nonmaterial components tend to be thrown out and lost in the reduction process as science aims toward ever more elementary levels of explanation.’

Indeed, what are these factors that determine why the countless forms populating our world are what they are and how do they become what they are? This is still a mystery for science, but when it begins to deal with time in a more enlightened manner, time’s contribution to the evolution of forms will become clear.

In Sperry’s view, science has misled itself and humanity by not giving due importance to what he calls, the ‘nonmaterial elements in reality’. This, he feels, is responsible for the crisis we face as a civilisation. In fact, he is now channelling his efforts into evolving a ‘new ethic’ that can unite humanity and can ward off what appears at this point to be an inexorable march to our collective annihilation. In his opinion, science is the best framework for the evolution of an ethic that has the potential to cut across the barriers that religions have constructed and because of which society has become so divided.

However, as interesting as his discoveries may be, the gap remains in his research insofar as he does not see or has not experienced and accepted a nonmaterial reality or plane of consciousness beyond what is presently scientifically measurable. If he were able to perceive these subtle dimensions with their often opposing forces and activities, and measure them according to the formulae provided by the new cosmology, he would certainly appreciate even more deeply that the workings of the brain in themselves cannot be relied upon and must be validated empirically:  ‘The human brain can easily go wrong by itself. You can let your internal logic processing run loose and arrive at all kinds of rationalizations. That’s the nature of the brain. It has a built-in logical processing system and it picks up reasons for this and that, but such logic is not always airtight,’ he states.

From where is the brain ‘picking up reasons for this and that’? The answer to this question carries us to the true realm of integration of the material and the nonmaterial; and above all the perception of the involutionary-evolutionary patterns that result ultimately in the innumerable forms nature provides as vehicles for the expression in the physical dimension of essential, causal truth-seeds.

The interview concludes with this advice from Roger Sperry: ‘Like everything else today, even the desirable irrationalities of life – the mysteries and the magic – need more rational protection. It’s just that with everything considered, it would seem far safer for our children if we don’t continue to gamble the world’s destiny on conflicting mystical answers anymore – or on outmoded materialist ideologies.’

With this I can fully agree. The world needs a ‘way’ that is something entirely new. In the next Newsletter, I shall discuss this position and the emergence of what the Mother has called, ‘the third way’ beyond both science and spirituality.


P.N.-B
October, 1985


Gemini-The Magical Carousel

Image of Gemini from ‘The Magical Carousel’, featured on the back of ‘The Vishaal Newsletter’, Vol 0, No. 2

Four Quadrants of Evolution - Phsyical, Vital, Mental and Spiritual

Mind in the Supramental Creation

Perhaps one of the most obstinate stumbling blocks for seekers who aspire to a truly new consciousness and the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo’s prophecy of the establishment of a race of gnostic beings on Earth, is the role of Mind in the new arrangement.  Spirituality provides a series of aphorisms and now perhaps worn out cliches in dealing with the mind of the human species and its role in a quest of any order.  One hears phrases such as ‘go beyond mind’, or, as I myself have written on occasion, ‘to be caught in the mental cage’, and so forth.  But, if the Supramental Manifestation is a reality for the Earth and a realisation  in the body, which is obviously an essential prerequisite if this new creation is indeed to be established on this planet, then what is the real purpose of this most important of evolution’s devices?  This is perhaps one of the most valid questions that can be asked at this point, and merits our most concentrated attention.

The truth of creation in matter is a fourfold reality.  There are four major planes with which we can provide a preliminary overall categorisation.  These are: physical, vital, mental and spiritual (for want of a better word). Indeed, in the light of the Supramental Manifestation, the latter is in need of a re-evaluation, and in the course of these Newsletters, we shall deal with the formulation of a more correct vocabulary for the creation that Supermind is introducing, insofar as the terms currently employed carry significances which are outdated and inadequate to express this entirely new revelation.  Be this as it may, let us use the accepted categorisation for an initial discussion. In particular, we shall concentrate on the third plane, the one closest to the higher realm of the spirit.  This is the mental plane and at the present stage of evolution, it is the regent of our civilisation.

Four-Quadrants

Mind in all spiritual quests has presented tremendous obstacles to realisation. This is evident inasmuch as mind is the connecting link with the more subtle realms. It forms a bridge to the brain; or, we may say, it organises the descending light and power in such a manner as to provide a coherent and orderly interaction between subtle and physical. The brain is merely the instrument onto which this activity is directed, but it is not the determining agent.  True, brain damage can obstruct a balanced experience of life in the body.  For example, a person in a coma whose brain has suffered damage is subjected to delusions and unable to experience an orderly intake of impressions from the more subtle planes.  It is merely that in the physical there is a broken link and this cannot be overcome unless that organ is repaired. The mind of the individual may continue to function properly, but this normal, sane experience is not coherently expressed by the embodied consciousness.  That is, it is not made a conscious experience and therefore the purpose of embodiment on this planet is rendered meaningless and ineffectual.

However, mind itself has its own aberrations, and when these occur, no right functioning of the brain will solve the problem. That is, mind is the determinant in the process of balanced awareness, and not vice-versa. Therefore, the present emphasis on medication to heal an imbalance of mental functioning is wholly deceiving. Temporary results may be experienced; but these are not healing. They are only assuasive. The real damage is not dealt with and all that such medication provides is a lessening of the ability of the brain to serve as the instrument to act out the commands it receives from mind, – in this case abnormal. A damaged mind may command an irrational and violent behaviour, for which the instrumentality of the brain is imperative in order to have the physical body serve as the tool to carry out the deranged command. Medication can deaden certain areas of the brain which do indeed serve this purpose and are the means to permit the individual to enact mental commands; but this will in no way alter those commands and heal the real causation in its own domain. Mind is untouched by this administration, though the brain can be effectively subdued.

Out-of-the-body experiences allow us to appreciate this fact, especially when one consciously leaves the body just before falling asleep, maintaining the consciousness in full awareness during the process. One experiences that mind stands apart from the physical body. Indeed, one leaves that body and moves into other dimensions freely, while remaining fully aware, conscious of what one is experiencing. What then does this signify in terms of the role mind and brain play in the human being, and in particular what will their roles be in a new, supramental creation?

The brain is the organ that serves as a transmitter of the commands that it receives from the mind to the physical body. It is the bridge, as it were, between the two.  Likewise, mind itself is a bridge, though of a subtle substance. And indeed, it is the link between the subtle planes and the brain. In the fourfold arrangement of creation in matter described above, mind or the mental being is the first level in what I have called the higher hemisphere. That is, there are four aspects to material creation and to the being of man.  If we divide this scale in half, we see that mind represents the first poise in the upper half. It is our highest principle in evolution at present, the element that sets us off from the rest of the animal kingdom. One of its main functions is to provide the means for self-awareness, self-consciousness. To a certain extent this may be present in creatures on other rungs of the animal kingdom, but it reaches its indisputable apotheosis in the human being.

Higher-Lower HemisphereIn the Gnostic Circle there is a particularly critical juncture that comes into being where the quarter of the Circle that represents Mind, and the quarter that represents the next in the descending order, the Vital, come into contact. This is what I have called, the 4.5 Orbit. The qualitative nature of that point is one of disintegration and reversal. It is an especially interesting area which in our solar system is reflected in the Asteroid Belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It could be said that the distressing impasse we have reached as a civilisation and the decay and disintegration experienced in every society at present, as well as the pernicious nuclear menace under which world population lives, is entirely expressed by this critical 4.5 Orbit in the Gnostic Circle.  This is the area that epitomises the great Transition we are living. It is the Orbit of the great Reversal.

But what is it that is disintegrated at this crucial passage?  There is no question of mind itself being dissolved or disintegrated, for then how could we experience the full gamut, or the whole Gnostic Circle which is the diagram of a complete and integrated being? On the contrary. A new poise has to come about, and this is the crux of the integral and supramental yogas. When this is achieved, then mind adopts a truer function. The nature of this function is the subject of this discussion.

The old spirituality has not really dealt with the problem. It has ignored it by providing realisations that fled the problem and its solution entirely, and which established a poise of the consciousness outside of the body. Evidently, if it had been seen that mind was a stumbling block, in the past the only way to become liberated from this scourge was to devise a means to experience a higher reality beyond it, – meaning, in actual fact, a realisation out of the body and beyond the cosmic dimension.

But this is inadequate in our quest, while it is wholly incapable of providing humanity with a way out of the actual impasse.  It is evident that we cannot obliterate mind and ‘go beyond it’ by the means provided in the old spirituality. We have to find a new poise; or better said, the fuller, more mature and complete being of the species. This means that mind will not remain in its place of regent and the species’ highest light. It will continue to serve as the indispensable bridge that it is, but in the context of the new and wider reality of our experience.

When he had reached the very last year of his embodiment, Sri Aurobindo introduced something new in his description of the manifestation of Supermind. He called it the Mind of Light.  Some referred to it as a ‘new star on the horizon’ of his work. Yet though Sri Aurobindo did not write in any great detail about the characteristics of this Mind of Light, the work that the Mother carried out in the years after his passing served to incorporate this  ‘new star’ in the evolutionary mechanism on Earth. When therefore I write of a new poise of Mind that is required in order to incorporate the mental instrumentation in the greater blueprint, I mean that this Mind of Light now has to serve as the bridge between the subtle realms and the physical, or the brain. The Mother’s ‘yoga of the body’ was precisely centred on the establishment of this new poise for the species. In the course of this discussion, not only will we treat the nature of the Mind of Light in itself, but I shall offer a specific example of its functioning at this time. Again, the purpose is to render concrete what until now has been largely abstract and speculative.

The purpose of Sri Aurobindo’s coming was to forge a new way for the Earth and to reverse the direction that spirituality had imposed on seekers. If in the past one wanted to realise God, one could do so only by directing one’s quest beyond the Earth and out of the body. Sri Aurobindo’s yoga provided a different direction, while still working within and hand-in-hand with the evolutionary laws. He began to forge the link with those higher planes and the realm of Supermind. The Mother continued this work, drawing the process deeper and deeper into the physical. In the last Newsletter, I discussed her description of the method by which the new Supramental Consciousness would be seen to work on Earth, how it would be ‘organised for Earth use’.  The present discussion is, to a certain extent, a continuation of the last, only I shall introduce the concept of the Mind of Light; and in the process we shall discover how the mind is to be incorporated in the new creation, the new species, and how the bridge is now to be formed linking this plane to the planes wherein Supermind is the determining power. But it is necessary to present a clear example of this action, otherwise the most exciting aspect of this work will be missed, that of its actuality and its relevance in the present context of this very trying period we are experiencing. In the process, it will become more than evident that the question is not to obliterate mind and poise the consciousness in a beyond, outside of the material dimensions in which we abide, but rather to re-poise the instrument and use it differently.

At this point I must discuss certain criticisms that this work has been the target of, and interestingly they are the same criticisms one often hears regarding Sri Aurobindo and his realisation. I have heard people refer to his work as ‘purely mental’, and this is sought to be justified because of the fact that he wrote books and utilised the written word for the transmission of his message to a more marked degree than other yogis. Indeed, having withdrawn into seclusion early on, it was largely through letters to his disciples and his writings on his yoga that a record was left of his activity. But many have seen in this a purely philosophical expression, that is, entirely mental and not spiritual in the fullest accepted sense of the word. The Mother was not the subject of this criticism as much as Sri Aurobindo, insofar as she did not use the written word for the explanation of her yoga to the same degree. However, when the point was reached and she ‘had conquered mind’, so to speak, then, as expressed in the dialogue I reproduced in the last Newsletter, a more ‘mental’ expression was utilised.

The results were predictable: very little attention was paid to the experiences she began to describe in this more mental formulation; that is, using elements closer to the language of science than spirituality. The very fact that she employed numbers was the reason that the experiences were not taken seriously by her entourage, not considered perhaps to be really  ‘spiritual’.  But the fact remains, when she wanted to know how the Superman Consciousness would act in the world, in the work, the answer was via Numbers and Time. In consequence, at that point once and for all the Mother parted ways with the old spirituality. She began concretely to forge the bridge between the planes of Supermind and the physical.

Now that the third stage of the work has been reached, this ‘mental formulation’ has become even more pronounced, and thus it too has been the target for criticism and dismissal by all but those who have been effectively touched by the new light. The old dies hard and the old formulations persist and will not lessen their hold on the human consciousness. But the point in question is the transformation of the mental instrument in order that it serve as the link to the new planes that have been reached and which are to provide the guiding powers of the new creation that is being established on Earth. In this process it is not a question of absolving Mind from its responsibility, but rather that it agree to serve the new Light. In which case it must agree to find a new poise for itself. The Mother’s yoga during her final years was centred on the question of working out this problem, of getting the mind of the species to consent to adopt this new poise.  All the disciples in her close entourage during those years were instruments for this revolutionary activity.

The role these disciples played, however, was largely unconscious. To this day the real process is not appreciated in the circles of the Ashram and the city she called Auroville.  Whatever the case, the fact is that she did complete the work allotted to her, and the bridge was forged. Which means, quite simply, that Mind has been displaced as the regent of the race. Though we are still in the initial stages of this new dispensation and are yet experiencing the destructive and negating attitudes that the old consciousness puts forth, the bridge has nonetheless been forged; moreover, we have been left with a detailed record of the process. By studying the work carried out, in conjunction with the records of the negation that perforce had to be experienced as a result of the introduction of this new poise, we are able to learn much about the properties of the Mind of Light and the role it is to play hereafter in the new creation. And, I repeat, since the focus of the new way is to provide a means to establish a gnostic society on Earth, the fact that this can only be done by using mind in a new way is the reason why disciples have not been able to appreciate the work in the later stages of its development, namely from 1962 to the present times. This confusion is rendered all the more confounding since Numbers are the key elements used in the new formulation, exposing this work to even more strident cries of spiritual aberration, of deviating from the known, trodden and accepted paths that humanity has come to regard as the only means to relate to the Absolute.

What then is the correct poise of mind in the new creation?  To answer this we must return to our discussion concerning the nature of mind and its function in creation, but in particular in the untransformed human being. The present race orbits the ego, as we all know. This is its effective pivot, the axis of its being. Mind and vital and physical in such an arrangement are not able to express anything other than what this incomplete posture permits. That is, the truth of our instrumentality is fourfold, yet when we orbit the ego we are balancing our consciousness in the body in an incomplete fashion, leaving a dangerous gap. Instead of a perfect poise, a harmony of being which expresses the complete individual, we are off-centred and hence an incomplete product – a transitional race. The ego demands this, pulls the consciousness to a lower expression, and for this reason mind remains seated in the highest throne, rather than Supermind.

The work we are engaged in, both individually and collectively, is to reorient the being, to re-poise it on this fourfold foundation, and thus to allow a higher principle to govern our lives, displacing mind in the process, but not obliterating it. On the contrary. It finally comes to learn its true expression.

In this episode of the Temple, to which I have given great importance in my written works, we can appreciate the efforts made to bring mind to a new poise. But there were two phases involved in that formidable activity. As stated, the first concerns the Mother’s work ‘above’, something of which was described in the last Newsletter. When her Yoga of the Body reached its culmination, she was finally able to provide us with the Divine Measure, or the truth-measure of matter. This special activity covered the Sixties, but was set off by the Supramental Manifestation which occurred on 29 February, 1956. A decisive phase of Sri Aurobindo’s work began at that time. And from then onward, the Mother’s yoga was centred on her ‘body transformation’; not, however, restricted to her physical, as is widely believed. It was the larger Body; containing four planes, even as do our bodies. But the greatest obstacle to her transformation was the mental being, inasmuch as it is the first aspect encountered in the descent and the highest reigning principle of the human race. She carried out this activity with one of her disciples during those years, he representing this particular dimension of the human consciousness-being, though unaware of this representative activity.

The resistances to this re-poising of the mind – hard and destructive – were met in full at the close of the decade of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies, when the Mother presented a disciple and architects with her plan of the Temple. As reported, this followed upon the ‘arrival of the Superman Consciousness’ by one year, to the day. That final year of the decade, 1969, centred entirely on the conclusive formulation of the way in which that new Consciousness would be organised for Earth and  ‘measurable’ by the human being. The ultimate experience came to the Mother in the vision of her Temple, which demanded a numerical expression and was therefore the signal that mind had attained a new poise. In the plan she gave, we have the blueprint as it were of a mental poise entirely new and expressive of the light of the planes of Truth. This is the major feature of the Mind of Light.

However, as described earlier, the Mother’s yoga was centred ‘above’, in what she termed the creative zone of the physical. The conquest she achieved encompassed the descending portion of that Bridge which would join plane to plane. When she reached the threshold of the physical plane, there was the condition below to contend with. Hence, the moment she presented her Plan to the disciple and architects, the void on this end, in this most material dimension, was met in full. It was as if the Mother stood dangerously poised over an abyss, on half of the incompleted bridge, suspended in mid-air. This was the dangerous abyss before which the entire race stood poised.

The effects of this void, or this gap in the work, made themselves known immediately when disciple and architects dismantled the plan she gave, the blueprint of the organisation of Supermind for the Earth, whose creative organ was the Mind of Light. While the work ‘above’ had been entirely successful – otherwise she could not have seen the Divine Measure, much less formulate it architecturally – conditions below remained largely untouched and closed to the full Power. Another element had to manifest, another course of the work had to be carved out, another direction assumed. And this was a work on the physical dimension proper, to open this plane to that light and to construct from below the remaining half of the connecting Bridge. The reception her original plan received pointed out in full the existent gaps in the process.

But even the necessity of an ascending link was foreseen and recorded in the design and measurements that the Mother gave in her original plan. She passed on the message of this need in a most sophisticated manner, yet entirely obvious in its symbolism. From the ‘Matrimandir Talks’ reproduced as Appendix I of The New Way, Volumes 1&2, it can be noted that the Mother insisted that she wanted only one entry into the chamber, by way of an ascension into the room through an opening in the floor at a specified place. The stairway was indicated in her plan to consist of 15 steps.  I have written extensively on this point of the plan and its significance in The New Way because it is one of the most important features of her chamber. The aspect I must bring forth here concerns the fact that this direct ascension through the chamber’s floor into the room indicates this very bridge that needed to be constructed, but which, at the time of her vision, did not exist. Moreover, in the design and measurements, the Mother indicated when its construction would begin. This prophecy, written in the language of sacred architecture, was fulfilled accurately.

Given the general conditions prevailing and the work that had to be done, it is not surprising therefore that the very first item to be questioned in her plan by the disciple and architects was precisely this one, the ascension into the chamber through the floor by means of a 15-step stairway. They immediately sought to replace it by no less than a dozen stairways! (See Appendix I, The New Way, Volume 2, page 541) The final result is in Auroville for everyone to see: notwithstanding the claims of the architects that they are implementing her original plan in full, the fact is that the 15-step stairway through the chamber’s floor has been replaced by spiral ramps leading to two doors piercing the walls of the chamber, bearing no relation therefore to the significance of her vision. Moreover, she was emphatic that in her seeing there were no openings in the walls.

Despite this disregard for the knowledge of sacred architecture, of an entirely new order for this Age of the Supermind, the fortunate fact is that the Mother’s original blueprint managed to survive and, just as she had indicated in her plan, in 1971 the bridge from below was to come into being. 1956 was the beginning. The stairs she wished to have as entry into the Chamber were 15. These represent 15 years after 1956, by the Laws of Correspondence governing this type of architecture, which brings us to 1971 and the precise time that construction from below, ascending to join her Bridge above, began – in a Temple of which she said,  ‘Everything is symbolic’.

In 1971 the first foundations for two things were laid: the construction of the temple in Auroville in its disfigured form; but more important was the other unperceived element: the Bridge symbolised in that ascending stairway that would allow her work of transformation of the reigning mental principle to be completed. Thereafter the Mother was concentrated on this activity on the physical plane, pouring out the Knowledge in an uninterrupted stream. By 1976 the first all-important phase of that work was completed. It is important, however, to study in detail the nature of that ascensional work, not only how this bridge joined her descending half, but what its significance is in the context of the Supramental Manifestation.

In January, 1970, when the Mother gave out her plan, she encountered a void. Below nothing was effectively prepared. The resistance the reigning principle presented was clear and definite. It was a colossal NO. Interestingly, this was reflected in the attitude regarding the construction of the temple in Auroville from the very first day that she gave the disciple and architects her plan. Nonetheless, in spite of this expected resistance, the refusal to implement her plan merely served to force the construction of that ‘bridge’. The ‘act of seeing’ was the tool of yoga to achieve this. A receptive vessel ‘below’ had to receive the light and in the same manner that the Mother carried the vision over from the plane of truth-consciousness to the portals of the physical without distortion, it was necessary to give the vision back to her in the very same undiluted form. This brought into being the bridge joining the two planes and secured a permanent opening on Earth for the light of the supramental world. In the midst of this activity there stood the resisting power of mind, untransformed, unintegrated into the larger vision. This condition is reflected in the building coming up in Auroville, which presents us with a disfigurement of each item of her original plan. Yet this is the problem the entire world faces: that construction is merely symbolic or representative, – a microcosm duplicating the greater malaise.

The victory has been achieved nonetheless, and The New Way stands as testimony to this success. Moreover, it must be stated once again that without the resistance concentrated in the Temple episode, it would not have been possible to complete the process. The half of the ‘bridge’ that had to come into being from this physical plane, reaching to the heights, could not have been achieved in a realistic fashion – that is, taking into consideration and incorporating the real conditions prevailing on Earth – unless this resistance was effectively reproduced in full strength in the centre of the Age established for this very purpose. What, then, is the exact nature of this victory?

The Mind of Light has to replace the present mental instrument, in the early stages at least in a representative number of individuals. This means that mind will function as it did for the Mother in the transmission of her original vision in the form of the architectural design she gave.  In other words, without any distorting veils. And while the present unpoised mental being is reflected in the distorted plan which became the one implemented in the construction, the Mind of Light, working from below, is reflected in the true Knowledge that was received from the Mother and centred on her original plan, likewise without any distortions.

In The New Way, Volume 1 & 2, page 482, I have discussed the waves thrown up by the human instrument when it is wrongly poised and the manner in which a descending inspiration is thereby distorted; how man then makes a transcription  ‘in his own image’. This is the state in which all things are transcribed by the human race in its actual incomplete condition. It is the major characteristic of the species. Because this bridge in material creation had not been formed, the mind of the human being was left open and vulnerable, a free marketplace for powers from any of the intermediate planes to use as their entry into this dimension. This action reaches a culmination now, for as the time draws near when the Mind of Light will become an established feature in evolution, those powers in the intermediate regions are also feeling the impact of this new organisation. One notable effect of this invasion is the present immense proliferation of ‘ways’, ‘enlightenment techniques’, spiritual teachings, and so forth.  For the reigning elements in each of these zones seek to secure their hold over the Earth by putting forth influences through these channels. This is the proverbial war between the Light and the Dark, so majestically described in certain tales of Hindu mythology, as well as in St. John’s Revelation. Indeed, in the latter the vision is centred on a temple, the temple of the new Age, and on ‘a city’.

The work in effect at present is to integrate the intermediate planes which are experiencing a tremendous upheaval due to the Supramental Manifestation. There is a new Power at work in the world, hitherto operative only behind the veils and impeded in any fuller activity by the unbalanced poise of the human instrument which was founded on three rather than the four pillars of being. The highest was lacking or dormant, we may say, the one that while being the highest is at the same time the nearest, for it is the involved Seed in material creation. Because of its veiled and inoperative presence, there was no way to realise God on Earth and in the body, – that is, an established realisation here, which would in turn become the effective foundation for a new and better world order. When the point was reached to forge that link with the planes of the truth-consciousness, the Supermind, then the void was met and the only real means to deal with it was to shoot off to a Beyond. The great Reversal that has now come about, expressed in the 4.5 Orbit of the Gnostic Circle, is the new direction that utilises the Bridge and can therefore establish the kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

To accomplish this, Mind had to be displaced as the regent of the human species, inasmuch as it imposes its rule on the other levels beneath it, the vital and the physical.  We can appreciate this in the fact that the nuclear menace – along with all the other devastating tools for destruction, total at this point – is the result not of the vital (force/power) but of an intellectual achievement. The survival of the human race hangs in the balance because there is yet one more link that must be forged, directly within the physical dimension itself. Be this as it may, the first stages of the process have been successfully completed and this renders inevitable the final one.

The new Mind of Light allows for the reception of Light from the planes of the Truth-Consciousness. This means that mind no longer distorts the descending inspiration, of whatever order, as evidenced in the Temple episode. Or else, the manner in which science distorts the inspiration it receives and devises more and greater tools of destruction. Mind comes to enjoy its true poise and offers the proper service, which is to organise the incoming Light and allow for an integrated, harmonised expression to ensue. The Mother’s original plan of the Temple is the first example of just how such a new poise of mind will function. One of its principal features is an integration and harmonisation of the unity and the multiplicity. The old attitude of Mind is replaced; it is no longer separative but unitive. No shadows arise because of off-centredness. The axis of being is repoised and the true centre takes the place of the ego-pivot. This is expressed exquisitely in the Mother’s original plan of the Temple; but as might have been expected, the changes introduced by the architects, also threw this perfect axial balance off-centre. The result is a reproduction on the physical plane of the disharmony the human race still knows.

A part of the bridge was completed in 1974. But the full work was done in 1976, when the Solar Line was completed in the vision and therefore the clear direction of the new creation began to emerge: the work became poised on the integral, fourfold foundation. It was then that the true Temple became a reality for the Earth – the ‘temple in heaven’ of St. John’s vision – and the connecting link from below joined the descending portion to forge an indestructible bridge, whereby the possibility now exists for this connection to act effectively on Earth, in the species, on the road to establishing a gnostic, truth-conscious society. And it is interesting to point out that at the very time the fourfold Solar Line and the vision of the true Temple were completed in 1976, this work parted ways with the existing organisations in Pondicherry and Auroville. It stands to reason that once the full vision comes, once the real foundations are known, one cannot compromise and accept a shadow version in its place. The Supramental Manifestation is one, though its integral scope embraces all elements and securely sets each thing in its rightful place.  However, for this to function in a new way, mind cannot stand supreme. It must agree to occupy its true place and adopt a finer poise.

When this is finally achieved, mind permits an orderly transmission to the brain, and because of its poise on the true pivot of being rather than the ego, it is not overwhelmed by the intake and does not become literally possessed by one or the other of the intermediate influences it comes into contact with along the way. The bridge from mind to brain then becomes a clear channel rather than the obfuscated avenue so full of the chaotic traffic we know at present, which results in the many patterns of deranged behaviour, – for example, the nuclear threat of total annihilation. Presently, in its off-centred condition, mind cannot adjust to the intake of higher forces and impressions. Waves arise from below and cloud the light.  But with the completion of the two-tiered Bridge, constructed by the Mother ‘above’ in the creative zone of the physical, and the Third here ‘below’, the time has come for an entirely new functioning of mind to manifest.  This is the first distinguishing characteristic of the new gnostic race.


October, 1985
The Aeon Centre of Cosmology
Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India