Published: January 2025 (10 months ago) in issue Nº 426
Keywords: Ideals of Auroville, Utopias, Supermind, Words of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Consciousness, Collaboration and Cooperation
References: Suryamayi
Prefiguring the supramental
Suryamayi pointed to ongoing experiments in governance, economics, education and the arts as examples of how we are attempting in Auroville to prefigure a more ideal society on the basis of guidance provided by The Mother.
I would like to go further. Why don’t we try prefiguring the supermind?
Of course, on the face of it this is an extremely stupid proposal, not only because we are talking about a spiritual summit which most of us cannot even contemplate, but also because both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother warned that it is impossible to comprehend the supramental with our present limited minds and understanding. Moreover, in the past a few Aurovilians have mistakenly claimed to have become ‘supramentalised’, invariably with tragic results.
But I am not suggesting that we pretend that we are already supramentalised. Rather, that we attempt to ‘prefigure’ in our outlook and behaviour something of what, given our present limitations, we understand the supramentalised experience to be.
So what did Sri Aurobindo and The Mother say concerning the qualities of the supramental?
Among other things, they described it as a Truth Consciousness which, because it sees all, possesses true Power and can dissolve all falsehood; as “Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being”; as a divinised body; and as the final victory over the necessity of death.
All these seem far, far beyond, our present understanding and capacity. However, there is one aspect of the supermind which may be more amenable to prefiguration. Indeed, Mother herself stressed that it was something that needed to be worked upon today. This was that aspect in which there are no contraries, no contradictions, where everything is included and finds its true place.
This is why, at the end of 1969, in reference to Auroville and the need to unite the energies of Roger and Paolo in the construction of the Matrimandir, Mother said, “Now, for me, things are no longer exclusive, not at all. I very clearly see the possibility of using the most opposite tendencies AT THE SAME TIME… It’s not exclusive, I don’t say, ‘Ah no, not this!’ No, no, no, everything, all of it together. That’s what I want, to succeed in creating a place where all countries can be united.”
And in early 1970 she reiterated, “All human knowledge had gone bankrupt because it was exclusive. And man has gone bankrupt because he was exclusive. What the New Consciousness wants (it insists on this) is: no more divisions. …The step forward humanity must take IMMEDIATELY is a definitive cure of exclusivism… They all say, ‘This and not that’ – no, this AND that, and this too and that too, and everything at the same time. To be supple enough and wide enough for everything to be together.”
Auroville today is clearly not a place where we have conquered exclusivism. In fact, much of our present public discourse involves the pitting of one narrative against another. But the challenge Mother is placing before us today – and not in some distant future – is to view all our contradictions, differences, as part of a larger whole in which all find their true place.
Just think how this would transform our whole outlook as well as our relationships with each other. Instead of seeing things as always in opposition and therefore in conflict – leading each orientation to believe that they must triumph over the opposition and, in the process, dissipating our collective energy – we would combine our efforts to seek the larger vision in which seemingly different perspectives complete each other.
However, we have to take care that we do not seek an easy compromise based on superficial points of agreement. For example, some people would say that the concept of Auroville as a ‘green city’ is an example of combining very different outlooks and energies. But ‘green city’ can mean many things. It can mean concrete high-rises with a smattering of parks or, conversely, an urbanised form of a green suburbia. Neither would necessarily demonstrate that the planners had grasped the ‘truth’ of each perspective and discovered how they complement each other.
For that, they would have to dive much deeper. In this particular instance, they would need to understand and, ideally, experience the profound truth both of the ‘wisdom of the earth’ as well as the transcendent vision of higher planes. Only then could they begin to explore and understand how they complement and complete each.
In this sense, planning would become yoga.
If we Aurovilians embarked on a collective prefigurative exercise today, it could begin with us assuming that the major oppositions we have struggled with over the years – in town planning, governance, education etc. – are actually not oppositions but complementary truths. We would then come together to discover what those truths are and, on the basis of this, find practical ways of implementing them (here it’s worth recalling what Sri Aurobindo observed: that even when there appears to be an irreconcilable opposition…it drives towards a more subtle and puissant order than can normally be the result of a less difficult endeavour).
If this sounds far beyond our present capacity, what is the alternative? Do we really wish to continue this zero sum game, battling each other over competing visions of the way we want to build the city and organise ourselves? Or are we ready to take the first steps towards becoming the place where “contraries are united”?