Opening remarks
There are powers that lie in the intermediary domains that connect the human mind to the Overmind. This entire region can be termed as the spiritual mind through which we can glimpse something of the Light and Glory that is hidden from our mortal eyes. It is this that is being described here in a summary way.
Undoing Nature’s work
Mind is a mediator divinity:
Its powers can undo all Nature’s work:
Mind can suspend or change earth’s concrete law.
Here Sri Aurobindo is not referring to the human mind as such but the highest ranges of the Mind we meet in our spiritual ascension. The highest of these is the Overmind whose powers and splendours can easily be mistaken for the Divine. Yet it is only a mediator between the Divine and our world. It is a world of “form-makers” that mould the forms and set them into fixed and finite patterns. Therefore it holds the key to undo this as well.
Acts at a distance
Affranchised from earth-habit’s drowsy seal
The leaden grip of Matter it can break;
Indifferent to the angry stare of Death,
It can immortalise a moment’s work:
A simple fiat of its thinking force,
The casual pressure of its slight assent
Can liberate the Energy dumb and pent
Within its chambers of mysterious trance:
It makes the body’s sleep a puissant arm,
Holds still the breath, the beatings of the heart,
While the unseen is found, the impossible done,
Communicates without means the unspoken thought;
It moves events by its bare silent will,
Acts at a distance without hands or feet.
What we call as ‘laws’ are in fact merely groves of habit and patterns of force created by the Mind. Its powers and possibilities are immense and they quite naturally awaken in those aspiring towards a greater Life. Not only those functions that we call as voluntary but also those that are very clearly involuntary and autonomous such as breath and heart beat can be brought under the mind’s control. The mind is not only the sixth sense that can know without the use of senses but it is also an organ of action and can transmit thoughts and feelings from a distance, move events by the pressure of a concentrated will, inspire men and change circumstances by its fiat.
Illumine and invoke
This giant Ignorance, this dwarfish Life
It can illumine with a prophet sight,
Invoke the bacchic rapture, the Fury’s goad,
In our body arouse the demon or the god,
Call in the Omniscient and Omnipotent,
Awake a forgotten Almightiness within.
The Mind can call in powers of different domains and arouse and direct them within ourselves and others. It can call in the intervention of God’s Power and Light thereby changing the fixed course of destiny.
A shining emperor
In its own plane a shining emperor,
Even in this rigid realm, Mind can be king:
The logic of its demigod Idea
In the leap of a transitional moment brings
Surprises of creation never achieved
Even by Matter’s strange unconscious skill.
The Overmind is actually born from the Supermind where we see the original Divine Plenitude. It has plunged into Matter where it works out the Idea that has gone into creation. Even the Overmind splendours can easily make one believe that one is in contact with the Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence.
All’s miracle here
All’s miracle here and can by miracle change.
There are indeed no fixed unalterable laws but simply patterns and habits of nature that moves in fixed groves. Science studies these surface laws and processes but the origin of these laws is deep within in the Idea-Force that has gone into creation. The closer we move towards this hidden Idea, the more our life becomes a perpetual miracle.
Edge of might
This is that secret Nature’s edge of might.
Seen from below, the Overmind is the highest peak of creation in the triple world of Ignorance. Seen from Above it is at the edge of the higher Hemisphere, the Secret Supernature, from where the plunge into Ignorance takes place.
Closing remarks
It is this realm that one comes across in one’s ascension, a realm of tremendous powers that can easily be mistaken for the true Divine. Sri Aurobindo reminds us that this is but a mediating realm, the mediator divinity that connects matter with the Spirit.
