The Higher Planes

What is the source of peace, silence and knowledge?

That comes from above the mind.

As there is love and joy on the higher planes, is there not also devotion and surrender as in the psychic?

There can be, but it is not inevitable as in the psychic. In the higher mind one may be too conscious of identity with the “Brahman” to have devotion or surrender.

What is the position of the 7th centre in connection with the higher planes?

The 7th centre is a place of communication with the higher planes of consciousness — the planes themselves are mostly above.

What is the difference between a spiritual thing and a thing having the essential character of the higher consciousness?

There are many things that are spiritual that are not the essence of the higher consciousness. All that tends towards the transformation and helps to prepare it is spiritual. Psychic sorrow is a spiritual movement, but sorrow is not part of the essential character of the higher consciousness. Resignation, the ego’s submission to the divine will is a spiritual movement, but the higher consciousness has no need of resignation and a submitted ego is not a part of its essence, for it has no ego.

You wrote that the planes between the Mind and Overmind came down long ago. But why do we not feel their presence here?

Why should there be a “presence here”, or in what sense? It is for each one to open to these levels in his own being when he is ready to do so.

H has written something about the Overmind in his poems. He used to tell me about the falsehood and ignorance of the Overmind and of the possible dangers there.

He certainly knew nothing about it by experience. There are no Overmind dangers — it is only the lower consciousness misusing overmind or higher consciousness intimations that can make a danger. There are also no Overmind Falsehoods. The Overmind is part of the Ignorance in this sense that it is the highest knowledge to which the Ignorance can attain, but the knowledge is still divided and so can be a knowledge of parts and aspects of the Truth, not the integral knowledge. As such it can be misused and turned into falsehood by the Mind.

When can one make an attempt at the Supermind?

One has to go by stages and to reach and be conscious on the higher planes between mind and Overmind is already sufficiently difficult without insisting on Supermind as the immediate goal.

Would you say something in brief about how the Supermind works on the earth consciousness in order to transform it?

No. I have never written on that except in Arya and do not propose to start now. It would be mere words to the mind which would be likely to make its own wrong constructions about it. The sadhak should first get the higher consciousness down and know something by experience of the higher planes before trying to know what is the Supermind.

What is the difference between spiritualisation and supramentalisation?

Spiritualisation means the descent of the higher peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda etc. which belong to any of the higher planes from higher mind to Overmind, for in any of these the Self can be realised. It brings about a subjective transformation; the instrumental Nature is only so far transformed that it becomes an instrument for the Cosmic Divine to get some work done while the Self within remains calm and free and united to the Divine. But this is an incomplete individual transformation — the full transformation of the instrumental Nature can only come when the Supramental change takes place. Till then the nature remains full of many imperfections, but the Self in the higher planes does not mind them, as it is itself free and unaffected. The inner being down to the inner physical can also become free and unaffected. The Overmind itself is subject to limitations in the working of the effective knowledge, limitations in the working of the Power, subject to a partial and limited Truth, etc. It is only in the Supermind that the full Truth-consciousness comes into being.

There is a popular idea here that whenever one experiences a rapid and powerful action from above, it is the Supermind preparing to descend — as if no such action was possible from the planes below the Supramental.

Obviously — but it is so nice to think that at the first leap one is becoming a supramental being!

When some people here feel a higher pressure they pronounce it to be of the Supermind!

That is also so nice and self-flattering an idea.