The Advent of the Supramental Consciousness and Its Impact on Mind, Life and Body

Every new evolutionary development of consciousness has brought with it changes in the material forms and activity of those forms to accommodate the new powers that are manifesting. It is therefore expected that as the supramental manifestation takes place, it will also bring about changes in the forms and functions to express the needs and the powers of that new consciousness. These changes do not generally take place overnight. Evolutionary development on the earth spans millions of years and, while we may expect a more speedy process as the power of expression increases (and which can be seen in the relative speed of the evolution of mind in life, or the development of the reasoning intellect in the evolution of higher mind powers, the process of Nature does not tend to occur through what might be called miraculous intervention, as Sri Aurobindo points out.

It is not possible to foresee all of the changes to be ushered in with the advent of the supramental consciousness, as the mind has its limitations and is rooted in what it can see looking backwards. It is also not advisable to try to channel the action in ways that the mind may be able to envisage, as this acts as a limiting factor in the actual manifestation. We can , in general, recognise that the type of powers that the supramental consciousness brings to bear must eventually have a transformative impact on both the anatomy and physiology of those beings intended to manifest it in the future, as well as having an influence on the interaction with the natural environment and the conditioning of earthly life to provide a more harmonious basis for life to both survive and thrive.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “The descent of the supermind is a long process, or at least a process with a long preparation, and one can only say that the work is going on sometimes with a strong pressure for completion, sometimes retarded by the things that rise from below and have to be dealt with before further progress can be made. The process is a spiritual evolutionary process, concentrated into a brief period; it could be done otherwise (by what men would regard as a miraculous intervention) only if the human mind were more flexible and less attached to its ignorance than it is. As we envisage it, it must manifest in a few first and then spread, but it is not likely to overpower the earth in a moment. It is not advisable to discuss too much what it will do and how it will do it, because these are things the supermind itself will fix, acting out of the Divine Truth in it, and the mind must not try to fix for it grooves in which it will run. Naturally, the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functionings of the body must be among the ultimate elements of a supramental change; but the details of these things must be left for the supramental Energy to work out according to the Truth of its own nature.”

“The descent of the supramental is an inevitable necessity in the logic of things and is therefore sure. It is because people do not understand what the supermind is or realise the significance of the emergence of consciousness in a world of inconscient Matter that they are unable to realise this inevitability. I suppose a matter-of-fact observer, if there had been one at the time of the unrelieved reign of inanimate Matter in the earth’s beginning, would have criticised any promise of the emergence of life in a world of dead earth and rock and mineral as an absurdity and a chimera; so too, afterwards he would have repeated this mistake and regarded the emergence of though and reason in an animal world as an absurdity and a chimera. it is the same with the appearance of supermind in the stumbling mentality of this world of human consciousness and its reasoning ignorance.” Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, The Supramental Evolution, pp. 69-75