"The Longest Story Ever Told"
And then comes the next giant leap, a new chapter in our story: Man, for the first time, appears upon earth. The Mother once observed, that scientists are looking for a "missing link" between monkey and man, but they will find none because there is none. She said that the leap from animal to man was so great that Nature was not capable of making it by herself. And there had to be a help from above. And man descended upon earth.
So with the coming of the human being, a new chapter starts: a new level of the consciousness of mind appears. And here also there are gradations. There is first the physical mind, the primitive man worried only about his survival, food and sleep. His is a sensory mind, limiting itself to the main impact of his senses. Then comes the vital man, who dominates, who wants to control and possess. His mind is like an appendage to his emotions and is driven by them. And then comes the mental man, who for the first time thinks with a mental logic. And as he grows, he begins to think of more than what he sees in the world around himself. His mind explores abstract concepts and higher ideas.
There is a very ancient tradition in India of ten Avatars. It is said that when a radically new level of consciousness has to manifest, Nature cannot make the leap by herself and there is a help from above; and the Divine Consciousness sends out a conscious portion of itself to incarnate as the first exemplar of the new level of consciousness and to establish its principles in the working of the universe. And thus we have, the matsya (the fish), kachha (tortoise), varaha (the boar), narasimha (the half-man and half-animal) the transitional stage, vamana (the dwarf physical man), Parashurama (the vital man) and Rama (the sattwic, moral and intellectual man). After them come Krishna, Buddha and the Kalki.
We have seen that among animals there is such an enormous range and variety of evolution that has taken place, and we would expect that with the human being there should be a still greater range of evolution; that the mind consciousness would manifest with still greater gradations and varieties of organisation. And we discover that it is really so. Those who have experienced higher states of consciousness have described the many layers of the mind.
There is first the sense mind, the physical mind, which is concerned only with what happens around it and what the senses report. Then comes the vital mind, which seeks to control the world around, dominating, and asserting itself upon the world. Then the intellectual mind, which manifests the first stages of logic and intellect. And then comes the thought mind, which is capable of abstractions: while the intellectual mind utilises its logic only in terms of what it perceives around itself, the thought mind is capable of concepts which have nothing to do with the world around it.
Still higher is the mind of ideas, which treats ideas independently of concept or thought. If you observe your own thought process carefully, you will find that before you speak, there is a thought, before the thought there is a concept and before the concept there is still another stage where there are no words, there is no conceptualisation, there is only an idea, which has just come into your mind. We tend immediately to rush to express it into concepts and words. But that level of pure ideas exists and it is possible to live purely at that level and work from there.
Above the range of pure ideas, is the higher mind, which handles groups of concepts. Above that is the illumined mind, which reveals knowledge spontaneously. Above that there is the intuitive mind, which in one grasp seizes the essential truth of things. Some individuals on the higher levels of humanity attain this state in flashes. This most often occurs in geniuses, great scientists, poets and mystics. Some yogis have gone further still and have been able to live for long periods at the level of the intuitive mind. There is no thought there, no words, ideas, or concepts; you see the truth and you grasp it in one glance.
Above the intuitive mind are the realms of inspiration and revelation. Still above is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. In this state of consciousness you see everything in relation to everything else. You see the truth of everything, you see the limitations of everything and you see how all the great philosophies, religions and the teachings of the world neatly fit together in one whole truth. But you also see the differences between them and their limitations. It is a vision of unity in diversity.
