Insufficiency of Mental Nature to Achieve Spiritual Perfection

In the discussion of “supermind” and “supernature” we adopt a convention to distinguish the changes that need to occur to move from the imperfect, limited, fragmented and ignorant basis of evolution of matter, life and mind to a new basis founded in Knowledge and Oneness. It must be remembered however that none of this implies a miraculous transformation from one thing to something totally other and different. Sri Aurobindo reminds us that: “Whatever happens in Nature must be the result of Nature, the effecutation of what is implied or inherent in it, its inevitable fruit and consequence.” To the extent that we remain rooted in the Inconscience, we cannot achieve “supernature”. The essential spiritual change that shifts our basis to the Knowledge from the Ignorance is required. “We seek to construct systems of knowledge and systems of life by which we can arrive at some perfection of our existence, some order of right relations, right use of mind, right use and happiness and beauty of life, right use of the body. But what we achieve is a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy; our successive constructions, because of the vice in them and because mind and life cannot rest permanently anywhere in their seeking, are exposed to destruction, decadence, disruption of their order, and we pass from them to others which are not more finally successful or enduring, even if on one side or another they may be richer and fuller or more rationally plausible.”

Otherwise, “we can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature; imperfect, we cannot construct perfection, however wonderful may seem to us the machinery our mental ingenuity invents, however externally effective. Ignorant, we cannot construct a system of entirely true and fruitful self-knowledge or world-knowledge: our science itself is a construction, a mass, of formulas and devices; masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, it cannot perfect our nature and therefore cannot perfect our life.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 28, “The Divine Life”