The First Signs of the Advent of a Mind of Light

Are we witnessing the first signs of the development of a mind of Light in the world today? If we look back at human civilisation over the last several thousand years, we can see several bright spots where individuals or relatively small groups of people broke out of the fixation on material acquisition and personal satisfaction of desire to try to achieve a new standpoint that would take into account the needs of a larger collectivity and a focus on achieving peaceful relations between people. These may be taken as first signs of an aspiration to something greater than what humanity had been able to achieve with its mental development focused on satisfaction of desire and working with physical matter.

More recently, in the latter half of the 20th century, we see a number of incidents and developments which speak to a much larger and broader perspective starting to manifest, with the concern for the environment, the focus on understanding and overcoming the colonial and genocidal history of the past, and the rise of concern for all human beings living together and sharing the resources of the earth’s bounty. Then we see humanity reaching out beyond the planet with a drive to explore outer space and visit the moon, and eventually other planets in the solar system; and the search for extra terrestrial beings through the SETI project. We see scientists systematically delving into the origins of Matter and finding energy, and now finding that energy embodies consciousness. Quantum entanglement and the origins of the universe are leading scientists beyond the limits of the mental framework that has held us in thrall for most of our presence on earth. We remain ignorant and continue to make errors along the way, but the direction of the striving for knowledge is clearly visible.

We see concurrently the breaking down of traditional models of belief and religion, with more people opting to forego formal adherence to a particular set of religious precepts in favor of an inner seeking for spiritual enlightenment, now no longer reserved for a small group of renunciates, monks or anchorites. This drive is a defining change in humanity’s relationship to seeking divine guidance and significance of their lives.

We see as a result of these multiple streams, people working to overcome the limits of human perception and the strict logic of the mental framework. We see people working on developing intuition, inspiration, creativity, global rather than linear thought process, wholistic rather than fragmentary viewpoints, and a drive to develop senses of clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, and other ostensibly “occult” powers. There is an enormous focus on spiritual practice on a scale not seen before, and people are reporting opening of various chakra energies, pouring of a force from above into them, out of body experiences of various types, silence of the mind, and experiences that fall into the realm of spiritual development.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate. In each of these stages it will define its own grades and manifest the order of its beings who will embody it and give to it a realised life.”

“Thus there will be built up, first, even in the Ignorance itself, the possibility of a human ascent towards a divine living; then there will be, by the illumination of this mind of Light in the greater realisation of what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Mind of Light, pg. 91