Sri Aurobindo

Essays Divine and Human

Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950

Man and Superman

The Emergence of the Superman

76

A god has veiled himself in the earth and mire and beauty and perfection lie unevolved in masses of ordure. This is the play of God with His substance in Matter.

In the atom there is hidden all the will and intelligence and joy that created the universe. In Man they have emerged, but blinking and dazzled by the gleam¹ of their own sunlight, bewildered at themselves and each other. They stumble up against each other, strive and wrestle blindly; for they cannot even [in] the highest man accomplish altogether their own unity and harmony.

An ignorance in which is packed up all knowledge, a mighty inertia in which all cosmic force strives helplessly, an insensibility which conceals the pain and strain of all ecstasy present, but held back, this is the outer face of material Nature and our starting point.

The Spirit awakening out of this veil gradually and with difficulty but inevitably is the secret sense of life. The power to accomplish the perfect awakening against accumulated difficulties, is God's offer to man throughout his cycles.

The perfection and the unity of the divine knowledge, will, delight in the mould of his universalised individuality is the destiny of man, his ascent to Godhead and the unfolding in him of Superman.

Mind evolved is man; supermind unevolved conceals in him the superman.

Circa 1914/21

¹ [In manuscript:] their gleam

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