SEVEN PLANES
Sat, Chit, Ananda, Supermind, Mind, Life, Matter are the seven planes described
in the Veda - but in this yoga one sees many levels of consciousness which appear as skies or else as seas.
...the
creation or manifestation is very vast and contains many planes and worlds that existed before the evolution, all
different in character and with different kinds of beings. The fact of being prior to the evolution does not make
them undifferentiated. The world of the Asuras is prior to the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital
or subtle physical Devas — but these beings are all different from each other. The great Gods belong to the overmind
plane; in the supermind they are unified as aspects of the Divine, in the overmind they appear as separate personalities.
Any godhead can descend by emanation to the physical plane and associate himself with the evolution of a human
being with whose line of manifestation he is in affinity. But these are things which cannot be very easily understood
by the mind, because the mind has too rigid an idea of personality - the difficulty only disappears when one enters
into a more flexible consciousness above where one is nearer to the experience of One in all and All in one.
In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachchidananda.
Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane.
The supermind could be added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the upper hemisphere.
...it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility
of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its basis the three principles of
our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle
of vijnana, supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises
of our being in a tier of seven planes, — sometimes regarded as five only, because, only the lower five are wholly
accessible to us, — through which the developing being can rise to its perfection.
Fair on its peaks, it has dangerous nether planes;
Its light draws towards the verge of Nature's lapse;
It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs
And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,
Invests with grace the demon and the snake.
Its trance imposes earth's inconscience,
Immortal it weaves for us death's sombre robe
And authorises our mortality.
