[en] It is shown that the action of the bosonic sector of $D=11$ supergravity may be obtained by means of a suitable scaling of the originally dimensionless fields of a generalized Chern–Simons action. This follows from the eleven-form CS-potential of the most general linear combination of closed, gauge invariant twelve-forms involving the $sp(32)$-valued two-form curvatures supplemented by a three-form field. In this construction, the role of the skewsymmetric four-index auxiliary function needed for the first order formulation of $D=11$ supergravity is played by the gauge field associated with the five Lorentz indices generator of the bosonic $sp(32)$ subalgebra of $osp(1|32)$.