Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

SRI AUROBINDO'S SUPERMIND, CAUSAL

CONSCIOUSNESS AND "TURIYA"

A LETTER

The following are my ideas after reading p. 256 of the book you wanted me to consult: Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga, Tome I.

In the first letter, after the mention of the external waking consciousness and then the inner subliminal whose movements are felt like things of dream and vision, there is the phrase: "the Superconscient (Supermind, Overmind etc.) is beyond even that range and is to the mind like a deep sleep."

All that is above the inner subliminal is here considered "the Superconscient", and Supermind no less than Over-mind and the other "overhead" ranges comes under the rubric.

The next letter (in reference to the one Self that is at the base of all the states) alludes to this third state as "the Self that supports the Deep Sleep State or Causal Consciousness, Karana is all the "overhead", with Supermind as its top. Supermind is evidently the Karana consciousness par excellence.

The fourth state or "the Self in the Supracosmic Consciousness", therefore, cannot be Supermind, strictly speaking. Inasmuch as Supermind, the organising Truth-Consciousness, is the original divine plane where the term "cosmos" (= organised play of One and Many, truths of the Unmanifest brought forth and put in order for a manifestation of the universal and the individual) becomes meaningful, Supermind is not "Supracosmic."

But inasmuch as the cosmos manifested on that plane is the archetypal cosmos, the Truth-world, Supermind is not cosmic in the sense that would apply to Overmind, etc. The fact that it is part of a transcendent quaternary — Sat (Existence), Chit-Tapas (Consciousness-Force), Ananda (Bliss),

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Vijnana (Knowledge) — renders it "Supracosmic": it is the Supracosmic turned towards cosmicisation, or the Transcendent Cosmified. It is both transcendent and universal. Perhaps this is what the third letter on the same page means by its closing phrase: "Prajna or Ishwara = the Superconscient Spirit, Master of all things and the highest Self on which all depends."

The last seven words here would seem, strictly speaking, to apply to the second letter's "Self in the Supracosmic Consciousness". But in this letter Sri Aurobindo is referring, as the opening sentence says, only to "two sets of three names". The fourth name is not in question.

In Sri Aurobindo's outlook, Supermind is the Supreme Karana or causal consciousness which is continuous with the Self in the Supracosmic Consciousness.

As for "turiya" — the term on the strength of which you have argued differently from me — I should say that Supermind is "turiya" or "fourth" when we descend from Sat, Chit-Tapas and Ananda as well as the same when we ascend from Matter, Life and Mind. It is known by that term in the Rigveda as Sri Aurobindo interprets that scripture. It is not the "turiya" of the Mandukya Upanishad's gradation, the sheer Self beyond all manifestation, the utter Absolute distinct from the Self of "Sleep", "Dream" and "Waking". Or we may consider this "turiya" in the sense that for Sri Aurobindo the Supermind is continuous with it and is itself that "fourth" in an archetypally cosmifying activity on which all cosmos from Overmind downward depends and which is their cause or Karana.

Once we stop identifying the Rigveda's "turiya" with the Mandukya Upanishad's without any reservation, we shall grasp Sri Aurobindo's vision correctly in the context of our discussion.

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