A Greater Psychology

4

Sri Aurobindo on the Structure and Organisation of the Being

An Integral Map for Self-Discovery

We are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence.¹

— Sri Aurobindo

Our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the great body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters.²

— Sri Aurobindo

Normally, one feels oneself to be a unitary entity, a single being. Someone who is to some extent conscious of his psychological make-up can somewhat distinguish among its different aspects, physical, emotional and mental. But in our ordinary consciousness or awareness all these elements are mixed up. When one becomes more conscious — usually as a result of the practice of a spiritual discipline — one discovers that one's psychological nature is complex, made up of different distinguishable parts of the being.

Men do not know themselves and have not learned to distinguish the different parts of their being; for these are usually lumped together by them as mind, because it is through a mentalised perception and understanding that they know or feel them; therefore they do not understand their own states and actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface.fnn3

...man is not made up of one piece but of many pieces and each part of him has a personality of its own. That is a thing which people yet have not sufficiently realised — the psychologists have begun to glimpse it, but recognise only when there is a marked case of double or multiple personality. But all men are like that, in reality.⁴

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Two Systems in the Organisation of the Being

Sri Aurobindo distinguishes "two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts". One system is concentric, like "a series of rings or sheaths"; the other is vertical, "like a flight of steps".⁵

The concentric system consists of the outer or surface being, the inner being, and supporting both of these, the inmost being or the psychic (Fig.l). The outer being and the inner being have three corresponding parts — mental, vital, physical. Thus "There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self."⁶

Figure 1.

The Concentric System

The vertical system consists of various levels or gradations of consciousness below and above mental consciousness — the level with which we are most familiar as human beings. The Inconscient, the Subconscient, the Physical, the Vital, Mind, Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, Supermind and Sachchidananda constitute the chief levels of consciousness in the vertical system (Fig.2).

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Evolution of Consciousness

In Sri Aurobindo's thought, the concept of levels of consciousness is intimately related to the concept of evolution of consciousness.

...this One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental.⁷

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In my explanation of the universe I have put forward this cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the supramental Consciousness and the supramental being....⁸

The Outer Being

The three major divisions in the outer being consist of the mind (the mental), the life-self (the vital) and the body (the physical). Each of these parts has its own distinct type of consciousness, though in our ordinary awareness they are all mixed up.

Each plane of our being — mental, vital, physical — has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting; but to our outer mind and sense, in our waking experience, they are all confused together. The body, for instance, has its own consciousness and acts from it, even without any mental will of our own or even against that will, and our surface mind knows very little about this body-consciousness, feels it only in an imperfect way, sees only its results and has the greatest difficulty in finding out their causes.⁹

One of the first distinctions that one learns to make as one grows in consciousness is the difference between the mental and the vital.

The "Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but... "mind" and "mental"... connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence. The vital has to be carefully distinguished from mind,

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even though it has a mind element transfused into it; the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface mixtures.¹⁰

...mind and vital... are not the same. The thinking mind or buddhi lives, however imperfectly in man, by intelligence and reason. Vital, on the other hand, is a thing of desires, impulses, force-pushes, emotions, sensations, seekings after life-fulfilment, possession and enjoyment; these are its functions and its nature; — it is that part of us which seeks after life and its movements for their own sake and it does not want to leave hold of them if they bring it suffering as well as or more than pleasure; it is even capable of luxuriating in tears and suffering as part of the drama of life.¹¹

Similarly, the body, which is not mere unconscious Matter, but "a structure of a secretly conscious Energy that has taken form in it",¹² has a consciousness which is different from and independent of the mind.

The body also has a consciousness of its own and, though it is a submental instrument or servant consciousness, it can disobey or fail to obey as well. In many things, in matters of health and illness for instance, in all automatic functionings, the body acts on its own and is not a servant of the mind. If it is fatigued, it can offer a passive resistance to the mind's will. It can cloud the mind with tamas, inertia, dullness, fumes of the subconscient so that the mind cannot act. The arm lifts, no doubt, when it gets the suggestion, but at first the legs do not obey when they are asked to walk; they have to learn how to leave the crawling attitude and movement and take up the erect and ambulatory habit. When you

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first ask the hand to draw a straight line or to play music, it can't do it and won't do it. It has to be schooled, trained, taught and afterwards it does automatically what is required of it. All this proves that there is a body-consciousness which can do things at the mind's order, but has to be awakened, trained, made a good and conscious instrument.¹³

Though separate, the three principal parts of the outer being — the mental, the vital and the physical — are intermixed and interact on one another, giving rise to distinguishable subdivisions within each part of the being. Thus, besides the mind proper (the thinking mind), there is a part of the mind which is intermixed with the vital, called the vital mind. There is also a part of the mind which is interfused with the physical, called the physical mind. Similar subdivisions exist within the vital and the physical. Two of these subdivisions which generally play a prominent role in most human beings are the vital mind and the physical mind.

The vital mind is the part of the mind which is intermixed and dominated by impulses, desires and feelings of the vital nature. The reasoning of the vital mind is a pseudo-reasoning as is well illustrated by the common act of rationalisation by which the mind, usurped by the vital, provides plausible "rational" explanations and justifications for impulses and desires of the vital.

The physical mind is the part of the mind which is intermingled with and partakes of the characteristics of the physical consciousness. Some of the chief characteristics of the physical, namely, inertia, obscurity, mechanical repetitiveness, automatism, constriction and chaotic activity are reflected in the physical mind in the form of mental torpor, doubt, mechanical reactions to things, habitual modes of thinking, and confusion. The part of the mind which is closest to the physical is referred to as the mechanical mind; it is like a machine that goes on turning round and round whatever thoughts occur in it.

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The Inner Being (The Subliminal)

Behind the outer being is the inner being, also called the subliminal self.

There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being and by far the larger part of us is below the surface. Or, more accurately, it is behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge.... What we call our mind is only an outer mind, a surface mental action, instrumental for the partial expression of a larger mind behind of which we are not ordinarily aware and can know only by going inside ourselves. So too what we know of the vital in us is only the outer vital, a surface activity partially expressing a larger secret vital which we can only know by going within. Equally, what we call our physical being is only a visible projection of a greater and subtler invisible physical consciousness which is much more complex, much more aware, much wider in its receptiveness, much more open and plastic and free.¹⁴

Whereas the outer being "receives consciously only the outer touches and knows things indirectly through the outer mind and senses",¹⁵ the inner being is "directly aware of the universal consciousness and the universal forces that play through us and around us."¹⁶ For the inner mind is directly in touch with the universal mind, just as the inner vital is in direct touch with the universal life-forces, and the inner physical with the universal physical forces around us. To illustrate the difference between indirect knowledge through the outer being and direct knowledge through the inner being:

Take illness. If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, we do not usually know that we are going to be ill until the

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symptoms of the malady declare themselves on the body. But if we develop the inward physical consciousness, we become aware of a subtle environmental physical atmosphere and can feel the forces of illness coming towards us through it, feel them even at a distance and, if we have learnt how to do it, we can stop them by the will or otherwise. We sense too around us a vital physical or nervous envelope which radiates from the body and protects it, and we can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold, for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body.¹⁷

Environmental Consciousness (The Circumconscient)

The subliminal has a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond the body "and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world and can become aware of them and deal with them before they enter."¹⁸ This environmental consciousness surrounding the body is that part of the individual being through which the individual is in inner contact with other beings and with universal forces.

By environmental consciousness I mean something that each man carries around him, outside his body, even when he is not aware of it, — by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces. It is through this that the thoughts, feelings, etc. of others pass to enter into one — it is through this also that waves of the universal force — desire, sex, etc. come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body.¹⁹

Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses.

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Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside.

But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.²⁰

The Inmost Being — The Psychic

Supporting mind, life and body is the inmost being, called by Sri Aurobindo the psychic being, the term being derived from a Greek root (psukhē) which means the soul. The soul in its essence, called the psyche, is described by Sri Aurobindo as a spark and an eternal portion of the Divine present in all things and beings in the universe. Whereas the Universal Self or Atman stands above the evolutionary process and is unaffected by it, the psyche is the element that develops in the evolution and grows into an individual self called the psychic being.

It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and the pure Atman, self or spirit. The pure self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature. It is not bound by these things, not limited, not affected,

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even though it assumes and supports them. The soul, on the contrary, is something that comes down into birth and passes through death — although it does not itself die, for it is immortal — from one state to another, from the earth plane to other planes and back again to the earth-existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being that supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression.²¹

A distinction must be made also between the true soul (psychic being) and the desire-soul (the vital being) which is often mistaken for the real soul.

In most men the soul is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces, good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a divine nature.²²

Purusha and Prakriti

Developing the concepts of the Sankhya philosophy, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes between the soul or spirit side of the Being called Purusha (Person or Conscious Being), which is the essential or true being, and the Nature side of Being called Prakriti (Nature), which is the phenomenal or instrumental being. Both the outer being and the inner being described previously belong to Prakriti. Behind the outer mind and the inner mind, the outer vital and the inner vital, the outer physical and the inner physical, lies the true being, the Purusha, in the form of "an inmost

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mental, vital, physical, more specifically called the true mind, the true vital, the true physical consciousness".²³ The psychic being behind the outer being and the inner being and supporting them both is also a Purusha (Fig. 3).

Purusha

Prakriti

figure 3.

Purusha and Prakriti

Explaining the nature of Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo writes:

The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the mental Purusha in the mental plane, the vital Purusha in the vital, the physical Purusha in the physical.²⁴

The Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti — Prakriti is the Force of Nature which one feels as doing all the actions, when one gets rid of the sense of the ego as doer.²⁵

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When we come to look in at our selves instead of out at the world and begin to analyse our subjective experience, we find that there are two parts of our being which can be, to all appearance, entirely separated from each other, one a consciousness which is still and passive and supports, and the other a consciousness which is busy and creative and is supported. The passive and fundamental consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or sākṣī, the active and superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the sākṣī.²⁶

In our ordinary consciousness we are unable to distinguish our true self, the Purusha, from the Nature side of our being, Prakriti, because Purusha is identified with Prakriti. In the state of identification, the Self is bound and governed by its instrumental nature — body, life and mind.

If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.... ²⁷

The experience of the separation of Purusha from Prakriti may take place on any plane of the being.

Usually it is in the inner mental that this separation first happens and it is the inner mental Purusha who remains silent, observing the Prakriti as separate from himself. But it may also be the inner vital Purusha or inner physical or else without location simply the whole Purusha consciousness separate from the whole Prakriti. Sometimes it is felt above the head, but then it is usually spoken of as the Atman and the realisation is that of the silent Self.²⁸

The true being may be realised in one or both of two aspects — the individual soul (psychic being) or the Universal Self (Atman).

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Being — Individual and Universal

When we think of the being, we normally think of the individual being, just as when we think of consciousness, we generally think of the consciousness of the individual. But Being or Consciousness — two aspects of the One Reality — is all-embracing and includes the universe as well as the individual. Seen from a spiritual consciousness "both individual and universe are simultaneous and interrelated expressions of the same transcendent Being".²⁹ "Universe is a diffusion of the Divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time."³⁰ It is the ego that creates a wall and sense of separation between the individual being and the universal being.

In the lower nature man is an ego making a clean cut in conception between himself and all other existence; the ego is to him self, but all the rest not-self, external to his being. His whole action starts from and is founded upon this self-conception and world-conception. But the conception is in fact an error. However sharply he individualises himself in mental idea and mental or other action, he is inseparable from the universal being, his body from universal force and matter, his life from the universal life, his mind from universal mind, his soul and spirit from universal soul and spirit.³¹

Thus each part of the individual being corresponds to a plane of the universal being.

Ego and Individuality

In our normal consciousness, as stated previously, we are not conscious of our true being; we are aware only of our outer being — body, life and mind — with which we identify our self. This identification of the true being with the outer being gives rise to an ego — physical, vital, and mental — which gives us the sense of I-ness, an individuality separate from the rest of the universe.

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...the ego is mental, vital, physical. Ego implies the identification of our existence with outer self, the ignorance of the true self above and our psychic being within us.³²

The ego is only a provisional individuality, "a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body"³³ until the true individual — the psychic being — is discovered.

The "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and the formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place.³⁴

This persistent soul-existence is the real Individuality which stands behind the constant mutations of the thing we call our personality. It is not a limited ego but a thing in itself infinite.... ³⁵

The Subconscient and the Inconscient

Whereas the subliminal or inner being is behind the outer being of mind, life and body, the subconscient and the Inconscient constitute the nether being below the physical consciousness. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient which is not really devoid of consciousness, as the term would imply, but is the nethermost level of the involution of consciousness from which the evolution of consciousness starts.

The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme super-conscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama āsīt tamasā gūḍham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous

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inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being.³⁶

The subconscient is the antechamber of the Inconscient, and lies between the Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.

In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate Sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness.³⁷

...all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient, not as precise though submerged memories but as obscure yet obstinate impressions of experience, and these can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feelings, action, etc., as "complexes" exploding into action and event, etc., etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever.... All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.³⁸

Matter is under the control of this power [the subconscient], because it is that out of which it has been created — that is why matter seems to us to be quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the most part. The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware

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of what is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams.³⁹

During the waking state, the mind lives largely in impressions rising up from the subconscient. In ordinary sleep most dreams are formations made from subconscient impressions. Thus, in most human beings, the outer self of mind, life and body is to a great extent an instrument of the upsurging irrational, mechanical and repetitive movements of the subconscious during both waking and sleep.

The Superconscient

Just as the subconscient is what lies below the physical consciousness from which things come up into the physical, the vital and the mental parts of the being, so the superconscient, consisting of higher levels of consciousness, lies above normal mind, and from these higher ranges, things descend into the lower parts of the being. Whereas the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature, the superconscient supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature. "The role of the superconscient has been to evolve slowly the spiritual man out of the mental half-animal."⁴⁰

The superconscient has generally been referred to as the capital "M" Mind, the Deeper Mind, Cosmic Consciousness, the Higher Self, Spirit and other similar global terms. Sri Aurobindo, however, distinguishes various distinct levels of consciousness among these higher planes of being which lie above the ordinary mind.

There are above us... successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience.... ⁴¹

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...from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.⁴²

There are many layers in each of the main gradations between mind and Supermind, and each of these layers can be regarded as a gradation in itself.

In all the series of the planes or grades of consciousness there is nowhere any real gulf, always there are connecting gradations and one can ascend from step to step.⁴³

Higher Mind

Higher mind is the first and lowest of the superconscient planes above the level of the ordinary mind.

I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual consciousness where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight — not illumined by any of the intenser upper lights but as if in a large strong and clear daylight. It acts as an intermediate state between the Truth-Light above and the human mind; communicating the higher knowledge in a form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it.⁴⁴

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Illumined Mind

...greater Force [than the Higher Mind] is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous "enthousiasmos" of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.⁴⁵

Intuition

In common usage, intuition means the power of understanding things immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. In this sense, intuition may be based on a feeling, or it may be a rapid "subconscious reasoning", based on subtle cues which are not consciously apprehended. Sri Aurobindo, however, uses the term "intuition" in a much deeper sense when he refers to a certain gradation of consciousness.

[The Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind] enjoy their authority

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and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.⁴⁶

Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.⁴⁷

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Overmind

Between the supermind and the human mind are a number of ranges, planes or layers of consciousness — one can regard it in various ways — in which the element or substance of mind and consequently its movements also become more and more illumined and powerful and wide. The overmind is the highest of these ranges; it is full of lights and powers; but from the point of view of what is above it, it is the line of the soul's turning away from the complete and indivisible knowledge and its descent towards the Ignorance. For although it draws from the Truth, it is here that begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above.⁴⁸

It is (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) by the power of the overmind releasing the mind form its close partitions that the cosmic consciousness opens in the seeker and he becomes aware of the cosmic spirit and the play of the cosmic forces.

It is from or at least through the overmind plane that the original pre-arrangement of things in this world is effected; for from it the determining vibrations originally come.⁴⁹

The overmind has to be reached and brought down before the supermind descent is at all possible — for the overmind is the passage through which one passes from Mind to supermind.

It is from the overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the Illumined and Higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative

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ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.⁵⁰

Supermind

Sri Aurobindo does not use the term Supermind in the sense of "mind itself super-eminent and lifted above ordinary mentality but not radically changed".⁵¹ He means by the term a plane of consciousness which is not only above mind and the superconscient planes of consciousness just described, but is radically different from them all. For whereas even the superconscient levels of mind — Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind — are varying blends of Knowledge-Ignorance, Supermind is the Truth-Consciousness.

We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.⁵²

The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence,

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but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light.⁵³

The Divine — Sachchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss)

Sachchidananda is the supracosmic Reality, the Divine, the Supreme Being who "manifests Himself as infinite existence of which the essentiality is consciousness, of which again the essentiality is bliss, is self-delight...."⁵⁴

[Sachchidananda] is one eternal Existence that we then are, one eternal Consciousness which sees its own works in us and others, one eternal Will or Force of that Consciousness which displays itself in infinite workings, one eternal Delight which has the joy of itself and all its workings, — itself stable, immutable, timeless, spaceless, supreme and itself still in the infinity of its workings, not changed by their variations, not broken up by their multiplicity, not increased or diminished by their ebbings and flowings in the seas of Time and Space, not confused by their apparent contrarieties or limited by their divinely-willed limitations. Sachchidananda is the unity of the many-sidedness of manifested things, the eternal harmony of all their variations and oppositions, the infinite perfection which justifies their limitations and is the goal of their imperfections.⁵⁵

Supermind is between the Sachchidananda, the One who is above all manifestation, and this flux of the Many in the manifested universe. For an integral self-knowledge, states Sri Aurobindo, it is not enough to go beyond mind and take a straight plunge into Sachchidananda as aimed at by the traditional Path of Knowledge: it is necessary to attain the Supermind during the ascension beyond mind to Sachchidananda.

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The method of the traditional way of knowledge, eliminating all these things [body, life, mind] arrives at the conception and realisation of a pure conscious existence, self-aware, self-blissful, unconditioned by mind and life and body, and to its ultimate positive experience that is Atman, the Self, the original and essential nature of our existence. Here at last there is something centrally true, but in its haste to arrive at it this knowledge assumes that there is nothing between the thinking mind and the Highest,... and, shutting its eyes in Samadhi, tries to rush through all that actually intervenes without even seeing these great and luminous kingdoms of the Spirit. Perhaps it arrives at its object, but only to fall asleep in the Infinite. Or, if it remains awake, it is in the highest experience of the Supreme into which the self-annulling Mind can enter but not in the supreme of the Supreme, Parātpara. The Mind can only be aware of the Self in a mentalised spiritual thinness, only of the mind-reflected Sachchidananda. The highest truth, the integral self-knowledge is not to be gained by this self-blinded leap into the Absolute but by a patient transit beyond the mind into the Truth-Consciousness where the Infinite can be known, felt, seen, experienced in all the fullness of its unending riches.⁵⁶

References

1. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (hereafter SABCL), (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-75), Vol. 18, p. 555.

2. Ibid., p. 556.

3. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 233.

4. Ibid., p. 303.

5. Ibid., p. 251.

6. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 23, pp. 1020-21.

7. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, p. 95.

8. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 47.

9. Ibid., p. 347.

10. Ibid., pp. 320-21.

11. Ibid., p. 323.

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12. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 305.

13. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, pp. 323-24.

14. Ibid., pp. 348-49.

15. Ibid., p. 350.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 541.

19. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, p. 1602.

20. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22 pp. 313-14.

21. Ibid., p. 438.

22. Ibid., p. 300.

23. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 349.

24. Ibid., p. 285.

25. Ibid., p. 301.

26. Sri Aurobindo, The Hour of God and Other Writings, SABCL Vol. 17, p. 51.

27. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 348.

28. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 23, p. 1005.

29. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 974.

30. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 45.

31. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 21, pp. 613-14.

32. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 300.

33. Ibid., p. 46.

34. Ibid., p. 278.

35. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 360.

36. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 550.

37. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 353.

38. Ibid., pp. 354-55.

39. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, p. 1597.

40. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 360.

41. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol.19, pp. 932-33.

42. Ibid., p. 938.

43. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 250.

44. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, SABCL Vol. 9, p. 342.

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45. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, p. 944.

46. Ibid., pp. 946-47.

47. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 264.

48. Ibid., p. 257.

49. Ibid., p. 260.

50. Ibid., p. 261.

51. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 18, p. 124.

52. Ibid., p. 143.

53. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, SABCL Vol. 16, pp. 41-42.

54. Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, SABCL Vol. 12, p. 96.

55. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 395.

56. Ibid., p. 281.

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