Man’s attraction towards world strengthens the knowledge of the Becoming, this terrestrial existence; attraction towards heaven strengthens the knowledge of our Source, the Supracosmic origin; attraction of heaven on earth strengthens the knowledge of the intermediate Supra-terrestrial link of subtle, Superconscient, Universal and Supramental plane and attraction towards His ecstatic oneness, order and harmony transforms Matter into image of the Spirit or material transfiguration, eliminating the permanent division between terrestrial, Supra-cosmic and Supra-terrestrial world or bridging the gulf between, the Creation and the Creator.

            It is true that the deficiencies of the above four institutions are to be rightly related to the total harmony of Existence. In the past, the above evolutionary synthesis had failed due to exaggeration and exclusive importance of either one or another school of thought and now a time has come in the recent development of integral Yoga, as another opportunity and a trying ground of equal importance and regard for all four schools of thought and their utmost Spiritual consummation. The secret truth behind the material existence of physical Science and the truth of pure devotion of all Religious movements are to be reconciled with the Ascetic affirmation of a pure Spiritual impulse. The Ascetic or Sannyasin aspiration upward to unite with the Divine is to be rightly and sufficiently related with the ancient Vedantic approach of descending movement of the Divine Shakti to embrace its manifestation. The ancient Vedantic quest to reconcile Matter and Spirit, One and Many in its comprehensiveness is to be sufficiently related with the Vedic representation of the Divine Mother, the daughter of the Sun, Savitri, who is concerned with the final aim of the Vedic discipline, Divine perfection of material life and physical Immortality of the mutable substance. Thus, earth life can be transformed into an ecstatic playfield of her Divine children.

            In Integral Spiritual Evolution, Supracosmic is accepted as a source, origin and support, the Supra-terrestrial or other intermediate world for a condition and connecting link of bridging the gulf between Supracosmic Source and the nether material life and the Terrestrial for its field and circumstance, and with human Body, Life and Mind for its nodus, turning point and dynamic mould into which Divine existence can be poured in for a higher and even highest perfection.

​

            The whole aim of the evolution is the continuous enlargement of the existing human vessel. The force or energy that moves the stars and planets, the same force also moves our thoughts and actions. When this inrush of ‘energy is the highest in kind and the fullest in amount’³⁴ and works in a perfected human vessel, then he has attained the complete and utmost development. To this height all humanity is aspiring, knowingly or unknowingly.

​

                        Mother Nature attempts through each individual formation to bridge the gulf between the existing material living and the future Supramental world. She attempted and reattempted this with her best Master Souls and succeeded with Sri Aurobindo. Now, after Mother Nature’s success in creating a single Sri Aurobindo, who is a symbol of the movement of comprehensive Consciousness, her next great and difficult task is ‘to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.’²⁸ Now it is time for her to universalise her success, by providing the best surrounding atmosphere to the receptive human Souls with perfected minds and bodies who will be able initially to unveil the transcendent activities of the Spirit and finally hold and carry Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness or the total consciousness of the Eternal by the simple formula though difficult to execute, that of initially living and experiencing all the norms of Integral Yoga, Dharma, and finally, the outer law is substituted by the inner plastic Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Law. This intensive evolution of the individual must be preoccupied in entirely changing the mind, life and body in conformity with the truth of the Spirit. This multiplication of total Consciousness of the Eternal may be understood in Sri Aurobindo's language, "The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings."³³

​

            After bridging the gulf between ordinary living and Supramental life, Mother Nature attempted again to experience the cellular transformation of her animal evolutionary form through The Mother’s body. This is another intermediate adventure which has opened for the race another possibility of physical change and a journey toward the ultimate adventure and victory of Spirit over Matter. The simple formula to repeat The Mother’s Cellular transformation experience or discovery of immortal principles concealed within the body's cells is to purify the physical substance to the extent of bearing the pressure of All Delight and the burden of the earth’s Inconscient negations. Or “The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,”³⁰ and “Almighty powers are shut in Nature’s cells.”³¹ The next difficult task of Mother Nature related to the multiplication of individual Cellular transformation may be understood in The Mother’s language, “If, for any reason this body (The Mother’s body) becomes unusable, the universal Mother will again start manifesting in hundreds of individualities according to their capacity and receptivity, each one being a partial manifestation of the Universal Consciousness.”²⁹   

 

            Now, most of humanity is suffering from the slavery of lower Nature and the slavery of ordinary action. So, first, very few should go beyond these two slaveries by ascending their consciousness to the Psychic, Spiritual and Universal planes and their Spiritual Influence should spread beyond the individual Soul Centre. Sri Aurobindo confirms, "whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity..."³² Thus, in the long run, the whole of humanity can be liberated and their life can be Divinised.   

OM TAT SAT

The References of the above extraction are taken from the manuscript ‘The Integral Yoga and Sanatana Dharma’ (Page-27, 120) 

​

THE PSYCHIC & SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

            "The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana; but they are here (in Integral Yoga) being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature." 

Sri Aurobindo

CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943

            “As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it, so the first spiritual change has to call in the supramental transformation to complete it.”

Sri Aurobindo

CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-951

           “The psychic transformation after rising into the spiritual change has then to be completed, integralised, exceeded and uplifted by a supramental transformation which lifts it to the summit of the ascending endeavour.”

Sri Aurobindo

CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-242

            "A purified mind and heart and a strong and fine psychical intuition may do much to protect from perversion and error, but even the most highly developed psychical consciousness cannot be absolutely safe unless the psychical is illumined and uplifted by a higher force than itself and touched and strengthened by the luminous intuitive mind and that again raised towards the supramental energy of the spirit."

Sri Aurobindo

CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-896

​

             It has been observed that there is wide misuse of the word ‘Supermind’¹ and ‘transformation of Nature’¹ by devotees and disciples in their writings and orations. This was not acceptable to Sri Aurobindo as they are related with the last perfection of integral Yoga and can be attained only after the long movement² of Consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual planes and after the universalisation of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness. So, as we understand, an isolated individual transformation is not practicable. ‘Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible.’³ ‘It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.’⁴ He further confirmed that at present, the Psychic and Spiritual transformation and perfection is possible ‘only by a small number of human beings.’⁵ What Sri Aurobindo proposes to them is, ‘one must first have the self-realisation, the full action of the spiritualised mind and heart, the psychic awakening, the liberation of the imprisoned consciousness, the purification and entire opening of the adhara. Do not think now of those ultimate things (Overmind, Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature.’⁶ ‘At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established.’⁶ There are very few Sadhakas who are concerned with Supramental energy that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo intended to call down to earth’s atmosphere. Apart from it, most of the Ashramite Sadhakas ‘are seeking realisation through meditation, through love and worship or through activity and work.’⁷

​

            In this Yoga, if a Sadhak will not learn the lesson sufficiently to transform the nature by movement of ascending and descending Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness, then he will have to be satisfied with partial intermittent Divine union. The vision of complete and constant Divine union through activation of the Supramentalised Psychic Self will remain as a distant and remote objective of integral Yoga.

​

            Spiritual life is for those who are not satisfied with life as it is. They enjoy Divine’s single protection by partial Psychic opening (“Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:” Savitri-211), double protection by full opening of Psychic being which can discover Ocean of Light above the head and bellow the feet (“Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light,” Savitri-531) and multiple protection by opening all the ten Selves. (“It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above.” Savitri-98, "Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth," Savitri-716)

​

OM TAT SAT

References:

1(59 is the reference in the Manuscript): “Transformation is a word that I have brought in myself (like supermind) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them…” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/-p-403, CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-174, “The words supermind and supramental were first used by me, but since then people have taken up and are using the word supramental for anything above the mind.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-144, ‘It is a common mistake. Even the word supermind (which I invented) has been taken up by several people (writers in the Prabuddha Bharata and elsewhere) and applied generally to the spiritual consciousness.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-142-143, “People talk very lightly of the overmind and the supermind as if it were quite easy to enter into them and mistake inferior movements for the overmental or supramental, thereby confusing the Truth and delaying the progress of the sadhana.” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-408, "For if it is some inferior state that we thus mistake for the supermind, it lays us open to all the dangers we have seen to attend a presumptuous egoistic haste in our demand for achievement. If it is one of the higher states that we presume to be the highest, we may, though we achieve much, yet fall short of the greater, more perfect goal of our being; for we shall remain content with an approximation and the supreme transformation will escape us. Even the achievement of a complete inner liberation and a high spiritual consciousness is not that supreme transformation; for we may have that achievement, a status perfect in itself, in essence, and still our dynamic parts may in their instrumentation belong to an enlightened spiritualised mind and may be in consequence, like all mind, defective even in its greater power and knowledge, still subject to a partial or local obscuration or a limitation by the original circumscribing nescience." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-284, "If spiritual and supramental were the same thing, as you say my readers imagine, then all the sages and devotees and Yogis and sadhaks throughout the ages would have been supramental beings and all I have written about the supermind would be so much superfluous stuff, useless and otiose. Anybody who had spiritual experiences would then be a supramental being; the Asram would be chock-full of supramental beings and every other Asram in India also. Spiritual experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer active parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. The change then only will be that the inner self will watch all that without getting disturbed or bewildered, with a perfect equality, taking it as an inevitable part of Nature, inevitable at least so long as one does not withdraw to the Self out of Nature. That is not the transformation I envisage. It is quite another power of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical consciousness that must come in by the supramental change." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-273-274

2 (147): "There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that can transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the integral Yoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-148, “It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant and ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must (1) first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. (2) Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. (3) Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. (4) It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, and acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. (5) Then only the passage into supramental consciousness begins to become possible, (6) and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-281-282, "It follows that the psychic and the spiritual transformation must be far advanced, even as complete as may be, before there can be any beginning of the third and consummating supramental change; for it is only by this double transmutation that the self-will of the Ignorance can be totally altered into a spiritual obedience to the remoulding truth and will of the greater Consciousness of the Infinite. A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya, has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being and the Supreme Nature can become total and absolute." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-964, "If (1) this first (Psychic) change establishing the being in the inner and larger, a Yogic in place of an ordinary consciousness has not been done, the greater transmutation is impossible. Moreover the individual must have sufficiently universalised himself, he must have recast his individual mind in the boundlessness of a cosmic mentality, enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere of universality into a consciousness belonging to its spiritual upper hemisphere. (2) (second Spiritual change) Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient; he must be already a being conscious of the higher spiritual Light, Power, Knowledge, Ananda, penetrated by its descending influences, new-made by a spiritual change. It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place and its action to proceed before the psychic is far advanced or complete; for the spiritual influence from above can awaken, assist and complete the psychic transmutation: all that is necessary is that there should be a sufficient stress of the psychic entity for the spiritual higher overture to take place. But the third, the supramental change does not admit of any premature descent of the highest Light; for it can only commence when the supramental Force begins to act directly, and this it does not do if the nature is not ready. For there is too great a disparity between the power of the supreme Force and the capacity of the ordinary nature; the inferior nature would either be unable to bear or, bearing, unable to respond and receive or, receiving, unable to assimilate. Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially responsive." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-965-966

3 (143): CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness- Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, "A perfect self- expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal, for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. The individual separating himself from the All to reach the Highest, loses himself in the supreme heights; including in himself the cosmic consciousness, he recovers his wholeness of self and still keeps his supreme gain of transcendence; he fulfils it and himself in the cosmic completeness. A realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an indispensable condition for the fullness of the self-expressing spirit: for the universe is the field of its totality of self-expression, while it is through the individual that its evolutionary self-unfolding here comes to its acme." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706, "But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things ... If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, it’s a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that it’s absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized – that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everything – really to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT." The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960, "He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-718,

4 (133): "It is not intended to supramentalise humanity at large, but to establish the principle of the supramental consciousness in the earth-evolution. If that is done, all that is needed will be evolved by the supramental Power itself. It is not therefore important that the mission should be widespread. What is important is that the thing should be done at all in however small a number; that is the only difficulty…It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288-290, “The questions about the supermind cannot be answered profitably now. Supermind cannot be described in terms that the mind will understand, because the terms will be mental and mind will understand them in a mental way and mental sense and miss their true import. It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible. Let the whole dynamic nature led by the psychic make itself full of the dynamic spiritual light, peace, purity, knowledge, force; let it afterwards get experience of the intermediate spiritual planes and know, feel and act in their sense; then it will be possible to speak last of the supramental transformation.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-289-290, “Otherwise what will be ultimately accomplished is an achievement by the few initiating a new order of beings, while humanity will have passed sentence of unfitness on itself and may fall back into an evolutionary decline or a stationary immobility; for it is the constant up ward effort (of the few) that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it, Its plays in the front of creation.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-752, “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-290, "As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation — and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-312-313, "When external difficulties subside, when the body becomes passive and quiet, when it is not constantly demanding attention, then you can LIVE in this supramental consciousness and it does not seem so difficult; you feel it is so victorious in its essence that it will end all difficulties." The Mother’s Agenda/ December 13, 1960,

5 (144): “The Psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-953, “But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the play of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-351

6 (76): CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-413, CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-492,

7 (10): “There are very few among the sadhaks here who at all concern themselves with the supermind or know anything about it except as something which the Mother and I will bring down some day and establish here. Most are seeking realisation through meditation, through love and worship or through activity and work. Meditation and silence are not necessary for everyone; there are some, even among those spoken of by you and others as the most advanced sadhaks, who do their sadhana not through meditation, for which they have no turn, but through activity, work or creation supported or founded on love and bhakti. It is not the credo but the person who matters. We impose no credo; it is sufficient if there is an established and heart-felt relation between ourselves and the disciple.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-210, “I may say generally that to bring down the supermind is my aim in the yoga or that to do that one has first to rise out of mind into overmind, but if on the strength of that, anybody and everybody began trying to pull down the supermind or force his way immediately out of mind into overmind, the result would be disaster.” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-349,

​

The References of the above extractions are taken from the manuscript ‘The Mother's Manifestation’ (Page-267)

​

    Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file:

​