Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Triple Transformation - Track 407

Spiritual Transformation

But when you go beyond the mind and develop other experiences of other instruments higher than the mind, then they are spiritual experiences. In the Bhagavad Gita there is a distinction made between Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. Apara Prakriti consists of body, life and mind but there is also a Para Prakriti. Apara Prakriti is a lower instrument but Para Prakriti is an instrument of God Himself. So the utilisation of Para Prakriti as an instrument is a part of spiritual development. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes several instrumentations beyond the mind. There is above the mind a higher mind; above the higher mind is the illumined mind; above the illumined mind is the intuitive mind; above the intuitive mind is the overmind; and above the overmind is the supermind. These are the layers of instrumentations. We are aware only of body, life and mind but when you can begin to ascend into these higher planes, then you become more and more vast, not only individualised in this small field of action but your scope of action becomes very vast.

In the higher mind you begin to live in thousands of thought-systems at the same time. At present we are hardly able to keep two or three systems of thought in the mind, that too with great difficulty. You can compare one thought system with another and that too with great difficulty. But in the higher mind, thousands of systems of thought can stay together harmoniously in your mind.

In the illumined mind, not only do you have a capacity of thinking of this kind when you can have thousands of thoughts together, but you have a power similar to thousand eyes so that not only can you think in thousand ways or with thousand systems of thought but you can see at once thousand systems of reality. That is why Indra is called Sahasraksbaha. Indra is the Lord of the illumined mind. When thousand eyes open up on the universe at the same time, that is the consciousness in which we live when we are elevated to the illumined consciousness, illumined mind.

The intuitive mind is when you can experience thousands of experiences simultaneously, you can touch, you can smell, thousands of systems. You intimately experience them by identity, not only do you see because when you see there is still a distance between you and the sight, but in the interactive mind you feel yourself penetrating into all things simultaneously. Actually Ramakrishna was supposed to be living constantly in the intuitive mind. He could see and feel and touch thousands of things at the same time, and correctly -- intuition is always a truth perception, there is no mistake in it.

And when you can go above it, into the overmind; millions of aspects open out and you can see each one to its logical extreme.

And supermind is one in which these millions of things are united together in one vision, like Vishnu's eye. In the Veda, Vishnu's eye has been described as if one eye is occupying the whole sky. Such is the supramental vision in which there is unity of all things, the supreme universal consciousness, enlightened, illumined.

All this movement from higher mind to supermind is called spiritual consciousness. The descent of all this into the mind, life and body and transformation of body, life and mind by all these powers is called spiritual transformation.

And this is followed by the third notion -- I'm speaking rapidly like this so you can have the full picture like a geographical map. When you can, not only ascend into the supermind but can fix yourself in the supermind, and then if that consciousness being fixed can descend into overmind and intuitive mind and illumined mind and higher mind and mind and life and body and even below the body into the subconscient and the inconscient, if it can go down and down and down, and then if it can transform them, not only the coming down but even the transformation right down to the inconscient, that process is called supramental transformation.

So these are the three basic steps to triple transformation: the psychic transformation, the spiritual transformation and the supramental transformation.

Q: The Divine's will can be known in which stage of mind?

Even psychic being can know because it is directly connected. Psychic being is a delegate of the Jivatman and Jivatman is the transcendental himself, specific.

Q: Even in the psychic transformation?

That is why our psychic transformation is so important. The easiest way of finding out God's will is to contact the psychic being. Without doing anything else, if you are in the psychic being, it is the easiest way of doing it. So that is why we are told that the easiest thing is: surrender to the Divine, offer yourself to the Divine, let the Divine take charge of you, that will create the psychic consciousness, and the moment you take that stand the Divine's will flow through you.