Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Triple Transformation - Track 708

Sri Aurobindo and the Supermind.

 This last method is, you will find, much more richer than all others and it is in direct line with the teaching of the Veda which has been greatly lost. If you go to the original Veda, which is not understood today but if you really make a great effort to find out what the Vedic teaching is, then you will find that the Vedic method was to be able to arrive at a point where the instrument of the mind itself is transcended and a new instrument is discovered. A new instrument, a truth consciousness – which Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind, had been discovered by the Vedic rishis – so they said that when you discover the Divine's will and when you become its instrument you no more are obliged to act only through the mind. You will be able to act through the Supermind and this was the Vedic discovery. And when you are able to act through the Supermind then that was regarded as perfection, because whatever manifests from there is perfect, the Divine consciousness is perfect and all actions that proceed from there are perfect actions.  The same thing was taught in the Bhagavad Gita because Bhagavad Gita says that beyond the mind – which is the highest point of Aparaprakriti – there is a higher Prakriti: Paraprakriti. It is a very clear enunciation given in the Bhagavad Gita that the Supreme acts at present through the lower Prakriti but it is also capable of acting through a higher Prakriti. This higher Prakriti is a higher instrumentation which is higher than the mind. So this possibility was again made available to us in the Bhagavad Gita. In the Vedic teaching, you might say you reach the highest level that was possible in the history of Indian thought. Sri Krishna says: "I have taught this teaching, first to Vivasvan, then to Manu. It was lost and I am now repeating it again to you", that is why the Gita's importance is so great. Sri Aurobindo says that the highest point that was reached was that when the instrument was proposed to be perfected, even transcended so that a new instrumentation could come about, but there the work has remained. It has not yet proceeded further. Having reached the Supermind, to make a permanent possibility of residing the Supermind, to bring it down on the earth not only for one individual or few individuals but to make it available to the race, that work remains to be done and that work can be done by the triple transformation: the psychic transformation, spiritual transformation and Supramental transformation.