Page 5 - All India Magazine Nov-2022

Supermind and Overmind

Sri Aurobindo’s work is a unique earth-transformation.
Above the mind there are several levels of conscious
being, among which the really divine world is what Sri
Aurobindo has called the Supermind, the world of the Truth.
But in between is what he has distinguished as the Overmind,
the world of the cosmic Gods. Now it is this Overmind that
has up to the present governed our world: it is the highest
that man has been able to attain in illumined consciousness.
It has been taken for the Supreme Divine and all those who
have reached it have never for a moment doubted that they
have touched the true Spirit. For, its splendours are so great
to the ordinary human consciousness that it is absolutely
dazzled into believing that here at last is the crowning real-
ity. And yet the fact is that the Overmind is far below the true
Divine. It is not the authentic home of the Truth. It is only
the domain of the formateurs, all those creative powers and
deities to whom men have bowed down since the beginning
of history. And the reason why the true Divine has not mani-
fested and transformed the earth-nature is precisely that the
Overmind has been mistaken for the Supermind. The cosmic
Gods do not wholly live in the Truth-Consciousness: they are
only in touch with it and represent, each of them, an aspect
of its glories. ...
The Overmind, therefore, does not and cannot possess
the power to transform humanity into divine nature. For
that, the Supramental is the sole effective agent. And what

exactly differentiates our Yoga from attempts in the past to

spiritualise life is that we know that the splendours of the
Overmind are not the highest reality but only an intermedi-
ate step between the mind and the true Divine.
CWM 3: 173-74 The Mother

All India Magazine, November 2022 5