My Pleroma Esoteric Multiverse ...

Supermind, Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher Mind, Mental Mind, Vital Mind and Physical Mind

The Supermind

Dynamic Eternal Truth Consciousness

Sachchidananda in manifestation

Introduction

Supermind in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy refers to the infinite unitary truth-consciousness or truth-idea simultaneously transcendent and immanent to planes of matter, life, and mind. Supermind is the dynamic form of sachchidananda (being-consciousness-bliss), and the necessary conduit, mediator or linkage between satchitananda and the manifest Creation. (Life Divine Book I, ch.14-16)

The objective and final stage of integral yoga is to actualise the Supermind within one's being, this would constitute a divinisation of matter itself or a realisation of its inherent primordial propensity, and usher in a completely new, 'divine' way of existing. (Life Divine Book II, ch.26-28)

Quotes:

"The term above is the unitarian or indivisible consciousness of pure Sachchidananda in which there are no separating distinctions; the term below is the analytic or dividing consciousness of Mind which can only know by separation and distinction and has at the most a vague and secondary apprehension of unity and infinity,-for, though it can synthetise its divisions, it cannot arrive at a true totality. Between them is this comprehensive and creative consciousness, by its power of pervading and intimately comprehending knowledge the child of that self-awareness by identity which is the poise of the Brahman and by its power of projecting, confronting, apprehending knowledge parent of that awareness by distinction which is the process of the Mind." "Above, the formula of the One eternally stable and immutable; below, the formula of the Many which, eternally mutable, seeks but hardly finds in the flux of things a firm and immutable standing-point; between, the seat of all trinities, of all that is biune, of all that becomes Many-in-One and yet remains One-in-Many because it was originally One that is always potentially Many. This intermediary term is therefore the beginning and end of all creation and arrangement, the Alpha and the Omega, the starting-point of all differentiation, the instrument of all unification, originative, executive and consummative of all realised or realisable harmonies. It has the knowledge of the One, but is able to draw out of the One its hidden multitudes; it manifests the Many, but does not lose itself in their differentiations. And shall we not say that its very existence points back to Something beyond our supreme perception of the ineffable Unity, -- Something ineffable and mentally inconceivable not because of its unity and indivisibility, but because of its freedom from even these formulations of our mind, -- Something beyond both unity and multiplicity? That would be the utter Absolute and Real which yet justifies to us both our knowledge of God and our knowledge of the world." "the supermind, the Truth-consciousness, the Real-Idea which knows itself and all that it becomes. "

"Consciousness and Force are the twin essential aspects of the pure Power of existence; Knowledge and Will must therefore be the form which that Power takes in creating a world of relations in the extension of Time and Space. This Knowledge and this Will must be one, infinite, all-embracing, all-possessing, all-forming, holding eternally in itself that which it casts into movement and form. The supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time and Space."

Supermind
Psychic Being (Chaitya Purusha)	Mind
	Vital
	Physical

The Supermind - parallel concepts
Pleroma Gnosticism	Henads Proclus	Adam Kadmon Lurianic Kabbalah
suggested reality: The Manifest Absolute

external link The Nature of Supermind, by Sri Aurobindo - an essay originally published in July 1920 and currently in the public domain.

The Overmind

Although Sri Aurobindo only posits seven major planes of existence, he also suggests between Midn and Supermind, or lower (finite, limited, ignorant) and higher (infinite, divine, perfect) creation, an important transitional or intermediate reality, which he calls the Overmind.

Overmind, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the plane of Gods. Overmental plane is the highest consciousness one can achieve without transcending the mental system. Beyond overmind are the planes of Supermind or unity-consciousness.

A detailed description of the Overmind is provided in Book I ch.28, and Book II ch.26, of Sri Aurobindo's philosophical opus The Life Divine.

At the source of ...Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, -- not Mind as we know it, but an overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.

In keeping with the emanationist concept of successive hypostases, Sri Aurobindo presents a series of intermediate or transitional links; each link itself a plane or hypostasis of existence and grade of cosmic consciousness, as well as being transitional between the reality below and the reality above (the Suhrawardan and esoteric islamic concept of Barzakh (interworld) is somewhat similar). Thus mediating between the transcendent Sacchidananda and the lower creation is Supermind, again between the lower creation and Supermind is the Overmind (described here), and between Mind and Overmind is Intuition (of which Overmind is the source)

The Overmind is the region of the great Gods, the individualised expression of the unitary Supramental Truth. These are the powers that oversee the phenomenal world. It is the level where (as with Plotinus' Nous) multiplicity first appears, and indeed is the principle that originally causes multiplicity.

"Overmind Energy (has the)...capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral...all-comprehending Unity (of the Supermind). It takes each aspect or power and gives it an independent action in which it aquires a full separate importance..."

Thus multiplicity emerges from Unity; the Archetypes from the Unmanifest Absolute. Here we have the distinction between the Unmanifest and the Manifest Absolute or Godhead.

The Intuitive Spiritual Mind

This is region of higher consciousness, which would seem to pertain more to a very high stage of Realization, far beyond ordinary nonduality, rather than intuition in the ordinary sense of the term. To avoid this confusion, I sometimes refer to it Revelatory Absolute. Especially, it is important to avoid misleading interpretations such as those popularised by Ken Wilber (who respects but misinterprets Sri Aurobindo) in his charts and tables of correspondence. So, there is the Nondual Absolute and equivalent states of Realization, then the Higher and Illumined Mind, and then Intuition. It is described by Sri Aurobindo (in The Life Divine) as follows:

But these two stages of the ascent [i.e. Higher and Illumined Minds] enjoy their authority 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 ill 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.

In the human mind the intuition is even such a truth-remembrance or truth-conveyance, or such a revealing flash or blaze breaking into a great mass of ignorance or through a veil of nescience: but we have seen that it is subject there to an invading mixture or a mental coating or an interception and substitution; there is too a manifold possibility of misinterpretation which comes in the way of the purity and fullness of its action. Moreover, there are seeming intuitions on all levels of the being which are communications rather than intuitions, and these have a very various provenance, value and character. The infrarational "mystic", so-styled, -- for to be a true mystic it is not sufficient to reject reason and rely on sources of thought or action of which one has no understanding, -- is often inspired by such communications on the vital level from a dark and dangerous source. In these circumstances we are driven to rely mainly on the reason and are disposed even to control the suggestions of the intuition, -- or the pseudo-intuition, which is the more frequent phenomenon, -- by the observing and discriminating intelligence; for we feel in our intellectual part that we cannot be sure otherwise what is the true thing and what the mixed or adulterated article or false substitute. But this largely discounts for us the utility of the intuition: for the reason is not in this field a reliable arbiter, since its methods are different, tentative, uncertain, an intellectual seeking; even though it itself really relics on a camouflaged intuition for its conclusions, -- for without that help it could not choose its course or arrive at any assured finding, -- it hides this dependence from itself under the process of a reasoned conclusion or a verified conjecture. An intuition passed in judicial review by the reason ceases to be an intuition and can only have the authority of the reason for which there is no inner source of direct certitude. But even if the mind became predominantly an intuitive mind reliant upon its portion of the higher faculty, the co-ordination of its cognitions and its separated activities, -- for in mind these would always be apt to appear as a series of imperfectly connected flashes, -- would remain difficult so long as this new mentality has not a conscious liaison with its suprarational source or a self-uplifting access to a higher plane of consciousness in which an intuitive action is pure and native.

Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much Minded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of "stable lightnings''. When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.

Intuition has a fourfold power. A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of its intervention in our mental intelligence, a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth,-these are the fourfold potencies of Intuition. Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason, -- including the function of logical intelligence, which is to work out the right relation of things and the right relation of idea with idea, -- but by its own superior process and with steps that do not fail or falter. It takes up also and transforms into its own substance not only the mind of thought, but the heart and life and the sense and physical consciousness: already all these have their own peculiar powers of intuition derivative from the hidden Light; the pure power descending from above can assume them all into itself and impart to these deeper heart-perceptions and life-perceptions and the divinations of the body a greater integrality and perfection. It can thus change the whole consciousness into the stuff of Intuition; for it brings its own greater radiant movement into the will, into the feelings and emotions, the life-impulses, the action of sense and sensation, the very workings of the body-consciousness; it recasts them in the light and power of truth and illumines their knowledge and their ignorance. A certain integration can thus take place, but whether it is a total integration must depend on the extent to which the new light is able to take up the subconscient and penetrate the fundamental Inconscience. Here the intuitive light and power may be hampered in its task because it is the edge of a delegated and modified supermind, but does not bring in the whole mass or body of the identity-knowledge. The basis of Inconscience in our nature is too vast, deep and solid to be altogether penetrated, turned into light, transformed by an inferior power of the Truth-nature.

The Illumined Spiritual Mind

About the Higher Mind is in Sri Aurobindo's system a further and even more powerful and revelatory supra-rational level of being, which he calls the Illumined Mind. About this, he says:

this grade of Spiritual Mind, Sri Aurobindo says The power of the spiritual Higher Mind...prepare(s) an Integration of the being in a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge.

This greater Force 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.

Max Theon in his series of higher faculties or degrees, has the level called :"Light" above "Essence" which in turn is above "Mind". If Mind is the same as in Sri Aurobindo's (non-spiritualised or pure Thinking) Mental and Essence corresponds to Aurobindo's Higher Mind., then Light, logically, would be equivalent to the Illumined Mind

Spiritual Light

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.

This is also what Christopher Hills says in his theory of Rainbow Evolution. Suhrawardi went so far as to develop a cosmology based on the principle of Light. And of course there is the symbolism of Light in Gnosticism , Manichaeism, and Kabbalah.

Perhaps these cosmologies were inspired by gnosis and revelation deriving from this level or stratum or degree of being.

Transformation

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.

In other words, the higher up the scale of being; the closer to the supreme Truth Consciousness, the more powerful and even the more confronting the transformation of the lower vehicle.

Epistemology

The theory of knowledge in philosophy is most often based on the rational mind. This means that it is limited relative to higher levels of insight. Indeed what is required is a framework according to what external link Charles T Tart calls "state specific sciences"

The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is here only a subordinate movement expressive of sight. The human mind, which relics mainly on thought, conceives that to be the highest or the main process of knowledge, but in the spiritual order thought is a secondary and a not indispensable process. In its form of verbal thought, it can almost be described as a concession made by Knowledge to the Ignorance, because that Ignorance is incapable of making truth wholly lucid and intelligible to itself in all its extent and manifold Implications except through the clarifying precision of significant sounds; it cannot do without this device to give to ideas all exact outline and an expressive body....

A consciousness that proceeds by sight, the consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought: it is a spiritual sense that seizes something of the substance of Truth and not only her figure; but it outlines the figure also and at the same time catches the significance of the figure, and it can embody her with a finer and bolder revealing outline and a larger comprehension and power of totality than thought-conception can manage. As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power. It can effect a more powerful and dynamic integration; it illumines the thought-mind with a direct inner vision and Inspiration, brings a spiritual sight into the heart and a spiritual light and energy Into its feeling and emotion, imparts to the life-force a spiritual urge, a truth inspiration that dynamises the action and exalts the life-movements; it infuses into the sense a direct and total power of spiritual sensation so that our vital and physical being can contact and meet concretely, quite as intensely as the mind and emotion can conceive and perceive and feel, the Divine in all things; it throws on the physical mind a transforming light that breaks its limitations, its conservative inertia, replaces its narrow thought-power and its doubts by sight and pours luminosity and consciousness into the very cells of the body. In the transformation by the Higher Mind the spiritual sage and thinker would find his total and dynamic fulfilment; In the transformation by the Illumined Mind there would be a similar fulfilment for the seer, the illumined mystic, those in whom the soul lives in vision and in a direct sense and experience: for it Is from these higher sources that they receive their light and to rise into that light and live there would be their ascension to their native empire.

This constitutes a gradational or gnostic epistemology, with each higher hypostasis a progressively more integral form of understanding. And like all such paradigms, it is qualitative - the higher is more complete than the lower, which ina sense could be considered its emanation.

And just as there are grades below, so there are those that are above, in the ladder of ascent.

But these two stages [the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind] of the ascent enjoy their authority 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.

In a sense, ands a sa representative of the branching pattern of emanation, the Higher Mind depends on both the Illumined and the (Divine) Intuitive Mind, whilst the Illumined Mind depends only on Intuitive Mind. And of course all three depend on the Overmind.

The Higher Mind and Transformation

The Higher Mind is in Sri Aurobindo's system the first of the supra-rational levels or grades of being, the first level of "Spiritual Mind". It is both an evolutionary stage beyond the rational mind, and an ascent to (and descent from) a plane above the level of pure thinking mind.

About this level of realisation, the first of the "supra-liberation" levels - he says this in his opus The Life Divine (I have added headings and broken up the long paragraphs to make it more readable. Also I've added some commentary; feel; free to ignore and just read the block quotes for Sri Aurobindo):

The Higher Mind and its origin in Overmind and Supermind

Our first decisive step out of our human Intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the Spirit. Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the overmind, -- but with the supermind as its ulterior origin, -- as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness are dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge.

An all-awareness emerging from the original identity, carrying the truths the identity held in itself, conceiving swiftly, victoriously, multitudinously, formulating and by self-power of the Idea effectually realising its conceptions, is the character of this greater mind of knowledge.

This kind of cognition is the last that emerges from the original spiritual identity before the initiation of a separative knowledge, base of the Ignorance; it is therefore the first that meets us when we rise from conceptive and ratiocinative mind, our best-organised knowledge-power of the Ignorance, into the realms of the Spirit: it is, indeed, the spiritual parent of our conceptive mental ideation, and it is natural that this leading power of our mentality should, when it goes beyond itself, pass Into its immediate source.

An important point: this is the first grade of being beyond "ignorance", the first hypostasis of higher gnosis. It can be identified with the Nous of the Neoplatonists, as the lowerst sub-level of Nous (or perhaps as the "noetic soul" of Plotinus).

Contrast between Higher Mind and Thinking Mind and Ordinary Intuition

But here in this greater Thought there is no need of a seeking and self-critical ratiocination, no logical motion step by step towards a conclusion, no mechanism of express or implied deductions and inferences, no building or deliberate concatenation of idea with idea. In order to arrive at an ordered sum or outcome of knowledge: for this limping action of our reason is a movement of Ignorance searching for knowledge, obliged to safeguard Its steps against error, to erect a selective mental structure for its temporary shelter and to base it on foundations already laid and carefully laid but never firm, because it is not supported on a soil of native awareness but imposed on an original soil of nescience.

There is not here, either, that other way of our mind at its keenest and swiftest, a rapid hazardous divination and insight, a play of the searchlight of intelligence probing into the little known or the unknown.

So a trilogy of Reason-Intuition-Higher Gnosis. The Higher Mind is equally beyond the two conventional ways of arriving at Truth - ratiocintation (slow and limping) and intuition (quick but sporadic)

The Higher Mind in its aspect of Cognition

This higher consciousness is a Knowledge formulating itself on a basis of self-existent all-awareness and manifesting some part of its integrality, a harmony of its significances put Into thought-form. It can freely express itself in single ideas, but its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view; the relations of idea with idea, of truth with truth are not established by logic but pre-exist and emerge already self-seen in the integral whole. There is an initiation into forms of an ever-present but till now inactive knowledge, not a system of conclusions from premisses or data; this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired knowledge. Large aspects of truth come into view in which the ascending Mind, if it chooses, can dwell with satisfaction and, after its former manner, live in them as in a structure; but if progress is to be made, these structures can constantly expand into a larger structure or several of them combine themselves into a provisional greater whole on the way to a yet unachieved integrality. In the end there is a great totality of truth known and experienced but still a totality capable of infinite enlargement because there is no end to the aspects of knowledge, nastyanto vistarasya me.

The Higher Mind in its aspect Will

This [the previous paragraph] is the Higher Mind in its aspect of cognition; but there is also the aspect of will, of dynamic effectuation of the Truth: here we find that this greater more brilliant Mind works always on the rest of the being, the mental will, the heart and its feelings, the life, the body, through the power of thought, through the idea-force. It seeks to purify through knowledge, to deliver through knowledge, to create by the innate power of knowledge. The idea is put into the heart or the life as a force to be accepted and worked out; the heart and life become conscious of the idea and respond to its dynamisms and their substance begins to modify itself in that sense, so that the feelings and actions become the vibrations of this higher wisdom, are informed with it, filled with the emotion and the sense of it: the will and the life impulses are similarly charged with its power and its urge of self-effectuation; even in the body the idea works so that, for example, the potent thought and will of health replaces its faith in illness and its consent to illness, or the idea of strength calls in the substance, power, motion, vibration of strength; the idea generates the force and form proper to the idea and imposes it on our substance of Mind, Life or Matter. It is in this way that the first working proceeds; it charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness, lays a foundation of change, prepares it for a superior truth of existence.

In his description of Supermind also, there is distinction of Will and Idea. This polarity seems to be important to Sri Aurobindo, e.g. Chit and Tapas (Consciousness and Force), and may be traced back to Tantric conception of passive Shiva (the "Knower") and dynamic Shakti (the Creative power)

These higher forces are limited in the realm of Ignorance

It has here to be emphasised, in order to obviate a natural misconception which can easily arise when the superior power of the higher forces is first perceived or experienced,

Because they can appear dizzying and give a vast sense of possibilities. But in the lower world the situation is not the same as in their own realm (hence the idea of a Spiritual Dualism - common in Gnosticism and other philosophies). Sri Aurobindo explains

that these higher forces are not in their descent immediately all-powerful as they would naturally be in their own plane of action and In their own medium. In the evolution in Matter they have to enter Into a foreign and inferior medium and work upon it; they encounter there the incapacities of our mind and life and body, meet with the unreceptiveness or blind refusal of the Ignorance, experience the negation and obstruction of the Inconscience. On their own level they work upon a basts of luminous consciousness and luminous substance of being and are automatically effective; but here they have to encounter an already and strongly formed foundation of Nescience, -- not only the complete nescience [Inconscience] of Matter, but the modified nescience of mind and heart and life.

Because on all these levels there is ignorance; as explained, right upto the higher levels of rational mind.

The Cognitive Mind resists the Illumninbation of the Higher Mind

Thus the higher Idea descending into the developed mental intelligence has even there to overcome the barrage of a mass or system of formed ideas which belong to the Knowledge-Ignorance and the will to persistence and self-realisation of these ideas; for all ideas are forces and have a formative or self-effective faculty greater or less according to the conditions, - even reducible to nil in practice when they have to deal with inconscient Matter, but still potential. There is thus ready-formed a power of resistance which opposes or minimises the effects of the descending Light, a resistance which may amount to a refusal, a rejection of the Light, or take the shape of an attempt to impair, subdue, ingeniously modify or adapt or perversely deform the light in order to suit it to the preconceived ideas of the Ignorance.

Unless one is very open and receptive to higher truths, one's preconceived worldview will come in and ruin everything. Not just any sort of literalist belief, but even philosophical and intellectual conceptions taht may be fine on their own level, or where there is no alternative, but are here rendered obsolete by the Higher light.

Resitance by Lower Levels of the Being

If the preconceived or already formed ideas are dismissed and deprived of their right to persistence, they have still the right of recurrence, from outside, from their prevalence in universal Mind, or they may retire downwards into the vital, physical or subconscient parts and from thence resurge at the least opportunity to repossess their lost domain: for evolutionary Nature has to give this right of persistence to things once established by her in order to bring a sufficient steadiness and solidity to her steps.

This "right of persistence" pertains to the necessity of manifestating in the world of "collision and struggle and intermixture of Forces".

Resistance by the Vital and the Subconscious

In the lower levels of the being, in the heart and life and body, the same phenomenon recurs and on a more intense scale; for here it is not ideas that have to be met but emotions, desires, impulses, sensations, vital needs and habits of the lower Nature; these, since they are less conscious than ideas, are blinder in their response and are more obstinately self-assertive: all have the same or a greater power of resistance and recurrence, or take refuge in the circum-conscient universal Nature or in our own lower levels or in a seed-state in the subconscient and from there have the power of new invasion or resurgence. This power of persistence, recurrence, resistance of established things in Nature is always the great obstacle which the evolutionary Force has to meet, which it has indeed itself created in order to prevent a too rapid transmutation even when that transmutation is its own eventual intention in things.

For most spiritual teachings the task of overcoming the obstructions posed by the stubborn resistance of the old nature and old habits in matter and the psyche are so great that they prefer the Wikipedia link ascetic acosmic path of renbunciation and world-denial; total transcendence without any transformation. This is the option taken by traditional Hinduism and Buddhism (although in the former one finds Tantra, and in the latter some compensation in the Bodhisattva Ideal), by Gnosticism and Christianity in which the body, sexuality, and the world is renounced as sinful or evil (but re Christianity there is some progress in countering this attitude of denial of the world and of nature, for example in forms of Christianity, Process theology, the Creation Spirituality of Matthew Fox), and in fact in most forms of mysticism in general. But a far greater and more noble task is the transformation of matter and transmutation of the lower nature, rather than its denial.

Which brings us to the next section:

Overcoming the resistance to the transformation

This obstacle will be there, -- even though it may progressively diminish, -- at each stage of this greater ascent. In order to allow at all to the higher Light an adequate entry and force of working, it is necessary to acquire a power for quietude of the nature, to compose, tranquillise, impress a controlled passivity or even an entire silence on mind and heart, life and body: but even so a continued opposition, overt and felt in the Force of the universal Ignorance or subliminal and obscure in the substance-energy of the individual's make of mind, his form of Life, his body of Matter, an occult resistance or a revolt or reaffirmation of the controlled or suppressed energies of the ignorant nature, is always possible and, if anything in the being consents to them, they can resume dominance.

A previously established psychic control is very desirable as that creates a general responsiveness and inhibits the revolt of the lower parts against the Light or their consent to the claims of the Ignorance. A preliminary spiritual transformation will also reduce the hold of the Ignorance; but neither of these influences altogether eliminates its obstruction and limitation: for these preliminary changes do not bring the integral consciousness and knowledge; the original basis of Nescience proper to the Inconscient will still be there needing at every turn to be changed, enlightened, diminished in its extent and In its force of reaction. The power of the spiritual Higher Mind and its idea-force, modified and diminished as it must be by its entrance into our mentality, is not sufficient to sweep out all these obstacles and create the gnostic being, but it can make a first change, a modification that will capacitate a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare an Integration of the being in a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge.

This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind...

The Mental aspect of Mind

(the thinking mind - mind proper)

Beneath spiritual mind - which is the province of enlightened beings and only appears at best as flashes of inspiration in ordinary consciousnes, there is the plane of mundane mind, or mind-proper. Concerning this, Sri Aurobindo explains

"The mind proper is divided into three parts - Thinking Mind, Dynamic Mind, Externalising Mind - the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forms for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give.)"

[Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga vol 1, pp.326 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)]

The following (from Growth Online - external link Our Human Makeup is a summary of this aspect of being as presented in Sri Aurobindo's teachings:

Level #, Level, Level Definition, Function, Expression, Works, Historical

1 PURE MENTAL (The pure mental, Conceptual Mind, Mental mental, Thinking mind, Master of thought, speculative mind)

Overview
This is where pure thinking, conceptual thinking takes place; where ideas are organized; concepts, ideas, possibilities are developed. There is no connection here to the senses of the body here as perceived in the sense mind below. It is pure thought. It is the center of our mental skills.

Function
Pure mind not related to emotion or body. Conceptual thinking, pure ideas, pure thinking, organization of ideas

Expressions
Concepts, ideas, possibilities, mental skills, movement toward pure understanding, accomplishment by comprehension. One reflects on mystery of the universe, meaning of one's place in creation.

Traits
logical, insightful. Skills -- Decision making, planning, problem-solving, writing?

Works
Philosopher, philosophy, mathematics, theoretical physics

The Vital Mind

" Vital Mind proper is a sort of mediator between Vital emotion, desire, impulsion, etc and the Mental proper. It expresses the desires, feelings, emotions, passions, ambitions...(etc) of the Vital and throws them into Mental forms: the pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc in which men indulge are one peculiar form of the vital-mind activity)"

...the Vital Mind is limited by the Vital view and feeling of things (while the dynamic Intelligence is not, for it acts by the idea and reason)..."

[Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga vol 1, pp.326 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)]

The following further quotes of Sri Aurobindo are from the "Divine Plan" website (no longer online)

" There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, buddhi, -- but to plan or dream or imagine what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if opportunity and circumstances become favourable or even it can work to make them favourable. In men of action this faculty is prominent and a leader of their nature; great men of action always have it in a very high measure. But even if one is not a man of action or practical realisation or if circumstances are not favourable or one can do only small and ordinary things, this vital mind is there. It acts on them on a small scale, or if it needs some sense of largeness, what it does very often is to plan in the void, knowing that it cannot realise its plans or else to imagine big things, stories, adventures, great doing in which oneself is the hero or the creator. What you describe as happening in you is the rush of this vital mind or imagination making its formations; its action is not peculiar to you but works pretty much in the same way in most people -- but in each according to his turn of fancy, interest, favourite ideas and desire."

"Vital mind is a mind of dynamic will, action, desire - occupied with force and achievement and satisfaction and possession, enjoyment and suffering, giving and taking, growth, expansion, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, etc. Day-dreaming, talking mentally to another person - are the actions of vital mind."

"It is undesirable to make peace, joy or Ananda a condition for following the Yoga. If you do so, then the vital, not the psychic, takes the lead. When the vital takes the lead, then unrest, despondency, unhappiness can always come, since these things are the very nature of the vital - the vital can never remain constantly in joy and peace, for it needs their opposites in order to have the sense of the drama of life.
It is quite possible and even usual during a time shorter or longer, sometimes very long, for the mind to accept the Divine or the yogic ideal while the vital is unconvinced and unsurrendered and goes obstinately on its way of desire, passion and attraction to the ordinary life. Their division or their conflict is the cause of most of the more acute difficulties of the sadhana. " O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite the body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate; they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit's walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.

Savitri

The following (from Growth Online - external link Our Human Makeup is a summary of this aspect of being as presented in Sri Aurobindo's teachings:

Level #, Level, Level Definition, Function, Expression, Works, Historical

2 VITAL MENTAL (The vital part of the mental plane, emotional mind, sense mind)

Overview
This is where we gain a knowledge of life's workings; where the practical organized knowledge and comprehension of facts of level 3 is imbued with the emotions and feelings that turn organized comprehension into our interests, sentiments, values, and ideals.

Function

Expressions
Mental emotions, interests, values, sentiments, idolization of ideas, idealism, passion for a goal, patriotism

Traits
Idealism, inquisitiveness, resourcefulness, determination, mental-based devotion, scrupulous (in details), loyalty, naivety, tolerance, open-minded. Values -- honesty, integrity, open-mindedness, harmony, concern for others, tolerance, perfection, practicality, self-reliance, freedom, democracy, family-feeling, community, perfection, etc.

Works
Poet, high poetry, social sciences, inspiration of music

The Physical Mind

"The word "physical mind" is rather ambiguous, because it can mean (the) externalising Mind and the mental in the physical taken together."

[Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga vol 1, pp.326 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)]

The following further quotes of Sri Aurobindo are from the "Divine Plan" website (no longer online)

"This part of the mind is the instrument of understanding and ordered action on physical things guided only by an external knowledge. It is agile and active and competent only in its own limits, when it has to deal with the supraphysical things it becomes incompetent, often imbecile and yet positive and arrogant and dogmatic in its ignorance. A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why or whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than its small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance. We arrive at the conception and at the knowledge of a divine existence by exceeding the evidence of the senses and piercing beyond the walls of the physical mind. " In this bound thinking's narrow leadership
Tied to the soil, inspired by common things,
Attached to a confined familiar world,
Amid the multitude of her motived plots,
Her changing actors and her million masks,
Life was a play monotonously the same.

Savitri

The following (from Growth Online - external link Our Human Makeup is a summary of this aspect of being as presented in Sri Aurobindo's teachings:

Level #, Level, Level Definition, Function, Expression, Works, Historical

3 PHYSICAL MENTAL (The physical part of the mental plane, the physical mind seated in the brain)

Overview
The processing, organizing, systemizing of physical, natural, practical facts of information from the senses into understanding, comprehension, and knowledge, used for decision-making, action, and accomplishment.

Function
-Organizes & coordinates facts of physical phenomena that the senses gather, into systems & decisions, to create thoughts.
-There is a mastery of physical and natural processes. One has the knowledge of the practical.
-Is where systematic planning for organized action takes place. Seeks material goals.
- It is the seat of action.
-There is a thirsting for information and understanding. The mind wants to understand.
-One can accomplish because there is comprehension.
-Mind (levels 1,2,3) increasingly governs and directs life and actions.

Expressions
Thought facts, mental possessiveness (right, claim), organizer of mankind & society

Traits
Awareness, naivety, brilliant, learned, stupid?, insightful?

Works
Engineering, medicine, technician, physical sciences

Grades of Being - the Overmind in relation to other levels

Overmind

http://www.kheper.net/topics/Aurobindo/Supermind.htm

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