…the powers of our mind, life and body are bound to their own limitations and, however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise above their natural ultimate limits or expand beyond them. But, still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a supramental Light, Truth and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, supermind can descend and transform mind into its own substance. If the supramental Power is allowed by man's discerning assent and vigilant surrender to act according to its own profound and subtle insight and flexible potency, it will bring about slowly or swiftly a divine transformation of our fallen and imperfect nature…   more »

In a recent book presenting the life of Sri Aurobindo we have a chapter entitled The Ascent to Supermind. This gives an impression that during the period 1915-1926 Sri Aurobindo was making progress in the discovery of supermind, climbing step by step towards it. But he already had the knowledge of it with him, at least for a couple of years now, even much prior to the meeting with the Mother on 29 March 1914. What was happening during the period was not the ascent, but something radically different than that. It was the period of supramentalisation of the various grades of the lower consciousness. First it was the supramentalisation of the mental, during the Arya-period, 1915-21, and then the supramentalisation of the vital. This finally paved the path for the overmentalisation of the physical, marking its siddhi on 24 November 1926. Sri Aurobindo’s next concern was the supramentalisation proper of the physical itself. He recorded the first definite experience of it coming on 8 August 1938. We have to be pretty attentive towards these “visible” disclosures in the life of Sri Aurobindo.   more »