Sri Aurobindo’s View of the Supramental Transformation

The spiritual landscape is vast, and there are innumerable objectives and paths that can be taken. Sri Aurobindo describes briefly his approach to spiritual growth and its relation to the process of an evolution of consciousness in the earth-nature to incorporate what he calls the supramental transformation as a next step in the evolutionary progression. He also clarifies that the existence of the supramental realm and individual seeking to embody it is not ‘new’ but that his yogic vision is for this to become a human potential and realisation, not just one of individual yogis undertaking their own spiritual development more or less as an individual power of perfection. The goal of Sri Aurobindo is not individual liberation or perfection, but the uplifting and transformation of life on the planet through the supramentalisation process as this power of consciousness manifests and undertakes to change mind, life and body.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “There are different statuses (avastha) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness. It is only with the last that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body — in my sense of completeness.”

“You are mistaken in two respects. First, the endeavour towards this achievement is not new and some yogis have achieved it, I believe — but not in the way I want it. They achieved it as a personal siddhi maintained by yoga-siddha — not a dharma of the nature. Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or overmental-spiritual cannot achieve.”
Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 8, The Triple Transformation: Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental, The Supramental Transformation, pp. 229-237