Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
The Terminology of His Writings

Overmind [1]

In the whole of The Synthesis of Yoga [as originally published in the Arya] there is nowhere any mention of Overmind. If there is anything in that book similar to what you now call Overmind, it would be in the last seven chapters.

At the time when these chapters were written, the name “overmind” had not been found, so there is no mention of it. What is described in these chapters is the action of the supermind when it descends into the overmind plane and takes up the overmind workings and transforms {{0}}them.[[The highest Supermind or Divine Gnosis existent in itself is something that lies beyond still and quite above.]] It was intended in later chapters to show how difficult even this was and how many levels there were between human mind and supermind and how even supermind, descending, could get mixed with the lower action and turned into something that was less than the true Truth. But these later chapters were not written.

The lack of a clear distinction between overmind and supermind is causing me some confusion, as you have said that some of my experiences belonged to the overmind.

Not exactly that. They result from the overmind pressure on the intervening mental and lower planes, trying to pour into them the overmind movements. The process is very intricate, has many stages, is not of a simple, single, definite character.

13 April 1932