The Overmind

The next step in the process of creation is the emergence of the Overmind. This is the first step into the Ignorance. What Sri Aurobindo means by Overmind can be imagined this way: I identify with one aspect of my personality, but I do not identify with all the other aspects. I think of myself as an adult. I look back and see myself behind that adulthood, but I say the child-self or my other-selves are not me. What I see of myself is true, but it is no longer the whole truth. I still know myself, but I do not know every other manifestation of myself. Overmind is the plane of the Gods. Each God is a manifestation of the Divine. Each is a true manifestation of the Divine, one aspect. Each of them can look back and find the Supramental Divine behind or within them, but none of them recognizes that all the other Gods are equally aspects of the Divine. Each expresses a Truth of the Divine, but limits itself to one aspect or portion of the whole Truth. It is the beginning of division and of separative knowledge.

In Overmind, the conscious soul, the Purushottama, takes different poises in Nature and becomes the Purusha behind the heart, the Purusha behind the vital, the Purusha behind the physical and the Purusha behind the mind. The Purushottama splits up into separate centers of consciousness behind and gives rise to four different Purushas. This is necessary for the creation of mind, life, body and psychic. In Overmind, Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Being and Force of Nature, split apart. Prakriti also splits up and takes on different forms. It takes the form of the cosmos, the universal life. All force, all action is only the Divine. It becomes the force of our ego, which makes us call ourselves separate and different. It becomes our physical, vital and mental energy.

Overmind

Purusha becomes                                 

·        Manomaya

·        Pranamaya

·        Annamaya

·        Chaitya

Prakriti becomes

·        Cosmos

·        Ego

·        Mental

·        Vital

·        Physical

·        Psychic

Prakriti also becomes the energy and force of the psychic. There is a psychic element behind the mind, the heart, the vital and the physical centre. The soul is part of the Spirit. It is not part of evolving nature like the psychic. The psychic is the evolutionary part of our being, changing as it goes forward. The psychic is a projection or extension of Ananda in the lower hemisphere of creation.