Question: In a book about Sri Aurobindo, the Mother spoke about the descent of the overmind, and I was wondering if you could explain that.

Sri Chinmoy: In 1926 Sri Aurobindo declared his God-realisation. At that time Lord Krishna descended into him permanently. Before that, Sri Krishna used to come and go, come and go. Sri Aurobindo was in the Alipore jail for one year. There Sri Krishna used to come and see him. In the Alipore jail, Sri Aurobindo would look at the wall, look at the bad people, look at everything and see that it was all Krishna, Krishna, Krishna. But Sri Krishna was coming and going. Finally he entered into Sri Aurobindo permanently. We heard that Lord Krishna brought the overmind. There are so many layers of the mind!

The overmind-consciousness descended into Sri Aurobindo and also the Krishna-consciousness. Lord Krishna promised to Sri Aurobindo that he would be inside Sri Aurobindo permanently. That was Sri Aurobindo’s God-realisation. Swami Vivekananda came to Sri Aurobindo in the inner world for two weeks continuously while he was in jail to tell him that there is another plane of consciousness higher than the overmind: the supermind. He said, “You must bring it down, you must bring it down.” Sri Aurobindo got this message from Swami Vivekananda.

When Sri Aurobindo left the body, for two and a half days the supramental consciousness descended as a most beautiful light. There was no electric light there; it was the supramental consciousness. After two and a half days, the Mother said that the earth-consciousness was not ready to receive the supramental light. On the 5th of December Sri Aurobindo left the body; by the 9th the light was completely gone.

I was brought up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Around 1956, the supramental light was descending. I was an athlete, a first-class athlete. Once, after running 400 metres, I was all ready to die. I was lying down on a mat, and I saw that supramental light descending. On the highest plane it is golden, but when it descends, the supramental light becomes reddish. The Mother said that only three or four persons saw the supramental light the first day, when it started descending.

There is the overmind, the supermind, and what I call the intuitive mind. There are all kinds of minds. Before the level of the overmind there are quite a few minds. After the overmind comes the supermind. For you it is not necessary to know what the overmind is doing or what the supermind is doing.

When one deals with the overmind, the ordinary mind is still operating. But when it is a matter of the supermind, the supramental consciousness, at that time one far transcends the mind-consciousness. It is totally different. There is a big jump, a big leap between the overmind and the supermind. Before that, from the ordinary mind it goes in tiny, tiny steps. Between the overmind and the supermind is a very, very long step. I am telling you this from my own experience and realisation. Very few people on earth have had glimpses of the supermind.

One evening Sri Ramakrishna said to five or six very, very close disciples of his, “Please do not tell anybody: I am God." In all sincerity and seriousness he said, “I am God, I am God. Please do not tell anybody.” He was not cutting jokes. In Sri Ramakrishna’s case, most seriously he told his very dear disciples, “You know, I am God.” This moment Swami Vivekananda believed his Master, and the next moment he did not believe. At the eleventh hour of his life, Sri Ramakrishna said, “He who is Rama, he who is Krishna, in one form is Ramakrishna.” Lord Rama is an Avatar, and Sri Krishna is an Avatar. “Avatar” means direct descendant of God. Sri Ramakrishna declared himself to be a direct descendant of God.

In my poem “Revelation” I wrote, “The Supreme and I are one; all we outlast.”⁵ I had the realisation long before, but at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, in my poems I declared it.