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Namah Sri Aurobindo’s Prevision of a Greater Psychology

Supernature refers to the Higher Reality, the modern psychology constructs the structure
Consciousness-Force aspect of Sachchidananda, of the personality and in yoga psychology,
which upholds the lower nature. It acts by it is the substratum that holds in its bosom
unification and transcendence of limitations the play of the forces representing inertia
and is integral in outlook. The human being (tamas) , dynamism (rajas) and balance (sattva),
in ignorance is subject to the lower Nature but which by their interplay uphold the surface
by spiritual evolution of consciousness can personality. The Higher Nature, in the classical
ascend to the Higher Nature or Supernature. spiritual parlance, is accessible through ego-
Sri Aurobindo opined that an integral transcendence. Actually, it is through ego-
knowledge, “… has to recognise the double transcendence that the status of the soul (the
nature of this manifestation, — for there is the self) progressively shifts and with each new
higher nature of Sachchidananda in which He soul-status, there is a corresponding shift in
(Sachchidananda) is found and the lower nature the status of Nature or Prakriti. Thus Nature
of mind, life and body in which He is veiled, itself is a dynamic phenomenon defying fixed
— and to reconcile and unite the two in the determinations. As the soul-status shifts to a
oneness of the illumined realisation. We have higher and higher level of the being, Nature
not to leave them separate so that we live a itself is elevated to the poise of the Higher
sort of double life, spiritual within or above, Nature with ”… a superior working, a wider
mental and material in our active and earthly consciousness, a vaster force and an intenser or
living; we have to re-view and remould the larger range and joy of existence (11).”
lower living in the light, force and joy of the
higher reality (10).” Soul and Nature

The shifting stances of the soul-status indicates
the different poises of the soul or self that
preside over Nature in a complex, rich and
variegated manifestation. There is:

a. its poise of pure eternity that is superior
to and governing its manifestations;
b. the poise of self-supporting universality
that develops the power of becoming, of its
existence and thus manifests the “infinite
in the finite”; and
c. the poise of exclusive individuality,
which pursues a particular course of the
phenomenon of becoming, to appear as
“mutably finite in the infinite (12)”.
The lower Nature exists in the Ignorance At the same time, the soul or spirit,...” is not
where mind, life and Matter are linked with irrevocably limited by any particular self-
the ego and hence separated in consciousness formulation in Time, but can break through
from the Divine. It is in its matrix that and beyond it, break it up or develop it, select,

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