The aspiring yogic practitioner starts from the basis of the normal human egoistic standpoint of the mind-life-body complex. The process and method of perception, thought, logic, analysis, classification and labeling, reasoning, understanding and implementation in action is quite well-defined and is characteristic of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Mind. As previously noted, there are gradations of consciousness above the mental level. Sri Aurobindo takes the opportunity to describe this ascending series of gradations so that as the seeker has either a short-term experience, or eventually is able to shift the center of consciousness to a level above the mind, he will understand and appreciate the exact nature of the stage he has experienced or reached.
For most people, since there is no real experience of these gradations above the mind, they are all lumped into a generic term such as ‘intuition’, which does not aid the practitioner much when he actually begins to experience these states of awareness. Intuition, as described by Sri Aurobindo, represents a specific stage with specific characteristics. The first stage above the mind has already been described as “Higher Mind” and it is primarily based in the functioning of Mind with an opening to higher spiritual levels. “Illumined Mind” is the first stage that shifts away from the process of thought to one based in spiritual light.
Sri Aurobindo observes: “… greater force [than that of the Higher Mind] is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greate dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous ‘enthousiasmos’ of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 73-74
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 17 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.