The Synthesis of Yoga - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Chapter XXIV
The Supramental Sense
ALL THE instruments, all the activities of the mind have
their corresponding powers in the action of the supramental
energy and are there exalted and transfigured, but
have there a reverse order of priority and necessary importance.
As there is a supramental thought and essential consciousness,
so too there is a supramental sense. Sense is fundamentally
not the action of certain physical organs, but the contact of
consciousness with its objects, sa ˙mjñāna.
When the consciousness of the being is withdrawn wholly
into itself, it is aware only of itself, of its own being, its own
consciousness, its own delight of existence, its own concentrated
force of being, and of these things not in their forms but in their
essence. When it comes out of this self-immersion, it becomes
aware of or it releases or develops out of its self-immersion its
activities and forms of being, of consciousness, of delight and
force. Then too, on the supramental plane, its primary awareness
still remains of a kind native to and entirely characteristic of the
self-awareness of the spirit, the self-knowledge of the one and
infinite; it is a knowledge that knows all its objects, forms and
activities comprehensively by being aware of them in its own
infinite self, intimately by being aware in them as their self,
absolutely by being aware of them as one in self with its own
being. All its other ways of knowledge are projected from this
knowledge by identity, are parts or movements of it, or at the
lowest depend on it for their truth and light, are touched and
supported by it even in their own separate way of action and
refer back to it overtly or implicitly as their authority and origin.
The activity which is nearest to this essential knowledge by
identity is the large embracing consciousness, especially characteristic
of the supramental energy, which takes into itself all truth
and idea and object of knowledge and sees them at once in their