These are the radiant gods who are masters of Thought in those realms above the human mind. They cast their influence upon earth bringing our thoughts a step closer to the Ultimate Mystery.
The realms that climb beyond the human mind are also arranged hierarchically in a series of three. They are notably the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind. Beyond is the Overmind region which is the borderline between the lower and the higher hemisphere.
There are a number of luminous planes of knowledge that climb beyond our ordinary human mind. Thus Sri Aurobindo gives us a brief glimpse of the stairway of Thought and Mind-worlds climbing towards the Home of the Absolute Spirit, the Perfect Truth that is one with Delight.
There are ranges of consciousness beyond our thinking mind that remain unreached for now. But with our further evolution we are destined to reach these presently unreachable heights.
It is not some adverse power that has driven us out of our heavenly home. It is out of our own choice that we have landed here to build perfection upon earth with base material and transient things.
In our secret self we too belong to this world that exists on the heights of luminous mentality. Our strivings are an effort to reach out to the realms from where we descended.
Beyond our struggling human mind there exists an Ideal world of Truth and Light where grief and error have no place. The beings of this world exist in a self-luminous light and perfect sight. These are the high Heavens of the Mind.
In Canto XI Sri Aurobindo introduces us to the realm of spiritual mind or simply the spiritual realm. Many mistake it for the highest reality and stop here. The action and workings of this realm are being described here.
This Canto describes in great detail the three layers of the little Mind that has so far manifested upon earth. First of this to appear is the physical mind centered around the bodily existence, next - the vital Mind, and finally the rational Mind, the mind that uses Reason to discover truth of things.
Now we labour in the Night of ignorance, but this labour too is not vain, it prepares us to receive the Sun. This passage is prophetic of the Supramental Light that shall break upon earth bringing the rhythms and powers of a New Consciousness.
A deeper yearning now seizes the mind and reason. It is the yearning to discover what still is missed, the yearning to go beyond its limitations and its limits.
There are greater powers and possibilities awaiting their emergence. They are hidden in the folds of Light, are slow in reaching the Earth but powerfully transforming in their action.
The old world and its huge structures and institutions built with Reason are dying fast to give way and space to the new world order built on Intuition. This greater plan is now concealed to the eyes of common man but is glimpsed by the seer and sage and exceptional individuals.
Reason was needed to rescue the world from its infra-rational animal stage. But now its hour is getting over. It must be replaced by a greater Light and hence we see a collapse of values established by Reason and its daughter modern Science.
Reason builds systems of knowledge based on its observation, analysis and inference. But sooner or later a new discovery is made that completely upsets what it had known turning it all into a fresh ignorance.
Step by step in a most logical way Sri Aurobindo reveals us the paradox of Science and the limitation of Reason to give us a true understanding of ‘Reality’.