The human mentality is based on a fragmented and isolated view that must acquire and assemble information, facts, impressions, etc. and then use the assembled picture to speculate or infer about what preceded the current situation in the past, and what will follow in the future. The intuitive mentality is connected to the universal consciousness, and can receive images and information that tie together the individual elements into a more complete picture, which can encompass the three times. The method of working of the human mentality is based on an arduous process of collection, sorting, and interpretation, and is thus very intensive in its operations, keeping the mind actively at work to try to understand the truth of any situation it views. The method of working of the intuitive mentality, on the other hand, is best accomplished through a receptive silence in the mind. The transition, therefore, must necessarily involve steps to desist from the normal mental process and prepare for a new way of receiving knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo extrapolates: “A transformation is possible because the intuitive mind has to do the same work and cover the same field, but with a different handling of the materials and another light upon their significance. An exclusion is possible because all is really contained in the truth consciousness above and a silencing of the mind of ignorance and a pregnant receptivity is not beyond our compass in which the intuitions descending from the truth-consciousness can be received with a subtle or strong exactitude and all the materials of the knowledge seen in their right place and true proportion. As a matter of practice it will be found that both methods are used alternatively or together to effect the transition from the one kind of mentality to the other.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part Four: The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Chapter 25, Towards the Supramental Time Vision , pp. 867-868
Sri Aurobindo Studies 