This first volume is mostly what could be called the "psychological preparation" of Satprem. Mother's confidant had to be prepared, not only to understand the evolutionary meaning of Mother's discoveries, to follow the tenuous thread of man's great future unravelled through so many apparently disconcerting experiences - which certainly required a steady personal determination for more than 19 years! - but also, in a way, he had to share the battle against the many established forces that account for the present human mode of being and bear the onslaught of the New Force.
Satprem - "True Love" - as Mother called him, was a reluctant disciple. Formed in the French Cartesian mold, a freedom fighter against the Nazis and in love with his freedom, he was always ready to run away, and always coming back, drawn by a love greater than his love for freedom. Slowly she conquered him, slowly he came to understand the poignant drama of this lone and indomitable woman, struggling in the midst of an all-too-human humanity in her attempt to open man's golden future.
Week after week, privately, she confided to him her intimate experiences, the progress of her endeavour, the obstacles, the setbacks, as well as anecdotes of her life, her hopes, her conquests and laughter: she was able to be herself with him.
He loved her and she trusted him. It is that simple.

The course of 1961, the year of the first American voyage in space, arrives at the heart of the great mystery– "It is double! It is the same world and yet it is.... what?" In one world, everything is harmonious, without the least possibility of illness, accident or death – "a miraculous harmony" – and in the other, everything goes wrong. Yet it is the same world of matter - separated by what? "More and more, I feel it’s a question of the vibration in matter."
And then, what is this "vertical time" which suddenly opens up another way of living and being in the matter, in which causality ceases to exist – "A sort of absoluteness in each second"? A new world each second, ageless, leaving no trace or imprint.
And this "massive immobility" in a lightning-fast movement, this "twinkling of vibrations," as if Mother were no longer experiencing her body at the macroscopic level, but at the level of subatomic physics. And sixty years of "spiritual life" crumble like a "far more serious illusion" before.... a new Divine... or a new mode of life in matter? The next mode? "I am in the midst of hewing a path through a virgin forest."
Volume II records the opening up of this path.

The course of the year 1962.... the year of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation over Cuba and the first Sino-Indian conflict: "Could it be the first sign of something really.... momentous? It seems to have profoundly disrupted something central." The entire earth is disrupted. It is the year when Mother, in her body, emerges into a "third position", neither life nor death as we know them, but another side of the "web" where the laws of our physics no longer hold, and which strangely resembles the quantum world of Black Holes: time changes, space changes, death changes. Could this be the material place, in the body, where the laws of the world - which exist only in our heads - become inverted and where evolution opens out into an unthinkable body freedom, a third position, that of the next species on earth?.... "The body is beginning to obey another law. The sense of time disappears into a moving immobility.... A mass of infinite force, like pure superelectricity..... An undulating movement of corporeal waves, as vast as the earth.... All the organs have changed, they belong to another rhythm. Such a formidable power, so free! It's something else.... something else! I don't know if I am living or dead.... The nature of my nights is changing, the nature of my days is changing.... The physical vibration is becoming porous.... No more axis - it's gone, vanished! It can go forward, backwards, anywhere at all.... Ubiquity, or something of the sort."
And then this cry: "Death is an illusion, illness is an illusion! Life and death are one and the same thing. It's merely a shifting of consciousness. Why, it's fantastic!" And then this simple discovery in the flesh: "The closer you draw to the cell, the more the cell says, 'Ah, but I am immortal!' "A third cellular position in which you become incapable of dying because death no longer has any reality."
Has Mother, at the age of 84, discovered another material reality? "There, behind, it's like a fairy tale....Something very beautiful is in preparation, ineffably beautiful - a lovely story that Sri Aurobindo was trying to bring onto earth, and it is sure to come!"

The year of Kennedy's assassination; the beginnings of the Sino-Soviet split. While the destructive giants respond faster and faster and science calls in question the laws of the universe, Mother is slowly hewing out the path to the next species on earth. "The path I seek is ever descending," into the consciousness of the cells. Will it be global death then, or, just as the birds followed the reptiles, the beginning of a new world? "I am on the threshold of a stupendous realisation, which depends on a very tiny thing." She is 85 this year. Will it be a more "intelligent" species within the framework of our physics, or one endowed with another kind of intelligence capable of changing the laws of physics, as the frog changes the laws of the tadpole in its fishbowl? In the course of this descent towards the self, Mother suddenly veers into another physical universe: "Everything looks as though you were seeing it for the first time, even the motion of the earth and the stars… There is no distance, no difference, there is not something that sees and something that is seen.... You become a mountain, a forest, a house.... You see simultaneously thousands of miles away and at very close range" - a kind of cellular ubiquity. And then, too, this astounding realisation: "The body is everywhere!" Is the next species ubiquitous? For what happens to the laws of the old physics when the fishbowl is shattered, when distance and "elsewhere" are abolished? "All the usual rhythms have changed.... a universal movement so tremendously rapid that it seems motionless.... A true physical that lies behind." And where is death for one who escapes the wear and tear of time inside the fishbowl? "If this condition becomes a natural thing, death can no longer exist!.... It would be a new phase of life on earth." And there is no need to look far for it: "The field of experience is right here, at every second.... people strive to enter into contact with something that is right here." A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and perhaps the earth's next biology?

"The only hope for the future is a change in man's consciousness. It is left to men to decide if they will collaborate to this change or if it will have to be imposed upon them by the power of crushing circumstances." As the new post gradually infiltrates Mother's body it is the earth one wonders about. How is the earth going to absorb "this vibration as intense as a superior kind of fire"? "I see very few bodies around me capable of bearing it.... So what's going to happen?"
It is the year of the first Chinese atomic bomb. Mother is 86. "A tiny, infinitesimal, stippled infiltration - the miracle of the earth!" A catastrophic miracle? Isn't that butterfly some sort of catastrophe to the caterpillar? "Death is no solution, so we are here seeking another solution - there must be another solution." Imperturbably, Mother descends deeper into the cellular consciousness and deeper still: "A kind of certainty, deep in matter that the solution lies there.... It is at the atomic level that a change must take place; the question concerns the state of infinitesimal vibrations in matter." Time veers into something else: "Perhaps it is into the past that I go, perhaps the future, perhaps the present?...." And even the laws of matter change: "As soon as you reach the domain of the cells, that sort of heaviness of matter disappears. It becomes fluid and vibrant again. Which would tend to show that happiness, thickness, inertia have been added on - it's false matter, the one we think or feel, but not matter as it really is."
So what, then, would true matter be, the matter of the next species? "I am on the threshold of a new perception of life, as if certain parts of my consciousness were changing from the caterpillar state to the butterfly state...." And the earth groans and protests.... at what? "The whole youth seems to be seized by a strange vertigo...." Are we going to move on to a next species or not?

"A whole world is opening up." It is the year when Mother reaches "the mind of the cells", buried under the old genetic coding that seems to want to keep men forever harnessed to death: "There, there is such a concentration of power.... as if you had caught the tail of the solution." Another power of consciousness in matter capable of undoing the old program: "A kind of memory being elaborated from below" - a new cellular memory which is no longer the memory of decay, illness, death, gravity and all our "real" world?
At the same time, at that cellular level, freed from the old laws, Mother discovers "two worlds one inside the other: a world of truth and a world of falsehood, and that world of Truth is PHYSICAL; it is not up above: it's MATERIAL. And that's what must come to the forefront and replace the other: the true physical." Mother called that replacement the "transfer of power".
Is it really conceivable that a marvel of physical freedom lies concealed within our cells, while we strive and toil outside with illusory panaceas: "If even a tiny aggregate of cells were to succeed in experiencing the total transformation, all the way, that would be more effective than any big upheaval. But it's more difficult.... You must overcome death! Death must cease to exist, it's very clear."
Is the entire earth not in the process of living through this "transfer of power", just as one day it passed from the reign of the animal to the reign of the mind? "Everything is escaping, there's nothing left to lean on, it is the passage to the new movement.... and for the old, that always means a dangerous disruption of equilibrium."

Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It's up to each one to know whether he wants to participate in the adventure of the new species." This was 1966, the year of the Cultural Revolution in China. A far more profound revolution was taking place in a body which, on behalf of all the little bodies of the earth was seeking the one solution that would change everything: "We are seeking the process that will give the power to undo death.... The mind of the cell is what will find the key." it is the perilous transformation from a human body moves by the laws of the mind to the next body moved by a still nameless law buried in the heart of the cell: "A coagulated vibration, denser than air, extremely homogeneous, of golden luminosity, with a fantastic power of propulsion.... Everything is becoming strange, everything.... The body is no longer dependent on physical laws…" Isn't this the sensation the first vertebrate must have had when it emerged from the watery milieu into another nameless one in which we breathe today? "Each part of the body, at its moment of change, feels the end has come.... All the supports have been taken away.... I have no path to follow!" For what is the path to the next species? "A few have got to open it up."
At times, though, the other "milieu" suddenly appears: "An instant marvel.... A state in which time no longer has the same reality, it's very peculiar.... an innumerable present. Another way of living."
80 years earlier, a little girl had undergone her first revolution of matter: "When I was told that everything was made up of "atoms", it caused a sort of revolution in my head: Why. nothing is real, then!"
A second revolution takes place at the level of the cellular consciousness: the old matter and its apparent laws change into a new world and a new way of being in the body.

This year, all the features of the yoga of the cells become clear: "A growing conviction that a perfection achieved in matter is a far more perfect perfection than any other. The consciousness expressed in transformed cells is a marvel: it legitimises all these ages of misery. Oh, what a fuss all those gods make."
This year marks the discovery of "true matter".... without fuss: "In that cellular limpidity, there are no more problems: the solution precedes the problem. That is, things arrange themselves automatically." It's another mode of life on earth - "such a natural way of being" - in a body freed from its mental shackles and the laws of false matter: "The extraordinary impression of the unreality of suffering the unreality of illness.... It does not cure illness: it annuls it - it makes it unreal.... And then you see: as the functioning gradually grows perfect, it necessarily, inevitably means victory over death."
And meanwhile, Surveyor is digging the ground of the moon with its mechanical arms, while our own secrets remain buried in a little cell: "We can travel anywhere, we know what's going on anywhere.... and we don't know what's going on inside ourselves."
War is raging in Biafra, the Israeli troops are marching toward Suez, American planes are bombing Haiphong, China explodes its first thermonuclear bomb.... and so on. "A tremendous conflict over earth." At stake is a new earth, or a return to the old fiasco: "A local and momentary manifestation is not ruled out, but what is needed is a collective transformation sufficient to create a new species on earth.... This fact is certain."
Will we understand where the real way out is, and the Marvel concealed in a human body?

A fire spread across the world that year, from Warsaw to Colombia, from Nanterre to Alexandria: "There are long periods when things are being prepared, and a moment comes when something happens; and this something is what will bring about a new development in the world. Like the moments when man appeared on earth; now it is another being."
This is the second turning point of Mother's Yoga. She is 90. Auroville has just been founded: "A center for accelerated evolution." Martin Luther King is assassinated, and Robert Kennedy. Russia invades Czechoslovakia - what is going on? "I have the strong impression of an attempt to make us learn something like the secret of the functioning [of man, of the earth]. The method we have learned is constantly shown to be false, it doesn't conform to reality, and there is a will to make us find the true method, but through experience."
As if the earth were shut in a bowl, prisoner of a "false matter": "There is a sort of web over the entire earth, and the body is being taught how to get out of it.... Little by little the consciousness of the cells is breaking that hold." And on the other side of the web all of a sudden: "Never in my whole life have I seen or felt anything so beautiful!.... The most marvellous hours ever possible on earth - why do people go looking up above for something which is right here!" The short-lived miracle of 1968 seems to be swallowed up, while the walls of our bowl are slowly but inexorably being shattered in every country, every continent and every branch of human knowledge. "A considerable amount of time would still seem necessary for everything to be ready to change. And yet, there is almost a promise that a sudden change is going to take place." Could it be that, one fine morning, one last pressure of circumstances will throw us headlong into a new consciousness?

Now Mother has found the "passage", what she calls "the new consciousness," the one capable of opening up a new world to us, just as the first breaking of the watery mirror by an amphibian opened up a new air to us: "I don't know what is happening, there's a state of intense vibration, like waves of lightning rapidity, so rapid that they see motionless. And then I go off to America, to Europe.... This body has never been so happy: these cells, other cells, it was life everywhere, consciousness everywhere, all bodies were this body!...." And all our physiological misery vanishes by the same token: "There is a sort of dilation of the cells, the sense of boundaries lessons, fades away, and the pains vanish physically."
And it isn't "another world," it is this earth, our earth but lived otherwise: "As if we had entered an unreal falsehood, and everything disappears once you get out of it - it simply does not exist! And all the artificial means of getting out of it, including Nirvana, are worthless. SALVATION IS PHYSICAL! It is here, right here. All the rest, death included, really becomes a falsehood - there is no such thing as "disappearing", no "life vs death"!...." And as she breaks through the walls of our bowl, the whole world is in revolt - including Mother's entourage - as if it were under the pressure of a new air: "A considerable number of desires for it to die [Mother's body]; everywhere, they are everywhere!.... The whole gamut of feelings around me, from anxiety, eagerness for it to be over quickly, to impatient desires: free at last!.... I don't want to be put in a box, the cells are conscious.... What is going to happen? I don't know. It runs contrary to all habits." A new species is quite contrary to the old habits of the world - will the world accept it, or wind up killing it off?

The beginning of the terrible years.... There was the feeling that Mother had found the secret of the change, conquered all she could from her own body, and that she was now sitting there, surrounded by the pack, just putting up with each and every resistance of the old species. "The change is DONE. Everything is tooth and nail, ferociously after me, but it's over." A new mode of being of the cellular consciousness had appeared on earth, as one day, in inert matter, there appeared a new mode of being called life - but this time it is "overlife": "The impression there is a way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body; only, when that comes, the body itself feels it is dying." What would be the feeling of the first corpuscle to experience life? "The body feels it has reached the point of.... unknown. A very, very strange sensation. A sort of new vibration. It's so new that.... I can't speak of anguish, but it's.... the unknown. A mystery of the unknown." And there, what we call death is like the other side of the bowl for the former fish, and yet it is not "another world": "They are surprisingly one within the other! There is something there.... Is it possible? For overlife is both life and death together."
And then, this cry of the breakthrough: "What appears to us as 'the laws of nature' is nonsense!...." Another world ON EARTH in which the old mortal laws of our bowl break down.... into something else? "I have just had a fantastic vision of the cradle of a future.... which is not very far. It's like a formidable mass suspended above the earth." But will the old pack let her go through to the end?

The last turning point of Mother's yoga, and she comes out of it with this cry: "I have walked a long, long time. There was nothing but a constant cry, as if everything were torn away from me. It was the whole problem of the world."
And this Agenda is more and more strewn with heartrending little cries. It was not enough to have found the secret for herself, the others too had to understand, her own disciples, Nations locked in their egoistic power: "They have no faith! 'She is old, she is old', an atmosphere of resistance to the change; 'it is impossible, impossible' from all sides.... Not a single minute should be wasted - I am in a hurry.... The reign of the Divine must, oh, must come!.... If the entire Russian block were to turn to the right side, that would be an enormous support! The victory is certain, but I don't know which path will be followed to reach it.... We must cling, cling so tightly to Truth.... They don't listen to me any more." She is 93, groping her way into the unknown: "I see more clearly with eyes closed than with eyes open, and it is a physical vision, purely physical, but a kind of physical that seems more complete. The consciousness of the cells is what has to change, all the rest will follow naturally! I have the feeling I am on my way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life may go on uninterrupted - death is the result of a distortion of consciousness."
Will she be heard? Will she be allowed to pursue her experience? "Only a violent death could halt the transformation; otherwise the body knows that the work will go on and on and on...."
And this cry again: "There will be a miracle! But what, I don't know."

"Before dying falsehood rises in full swing. Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes?"
This is the year of Watergate, of Nixon's first trip to China, the assassination of the Israeli athletes in Munich, the first oil embargo. This is Mother's last lap. A lap strewn with heartrending little cries and stunning visions. The end of one world, the beginning of another.... whether we want it or not. "Sometimes, it is so new and unexpected, it's almost painful."
And I would ask her, "But is it a state outside matter?" "I don't go outside of physical life, but.... it looks different. But it is strange. And it is PHYSICAL, that is the extraordinary thing! As if the physical had split in two.... A new state in matter. And it is ruled by something that is not the sun, I don't know what it is.... I am touching another world. Another way of being.... dangerous but wonderful."
How I listened to her little breath as she gasped for air, a breath that seemed to come from another side of the world: "There is no difference between life and death. It's neither life nor death, it is.... something. It is not the disappearance of death you understand: BOTH are being changed.... into something still unknown, which seems at once extremely dangerous and absolutely wonderful." And what if "death" were merely the other, MATERIAL side of our human bowl, the sunlit shore for a species to come? A new condition on both sides of the world, in which life and death change into.... something else? "I am treading a very thin and narrow line...." And then this cry, this entreaty: "Let me do the work!"
On November 17, 1973, she passed away - why?