Beyond Man

Chapter Twenty-seven: The New Body

‘Happy New Year!’

1 January 1969. ‘That has been gradually increasing during the night, and at the time of waking up this morning there was as it were a golden Sunrise and the atmosphere was very light. The body felt: “Indeed, this is really, really new.” A golden light, delicate and benevolent. “Benevolent” in the sense of a certitude, a harmonious certitude. It was something new … And when I say “Happy New Year” to the people, it is that that I am passing them on. And this morning I have spent my time like that, spontaneously, saying: “Happy New Year! Happy New Year!”’ ¹

4 January 1969. ‘On the 1st something really strange has happened. And I was not the only one to feel it, several persons have felt it. It was just after midnight, but I felt it at two o’clock and others at four o’clock in the morning … It was something very material, by which I mean that it was very external — very external. And it was luminous, with a golden light. It was very strong, very powerful, but its character was nevertheless of a smiling benevolence, a peaceful joy, and a kind of unfolding in joy and light. And it was like a “Happy New Year”, like a wish. It took me completely by surprise. It lasted … I have been feeling it for three hours at least. Afterwards, I no longer paid any attention to it, I don’t know what has happened to it. But I have told it to you [Satprem] in passing, and I have also spoken about it to two or three other persons: all of them had felt it. This means that it was very material. All of them had felt it, just like that, like a kind of joy, but a joy that was congenial, powerful and, yes, very, very sweet, very much smiling, very benevolent. I don’t know what it is, but it is a kind of benevolence and therefore very close to humanity. And it was so concrete, so concrete! As if one could taste it, so concrete was it … It has not left. One does not have the impression that it came to leave again …

‘My own impression was that of an immense personality. Immense. By which I mean that the Earth was tiny to it. The Earth was like this [gesture: like a tiny ball in the palm of the hand], like a ball. An immense personality, very, very benevolent, coming in order to … coming to help. And so very strong and at the same time so sweet, so understanding. And that was very external: the body felt it everywhere, everywhere [the Mother touches her face, her hands], it was everywhere …

‘It was luminous, smiling, and so benevolent because of its power. By which I mean that benevolence, ordinarily in the human being, is something that is rather weak, in the sense that it does not like struggling, that it does not like fighting. But this is not at all like that: it is a benevolence which imposes itself [the Mother plants both fists on the armrests of her chair] …

‘It is perhaps the overman [le surhomme], I don’t know, the intermediary between the two [between the human and the supramental being]. Perhaps the overman. It was very human, but of a humanity with divine proportions, you see. A humanity without weaknesses and without darknesses: it was nothing but light. It was all light and smiling and … sweetness at the same time.

‘Yes, perhaps the overman.’

8 January 1969. ‘Have I told you that I have identified that consciousness? … It is the descent of the consciousness of the overman. I got the confirmation afterwards.

‘It happened on the 1st of January, after midnight. I woke up at two o’clock in the morning surrounded by a consciousness that was so very concrete, and new, in the sense that I had never experienced something like it. And that lasted in all its concreteness and forcefulness for two or three hours, and afterwards it spread out and went to find all those who were able to receive it. And I came to know that it was the consciousness of the overman, which means the intermediary between the human and the supramental being.’

18 January 1969. ‘That [consciousness of the overman] is very consciously active. It is like a projection of power and it has now become habitual.

‘It contains a consciousness — something very precious — that teaches lessons to the body [of the Mother], that teaches it what it has to do, the attitude it has to take, that is, the reaction it has to have. I had already told you several times that it is very difficult to find the procedure of the transformation when one has nobody to give one the necessary indications. Well, this seems to be the answer. It comes and says to the body: “Take this attitude, do this, do that like that.” And the body is very glad, it is completely reassured: it can no longer make mistakes. It’s very interesting.

‘It has come as a mentor, practical, completely practical: “This you must refuse, this you must accept, this you must generalize … ” — all the interior movements. And this becomes even very material, in the sense that concerning certain vibrations, it says: “This should be encouraged”, and concerning others: “This has to be guided into channels,” and concerning others: “This must be dispensed with.” A lot of small clues like that.

‘In one of the former Entretiens I said, when I was still speaking there at the Playground: “No doubt, the overman will be in the first place a being of power so that he may be able to defend himself.” This is it, it is that experience. It has come back as an experience.’²

The New Man is among us.³

— Nolini Kanta Gupta

Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Synthesis of Yoga: ‘It is impossible to rise into [the gnostic or supramental consciousness] at Once; if that could be done, it would mean a sudden and violent overshooting, a breaking or slipping through the gates of the Sun … without any possibility of return. We have to form as a link or a bridge an intuitive or illuminated mind, which is not the direct gnosis, but in which a derivative body of the gnosis can form.’⁴ Shortly before he departed, he wrote in the series of articles for the Bulletin: ‘It might be that a psychological change, a mastery of the nature of the soul, a transformation of the mind into a principle of light [the Mind of Light], of the life-force into power and purity would be the first approach, the first attempt to solve the problem, to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental being in the circumstances of the earth-nature.’⁵

The Mother said in 1959, looking back on her sadhana since 1950: ‘I have told [to my body]: “ … You are going to realize that intermediary overhumanity between the human and the supramental being, which is what I call le surhomme. And it is that what I have been doing in the last eight years.’⁶

In May 1957 she said: ‘One can go beyond this state [of the ordinary humanity], open oneself to the supramental Force which is now active upon the Earth, and enter into a zone of transition where both influences meet and penetrate each other, where the consciousness is still mental and intellectual in its functionings but sufficiently penetrated by the supramental Power and Force to be able of being the instrument of a higher truth. At the present moment this state can be realized upon earth by those who are ready to receive the supramental Force that is manifesting.’⁷

September 1957: ‘It is evident that intermediary beings are needed, that it is these intermediary beings who have to find the means to create the beings of the Supramental. And without any doubt, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this [the series of articles for the Bulletin] he was convinced that it was what we had to do. I think … I know that it is now certain that we will realize what he expects of us. It is no longer a hope, it has become a certitude.’⁸ As the Mother was always talking from her own experience, a confirmation like this could only be based on her own findings.

April 1958: ‘One can with certainty assert that there will be an intermediary specimen between the mental and the supramental being … It looks like … it is even certain that the substance which will constitute this intermediary world, which is in course of being elaborated, will be a substance that is richer, more powerful, more luminous, more resilient, with certain new qualities, more subtle, more penetrating. That substance will have a sort of inherent capacity of universality, as if its degree of subtlety and refinement allowed for the perception of vibrations in a much larger if not completely total way; and it eliminates the sensation of division which one has with the former kind of substance, with the ordinary mental substance … This [new] substance is at present almost universally spread in the terrestrial atmosphere.’⁹

March 1969: ‘It is as if that new Consciousness has brought with it a whole new field of experiences in the very material domain, with the abolishment of a number of things declared by people to be impossible … This consciousness has a great power of attraction. There are now people coming from everywhere, from everywhere [to the Ashram and Auroville].’¹⁰ The instrument in many cases used by that power of attraction was Sri Aurobindo, ou l’Aventure de la conscience (Sri Aurobindo, or the Adventure of Consciousness), the book written by Satprem under the guidance of the Mother and (behind the veil) of Sri Aurobindo.

April 1972: ‘The change of the human into the supramental being occurs, or doesn’t occur, through the overman. It is possible that there are some overmen — there are some — who are carrying out the transition.’¹¹

1987: ‘Although we may not know it, the New Man, the divine race of humanity, is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line [between the visible and invisible]. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront.’ This is a note by Nolini Kanta Gupta, who died in 1984, published above his signature in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual of 1987.

Sri Aurobindo had foreseen the necessity of the transitional being; he had begun to work it out in himself and had transferred the result of his material realization to the Mother at the time of his departure in 1950.

The Mother immediately continued to build on Sri Aurobindo’s realization. She wrote as early as 1954: ‘For the last few days, when I wake up in the morning I have the strange sensation of entering a body that is not mine — my body is strong and healthy, full of energy and life, supple and harmonious and this one fulfills none of these qualities; the contact with it becomes painful; there is a great difficulty in adapting myself to it and it takes a long time before I can overcome this uneasiness.’¹² These words cannot be interpreted in any other way than that the Mother already had a new subtle-physical body in 1954 besides and apart from her visible, gross material body. It was in this subtle-physical body that many saw her in their dreams and visions. ‘They see me like I really am,’ she said.

The above quoted statements of May and September 1957 leave no doubt that she then had reached the overhuman state for her bodily self.

On 1 January 1969, the overhuman consciousness manifested in the atmosphere of our Earth to establish itself here. Since then it is a new element in the evolutionary process and seeks out the human instruments capable of embodying it.

The Mother and also Nolini Kanta Gupta have expressed in unmistakable terms that, in the mass of the human species now populating the Earth, potential supermen are already present — a fact that moreover could be deduced from her narrative about the supramental ship.

But the Mother herself was far ahead again.

The New Body

The Avatar had come to establish permanently upon the Earth the foundations of a new evolution — one might say to bring into the earth-atmosphere the ‘archetype’ of the possibilities and forms of the new evolution. The Supramental Consciousness, the main goal of the Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, had come into the earth-atmosphere in 1956. The Mother had been forming the archetype of the ‘overman’ (surhomme) and the overhuman consciousness had manifested upon the Earth on 1 January 1969, with the inevitable consequence that this consciousness would embody itself in suitable instruments, in overmen. Though for the Mother this consciousness acted as a mentor, helping her in her avataric sadhana, she had not been waiting for it to go forward as fast as possible and with all means at her disposal. Ahead now lay the formation of the prototype, of the archetype of the supramental body. Once those embryos were formed in the womb of Mother Nature, all the elements for the elaboration of the New World would be present and the Avatar would have realized more than the full purpose of her incarnation.⁹¹

This too the Mother has brought to a good end: she has formed the archetype of the supramental body. To understand the course of matters as described in the Agenda and the Notes sur le chemin, it is necessary to keep three points in mind.

The first point concerns the ‘subtle physical,’ also called the ‘true physical’ (le vrai physique) by the Mother, and which has been defined already. The Mother in many instances still calls the true physical ‘subtle’ because normally it cannot be perceived by human beings, the field and medium of perception of the human senses being gross physical matter. (Physics has gradually advanced so far behind the wall of perceptible reality that it does not realize it is dealing with an occult world.) The ‘true physical’ is supramental; were it not so, Sri Aurobindo would not be able to dwell in it in his supramental body, for instance. It was also in the ‘true physical’ that the Mother saw some of the living and the dead meet in a most natural way; this was only possible because part of their body was supramentalized and because to the Supermind death is no existential boundary. Time and again the Mother has described the ‘true physical’ as more material, more concrete, more real, more complete and much more powerful than the physical we are familiar with. She also said that the two worlds existed separately and inside one another. ‘I think that [the true physical], now that the Supramental has descended, will become more and more active on earth. For it is in the subtle physical [which in this case in the true physical] that the new creation will be formed before it descends, before it can become fully visible and concrete.’¹³

The second important point, also already known to us, is that it is the psychic being that takes on the supramental body. We remember the words of the Mother: ‘It is the psychic being that will materialize and become the supramental being … The psychic being materializes and this gives a continuity to the evolution … The psychic being is immortal and it is by the psychic being that immortality will be established upon the Earth … It is the psychic being, the representative of the Divine in man, that will remain, that will cross over into the new species.’ These statements need no comment. It is understandable that only the souls matured in and by the evolution (Sri Aurobindo somewhere speaks about ‘the cosmic training’ of the soul) can be ready for this important step, for the great evolutionary saltus.

The third point is not the least important although it is the least evident. The universalization of the body of the Avatar, the precondition of her Work in Matter, was the result of the universalization of the consciousness of the cells. The Supramental is by definition a Unity-Consciousness. If all elementary particles are constantly in a cosmic relation, then it stands to reason that the cells too must be in this kind of relation, if only because they consist of elementary particles. The relationships within the cosmic unity are a fundamental capacity of the cells though not in their surface consciousness, otherwise all of us would be conscious cosmic beings, which we are not. (Consisting of cells, elementary particles, a subliminal mind and vital, and a soul, we are indeed cosmic beings unconsciously, and even more than cosmic beings.) To put it graphically, we could say that the cell shows the respective gradations of the evolution going from the outside towards the inside — from the gross materiality, supported by the Inconscient, of its surface to the supramental Unity-Consciousness in its inmost core. Because the cells of the Mother’s body were being supramentalized ever more and in ever greater numbers, the Unity-Consciousness was also increasing in her material substance: she became ever more bodily, or rather cellularly, conscious of the One Existence, which she experienced as her own physical existence. This did not happen in an egoistic way, in which one feels oneself the centre and relates everything to oneself, but in a ‘unity way,’ in a supramental, divine way by being present in everything, by being everything. She was the others, therefore feeling their inwardness with all their weal and woe as her own (so much so that once, in a critically ill person far away, she received the last sacraments!) Le corps est partout — the body is everywhere.

Good, but what if those cells died? Did they become dust again and had all her trouble been in vain? This was a question she had asked herself and others more than once till on 19 March 1969 she got a clear and indubitable answer. ‘The question had been asked: “All that transformative work of the cells, of the consciousness in the cells — it seems that in the usual way all that is wasted as it is going to be dissolved?” And then came in a very precise, almost concrete way: “There is a way, namely before dying to prepare in oneself a body with all the cells that are transformed, illumined, conscious — to gather them and to form a body with the maximum number of conscious cells. Then, when this work is finished, the full consciousness enters into it [into the new body] and the other one [the gross physical] can be dissolved, for it is of no importance anymore.’ And she concluded: ‘This possibility exists.’ This possibility existed in her body, she knew that. Her mentor showed her how the formation of the new body had to be done ‘for hours and hours, and that insisted and did not want to go away. It insisted till the body had thoroughly understood. And there is no need of a material intervention … The material intervention was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient.’ In the true physical. ‘It was really unexpected. I had never thought of something like it … And all objections were answered.’

The supramentalized consciousness of the cell supramentalizes the inner substance of the cell and makes the Unity-Consciousness in the cell concrete and active. The psychic being covers itself with the supramentalized substance, in other words it forms a supramental body which exists in the supramental world of the true physical, just like it earlier formed a material-vital-mental body (adhara) in the material-vital-mental world. This is not something we can ‘understand’⁹², but we can conceive that it fits into the line of evolution with the soul as the central element of the evolutionary development. One hesitates to put the label ‘important’ on a specific experience of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s, for all their experiences were important links in the chain of the whole; all the same, without the experience of the Mother just quoted in her own words, the transformation of her body, and therefore the work of the last years of her life, could not be envisioned.

The supramental transformation of the body was of course the continuation and the provisional culmination of all the preceding avataric labour of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. (The definitive pinnacle will be the visible supramental body on Earth.) We have seen time and again that the expansion of their realization, however surprising and overwhelming in some of the separate stages, with hindsight was usually discernible here and there in their previous reports, till the concretization of a certain line of development became inevitable, as it were, like a subterranean vein of ore suddenly appears on the surface because of a rift in the terrain. The same kind of consideration is applicable to the Mother’s realization of the supramental body. It is very instructive to follow this growth-process in the Agenda and the Notes on the Way, and to give a broad outline of its chronological sequence.

• As early as 24 January 1961 the Mother said to Satprem: ‘In the night of the day before yesterday, during the night, in the middle of the night, I woke up — or rather I was woken up — with the impression that I had in my body a much greater being — with ‘greater’ I mean bigger, more voluminous — than usual. It was as if it could hardly fit into it, it exceeded its limits. And it had such a compact power that it was almost annoying.’ She also said that this big body caused reactions which were in no proportion to a human body, and that this was accompanied by a storm of compact power in order that things might change. This statement dates from before the dramatic experience of 1962. Should we suppose that the perception in this case was that of her fully built superhuman body?

• 23 June 1962, i.e. after her death and resurrection in April of that year: ‘Last night, I have noticed that I was very tall. I am generally tall [during the night], tall and strong.’ Her earthly body at that time was eighty-four years old, very much stooped, and suffered crisis after crisis.

• On 27 June Satprem says to the Mother: ‘I wanted to tell you something strange. Sujata [then his companion, later his wife] told me that every time she sees you at night since you have withdrawn into your room in March, she sees you much taller than you were before.’ The Mother: ‘But everybody [has this experience]! Everybody! And I myself, when I see myself, I am very tall. What has happened? … It is the new being … When is this going to express itself physically? I don’t know. It is a being from the subtle physical. It is not a vital being, it is a being from the subtle physical. And I am tall and strong … It has no age, it is neither young nor old … it is completely different. And tall, strong … A day will come that it will be visible concretely, one will see it … Of course, logically speaking I should remain invisible until I appear in my new form. But this does not seem to come about very quickly.’

• 3 November 1962: ‘Now that I think of it, I have noticed last night that I was very young physically! It was the subtle, physical, of course, but I was very young.’

• 22 December 1962: ‘These last days, I have marked that I remembered having gone downstairs, having met people and seen certain things, having talked, having organized certain things — a lot of different scenes from the physical memory. Not at all things which I have seen with the internal sight in a state of exteriorization: the material memory of having done certain things … I asked myself: “But have I gone downstairs materially then?” All present here can testify that I have not gone downstairs, that I have not left this room. All the same I have the material memory of having done that, and of having done some other things also, even of having gone outside. You see, I am faced with a problem. This memory is not only material through and through, but the consequences of what I have done exist.’

• 22 June 1963: ‘Sri Aurobindo came with the notion, or the Order, or the conviction that it was for now. But in how far is the transformation for now? And what does that mean, “now”? How much time does it mean? … There is such a certitude, such a certitude that at present it is already like that, but seen from the other side.’

• 24 August 1963: ‘The ferment which makes everything rise is at least as important [as the personal realization]. After all, this is perhaps the main reason of the continuation of this body …

‘All those problems I am talking about are problems posed by the body, for the body. Within everything is perfect, everything is exactly as it should be …

‘It will not at all happen in the way people think or expect …

‘I have seen myself like I am …

‘But if one says so, people think that it is a psychic or mental seeing. It is not that, I am not talking about that! I am talking about a physical seeing, with these eyes [the Mother touches her eyes]. But it is a true physical seeing instead of the deformed seeing as it is now [in ordinary human beings].

‘I mean that the true reality is in fact much more marvellous than we can imagine, because what we imagine is always a transformation or a glorification of what we see. But it is not that! It is not that!

‘I am not very sure that I do not already physically exist in a true body. I say “I am not very sure” because the outward senses have no proof of it, but … I am not trying and I have never tried to see or to know. I am not trying, but from time to time there is something that imposes itself: for a moment I see myself, feel myself, objectivize myself like I am. But this lasts a few seconds and, phhht, it is gone, again replaced by the old habit.

‘You see, we can only think of things that are changing from one into the other — one becomes young again, all signs of old age disappear, and so on. That is old hat, it is not like that. It is not like that!’⁹³

• 11 August 1964: ‘During two hours the experience of the Omnipotence, the Omnipotence of the Lord — during two hours, with all decisions taken in the meantime, by which I mean the expression of what is going to be transposed into the terrestrial consciousness …

‘And what is strange (I was conscious, fully conscious; the “Witness”-consciousness is never annulled, but it is not disturbing): I knew, I saw (although my eyes were closed, I was lying on my bed), I saw my body move … Every gesture, every finger, every attitude was something that was being realized …

‘I have the impression that Action is not at all limited to the moment that the here active consciousness participates in it: it is all the time like that. One second [of interiorization] is enough — when I don’t talk, when I don’t do anything — and I feel that golden Glory behind everything. “Behind?” It is not “behind,” it is not “in,” it is … that what supports everything, what is always present. But in the course of the experience I have been given two hours of total participation in it: there was nothing but That, nothing existed anymore but That. And an unforgettable joy was given to all cells: they had become That …

‘In any case, the work is progressing very fast. This is really what Sri Aurobindo called “The Hour of God.” It is going very fast.’

• 7 November 1964: ‘I was resting — after lunch I rest half an hour — and at the end of my rest I suddenly see myself: I see myself standing beside the bed, very tall, in a magnificent robe, and with somebody dressed in white next to me. And I saw that just at the moment that it was as if I was going to faint: I was at the same time the person standing there and the person seeing all that from the bed. And at the same time I felt what sinks, what sinks down from the head: the head is being completely emptied. And the standing person smiled, and the person in the bed asked herself: “What is this? I am fainting but I am in my bed!” That is how it was. And as it was time for me to “wake up,” which means to return into the external consciousness, I came back. And I remained stuck with that problem: who was the one standing there?’

• 2 August 1967: ‘The subtle physical seems to be transformed more and more. There is still a mystery between the two [between the gross physical and the subtle physical body]. A mystery. They are coexistent and yet … [gesture as of a link which is missing] the subtle physical seems to have no influence on this [the gross physical body]. There is still something that has to be found …’

• 9 April 1969: ‘During the night the body is tall and active, it does things. It is the subtle body that is doing things, that is active, that has an existence that is fully conscious. And it is different from this [the Mother touches the skin of her hands]. But it is a body that is physical in the subtle physical and it is already something permanent, in the sense that one remains like that, one finds things like one has left them. They exist in a permanent way but they are not visible to the ordinary vision. But their existence is logical and continuous. Well, there the form is the true expression of the consciousness, while here the form is the result of … one could say: the lies disseminated in the consciousness.

‘Those who see me during the night, those who have that vision in the subtle world, do not see me like this [the Mother points at her body]. They see me like I am and they say: “Oh, but you are like this, you are like that.” But for the one to take the place of the other … ?’

• 19 July 1969: ‘The physical seems to be less imperative. Before, one had the impression, well yes, that [the subtle physical] was not a “dream” like people say, but that it was a more subtle and less precise consciousness, and that the physical consciousness was fully concrete and precise. But now this distinction [is no longer valid]. The other one [the subtle, true physical consciousness] has become almost more concrete and real than the physical consciousness. The purely material consciousness is more vague than [the true physical consciousness]. It gives the impression of being something that is not very … secure, yes, not very secure. Isn’t that strange.’

• 28 February 1970: ‘My body is now bent materially, but during the night it was completely normal again! And I do not sleep! What may this be? I don’t know … And I do not leave my body … Or is this body replaced by another one? I do not know.’

• On 9 May 1970 the Mother had an experience in which she saw her new body. ‘Well, I have seen it, my body — how it will be. It is quite good,’ she said with a smile. The form was not that different from the present human form, but ‘so refined.’ It was sexless, ‘neither man nor woman,’ and its colour was ‘somewhat like the colour of Auroville’ (orange). With her was ‘the physical Mother’ whom we would call Mother Nature, and who accepted the formation of the new body with a symbolic gesture. ‘This means that material Nature has accepted the new creation.’

24 March 1972. ‘For the first time, early in the morning, I have seen myself, my body. I do not know whether it is the supramental body or — how to say — a transitional body. But I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was asexual, it was neither woman nor man. It was very white, but I think that this is because my skin is white, I don’t know. It was very slender — it was beautiful. Really a harmonious form. So, this is the first time. I did not know at all, I had no idea of how it would be or anything, and I have seen … I was like that, I had become like that.’

The next day, Satprem asked for some explanation. The Mother said: ‘I was like that. That was me. I did not see myself in a mirror, I saw myself like this [the Mother bows her head in order, to look down at her body]. I was like that.

‘It was the first time. It was around four o’clock in the morning, I think. It was something completely natural. You see, I was not seeing myself in a mirror, I was completely natural. I remember only what I have seen [gesture: from the chest down to the hips]. I was not wearing any veils, so I have seen only … What was very different was the trunk, from the chest down to the waist: neither man nor woman.

‘And it was beautiful. I had a very, very slender form, very thin — very thin but not emaciated. And the skin was very white. The skin was like my skin. But a very beautiful form. But no sex, one could not tell … neither man nor woman. The sex was gone.

‘Here too [the Mother points to her chest], nothing of all that anymore. I don’t know how to say. It was like a remnant, but it had no forms anymore, not even as much as men have. A very white skin, very even. Practically no belly. The stomach … no stomach. All that was very svelte.

‘You see, I haven’t paid special attention to it because I was like that, it was completely natural.’

‘But was it like that in the subtle physical?’ asked Satprem. ‘It must be like that in the subtle physical,’ the Mother answered. Satprem again: ‘But how will that come down into the physical?’ ‘That is what I do not know,’ the Mother answered. ‘It was also evident that there was no longer a complicated digestive system like now nor the elimination as it is now … But how will the [physical] body itself change? I don’t know.’

Considering all this, it is evident that the Mother had a supramental body in the supramental world which was ready to be manifested upon Earth.

The problem was how the supramental ‘archetype’ she had build up would manifest in gross matter. It was indispensable that the gross matter would in an ever greater degree have to be transformed by the process of ‘permeation,’ the more and more omnipresent penetration. The supramental body, with its divine qualities, can logically speaking only take shape in a refined, supramentalized matter. Seen from the human side this requires a pure miracle — the miracle of a new creation in evolution, accomplishing the greatest saltus, the greatest change ever brought about in the history of the Earth. One should not forget, however, that the appearance of Life in matter has also been a stupendous miracle, as was the capacity of the reflective consciousness of evolutionary beings. ‘At the end, there will be a miracle,’ the Mother said.

How much time would it take, that miracle of the visible presence of the supramental species upon the Earth? In 1956, the Mother’s estimation was still in the range of millions of years. ‘I have told you that before the results of the supramental manifestation will be visible and tangible, able to be perceived by one and all, millions of years may go by.’¹⁴ Later on her guess was in the range of thousands of years, and still later of something like three hundred years — the period foreseen by Sri Aurobindo which now probably looked acceptable to her because of her own progress. That she had remained working on Earth in 1956 and 1962 has no doubt shortened the process by thousands of years. ‘The world unknowing for the world she stood.’

But the time of the presence of her earthly body among humankind was nearly over.

1972 was the centenary year of Sri Aurobindo’s birth. The Mother wanted it to be celebrated in a way worthy of him. In the whole of India commemorative functions were held, with committees of dignitaries, long-winding speeches and glossy memorial volumes. One talked about the Supermind here and the Supermind there, and about Sri Aurobindo’s philosophic and yogic system — but it was all so theoretical, abstract, academic and uninspired. Of all the speechmakers, those with real insight into the significance of Sri Aurobindo’s Work as Avatar and into the intense effort of his ‘successor and collaborator’ could perhaps be counted on the fingers of both hands.

At midnight, the hour the centenary day began, the disciples and many visitors sat around Sri Aurobindo’s tomb, so beautiful in its bareness under that large tree. Then Sunil’s soul-stirring music resounded, with a crystal-clear woman’s voice chanting the mantra of Sri Aurobindo’s name in Sanskrit. And straight above the tomb, covered with a wealth of flowers and curling clouds of incense, shone the Full Moon.

The next morning everybody received the Mother’s message for the day, summing up the meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s action in utmost simplicity: ‘One more step towards eternity.’