Overman

5: Overman

The Truth is not linear but global; it is not successive but simultaneous. Therefore it cannot be expressed in words: it has to be lived.¹

– The Mother

In December 1972, less than a year before she would lay down her body, the Mother thought back to that crucial moment on 5 December 1950: the passing of Sri Aurobindo. “He had gathered in his body much supramental Force and as soon as he left … You see, he was lying on his bed, I stood near him, and in a way altogether concrete – so concrete, I felt it so strongly that I thought it could be seen – all the supramental Force that was in him passed from his body into mine. And I felt the friction of the passage. It was extraordinary. It was an extraordinary experience. For a long time, a long time, like this (gesture indicating the passage of the Force into her body). I was standing beside his bed and that came into my body. Almost a sensation – it was a material sensation. For a long time. And that is all I know.”²

Sri Aurobindo’s departure had been a shattering blow to her, “an annihilation”. They, the double-poled Avatar, were after all one and the same consciousness – one and the same supernal Consciousness that is Love. She had been compelled to “lock away” her soul by a yogic act in order to prevent it from following him. Often she must have relived the moment described above, as for instance in May 1958. “When he left and I had to do the Yoga myself, to be able to take his physical place I could have adopted the attitude of the sage, which is what I did, since I was in an unparalleled state of calm when he left. As he left his body and entered into mine, he told me: ‘You will continue, you will go right to the end of the work.’ It was then that I imposed a calm upon this body, the calm of total detachment. And I could have remained like that.

“But in a way, absolute calm implies withdrawal from action, so a choice had to be made between one or the other. I said to myself: ‘I am neither exclusively this nor exclusively that.’ And actually, to do Sri Aurobindo’s work is to realise the Supramental on earth. So I began that work and, as a matter of fact, this was the only thing I asked of my body. I said to it: ‘Now you shall set right everything which is out of order and gradually realise this intermediate overmanhood [surhumanité] between man and the supramental being, in other words, what I call the overman [surhomme]:’ And this is what I have been doing for the last eight years, and even much more during the past two years, since 1956. Now it is the work of each day, each minute.

“And that’s where I am. I have renounced the uncontested authority of a god, I have renounced the unshakable calm of the sage in order to become the overman [surhomme]: I have concentrated everything upon that.”³

This is as good a place as any, now that we have to relate the Mother’s work in some detail, to draw attention to the fact of how much her personality and contribution to the Integral Yoga have been – and are – misjudged, underestimated and even neglected. In the primary years of the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo had time and again to put the record straight about her, as is there for anyone to read in his letters. A male Avatar was a known and acceptable phenomenon, but a female Avatar, who had ever heard of that? And a French one, a mleccha, to boot! Sri Aurobindo, withdrawn, always looked majestic, guru-like, Shiva-like; the Mother, approachable and for many years moving among the disciples and Ashram students, changed her aspect according to the circumstances and the necessities. Sri Aurobindo had written thick volumes of learned prose, was a poet of renown, and still wrote letter after letter, sometimes several pages long; the Mother played a little on her harmonium, distributed flowers, and mostly communicated her knowledge orally, sometimes in English, more often in French.

But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had “the same path from the beginning”. In 1920, when Mirra Richard and her husband Paul returned from Japan to India, “the Yoga was waiting for the Mother to continue”, wrote Sri Aurobindo. It was on the Mother’s advice that he and she descended from the supramentalised Mind into the Vital and then, in a most daring yogic move, from the supramentalised Vital into Matter and below, into the Inconscient. They divided the avataric task: Sri Aurobindo in the physical seclusion of his apartment did the general, fundamental Yoga, of which he communicated to the Mother every progress, every gain, every realisation; the Mother took on the task of building up and guiding the Ashram, a world in miniature: she literally did the Yoga of all the accepted disciples, “taking them into her consciousness as in an egg”. When Sri Aurobindo called the Second World War “the Mother’s War”, he must have had good reasons. And, as her body was constitutionally better for the future effort of supramental transformation, she had to stay on and continue the glorious, gruesome job. It is all there to be studied and meditated upon by the interested.

Never has a Yoga of this magnitude, of this importance been so well documented in so many of its phases. Alas, words are but words, and to a new, ignorant eye it all looks so unusual, fantastic, overblown, and confusing – although the principles are logical and rational, the aim the most important and glorious possible, the protagonists human even if in part divine, and their thought practicable for every individual attracted to it. But, you know, what have all those grandiloquent expectations come to? Where is the superman? Where is the new, divine world? Has the world ever been more inhuman and bewildering than now, at the turn of the millennium?

So much is new in this adventure of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Here is an Avatar not semi-mythical as in the great epics of the past, but in the flesh, talking, eating, sleeping, writing, riding in a car, being ill, breaking his thigh, having been married and even more than once. And this Avatar is not solely male, as all the others were in the past, but also female; and he/she maintains that they have the same consciousness in their two bodies. Here is an idea that the evolution is to take a gigantic quantum jump now, possibly in our lifetime – not millions of years ago, and not only within the limits of our imagination but contriving something better than paradise! Here is a spiritual practice, called Integral Yoga, demanding the mastery of the whole range of yogas perfected before and recognised as valid, a mastery not to reach liberation, Nirvana, the Absolute or Brahmaloka, but intending the transformation of this whole problematical planet and the founding of heaven here. With the intention of transforming the body, even, of becoming embodied gods on the Earth, of awakening a divine consciousness in the cells! Too fantastic to deign worthwhile considering?

But in whatever way one judges the personalities, the intentions and the work done by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, no sincere critic can deny the coherence of the vision and the greatness of their effort to turn it into reality. That the world is very little aware of it, is no criterion for evaluation, as it is not a factor in the elaboration of that vision. For they have dug the foundations “to front the years”, and in those foundations is built a spiritual Force to assure the automatic realisation of the Work they, as the Avatar of the Supermind, had come to perform. As they were one, none of the two was “greater” than the other. And if the above is true, then the difference between both can only arise from our ignorance, from our lack of insight into who they were and what they did.

“This is what I have been doing …”

Let us, at this point of our enquiry concerning overman, repeat what the Mother said to K.D. Sethna in June 1953 about the Mind of Light: “The Supermind has descended long ago – very long ago – into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.”⁴

After all we have learned in the previous chapter about “the new humanity” to be endowed with the Mind of Light, this new definition of the Mind of Light comes as a surprise. For as far as we know, in The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth Sri Aurobindo never even mentioned the physical mind, surely not in this context. The Mind of Light, he wrote, was “the last in a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification”; it was “a subordinate action of the Supermind”, “aware of its affiliation to Supermind”, “capable of living in the Truth”. Yet, Sethna’s report of the Mother’s words has to be taken into account not only because it is trustworthy, but also because of what the Mother says in the quotation from 1958 at the beginning of the present chapter. “This [namely, realising the overman, the being to be endowed with the Mind of Light] is what I have been doing for the last eight years, and even more during the past two years …” This long-term yogic occupation started at the very moment that Sri Aurobindo left his body and charged her with it. What entered into her body, palpably, was all the supramental Force he had accumulated in his – the Force that was the beginning of the formation of overman.⁵

Secondly, in the Mother’s Entretiens, her “questions and answers” at the Playground, she sometimes talked on appropriate occasions about her personal yogic experiences and progress. The word that crops up time and again in those brief glimpses of her inner life and work is “cells”: their consciousness, aspiration and transformation. Might Sri Aurobindo have expanded on the transformation of the body cells if he had had the time to complete his last series of articles? The lack of reference to the physical cells which, as we shall see, play such an important part in the transformational process, certainly is an argument in favour of the supposition that the series of articles remained unfinished.

Sri Aurobindo has, however, in The Life Divine the following words, already quoted before but deserving our renewed attention: “When the powers of any grade descend completely into us, it is not only our thought and knowledge that are affected, – the substance and very grain of our being and consciousness, all its states and activities are touched and penetrated and can be remoulded and wholly transmuted. Each stage of this ascent is therefore a general, if not a total, conversion of the being into a new light and power of a greater existence.”⁶ Any yogic siddhi has repercussions in the adhara of the yogi, but such effects remain limited to the person having the siddhi. The siddhis the most recent Avatars worked out for humankind – Rama, Krishna, the Buddha, Christ – were to become permanent psychological properties, qualities or possibilities within the human species. As Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had come to initiate a new species, the consequences of their siddhis had to be not only psychological but also physical, material, and this was the reason of their unprecedented difficulty.

Conclusion

Sri Aurobindo had seen that an intermediary species or variety of beings, called by him “the new humanity” and by the Mother “overman” (le surhomme), would be necessary to make the appearance of “superman”, the supramental being, possible on the Earth, as the gap between Mind and Supermind was too huge for a direct transformation. A new species necessitates a newly evolved, higher physical embodiment, “a greater existence”. Sri Aurobindo had started realising such an embodiment in the cells of his body, pulling down the supramental Force into them. When the general cosmic circumstances proved to be such that the supramental transformation leading to the superman was possible only by descending consciously into death, Sri Aurobindo transferred his evolutionary acquisition to the Mother with the instruction to continue the work. This she did at once. Now she was burdened not only with the guidance of the Ashram, she was in charge of the full avataric Yoga too.

On that 5th of December, the Mother suspended all activities in the Ashram for twelve days. The first Entretien we have is dated 21 December 1950: exactly twelve days later. There she sat, fully present again, but now alone in this physical universe, with the responsibility on her shoulders of making the impossible possible. The talks she gave at the Playground were actually French classes for the students of the Ashram School; interested adult Ashramites were allowed too. But she talked from the very beginning about all possible topics under the sun. Those talks as a whole form an impressive teaching in their own right. It is true of course that what she said expressed essentially the same vision Sri Aurobindo had given shape in his prose writings and in his poetry, and she commented in many “classes” on texts by Sri Aurobindo, but the Entretiens bear distinctly a personal stamp, with roots deep in her own experiences. The audience could ask any question that popped up into their head – and that sometimes she made pop up into their heads.

As early as on 4 January 1950, she talked about “the work of physical transformation, that is the most difficult of all things”.⁷ On 26 February, less than two months later, she spoke about the “gnostic”, i.e. the supramental consciousness, and concluded her talk with the words: “I am telling you that this evening because what has been done, what has been realised by one can be realised by the others. It is enough that one body has been able to realise this, one human body, to have the assurance that it can be done. You should consider it still very far into the future, but you may say: ‘Yes, the gnostic life is certain, for it has begun to realise itself.’ ”⁸ That “one”, the “one body” that had been “able to realise that, one human body”, naturally was hers.

Again some six weeks later, on 19 April, the Mother told her Playground audience that what had been up to then a “psychological” Yoga, had now become a “material” Yoga, a Yoga of Matter, of the cells of the body. It is in the cells that we are Matter, they are its presence in us and our direct access to it. Now the consciousness in the cells themselves began to aspire and surrender to the Divine, tried to establish the complete equanimity, which is the precondition of the Integral Yoga, and became aware of the inherent unity of all things. “Now it [the offering of everything to the Divine] has become the very movement of the cellular consciousness. All weaknesses, all responses to adverse suggestions – by this I mean the little things that happen every moment in the cells – are taken up in the same movement of offering. And that comes sometimes in waves, so much so that the body has the impression that it will lose consciousness because of the assault. But then comes a light so warm, so profound, so sweet, so powerful, that puts everything back in order, in its place, and opens the way to the transformation. Such moments are very difficult moments in the life of the body. One feels that there is now only one thing that takes the decisions: the Supreme Will. There is no longer any other support – no support, neither the support that habit gives, nor to the support of the knowledge, nor the support of the will: all the supports have vanished. There is only the Supreme … Aspiration in the cellular consciousness for perfect sincerity of consecration.”⁹

In March 1953, the Mother said: “I tell you: Only if you are sincere in all the elements of your being, up to the very cells of your body, and only if your whole being integrally wants the Divine, are you sure of the victory, but on no less a condition.”¹⁰ The invisible work of the transformation of the cells was continuing. She could not tell much about it, not only because many of the students in the Playground were so very young and would not understand, but also because it was a principle with her never to limit or distort an ongoing experience by formulating it into words and thus fixing it.

By the year 1954, however, the transformation of the cells, at this stage of the creation of overman, reached something like a climax. 24 February: “[The conscious, meticulous occupation with the body] is an enormous work. Yet, it is what must be done if one hopes to transform one’s body. It must in the first place be put in complete harmony with the inner consciousness. And that requires working in each cell, one might say, in each petty activity, in every activity of the organs.”¹¹

21 April 1954: “It will take a number of years before we can speak knowledgeably about how this is going to happen [the transformation of the body], all that I can tell you is that it has begun. If you read attentively the next issue of the Bulletin … you will see that it has begun.”¹² In the issue referred to, the Mother published Some Experiences of the Body Consciousness and New Experiences of the Body Consciousness. Without the titles these experiences would read just like other “psychological” yogic experiences. The difference, nevertheless, is enormous. This was no longer a Yoga in which the consciousness located in and above the Mind was instrumental but the consciousness in the cells, of which few people are aware that it exists. Yet if Matter was to be transformed, divinised, it was this consciousness of the cells that had to be transformed and divinised.

Now that, thanks to the discoveries of Science, we are in some way aware of the complexity of a cell (and of an atom, etc.), it seems hardly amazing that some form of consciousness, very different from ours, is at work there, for the simple question is how, otherwise, it all would keep together and working in such a complex way. But in our daily life the physical consciousness of the cells makes itself felt only in the feeling of a vague bodily heaviness and sometimes in a mechanical repetition of some suggestions, physical impressions or elementary remembrances. But if Matter is to become divine, then it is exactly this lowest form of physical consciousness, directly in contact with Matter and supporting it, that has to become divinised. This better than anything else may give an idea of the enormous gap to be bridged and of the necessity of a step in between the human and the supramental being – which is what the Mother was working at.

In the Experiences of the Body Consciousness¹³ we read: “When we speak of transformation, the word still has for us a vague meaning. It gives us the impression that something is going to happen and all will be well as a consequence. The notion reduces itself almost to this: if we have difficulties, the difficulties will disappear; those who are ill will be cured of their illness; if the body is infirm and incapable, the infirmities and incapacities will be removed; and so on. But as I have said, it is all very vague, it is only an impression. Now a remarkable thing about the body consciousness is that it is unable to know a thing with precision and in full detail except when it is on the point of accomplishing it. So, when the process of transformation becomes clear, when one is able to know through what sequence of movements and changes the total transformation will take place – in what order, in what way, so to speak: which things will come first, which things will follow – when everything will happen in full detail, that will be a sure indication that the hour of realisation is near. Because each time you perceive a detail with exactness, it means that you are ready to accomplish it.

“For the moment, one can have a vision of the whole. For example, it is entirely certain that under the influence of the supramental light, the transformation of the body consciousness will take place first; then will follow a progress in the mastery and control of all the movements and functions of all the organs of the body; afterwards this mastery will change little by little into a sort of radical modification of the movement and then of the constitution of the organs themselves. All that is certain, although the perception of it is not precise enough. But what will finally take place – when the various organs have been replaced by centres of concentration of different forces, qualities and natures, each of which will act according to its own special mode – all this is still merely a conception and the body does not comprehend it very well, because it is still far from realisation and the body can truly comprehend only that which it is on the point of being able to do.”¹⁴ Fully involved in the process of transformation, the Mother sketched here the programme of what she would work out in the years to come.

19 May 1954: “It is as though the cells themselves burst into an aspiration, into a call.”¹⁵

3 November 1954: “Each part of the being has it own aspiration, which takes on the nature of the aspiring part. There is even a physical aspiration … The cells of the body understand what the transformation will be, and, with all their strength, with all the consciousness they contain, they aspire for this transformation. The very cells of the body – not the central will, thought or emotion – the cells of the body open in this way to receive the [supramental] Force.”¹⁶

Within four years, the Mother, supported from behind by the work of Sri Aurobindo in the invisible realms, had achieved an enormous amount of work, without anybody knowing. Yes, she had given a hint from time to time, but who had even noticed? Then, towards the end of 1954, the situation seems to have grown critical. On 31 December her traditional message for the new year was distributed: “No human will can finally prevail against the Divine’s Will. Let us put ourselves deliberately and exclusively on the side of the Divine, and the Victory is ultimately certain.”¹⁷ “This message”, she commented, “was written because it is foreseen [by herself] that next year will be a difficult year and there will be many inner struggles and perhaps even outer ones.¹⁸ So I tell all of you what attitude you should take in these circumstances. These difficulties may last not only twelve months – one full year, that is – but fourteen months. And during these fourteen months you must make an effort never to lose the attitude about which I am going to speak to you now”¹⁹ – which was an attitude of utter equanimity, whatever the inner and outer circumstances, and total surrender. This was an astonishing prediction, as we shall see presently.

The difficulties the Mother spoke about were of course intended to harass and if possible to block the work of the Yoga, and were caused by the forces hostile to it. Of the battles she has fought at that time we know nothing, but as the situation seems to have become critical because the Yoga was about to reach its main objective, they must have been fierce. Something decisive seemed to be imminent. “… One has the impression, really, that it has lasted long enough [the ordinary human condition], that one is fed up with it, that it has to change”, she said in October 1955. “Well, when one has that kind of impression, one takes all – all one is, all one can, all one has – and one jumps into the fray without ever looking back, come what may.”²⁰ – “Mother”, asked a child, “you just said that it is very near …?” – “What, very near? The event? Yes, otherwise we would not talk about it.”

The “event” happened exactly as foreseen: fourteen months after the day it was announced. And decisive it was: on 29 February 1956 the Supermind descended into the earth-consciousness, a “first” in the evolution of the planet. The event Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been looking forward to and working for from the beginning, the event that was rendered possible by Sri Aurobindo’s descent into death and the Mother’s working out of the overman consciousness since then, took place on that day – and the world will never be the same again. (It will become a much better place.)

A long dim preparation is man’s life,

A circle of toil and hope and war and peace …

An endless spiral of ascent and fall

Until at last is reached the giant point

Through which his Glory shines for whom we were made

And we break into the infinity of God.²¹

How essential this descent of the supramental Force into the earth-consciousness was and how all along it was the peak realisation, “the giant point”, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been working towards, is proven by a categorical text of hers, a direct address to the Divine, noted down in her handwriting: “My Lord, what Thou has wanted me to do I have done. The gates of the Supramental have been thrown open and the Supramental Consciousness, Light and Force are flooding the earth.

“But as yet those who are around me are little aware of it – no radical change has taken place in their consciousness and it is only because they trust my word that they do not say that nothing has truly happened. In addition the exterior circumstances are still harder than they were and the difficulties seem to be cropping up more insurmountable than ever.

“Now that the Supramental is there – for of that I am absolutely certain even if I am the only one upon earth to be aware of it – is it that the mission of this form [her body or adhara] is ended and that another form is to take up the work in its place? I am putting the question to Thee and ask for an answer – a sign by which I shall know for certain that it is still my work and I must continue in spite of all the contradictions, of all the denials. Whatever is the sign I do not care, but it must be obvious.”²² And obvious it must have been, for she has stayed on.

Acceleration

“The movement has much accelerated; the march forward, the stages succeed each other much more rapidly … Things change quickly”,²³ said the Mother on 15 August 1956, Sri Aurobindo’s birthday anniversary. The transformative presence of the mighty Supermind made itself felt.

On 13 February 1957, the Mother talked about illness and its relation to the physical body. What came up in these “questions and answers”, twice a week at night, was always something happening in her own Yoga or in the inner life of the people around her – for all that was interconnected, it was one and the same process. This is an important observation for any reader of the Entretiens: their spiritual range went far beyond the apparently day-to-day topics asked about and commented upon in that Playground not far from the sea. It was after all the place where the Mother was physically present when she performed the cosmic act of opening the gates for the Supramental Consciousness, so that it could pervade the Earth.

“There is no illness, there is no [physical] disorder that is able to resist the discovery of this secret [the power of getting rid of the ego] and the putting of it into practice, not only in the higher parts of the being but also in the cells of the body. If one knows how to teach the cells the splendour that is within them, if one knows how to make them understand the reality that causes them to exist, that gives them being, then they too enter the total harmony, and the physical disorder causing the illness vanishes, as do all other disorders of the being.

“But for that you must be neither cowardly nor fearful. When the physical disorder takes hold of you, you must not be afraid. You must not run away from it, you must face it with courage, tranquility, confidence, with the certitude that the illness is a falsehood and that if you turn yourself entirely, in full confidence, with a complete tranquility towards the divine Grace, It will establish itself in the cells as It is established in the depths of the being, and the cells themselves will share in the eternal Truth and Joy.”²⁴ Apart from the light this quotation throws on the ever increasing role of the cells in the Yoga, it also is an indication that the Mother, from that time onwards, began being confronted with the health problems which inevitably accompany the physical transformation and which, to the ordinary eye, are common illnesses or “physical disorders”.

It certainly was no coincidence that, on 10 April 1957, she began to read to the Playground audience her own French translation of The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. (For Sri Aurobindo and the Mother there was no such thing as a coincidence: in the unity of Brahman all is connected with all.) In the following Entretiens, she returns time and again to the capacities of the body and the attitude required for its transformation.

On 29 May 1957 the Mother says: “[One] can open oneself to the supramental Force which is now active on earth and enter a zone of transition where the two influences meet and interpenetrate: where the consciousness is still mental and intellectual in its way of functioning, but sufficiently permeated by the supramental Power and Force to be able to be the instrument of a higher truth.” What she refers to here is unmistakably the Mind of Light.

Then she continues, and this sounds like a victory bulletin: “At present this state can be realised on earth by those who have prepared themselves to receive the supramental Force that is manifesting. And in this state – in this state of consciousness – the body can benefit from a condition that is much superior to the condition it was in before. It can be put into direct contact with the essential truth of its being to the extent that, spontaneously, at every moment, it knows instinctively or intuitively what is to be done and that it can do it. As I say, this state can now be realised by all those who take the trouble of preparing themselves to receive the supramental Force, to assimilate it and to obey it.

“Of course, there is a higher state than this, namely the state Sri Aurobindo speaks of as the ideal to be fulfilled: the divine life in a divine body. But he himself tells us that this will take time, it is an integral transformation that cannot be achieved in a moment. It will even take quite a long time … However, it is no longer only a possibility, it is no longer even only a promise for a far-off future: it is something that is being executed. Already one can not only foresee but feel the moment when the body will be able to repeat integrally the experience of the most spiritual part of the being, as the inner spirit has already done, and will itself be able to stand in its bodily consciousness before the supreme Reality, turn towards it integrally and say in all sincerity, in a total self-giving of all its cells: ‘To be what Thou art, exclusively, perfectly what Thou art, infinitely, eternally – and very simply.’ ”²⁵

A fortnight later, after having read from Sri Aurobindo’s second article in which he writes about the effects of fasting, she says (and it is remarkable how her tone grows ever more forceful and affirmative): “The only thing that is really effective is the change of consciousness, the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute, inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The concern of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, also of all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to worry about what the consequences will be. What has to be, in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation, will be, quite naturally, spontaneously, automatically, there is no need to worry about that. The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contact – constant, yes, constant – with the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable joy of the Supramental Consciousness.”²⁶

The Mother’s talk of 10 July 1957 stands out among her many talks (six volumes of Questions and Answers). Here she speaks without interruption in an almost hymnal tone about the new world that is born. This is not literature: in her words vibrate the triumphal accomplishment of the essential aim of the Yoga in which she was involved since the beginning of the century, and the joyful confirmation of the birth of a new world. In the first chapters of this book we have tried to make the importance of the coming and the work of the Avatar comprehensible. We have stressed that his/her intervention in the evolution means a decisive, unprecedented turn into a new, practically indescribable mode of being far beyond the one we are accustomed to: into a divine mode. On 29 February 1956, the realisation of this world was assured because the Consciousness that from that day onwards is giving it shape, touched the Earth and did not withdraw. In this talk now the Mother pronounces the confirmation of that event and its effects. The talk is worth being quoted in full, but we have to restrict ourselves to some extracts.

Having read part of the second chapter of The Supramental Manifestation upon the Earth, the Mother says: “It is rather difficult to free oneself from the old habits of being in order to be able to conceive freely of a new life, of a new world. And, naturally, the liberation begins on the highest planes of consciousness: it is easier for the mind or the higher intelligence to conceive of new things than for the vital, for instance, to feel the things in a new way. And it is still more difficult for the body to have a purely material conception of what a new world will be. Yet this perception must precede the material transformation; first one must feel very concretely the strangeness of the old things, their lack of actuality, if I may say so. One must have the feeling, even materially, that they are obsolete, that they belong to a past that has no longer a reason to exist.”²⁷ The Mother repeats here what she wrote in the passage from Some Experiences of the Body Cells quoted above: “A remarkable thing about the body consciousness is that it is unable to know a thing with precision and in full detail except when it is on the point of accomplishing it.” Besides, if ever there was a time when one felt “very concretely the strangeness of the old things” and “their lack of relevance”, if ever one had “the feeling, even a material impression, that they are outdated, that they belong to a past which no longer has any purpose”, it is now.

In the process of the creation of a new world, the elements of the old world and of the new one exist simultaneously. The old world partly continues to survive up to a certain point and mixes with the first elements of the new world. The new world, at the present moment, “is necessarily a totally new experience. One would have to go back to the time when there was a transition from the animal to the human creation to find a similar period, and at that time the consciousness was not sufficiently mentalised to be able to observe, to understand, to feel intelligently – the transition must have taken place in a wholly obscure way. Consequently, what I am speaking about is absolutely new, unique in the terrestrial creation, it is something that never had a precedent and that really is a perception, or a sensation, or an impression that is quite strange and new. (After a silence:) [There is now] a discrepancy [between] something that is overstaying its time and has nothing but quite a subordinate force of existence, and something totally new, but still so young, so imperceptible, almost weak, one might say: it has not yet the power to impose itself, to assert itself, to take the upper hand, to take the place of the other.”²⁸

Films were a regular feature in the Ashram Playground. On most occasions the Mother watched them together with the students and the adult Ashramites. Thus she had recently been watching a Bengali film, Rani Rasmani, about the rich widow who built the Kali temple in Dakshineshwar for Ramakrishna Paramhansa. This film, unexpectedly, had become the occasion of a powerful experience. (“For people who believe that some things are important and other things are not, that there are activities which are helpful to the yoga and others which are not, well, this is one more opportunity to prove that they are wrong. I have always noticed that it is the unexpected things that give you the most interesting experiences.”²⁹)

During the film she suddenly had “in a concrete, material way the impression that it [i.e. the traditional world dominated by the gods] was another world, a world that had ceased to be real, alive, an outdated world that had lost its reality, its truth, that had been exceeded, surpassed by something that had taken birth [the supramental world] and was only beginning to take shape, but whose life was so intense, so true, so sublime that all this [the old world of the gods] became false, unreal, worthless. Then I understood truly – for I understood not with the head, not with the intellect, but with the body (you understand what I mean?), I understood in the cells of the body – that a new world is born and is beginning to grow …”³⁰

“… I have announced to you all [after the descent of the Supermind] that this new world was born. But it has been so engulfed, as it were, in the old world that so far the difference has not been very perceptible to many people. Still, the action of the new forces has continued very regularly, very persistently, very steadily, and to a certain extent very effectively. And one of the manifestations of this action was my experience – truly so very new – of yesterday evening. And the result of all this I have noticed step by step in almost daily experiences …

“Firstly, it [the ideal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother] is more than a ‘new concept’ of spiritual life and the divine Reality. This concept was expressed by Sri Aurobindo, I have expressed it myself many a time, and it could be formulated more or less as follows: the old spirituality was an escape from life into the divine Reality, leaving the world where it was and as it was; our new vision, on the contrary, is a divinisation of life, a transformation of the material world into a divine world. This has been said, repeated, more or less understood; it is indeed the basic idea of what we want to do. But this could be a continuation of the old world as it was with [little more than] an improvement, a widening of it – and so long as it remains only a concept up there, in the realm of thought, it actually is hardly more than that. However, what has happened, what is really new, is that a new world is born, born, born. It is not the old one transforming itself, it is a new world that is born. And we are now right in the middle of the period of transition in which the two are intermingling – in which the old world still persists all-powerful and entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but the new one is slipping in, still very modest, unnoticed – unnoticed in so far that outwardly it does not disturb anything very much, for the time being, and that in the consciousness of most people it is even altogether imperceptible. And yet it is working, growing – until it will be strong enough to assert itself visibly …

“In the supramental creation there will no longer be any religions. The whole life will be the expression, the outflowering into forms of the divine Unity manifesting in the world. And there will no longer be what men now call gods. These great divine beings will themselves be able to participate in the new creation; but to do so, they will have to embody in what one could call ‘the supramental substance’ on earth. And if some of them choose to remain in their world as they are, if they decide not to manifest physically, their relation with the beings of a supramental world on earth will be a relation of friends, of collaborators, of equals, for the highest divine essence will be manifested in the beings of the new supramental world on earth. When the physical substance is supramentalised, to incarnate on earth will no longer be a cause of inferiority, quite the contrary. It will provide a plenitude which cannot be obtained in any other way.

“But all this is in the future. It is a future that has begun, but that will take some time to be realised integrally. Meanwhile we are in a very special situation, extremely special, without any precedent ever. We are now witnessing the birth of a new world that is still very young, very weak – not in its essence, but in its outer manifestation – not yet recognised, not even felt, denied by the majority. But it is there. It is there, making an effort to grow, absolutely sure of the result. But the road towards it is a completely new road never before traced out: nobody has gone there, nobody has done that! It is a beginning, a universal beginning. It is therefore an absolutely unexpected and unpredictable adventure.”³¹

Then, she addressed the following unforgettable call – still standing – to all people who are not stuck in their ways and whose soul is alive: “There are people who love adventure. It is to them that I direct this call, and I tell them: ‘I invite you to the great adventure.’ It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, risks and hazards it entails – a real adventure of which the goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced step by step in the unexplored. [It is] something that has never been in this present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If this interests you: all right, come aboard. What will happen to you tomorrow, I cannot say. You must leave behind all that has been foreseen, all that has been planned, all that has been built, and set out into the unknown – come what may! And that is that!”³²

Overman to Make Superman

What does that mean, a transformed, divinised body – a body of which the cells are not only fully conscious in the way we humans understand consciousness, but divinely conscious? It is a perfection “which now we can hardly conceive”, wrote Sri Aurobindo. The Mother sometimes tried to give an idea of the capacities of a supramental body to one or other of the Ashram youth. You want to grasp something out of your reach? Just wish to get it and you got it. “Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time … I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won’t need any material things to subsist on … It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent …”³³

And the Mother added: “The human body is closer to the animal than to the [supramental] body. It reacts like an animal, subsists like an animal. There is almost no difference between a man and an animal.”³⁴ And there lies the problem: in the enormous difference between our present state and the envisioned, godlike one. “… As the human body had to come into existence with its modification of the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious spirit”, writes Sri Aurobindo.

And he goes on: “While the capacity for taking up and sublimating all the activities of the earth-life capable of being spiritualised must be there, a transcendence of the original animality and the actions incurably tainted by it or at least some saving transformation of them, some spiritualising or psychicising of the consciousness and motives animating them and the shedding of whatever could not be transformed, even a change of what might be called its instrumental structure, its functioning and organisation, a complete and hitherto unprecedented control of these things must be the consequence or incidental to this total change. These things have been already to some extent illustrated in the lives of many who have become possessed of spiritual powers but as something exceptional and occasional, the casual or incomplete manifestation of an acquired capacity rather than the organisation of a new consciousness, a new life and a new nature.”³⁵

“This destiny of the body has rarely in the past been envisaged or else not for the body here upon earth; such forms would rather be imagined or visioned as the privilege of celestial beings and not possible as the physical residence of a soul still bound to terrestrial nature. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a spiritualised conscious body, cinmaya deha; there has been the conception of a radiant or luminous body, which might be the Vedic jotirmaya deha. A light has been seen by some radiating from the bodies of highly developed spiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura and there has been recorded an initial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so great a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been either conceptual only or rare and occasional and for the most part the body has not been regarded as possessed of spiritual possibility or capable of transformation … More ordinarily in the spiritual tradition the body has been regarded as an obstacle, incapable of spiritualisation or transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the dissolution of its individual beings in the Supreme … If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible.”³⁶

But there remains that huge gap to be bridged between the human and the supramental physicality. As long as bodies are formed by the method of procreation which is the sexual process, they will not be transformable into the refined adharas needed to embody a supramental being. The principal reason is that the sexual process inevitably involves an element of the Inconscient, the basis of gross Matter, and that the Inconscient is irreconcilable with Supermind. “… The necessity of a physical procreation”, writes Sri Aurobindo, “could only be avoided if new means of a supraphysical kind were evolved and made available. A development of this kind must necessarily belong to what is now considered as the sphere of the occult and the use of concealed powers of action or creation not known or possessed by the common mind of the race …

“If there is some reality in the phenomenon of materialisation and dematerialisation claimed to be possible by occultists³⁷ and evidenced by occurrences many of us have witnessed, a method of this kind would not be out of the range of possibility. For in the theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter, and to create this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible …

“A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation, without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature.”³⁸

All this shows that Sri Aurobindo was fully aware of the problem of the transformation of the animal-human body, and that he suggested a possible solution to it. We now again take up the thread of the Mother’s effort to solve precisely this problem. On 4 December 1957 she said: “The problem before us is: How will this higher form be created? … Will it be by a process to be imagined that this [present human] form will little by little transform itself in order to create a new one? Or will it be by some other means, still unknown to us, that the new form [of the supramental being] will appear in the world? What I mean is: will there be a continuity or will there be a sudden appearance of something new? Will there be a progressive transition between what we are now and what our inner spirit aspires to become, or will there be a gap? In other words, shall we be obliged to drop this present human form and wait for the appearance of a new form – an appearance the process of which we do not foresee and which will have no relation with what we are now? May we hope that this body, which is our present means of earthly manifestation, will have the possibility of transforming itself progressively into something that will be able to express a higher life, or will it be necessary to give up this form entirely to enter into another that does not yet exist upon the earth?”³⁹

At the time this Entretien was due to be published, the Mother added: “Why not both? Both will exist at the same time, the one does not exclude the other. The one will be transformed and be like a rough sketch of the other.” This reminds us of Sri Aurobindo’s “a first sketch of supermanhood”. “And the other, perfect, will appear when the first one will be existing. For both have their beauty and their reason of existence, therefore they will both be there. The mind always tries to make choices, decisions, but things do not work like that. Even all that we can imagine is much less than what will be. In truth, anyone who has an intense aspiration and an inner certitude will be called upon to realise it … Just as all sorts of possible intermediaries have been found between the animals and man, possible intermediaries that have not remained, so [now too] there will be all sorts of possible intermediaries: each individual will try in his own way, and all this together will help in preparing the future realisation.”⁴⁰

A few months earlier she had already said: “There are two things. There is the possibility of a purely supramental creation on the one hand, and [on the other hand] the possibility of a progressive transformation of a physical body into a supramental body, or rather of a human body into an overman body [surhumain]: In the latter case, it would be a progressive transformation which could take a certain number of years, probably a fairly considerable number, and which would produce a being that would no longer be a human being related to the animal, but that would neither be the supramental being formed fully free of any kind of animality, for the present origin [of man] is necessarily an animal origin. This means that a transmutation may take place, a transformation sufficient to liberate [the new being] from its [animal] origin, yet [that new being] would not be a supramental creation pure and simple. Sri Aurobindo said that there would be an intermediary race – a race or some individuals maybe, one does not know – an intermediary degree that would serve as a transition or that would become permanent according to the requisites and the necessities of the creation. But if one starts from a body generated in the way human bodies are at present, the result will never be the same as a being generated entirely according to the supramental method and process. It will perhaps be more of the kind of the overman [surhumain] in the sense that every animal likeness may disappear, but it will not be able to have the absolute perfection of a body that is purely supramental in its generation.”⁴¹

On 25 September 1957, the Mother read a passage from Chapter 6 of The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth; the last paragraph of this chapter goes as follows: “At its highest it [i.e. the new humanity] would be capable of passing into the Supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature.” Her comment, now wholly understandable and of obvious importance: “This was certainly what he expected of us, what he conceived of as the overman [surhomme], who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way, in other words: in no way part of the animal life any longer and freed from all animal needs.

“As we are, we have been procreated in the ordinary way, the animal way, and as a consequence something of this animal origin will remain, even if we transform ourselves. The supramental being as he [Sri Aurobindo] conceived it, is not at all formed in the ordinary animal way, but directly, through a process that for the time being still seems occult to us, but that is a direct manipulation of forces and substance in such a way that the body is a ‘materialisation’ and not a formation according to the ordinary animal principle.

“It is quite obvious that intermediary beings are necessary, and that it is these intermediary beings who must find the means to create beings of the Supermind. And there is no doubt that, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this, he was convinced that this is what we have to do.

“I think I know – that it is now certain that we shall realise what he expects of us. It is no longer a hope, it is a certainty. Only, the time needed for this realisation will be long or short according to our individual effort, our concentration, our goodwill, and the importance we give to this fact. To the inattentive observer things may seem to be very much what they were in the past, but to somebody who knows how to look and is not deceived by appearances things are going well. Let each one do his best and it may be that not many years will have to go by before the first visible results become apparent to all.

“It is for you to know whether this interests you more than anything else in the world. There is a moment when the body itself finds that there is nothing in the world so much worth living for as this, the transformation; that there is nothing which can be of an interest comparable with this passionate interest for the transformation. It is as though all the cells of the body were thirsting for that Light that wants to manifest. They cry out for it, they find an intense joy in it, and they are sure of the Victory.

“This is the aspiration that I am trying to share with you, and you will understand that everything else in life is dull, insipid, futile, worthless in comparison with that: the transformation in the Light.”⁴²

The Supramental Ship

The Mother knew from experience that the supramental world was already existing, that it was there, waiting to dock with the world we are living in, “a world that wants to incarnate in the world”.⁴³ Sri Aurobindo has often explained that within the Supermind itself there exist uncountable layers or worlds, hierarchically, each more concrete than our gross material world and with its own splendid beings – the “brilliances” – all greater than the gods. We may suppose that the supramental world ready to contact the material one was the nearest and therefore the lowest in that hierarchy, but supramental it was nonetheless. The problem therefore now consisted in the connection of that supramental world with the material world, for the kind and density of both substances is so different.⁴⁴ To put it metaphorically: the one is sun-stuff, the other is mud. (This will be a continuous point of concern for the Mother’s body in the coming years: the dosing of the transforming power, in order to prevent her material body from disintegrating.)

The Mother knew perfectly well what the supramental world was like; she had been there often and, as we will see, she even had a permanent presence or emanation there (as in any other world). On 5 February 1958, she gave a simile to make the children understand how the Divine works out his manifestation within the eternal plenitude of the Reality. “All is absolutely determined, for all is from all eternity, and yet the path traversed [by the Consciousness] has a freedom and unpredictability that is also absolute.” The movement of the Consciousness within itself she called “the great Journey”. “This is how there can exist simultaneously worlds that have no apparent relationship with each other, but that nevertheless coexist and are discovered gradually, which every time gives the impression of a new creation.

“Seeing things in this way, one can understand that simultaneously with this physical world as we know it, with all its imperfections, all its limitations, all its ignorance, there are one or several other worlds which exist in their own regions, and they are of such a different nature from ours here that to us they are practically non-existent, for we have no contact with them. But when the eternal great Journey moves from one world to another, by the very fact of this movement of the eternal Consciousness the link will necessarily be created, and the two worlds will gradually enter into contact with each other.

“Truly, this is what is actually happening now, and we can say with certitude that the supramental world already exists, but that the time has come for it to become the goal of the Journey of the supreme Consciousness, that little by little a conscious link will be formed between our world and that new one, and that they will have a new relation as a result of this new turn of the journey.” And the Mother added: “This explanation is as good as any other, and it is perhaps easier to understand for people who are not metaphysicians. As to me, I like it!”⁴⁵

When she said this, she had just had a mighty experience, on the 3rd of February, of which these reflexions were the result. Experiences she had by the dozen, not to say by thousands, for her whole life was one uninterrupted flow of experiences. Only, it so happened from time to time that an external or internal occasion, in herself or in “the family of the aspiration” she was guiding, caused her to reveal something to others. Compared to the whole of the experiences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Yoga, we know just about nothing – the incredible literature they have left us, the richest spiritual literature in history, is but crumbs of what they knew and have gone through. These crumbs, however, allow us like adventurous Tom Thumbs to retrace to a certain extent the path they have hewn in “the virgin forest”, and they contain the magic power, when assimilated, to trigger any experience needful for the personal progress on that path. The experience the Mother had on 3 February 1958 is a revealing one, but once again we have to summarise.

She starts by comparing the world of the animals with the one of the humans: “Between the beings of the supramental world and the humans almost the same separation exists as between humans and animals.” She had a long and thorough experience with animals, especially with cats.⁴⁶ “They do not understand, they do not see us as we are and they suffer because of us. We are a constant enigma to them. Only a very tiny part of their consciousness has a link with us. And it is the same thing for us when we try to look at the supramental world. Only when the link of consciousness is established shall we see it – and even then only the part of our being which has undergone transformation in this way will be able to see it as it is – otherwise the two worlds would remain apart like the animal and the human worlds.

“The experience I had on the 3rd of February is proof of this. Before that I had an individual subjective contact with the supramental world, whereas on the 3rd of February I moved in it concretely, as concretely as I once used to walk in Paris, in a world that exists in itself, outside all subjectivity … Here is the experience as I dictated it immediately afterwards.”

The Mother reads⁴⁷: “The supramental world exists permanently and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had the proof of this even today when my earth-consciousness went there and remained there consciously between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. Now I know that what is lacking for the two worlds to unite in a constant and conscious relation is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the supramental world as it is. This zone remains to be built, both in the individual consciousness and the objective world, and it is being built. When I used to speak of the new world which is being created, it was of this intermediary zone that I was speaking. And similarly, when I am on this side, that is, in the field of the physical consciousness, and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly penetrating matter, it is the construction of this zone which I see and in which I participate.

“I was on a huge ship, which was a symbolic representation of the place where the work is going on. This ship, as large as a city, is fully organised, and it had certainly already been functioning for some time, for its organisation was complete. It is the place where the people are trained who are destined for the supramental life. These people, or at least part of their being, had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the ship itself and everything on board was neither material, subtle-physical, vital or mental: [everything consisted of] a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest to the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a mixture of gold and red, forming a uniform substance of a luminous orange. Everything was like that. The light was like that, the people were like that – everything had that colour, although in various shades, which made it possible to distinguish things from each other. The general impression was of a world without shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order. Everything went in an orderly way and in silence. And at the same time one could see all the details of an education, of a training in all fields, through which the people on board were being prepared.

“This immense ship had just reached the shore of the supramental world and a first group of people who were destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were to go ashore … I was in charge of the whole enterprise from the beginning and throughout the proceedings. I had prepared all the groups myself. I stood on the ship at the head of the gangway, calling the groups one by one and sending them ashore …

“On the ship the nature of the objects was not as we know it on earth. For instance, the clothes were not made of fabric, and what looked like fabric was not manufactured: it formed part of the body, it was made of the same substance [as the body] which took different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it took place not by any artificial and external means but by an inner movement, a movement of the consciousness, which gave that substance its shape and appearance. Life created its own forms. There was one single substance in everything; it changed the quality of its vibration according to need and usage.”

Then the Mother describes herself as she was on that ship: “My upper part, particularly the head, was not much more than a silhouette of which the contents were white with an orange fringe. The more down towards the feet, the more the colour looked like that of the people on the ship, that is to say orange; the more upwards, the more it was translucent and white, with less red. The head was only a contour with a brilliant sun in it. Rays of light radiated from it, which were actions of the will.

“As for the people I saw on board the ship, I recognised them all. Some were from here, from the Ashram, others were from elsewhere, but I know them too. I saw everybody, but as I knew that I would not remember them all when coming back, I decided not to mention any names …

“When I came back I knew, simultaneously with the recollection of the experience, that the supramental world is permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link was needed for enabling the connection in the consciousness and in the substance, and it is this link which is now being established …”

When the Mother had finished reading the report of her experience, she commented upon it. “One thing – and I want to tell you this – seems to me at the moment to be the most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having gone there consciously, with the consciousness that normally is active here, that this difference has become apparent to me in what one might call its enormity): everything here, except what goes on within, very deep within, appeared to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of the ordinary life, of the physical life, are based on the truth … This artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth became so shockingly apparent to me that one wonders how, in so false a world, we can make any valid evaluations.

“But instead of becoming despondent, morose, rebellious, or dissatisfied, one rather has the feeling of what I was telling you at the end [of the text she read]: of something so madly ridiculous that for days I was seized with uncontrollable laughter when I looked at things and at people – an uncontrollable laughter, totally inexplicable except to myself, because of the ridicule of the situations.” Those who are turning the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother into a religion or a sect, in spite of their warnings, better keep this in mind.⁴⁸

And the Mother finished with the words: “When I invited you on a journey into the unknown, a journey of adventure, I did not know I was so close to the truth. And I can promise those who are ready to attempt the adventure that they will make very interesting discoveries.”⁴⁹

“This species may be considered a transitional species, for it is to be foreseen that it will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal method, and it is these beings – who will have a truly spiritual birth – who will constitute the elements of the new race, the supramental race. So we could call overmen [surhommes] those who, because of their origin, still belong to the old method of generation but who, because of their accomplishment, are in conscious and active contact with the new world of supramental realisation.

“It seems – it is even certain – that the very substance that will constitute this intermediate world, which is already being built, is richer, more powerful, more luminous, more durable, with certain new, subtler, more penetrating qualities, and a kind of innate capacity of universality. It is as if its degree of subtlety and refinement allowed the perception of vibrations in a much more extensive, if not altogether total way, and it abolishes the sensation of division one has with the old substance, the ordinary mental substance.” The Mother is here describing the new, more refined kind of Matter necessary for the embodiment of the new species.

In the coming years her descriptions of this new kind of Matter will become more and more detailed, but as early as in New Experiences of the Body Consciousness (1954) she had written: “In this intensity the aspiration grows formidable, and in answer to it Thy Presence becomes evident in the cells themselves, giving to the body the appearance of a multicoloured kaleidoscope in which innumerable luminous particles in constant motion are sovereignly reorganised by an invisible and all-powerful Hand.”⁵⁰

Essential to the understanding of the Mother’s Yoga during the rest of her life is also that her body gradually became more universalised as a consequence of the transformation of its cells. Her (and Sri Aurobindo’s) mind and vital had already been universalised, because supramentalised, in the Twenties. The problem of the transformation of the body consisted precisely in the fact that up to now its universalisation had proved impossible and, consequently, that its supramentalisation or divinisation too was impossible, for there is no divinity without universality. We have step by step gained a notion of the fantastic – but on the surface rather logical – transformation that was going on in the Mother.

With Lightning Speed

On 16 April 1958, the last paragraph of the passage the Mother read from The Life Divine went as follows: “If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at Supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in Nature.”⁵¹ The last sentence is one of the several pointers in The Life Divine to the possibility, if not the necessity, of an intermediary being between the human and the supramental species. The Mother’s comment is not only important, it is also a kind of summary of everything we have examined up to here. She is speaking, throughout, of the overman.

“Anyway, we have now arrived at a certitude, since there is already a beginning of realisation. We have the proof that in certain conditions the ordinary state of humanity can be exceeded and a new state of consciousness worked out which enables at the very least a conscious relation between mental and supramental man.

“It can be affirmed with certainty that there will be an intermediate specimen between the mental and the supramental being, a kind of overman [surhomme] who will still have the qualities and in part the nature of man, which means that he will still belong in his most external form to the human being [i.e. species] of animal origin, but that he will transform his consciousness sufficiently to belong, in his realisation and activity, to a new race, a race of overmen [surhommes]:⁵²

“This species may be considered a transitional species, for it is to be foreseen that it will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal method, and it is these beings – who will have a truly spiritual birth – who will constitute the elements of the new race, the supramental race. So we could call overmen [surhommes] those who, because of their origin, still belong to the old method of generation but who, because of their accomplishment, are in conscious and active contact with the new world of supramental realisation.

The Entretien continues: “There is a subtlety of vibration which renders global, universal perception spontaneous and natural. The sense of division, of separation, vanishes quite naturally and spontaneously with [the presence of] this substance. And this substance is at present almost universally spread out in the atmosphere of the earth …

“One may conclude from this that the moment one body, of course formed according to the old animal method, is capable of living this consciousness naturally and spontaneously, without any effort, without going out of itself, it proves that it is not an exceptional, unique case, but that it simply is the forerunner of a realisation which, even if it is not general, can at least be shared by a certain number of individuals who, moreover, as soon as they share [that realisation], will lose the feeling of being separate individuals and become a living collectivity.

“This new realisation is proceeding with what one might call lightning speed, for if we consider time in the usual way, only two years have passed – a little more than two years – from the moment the supramental substance penetrated into the earth-atmosphere [on 29 February 1956] till the moment that this change in the quality of the earth-atmosphere took place [i.e. now]:”⁵³