My Pilgrimage to the Spirit

March 5, 1932

Q. What should be the true attitude of one who wants to be helpful to you, or what exact conditions you want us to fulfil to create here the Supramental possibility?

A. 1) Get the psychic being in front and keep it there putting its power on the mind, vital and physical—so that it shall communicate to them its force of simple-minded aspiration, trust, faith, surrender, direct and immediate detection of whatever is wrong in them and turned towards ego and error, away from Light and Truth.

2) Eliminate egoism in all its forms and from every movement of the consciousness.

3) Develop the cosmic consciousness—let the egocentric outlook disappear in wideness, impersonality, the sense of the Cosmic Divine, the perception of the universal forces, the realization and understanding of the cosmic manifestation, the play.

4) Find in place of ego the true being—a portion of the Divine issued from the World-Mother and an instrument of the manifestation. This sense of being the portion of the Divine and an instrument should be free from all pride, sense of claim of ego or assertion of superiority, demand or desire. For if these elements are there, then it is not the true thing.

5) Most, even in doing Yoga, live in mind, vital, physical, lit up occasionally or to some extent by the higher mind and by the illumined mind; but to prepare for the Supramental change it is necessary (as soon as, personally the time has come) to open up to the intuitive and the overmind, so that these may make the Adhar ready for the Supramental change. Allow the consciousness quietly to develop and widen, and the knowledge of these things will progressively come.

6) Calm, discrimination, detachment (but not indifference) are all very important; for their opposites impede very much the transforming action. Intensity of aspiration should be there, but along with these—no hurry, no inertia,—neither rajasic over-eagerness nor tamasic discouragement—a steady and persistent but quiet call and working. No snatching or clutching at realization, but allowing realization to come from within and above, and observing accurately its field, its nature, its limit.

7) Let the power of the Mother work in you but be careful to avoid mixture or substitution in its place of either a magnified ego-working or a force of Ignorance presenting itself as Truth. Prepare especially for the elimination of all obscurity and unconsciousness in the nature.

These are the main conditions of preparation for the Supramental change, but none of them is easy, and they must be complete before the Adhar can be said to be ready. If the true attitude (psychic, unegoistic, open only to the Divine Force) can be established, then the process can go on much more quickly. To take and keep the true attitude, to further the change in oneself, is the help that can be given, the one thing needed to assist the general change.

Sri Aurobindo