The Spirit of Auroville

On 17.7.1972 the Mother gave names to the four pillars of the Matrimandir as follows:

Mahakali — North
Maheshwari — South
Mahalaksmi — East
Mahasaraswa — West

Each pillar represents one of the four powers of the Supreme Mother, Aditi.

Sri Aurobindo has written in his book The Mother:

Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this Universe and in her dealing with the terrestrial play.

(Mahakali — North)

Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.

(Maheshwari — South)

One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.

(Mahalakshmi — East)

A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.

(Mahasaraswati — West)

The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.

Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world..."

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother: The Mother - VI

Sri Aurobindo has also stated:

The four Powers of the Mother are four of her outstanding Personalities, portions and embodiments of her divinity through whom she acts on her creatures, orders and harmonises her creations in the worlds and directs the working out of her thousand forces. For the Mother is one but she comes before us with differing aspects; many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the goddess forms in whom she consents to be manifest to her creatures.

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother: The Mother - VI

Further Sri Aurobindo clarified in Vol. 25, p. 63:

These four Powers are the Mother's cosmic Godheads, permanent in the world-play; they stand among the greater cosmic Godheads to whom allusion is made when it is said that the Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world `stands there (in the Overmind plane) above the Gods'.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

Sri Aurobindo has also revealed about Mahashakti and Her Emanations:

In a sense the four Powers of the Mother may be called, because of their origin, her Emanations, just as the Gods may be called Emanations of the Divine, but they have a more permanent and fixed character; they are at once the Mother, the Mahashakti, and she can always either manifest through them as separate beings or draw them together as her own various Personalities and hold them in herself, sometimes kept back, sometimes at play, according to her will. In the supramental plane they are always in her and do not act independently but as intimate portions of the supramental Mahashakti and in close union and harmony with each other.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

Here once again Sri Aurobindo explains about the Emanations:

An Emanation of the Mother is something of her consciousness and power put forth from her which, so long as it is in play, is held in close connection with her and, when its play is no longer required, is withdrawn back into its source, but can always be put out and brought into play once more. But also the detaining thread of connection can be severed or loosened and that which came forth as an emanation can proceed on its way as an independent divine being with its own play in the world. All the Gods can put forth such emanations from their being, identical with them in essence of consciousness and power though not commensurate. In a certain sense the Universe itself can be said to be an emanation from the Supreme. In the consciousness of the Sadhak an emanation of the Mother will ordinarily wear the appearance, form and characteristics with which he is familiar.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

Further Sri Aurobindo discloses in Vol. 25, pp. 62, 64:

...Shaktis, manifestations of different powers of the Supreme Consciousness and Force, the Divine Mother; by which she rules or acts in the universe. And they are at the same time divine personalities; for each is a being who manifests different qualities and personal consciousness forms of the Godhead....

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

I came across the following passage in SABCL Vol. 21, pp. 752-3:

There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit's omnipotence. All knowledge, all strengths, all triumph and victory, all skill and works are in her hands and they are full of the treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis. She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination; she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of Tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the attahasya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance: she is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of the supreme love and delight, and her gifts are the spirit's grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing: she is Mahasaraswati, the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogah karmasu kaus'alam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies. And in all her powers and forms she carries with her the supreme sense of the masteries of the eternal Ishwari, a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument, oneness, a participating sympathy, a free identity, with all energies in all beings and therefore a spontaneous and fruitful harmony with all the divine will in the universe.

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - II: Faith and Shakti