On The Mother

CHAPTER 45

A New World is Born

I

Time and again the Mother had reiterated by word, gesture, silence and action that Sri Aurobindo's Yoga was not for half-hearted or bargaining people. The consecration needed was akin to that of the poor woman of the woods who offered to a beggar - who was really Shiva in disguise - her only belonging: a half-eaten mango; and yet she was "filled with an inner glory", for she had made a perfect and absolute gift of all she was and had. When people came to the Mother asking for a restful life, she told them: "Not here. This is not a place for rest because you have worked hard, this is a place for working even harder than before."¹ Growing old doesn't mean cessation from work and progress; one can grow in ways other than the physical - and there is no end to the possibilities of progress and the pursuit of excellence and perfection.

On 18 January 1956, a week after the above observation was made, when a question was put to the Mother whether the Divine was manifest in one chosen individual alone or in several at the same time, she answered that it was all done on a hierarchic principle:

One can understand nothing of the spiritual life if one does not understand the true hierarchy.

...each element which is truly in its place has a total and perfect relation with the Divine - in its place. And yet, on the whole, there is a hierarchy which too is quite absolute.

And yet what we see is only an imperfect hierarchy, with gaps and distortions that create confusion. For the perfect hierarchy we may have to wait till the supramental transformation:

...the world will be ready for a perfect, spontaneous, essentially true hierarchical manifestation - and without any kind of coercion - where everyone will become aware of his own perfection.²

II

Doing Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's Yoga means aspiring for and achieving the transformation of the human into the Divine. But exactly how? A divine life means, firstly, the fulfilment of man's urge to individual perfection; and secondly, the harmonisation of perfected individuals with one another, and the evolution of a perfect collective life. "Perfect the individual, perfect the race"!

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Between the twin poles of individual perfection and hierarchic perfection will revolve the many-splendoured Divine Life.

On 25 January, the Mother showed a champak flower (named by her "Psychological Perfection") and counted its five petals signifying the five perfections. When giving the flower to a particular sadhak, the Mother may charge it with the specific qualities (or perfections) that he particularly needs. But although there is thus no rigidity about the naming of the perfections, it is nevertheless desirable to have a consensus. Accordingly, the Mother reviews the possibilities and priorities, and concludes that surrender is the basic or cardinal perfection, for it is only this that makes the flower bloom:

...we put surrender first... to do the integral yoga one must first resolve - to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way, But after that one must have... the five psychological perfections...

Sincerity or Transparency

Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally)

Devotion or Gratitude

Courage or Aspiration

Endurance or Perseverance.³

Months later, on 30 May, the Mother shows another flower, the Golden Champak (Michelia champaka), and names it "Supramentalised Psychological Perfection". It has three rows, in gradations of four petals; and what do they signify? The Mother explains, as if tentatively:

Well, if one indeed wants to see in the forms of Nature a symbolic expression, one can see a centre which is the supreme Truth, and a triple manifestation - (because four indicates manifestation) - in three superimposed worlds; the outermost... that is a physical world, then a vital world and a mental world, and then at the centre, the supramental Truth⁴

On a subsequent occasion, when the Mother gave this flower, the Golden Champak, to a sadhak, he wanted to know what precisely "Supramentalised Psychological Perfection" was - and her answer was the single word "smile" spoken with her heavenly smile. "Keep smiling," the Mother had written on 28 May 1954, "it is a confidence born from the psychic. A smile expresses the faith that nothing can stand against the Divine." Or, as one might say, Raso vai sah - the Delight of Existence exemplified by a beautiful smile!

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III

For a few weeks, the conversations revolve round key sentences from The Synthesis of Yoga, and on 22 February the Mother is asked what Sri Aurobindo means by saying that, in the Gita, "Not the mind's control of vital impulse is its rule, but the strong immobility of an immortal spirit." Strong immobility: what can it mean? The Mother clarifies:

What the Gita wants is that the spirit should be conscious of its immortality and thus have a strong immobility.

...it is not an immobility of inertia or impotence; it is a strong immobility which is a basis for action.

And she adds that a mere explanation cannot convincingly explain; one needs to have the experience as well. When somebody attacks or insults you, there are two possible reactions. Either the vibrations of anger may be met by more anger on your side, and ill-will by more ill-will, though this will only make you feel "quite weak and powerless". The other way would be to preserve "a complete immobility which refuses to receive these vibrations", which will give you an accession of strength:

...if you can remain absolutely immobile within yourself, everywhere, this has an almost immediate effect upon the other person. ...

There is a tremendous power in immobility: mental immobility, sensorial immobility, physical immobility. If you can remain like a wall, absolutely motionless, everything the other person sends you will immediately fall back upon him. And it has an immediate action. It can stop the arm of the assassin, you understand, it has that strength. Only, one must not just appear to be immobile and yet be boiling inside! That's not what I mean. I mean an integral immobility.⁵

IV

February 1956 was to be a month of destiny for the Ashram - and indeed for the world. From 20th to 23rd, an exhibition of the Mother's laces and fans was organised. These were made of all materials, from palm leaf to ivory or lace, sandalwood and embroidered satin. Most of them had been offered to the Mother by her disciples, and when exhibited together they made a mosaic of art as well as an index of the love and devotion she inspired in her devotees and admirers. Over a period of years the Mother had besides accumulated a few hundred saris that had likewise been offered to her at various times, and worn by her but once or twice. The Mother now decided to distribute these with her blessings to the sadhikas of the Ashram.

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From 21 February 1956, her seventy-eighth birthday, there was a gradual - but hardly perceptible - building up of ardour and expectancy. In fact, the four Darshan days of the year were, as a rule, such focal points of aspiration and fulfilment. There were the visitors, and there were the exhibitions and other special events in the University Centre; and it was on these four days that the quarterly issues of the Bulletin and the Advent (and some other Ashram journals too) came out, carrying their divers loads of philosophical comment and spiritual knowledge, news and photographs. They were, in short, festival days in the Ashram, and the festival spirit would begin a week before and overflow into the week following the Darshan. It was not surprising that the usual Darshan rhythm was in full swing in February 1956 also.

On 29 February, something happened, of equal importance to (or, perhaps, of even greater significance than) what happened on 24 November 1926. On 22 February, the Mother had discoursed on the Gita's notion of "the strong immobility of an immortal spirit", and on the 29th a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga was read out, the key sentence being:

The law of sacrifice.... This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to the Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance.⁶

The Mother explains that sacrifice is self-giving, and a sacrifice in one direction brings about another in the opposite direction. As in the material world, in the spiritual world as well, action and reaction are equal and opposite. The Divine's descent into Matter is the provocation or antecedent to Matter's ascent into the Divine, and this is possible because of the ultimate or quintessential oneness of Spirit and Matter in the universe. "All are linked together by a secret Oneness," says Sri Aurobindo, and the Mother is at pains to underline this mystic truth at the heart of Reality:

You think you are separate from one another, but it is the same single Substance which is in you all, despite differences in appearance; and a vibration in one centre awakens a vibration in another.

This innate truth of oneness is "a divine action and a divine fact", but whether one is aware of it or not depends on one's consciousness. But the fact exists, whether you are conscious of it or not. For evolution, she concluded, may be regarded as the mutual sacrifice of the Divine and Matter,

...at the very heart of the inconscient there is the divine Consciousness, you aspire, and necessarily... automatically, mechanically, the sacrifice is made. And this is why when one says, "It is not you who aspire, it is the Divine, it is not you who make progress, it is the Divine, it is not you who

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are conscious, it is the Divine" - these are not mere words, it is a fact. » And it is simply your ignorance and your unconsciousness which prevent you from realising it.⁷

To cut oneself off from the divine consciousness is verily to become quite unconscious; and this is the normal plight of human beings. Be conscious -is one of the Mother's elemental exhortations. For if one's consciousness remains distorted and depraved, or is sunk in the drowse of inconscience, one will not be able to scent and recognise and greet the Truth even when one actually sees it.

During the brief meditation that followed the talk something happened, something of portentous implication for the future of Man; and yet, to the Mother's great surprise, hardly any in the congregation of children and elders, pupils and sadhaks, hardly any one was conscious that anything out of the ordinary had happened. It was like the end of any other Wednesday evening routine programme, and the people were completely insensitive to the blazing liberating light that - as the Mother could see - was flooding the place. Like the blind viewing the aurora borealis; or the deaf listening to a symphony!

V

What happened during that session of eternal time when the Mother led the meditation in the Playground was the sudden downpour of the Light and Force and Consciousness of the Supermind. It was an event beyond all mental categories of understanding or description.

In the opening decades of the century, the Mother in Paris and Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry had in their different ways and at about the same time inferred the existence and powers of a transformative Consciousness, and since their meeting on 29 March 1914, they had together - two bodies but one consciousness - aspired and hoped and striven to bring down what Sri Aurobindo called the Supermind, and hasten its manifestation on the earth. The Arya volumes (1914-21) were full of the Supermind; the Siddhi Day (24 November 1926) or the day of the descent of the Overmind Consciousness in the physical was a preparation for the ultimate descent of the Supermind too to inhabit the earth; Sri Aurobindo's correspondence with his disciples in the thirties was lit up with frequent references to the near possibility of the supramental manifestation; and on 5 December 1950, the Mind of Light, the physical mind receiving the Supramental Light, was realised in the Mother. All through, Savitri, imaging the dynamic and conquering power of the Supermind in the personality of the heroine was abroad, emanating vast circles of a prophetic illumination and force. But the crucial breakthrough hadn't

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happened yet. The Supermind itself hadn't come down to the earth. for a general manifestation.

On 31 December 1954, the Mother had foreseen that 1955 would be a difficult year, and the difficulty had been expected to spread even over 14 months, marked by inner and outer resistance to the Realisation in progress. The New Year message for 1955 had given the assurance that the Divine Will must surely prevail, whatever the impediments.

The fourteen months of resistance came to an end on 29 February 1956. Had the time for victory arrived indeed? But the decisive action had to be taken by one who had come into the world as a human being for accomplishing precisely this task. What actually happened had best be given as the Mother recorded it the same night, though it was not to be made public for another four years. Explaining the circumstances under which she made the record, the Mother told K. D. Sethna on his birthday on 25 November 1956:

The whole thing is not so much a vision or an experience as something done by me. I went up into the Supermind and did what was to be done. There was no need for any verbal formulation as far as I was concerned, but in order to put it into words for others 1 wrote the thing down. Always, in writing, a realisation, a state of consciousness, gets somewhat limited: the very act of expression narrows the reality to some extent.⁸

And this is the record itself, first made on 29 February 1956, but made public only on 29 February 1960:

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine.

As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that "the time has come", and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.

Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.⁹

The words the time has come, she told Sethna, "were heard by me in English and not in French. It was as if Sri Aurobindo had spoken them."¹⁰ The barred door had been smashed, the Light had streamed in, the darkness had fled - and the supramental dispensation had begun at last. As she later told Dr. Indra Sen:

The Light kept pouring for twenty minutes. Rather, I watched it for twenty minutes in meditation and then stopped the meditation.... I had to make a special effort to return into my external individual self and it was with great difficulty that I could utter a word.¹¹

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But the people at the Playground were as it were sleeping still on the lap of the inconscience, as though it was not Day, as though nothing had happened at all! As she told Sethna:

When I came down from the Supermind after that flood of light had swept all over the universe, I thought that since the outpour was so stupendous everybody who had been sitting before me... would be lying flat. But opening my eyes I saw everyone still sitting up quietly: they seemed perfectly unconscious of what had happened!

As the Mother had anticipated in her New Year message, the great victory of 29 February hardly made any noise; the long awaited Supramental manifestation was certainly not proclaimed "by beat of drum". The event passed unnoticed, and according to the Mother scarcely five people - two in the Ashram and three outside - had any unusual experience at the time: "Not that they knew it was the Supramental Manifestation." They nevertheless felt that something of supreme relevance to the Sadhana of Supramental Yoga had occurred. Syed Mehdi Imam has recalled his ineffable experience at the time and how he had also compared notes with the Mother herself. According to his testimony, he had been invaded and possessed in his room in Golconde on the golden day some hours after he had returned to it from the Balcony darshan in the morning:

I was alone in the room... I was in unconscious trance.... But nearing 1 p.m., I heard a rustle in the room. I became conscious of six dark forms looking at me with intensity to disturb the experience.... Thereupon in trance I turned towards the upper air which was radiant. It was brighter than the blaze of the Sun. In the radiancy were twelve illuminated forms. They were angels of the light guarding the supramental experience.... Twelve luminous ministers of the light swooped upon the asuric forces which suddenly disappeared. I awoke with a shock....¹²

In the afternoon he met the Mother and told her about his experience, and she assured him of its authenticity.

VI

Exactly a month later, on 29 March, the Mother distributed at the time of Pranam a print of "The Golden Purusha", a painting by Krishnalal, with the familiar quotation from her prayer of 25 September 1914:

The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:

A new Light shall break upon the earth.

A new world shall be born,

And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.¹³

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A little later, when some of the sadhaks met her upstairs, she took back the message and made a few alterations before returning it:

Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute:

A new light breaks upon the earth,

A new world is born.

The things that were promised are fulfilled.¹⁴

The first was written by the Mother about six months after her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo on 29 March 1914. The plain sense was that the supramental change had been decreed by the Divine. The rest was for future unfoldment and realisation. Forty-two years to a day after her first meeting, on 29 March 1956, the Divine's decree had been declared fulfilled, the manifestation had taken place, and the Mother became the executrix of the details of the new dispensation. The promised bud of the future - "a new world" - had already burst forth from the stem of past aspiration and tapasya, and was now in its white radiance of progressive efflorescence.

A few days later, on 5 April, the Mother told Sethna explaining that, what had come down was the supramental Light, Force and Consciousness and not the Ananda; and since the event concerned the whole universe, and not individuals, it would be appropriate to call the phenomenon a manifestation rather than a descent. A descent is in relation to the framework of an individual's existence in which various things are below and above - the mind centre, the heart-centre etc. and the "overhead" planes.

Doubtless there was some rumour-mongering and not a little bemused speculation in the Ashram,' for the changes made by the Mother by hand in the printed message of 29 March were meant to be kept a secret. On 24 April, however, she permitted the altered message to be published in the Bulletin, along with this explicit announcement:

The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality.

It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.¹⁵

Naturally enough, this came up for discussion at the weekly evening meeting in the Playground on 2 May. The Darshan on 24 April had attracted nearly two thousand visitors, and in the Playground talk on 25 April, the Mother made a distinction between approaching the Divine for the satisfaction of one's egoistic desires, and making a total surrender to Him. The latter is the wiser way. On 2 May,¹⁶ one of the questions asked was, well, since the supramental manifestation was "a living fact, a reality",

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where was the new race? The Mother felt provoked and returned this answer:

The new race? Wait for something like... a few thousand years and you will see it!

When the mind descended upon earth, between the time the mind manifested in the earth-atmosphere and the time the first man appeared, nearly a million years elapsed. Now it will go faster.... But faster means still thousands of years probably.

But aside from the new race (which is a matter really for the far future), an increasing number of people of the present human race, especially those who are already conditioned by their aspiration and tapasya for such a perception, can grow aware of the Supermind now already active in the earth atmosphere. If all and sundry want to profit by the new manifestation, by the new Light and Force at work, as if the supramental is a sort of gold-rush or stock-exchange boom, that simply cannot be: "We are not a commercial establishment, we have said we didn't do business."

The question is asked again: Of what relevance is the new manifestation to man if he cannot change himself into the superman? The Mother answers that, while the real work will be done by the new Force, man can certainly collaborate, he can "lend himself to the process, with goodwill, with aspiration, and help as best he can".

The Mother now asks a counter-question: How was it that her congregation of 29 February 1956 - a congregation that included many seasoned sadhaks - was so insensitive to this new Force as not to recognise and feel it when it suddenly poured down in a flood? They had been sincere in their aspiration for thirty years more or less, and they had been apparently in a constant state of expectancy and readiness; in short, they were the best audience imaginable. And yet —

How is it that the inner preparation was so... incomplete, that when the Vibration came they did not immediately feel it with the impact of identity? ...

...how is it, then, that so many hundreds of people, not to speak of the small handful of those who truly wanted nothing but that, thought of nothing but that, had staked their whole life on that, how is it that they did not feel anything? What can this mean?

The Mother concedes that a few - just a few - had the inner contact, and recognised the new Force and said, "Ah! here it is, it has come"; but as regards the rest, the vast majority, that "little inner contact" — the psychic antennae? — had been wanting. Affirming that "it is only like that knows like" the Mother makes an enlightening distinction between the individual ascent and descent of consciousness, and the general coming down or manifestation of the Consciousness:

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...certain individuals, who are the pioneers, the vanguard, through inner effort and inner progress enter into communication with the new Force which is to manifest and receive it into themselves....

What I call a "descent" is this: first the consciousness rises in an ascent, you catch the Thing up there, and come down with it. That is an individual event.

When this individual event has happened in a way that proves sufficient to create a possibility of a general kind, it is no longer a "descent", it is a "manifestation". ...

...when the gates are open and the flood comes in, you can't call it a descent. It is a Force which is spreading out....

A few had laboured individually and won individual victories to make a collective realisation possible. But the many do not get the realisation as a matter of course; it is not a free-for-all party where anyone can quaff for the asking "a glass of syrup". The right preparation - and a pretty arduous one - is needed too!

VII

Four months later, on 3 October, the Mother was asked as to how the presence of the Supermind would change the tenor of our problems. The Mother answered that it was a question of adding new dimensions to one's understanding:

If you take the material world and go down to the most minute element... absolutely invisible things, innumerable things - if you take this element as the basis... if you imagine a Consciousness or Will playing with all these elements at making all the possible combinations without ever repeating a single one... the number of combinations would be so immense that no limit could be assigned to it.

And then, with the induction of a new element so puissant as the Supermind, startling new developments must surely occur:

Every time a new element is introduced in the total set of possible combinations, it causes what may be called a tearing of its limits... all past limits disappear and new possibilities come in and multiply infinitely the possibilities of old....

Well, it is from this change... which quite certainly is going to bring about a kind of chaos in the perceptions, that a new knowledge will emerge.¹⁷

The Mother refers also to the great number of "child prodigies" of whom she has heard, and "there are obviously some kind of new types which

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seem astonishing to the ordinary human consciousness". Are the "child prodigies" the result of the influence and work of Sri Aurobindo - or of atom bombs? The Mother mentions in particular Minou Drouet, who at the age of eight had produced a remarkable book Arbre mon ami, containing some fine sentences belying the age of the author.

Returning on 10 October to the speculation regarding the probable first appearance of the new race, the Mother makes a significant distinction between an intermediate race evolving out of the present human race and the outright new race that may take a few centuries to arrive upon the terrestrial scene. But the time for the former is even now:

...the time has come when some beings among the élite of humanity, who fulfill the conditions necessary for spiritualisation, will be able to transform their bodies with the help of the supramental Force, Consciousness and Light, so as no longer to be animal-men but become supermen.¹⁸

As for the manner in which this is to be done, it is explained in Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga and especially in The Supramental Manifestation. Even so, it is unwise to be dogmatic about the paths or the techniques. For one thing, "it is not always the wisest who goes fastest" and more truly still, "the Grace is upon all". Grace is like the Hound of Heaven, who is always after us; it is we who do the running away from it. But if we will follow the lead of Grace, or at least let it take us in hand, we cannot possibly miss our goal.

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