On The Mother

CHAPTER 57

Superman Consciousness

I

The Mother's New Year message for 1969 ("No words - acts ") had doubtless been decided upon in the last weeks of the previous year. During the small hours of the night preceding the dawn on 1 January, however, she had the experience of the descent of a new power of consciousness:

In the night it came slowly and on waking up this morning, there was as though a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was so light. The body felt: "Well, it is truly, truly new." A golden light, transparent and... benevolent. "Benevolent" in the sense of a certainty - a harmonious certainty.

She came to know later that a couple of hours after her own experience, a few others too had felt this distinct invasion of a new consciousness which had spread out wide and far to find people who were readily receptive to it.

It was something very material... luminous, with a golden light... very strong, very powerful... its character was a smiling benevolence, a peaceful delight.... It lasted, for at least three hours.... It has not departed.... ...

It gave the impression of a personal divinity who comes to help....

Material, external, concrete, "it did not pass through an inner being, through the psychic being, it came directly upon the body"! On 8 January she said that it was the descent of the superman consciousness, the intermediary between man and the supramental being. On the 18th, she described it as "a mighty power"; and in those touched by it there would enter "a precision and a certitude" in their way of thinking. And on 15 February, she gave more details:

This atmosphere, this consciousness is very active, and active as a mentor. ... I understood absolutely what it was to have the divine consciousness in the body... it went about from one body to another, altogether free and independent, knowing the limitations and possibilities of each body - absolutely wonderful....

And then the cells themselves told of their effort to be transformed, and there was a Calm there.....

But that state, which lasted for several hours, nothing similar to that happiness has this body ever felt during the ninety-one years it has been here upon earth: freedom, absolute power and no limits....

The special character of this new consciousness is: no half measures, no approximations.... It is Yes or No....

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Truly it was a Grace, a tremendous Power doubled with Compassion; if one could be attentive to it, it was blissfulness. It was indeed the source of beatitude.¹

The New Year message certainly gained in significance when read with the declaration of the descent of the superman consciousness. Several of her New Year messages had indicated her preference for action rather than words. Her advice in 1950 was: "Don't speak. Act. Don't announce. Realise." And in 1954: "Never boast about anything, let your acts speak for you." For 1956 which was to be the year of the supramental manifestation, "The greatest victories are the least noisy. The manifestation of a new world is not proclaimed by beat of drum." In 1967, when "the transforming evolution of the world" had taken "a hastened and intensified movement", ² the choice for humanity was imperative: "Truth or the abyss." In 1968 there was the exhortation to remain young, for the march towards Truth; and the latest was but a diamond-edged crystallisation of the earlier messages.

The Mother knew of course that the Word too was power, but cautioned against the misuse, abuse and waste of words. Thought, word and deed must be a triune concert of harmony sustained by the great bass note of Truth. About her own words she said:

Do not take my words for a teaching. Always they are a force in action, uttered with a definite purpose, and they lose their true power when separated from that purpose.³

II

For her ninety-first birthday (21 February 1969) the Mother gave what appeared to be an enigmatic message. It was written long ago, after a vision she probably had at the Playground:

It is only immutable peace that can make possible eternity of existence.

Talking about it the next day she said, "Oh! words are worth nothing... all mental expression seems artificial." Words and phrases now appeared to her like two-dimensional pictures, lacking depth or roundness. The moment she put ideas or feeling into words, they looked "like a caricature". Nonetheless, when this message was read out to her it brought back her experience. The beginning of creation was but an inconscient symbol of the Eternity, and Evolution the great curve joining that inert immobility of the Inconscient to the conscient immobility and stability of the Origin or the immutable peace "containing all movements". Though "immutable" seemed to be its closest description, the peace was not 'eternal' in the sense of immobility. It was "an acme of movement... harmonious and

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general" corresponding to the scientific discovery off a certain " or intensity of movement in the apparent immobility or inertia of Matter.⁴

The Mother had sent on 12 February this forthright message to the Mother's School at the Delhi Branch of Sri Aurobindo Ashram: "Be more eager for truth than for success."⁵ When these messages were read together, they simply seemed to articulate an integral call to action. The time for words was over, the time for works had come. And while engaging in works, people should be more eager for Truth (which was a godhead of the soul) than for success which was apt to be vitiated by the weights and measures of the market place. But for such purposive and fruitful action to be possible, one had to establish an immutable inner calm, equality and peace. If we could thus take care of the inner reservoir, the flow of outer action would be clear and unimpeded. Then our 'acts' would be touched with the quality of the timeless, and they would partake more and more of the self-sufficing splendour of the sovereign consciousness.

III

On 17 May, when the question was put to her whether 'individuality' would get dissolved after 'death', the Mother answered that, for her, individuality was separate action only in appearance, but "at bottom, in essence always one". There was only one Being, one Consciousness. Her body had of late passed through all the possible states of consciousness, from the sole reality of the body, of Matter at one end to liberation at the other. But the general condition was one of total identification with the Supreme Consciousness: "What Thou wiliest, Lord, what Thou willest". On 24 May, when the disciple remarked that her "body was "a symbol of the whole earth", the Mother said, "It looks like that." Once something touched her, or happened to her body, there were repercussions in the whole world. There was certainly the question of 'misery' in the world, but the way of the "Buddha and of all of them [who] go to get dissolved in the Lord" was an error; the only solution, she said on the 28th, was "the direct contact of the physical with the Supreme". The Mother's own body had "taken its stand", and it was time that others did so too.

On 31 May, the Mother confided to Satprem that she had spent more than three hours with Sri Aurobindo on the night of the 29th, showing him Auroville as it was to be; and feeling interested, he had laid down the broad lines of the city's future development.

When the disciple referred to the depressing actual conditions upon the earth, she remarked that the remedial organisation was already formed in the subtle physical, and was waiting to come down; in other words, the actuality of darkness and the potentiality of Light were there together. Now the disciple mentioned Mao Tse-tung's dictum ''Power springs from the

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barrel of a gun" and Frantz Fanon's cult of violence in his The Wretched of the Earth, and the Mother reacted thus:

Oh! That explains all the visions I have had.... I was blaming my body... [that] it has an unfortunate atavism: always horrible, horrible imaginations _ and they were not imaginations, it was conscious of what was happening...

For three days past, her body had wept in front of the horror of it all:: "Oh! why does this world exist?" The answer had come at once, and it was "as though a vastness opening into the Light". But did that Marvel become this hideous monstrosity of our everyday experience? The solution was not to run away to the Nirvanic oblivion, but to accept even this monstrosity with a view to transform it. The disciple then suggested that the Mother herself should first transmute hers into a golden body - and all could then see what transformation really meant. The Mother agreed that somebody - she or anyone else - should first sport such a golden body, the image of the Divine; that would be convenient indeed. And then, as she remained gazing for a long time, the disciple felt "as though a cataract of luminous power was pouring down".⁶ Later she "looked into the matter a great deal", in fact, as she told him on 4 June, when he had expressed his aspiration for a glorious body, "something became concrete all of a sudden". Hadn't the disciple's aspiration been as good as answered? The utter delight in the possibility of its happening - that is, the golden divine body - had half brought about that miracle of manifestation in the Mother! But her body had no personal ambition or desire in the matter, it did not even aspire for it. Then there had come "that extraordinary Smile" which, confirming her body's stand, seemed to say, "It is not your business!" But what had become the body's business, "in such an intense way that it cannot be expressed", was

"Thou, Thou, Thou, Thou." No word can translate it: the Divine, to use one word. It is everything. For everything - to eat: the Divine; to sleep: the Divine; to suffer: the Divine... like that (Mother points both hands upward). With a kind of stability, of immobility.⁷

IV

The Mother's message for 15 August 1969 was taken from a letter of Sri Aurobindo written on 13 January 1934 in answer to the question whether the Mother had established a direct connection with Mars or any other far-off planet. The answer was that, although "a long time ago" the Mother used to go everywhere in the subtle body, she found it after all of a "very secondary interest". Then came Sri Aurobindo's own view of the matter:

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Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere.⁸

On her being told about this letter, the Mother wrote on 22 July 1969: "This answer is a very interesting one as it deals with the centre of the question."⁹ It was only on the previous day that the American astronauts, Aldrin and Armstrong, had made their spectacular landing on the moon, and the Mother may have felt that Sri Aurobindo's obiter dictum of 1934 was relevant to the present situation, and accordingly made it the message for 15 August.

The Space Age had begun on 4 October 1957 when the first sputnik started orbiting the earth, and since then space-technology made astonishing advances culminating in the feat of 21 July 1969. After the moon, what next? Mars? Space-shuttles? Space fuelling stations? Space colonial wars? There was doubtless room for limitless speculation. And yet a sense of proportion was called for. As Sri Aurobindo had said years earlier:

Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple.¹⁰

Commenting on this passage (which she had chosen as the message for May 4, 1967) the Mother had said,

The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is not a person but a condition that will be shared by all those who have prepared themselves to receive it.¹¹

Certainly, the whole universe was the habitation of the Lord, and yet He might, by an exercise of His will, locate in a place of His choice a particular or unique concentration of His consciousness. This was how the earth, as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother saw it, was the hub of the cosmic play, and hence a special - a unique - significance was attached to what went on here on the earth.

V

During his meditation on 15 August, Satprem experienced the sense of a massive Power that was there, so solid and silent, which made him feel profoundly at ease. When he spoke to the Mother about this the next day, she exclaimed "Ah! so it's all right." If there was so much confusion in the world, it was because of too much thinking and planning; and the best insurance for the future would be to return to the one Being, one Consciousness, one Power, and act from that inviolable poise, for that was "the state in which one can change the world";

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one became an instrument, and automatically did at every minute just what one had to do but "without calculating, without speculating, without deciding".¹² There would be no more preference, desire, repulsion or attraction; and, above all, no more fear!

There was another conversation on 18 October on the mechanics of Transformation. "A great passivity is needed," she revealed, "for the Force to be able to pass through quickly and reach the body." While generally the body works all its life for being receptive and obedient to the mind and so is not "supple enough to be transformed", in her experience, "it was only when the mind had reached its maximum that it abdicated". But her body had succeeded in getting "a complete immobility and an intense aspiration".* The aspiration was really a supramental vibration or the true vibration, and the immobility "the vibration of the true Consciousness... equivalent to the inertia of immobility", so intense that it is not even perceptible to us! Since creation had begun with unconscious perfection and later fallen into imperfection, it must now fulfill itself through a process of conscious perfection, and this would be possible only if one re-enacted creation in the true consciousness, instead of in the old debased one.

And so the days passed, and the body's experience was a rhythm of vicissitudes: the consciousness of immortality alternating with the consciousness of mortality - to fall back into which was "an awful anguish". To dismiss the latter as illusion, as the Yogas of old did, was easy; but the Mother would have none of it. For her, "the only effective way" of coming out of the alternating rhythm of the contradictory states of consciousness was

just to give up, surrender. It is not expressed by words, nor by ideas, nor by anything; it is a state of vibration in which nothing but the Divine Vibration has any value. Then, then only, things are put back in order.¹³

There was also the background of unconscious 'negation', and it was a colossal work to change this Everlasting Nay into the Everlasting Yea. But when one was in the 'other' state or the true Consciousness, the difficulties seemed to disappear. If one could be trustfully patient, all would be well.

Again, on 19 November, the Mother related an experience of the early hours of that morning. For several hours she had lived "in an absolutely clear perception... of the why and the how of creation. It was so luminous, so clear; it was irrefutable... each thing in its place and absolutely clear." Participating in that vision of the how, the why and the whither of creation,

* In a letter to her son in July 1927, the Mother had said that her body's sleep had long since become "a condition of absolute immobility in which the whole being, mental, psychic, vital and physical, enters into a complete state of rest made of perfect peace, absolute silence and total immobility, while the consciousness remains perfectly awake". [MO 16:4]

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she had felt that she was in the midst of a luminous, dazzling and golden glory. It was then she had scribbled with a pencil a few words recording her pointer-readings that were an automatic but exact transcription:

Stability and change

Inertia and transformation

Eternity and progress

Unity = power and rest combined.¹⁴

In the Lord, these were identical principles, but as words they seemed meaningless! In the Supreme, the divers "opposites" were united without differentiation; in creation, the movement was from unity conscious of unity to unity conscious of its multiplicity in the unity, in the background of space and time. The problem, as the Mother saw it, was at each infinitesimal point of consciousness to be both conscious of itself and conscious of the original Unity. The Inconscient was the projection (or inversion) of the original Unity, and it became increasingly conscious in beings in their infinitesimal existence, and conscious at the same time through progress or evolution, of the primordial Unity. In writing down, her idea was that the pairs combined gave back that state of perfect consciousness that wanted to express itself. It was this experience that had given her for hours the taste of an uncommon glory, which was really the poise, power and illumination of supramental consciousness.

And there was Grace too: who could explain the magnificence of Grace? It surpassed all comprehension, and that was why when Grace came to them, stupid people pushed it away. For her, everywhere there was the Consciousness and there was a Grace that did everything so that all might go well. It was only human egocentric imbecility that interfered and made everything go wrong.¹⁵

The Mother returned to her castigation of the ego in some of the subsequent conversations also. Thus on 13 December:

...there is only one way, the ego must go, that is all. It is that. Only when, there, instead of "I" there is nothing any more... it is not even expressed by words, but a very stable sensation of: "What Thou wiliest, as Thou wiliest."¹⁶

Again, on 27 December, she said:

...for all the actions of life, even the most ordinary... if the presence of the ego is suffered... it can really lead to an imbalance of health, and the only remedy is the disappearance of the ego.¹⁷

Perhaps, it was the ego that made 'death' itself possible; without the ego, it might mean immortality itself.

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VI

It was no doubt true that the Mother's body was, as Satprem put it, "a symbol of the whole earth" and hence the vicissitudes of her sadhana of the body, the sadhana of integral transformation, had a relevance for the Ashram, and for the world. In the same way, whatever happened in the world, and especially in Auroville and the Ashram, had its reaction on the Mother. Auroville, the Ashram and the Mother were indeed one body in three! On 6 February 1969, the Mother had issued a statement spelling out the qualities and attitudes expected of would-be Aurovilians:

All those who wish to live and work at Auroville must have an integral goodwill, a constant aspiration to know the Truth and to submit to it;; enough plasticity to confront the exigencies of work and an endless will to progress so as to move forward towards the ultimate Truth.

And, finally, a word of advice: be more concerned with your own faults than with those of others. If each one worked seriously at his own self-perfection, the perfection of the whole would follow automatically.¹⁸

It was also hoped that Auroville would be the cradle of supermen, and as a free international city, it would have no police, and law and order would be maintained by guards consisting of athletes and gymnasts.¹⁹ When the Mother was asked whether there would be family life, religion, atheism or social life in Auroville, she answered cryptically: "If one has not gone beyond that"²⁰ - but nothing would be compulsory. Again, when she was asked who had initiated the construction of Auroville and who would be financing the project, the Mother merely said, "The Supreme Lord." Auroville would thus be a homestead of the Divine by the Divine for the Divine!

During the first twelve months after the founding of Auroville, quite a few firm steps had been taken, and in the right directions. The first colonisers were already at "Forecomers", and "Promesse" was full of life. Work on "Auroson's Home" was started in November. An AIR symposium on Auroville was held at Pondicherry on 28 December 1968, and Auroville was hailed as a living symbol of the hope of humanity - especially the children and youth - for a rich and wholesome future. In her message on the first anniversary of the inauguration, the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, highlighted the importance of Auroville:

[Sri Aurobindo's] effulgence and message radiated to different parts of the world from Pondicherry. It is appropriate that seekers of enlightenment from various lands should found a new city there. It is an exciting project for bringing about harmony among different cultures and for understanding the environmental needs for man's spiritual growth.

May Auroville truly become a city of light and peace.²¹

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Without the fanfare of excessive publicity. Auroville was experience stirrings of life. There arose the first settlement at "Auro-Beach" huts came up at "Hope" in April 1969, construction began at "Aspiration" in June, the square huts were ready by September, and the "Caravan" arrived in November. And a cafeteria was coming up besides.

During 1969, the President of India, V.V. Giri, the Vice-President, G.S. Pathak, and the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, paid visits to the Ashram. Soon after his election as President, Mr. Giri came with Mrs. Saraswati Giri on 14 September, and went up to the Mother's room in the afternoon and offered obeisance to her. After everyone was seated the Mother meditated for about ten minutes. While meditating a line surged in her consciousness, and the words came out clearly and strongly: "Let us all work for the greatness of India."²² Later, the Mother wrote out the declaration she had orally made, and directed that it should be sent to the President. From the Ashram, the President's party went to Auroville and saw an exhibition of models and photographs.

The Prime Minister's visit took place about a month later, on 6 October 1969. She first visited an exhibition at the Auroville office where she was received by Aurovilians of many nationalities, and the whole Auroville project was explained to her in detail by Roger Anger, the chief architect of Auroville. She then visited the Ashram, accompanied by Nandini Satpathy (her Deputy Minister) and the Lt. Governor and Chief Minister of Pondicherry. She spent about twenty minutes alone with the Mother, before her Deputy joined them.²³

Her way from the Ashram Gate to the Meditation Hall was flanked by young people in sparkling white shirts and shorts. A Mexican-born Aurovilian (to whom the Mother had given the name "Mali") described it thus:

Those figures were all girls, the long braids wound round their heads and pressed down by black nets.... They were the guard of honour lining Indira Gandhi's way to the Mother... these young athletes, hair bound, feet together, poised as though ready to run or vault the horse, did bring to mind the discipline and aspiration of the body... they looked to me as though they knew what they stood for: the first generation of beings who have known that the body is divine, that it is not [merely] a disposable temple for the Divine but is itself permeated by a residue of the Divine, and on its way back to the full power and knowledge of its origin.

I caught these bodies in a suspended moment in the slow but inevitable transformation of the terrestrial form.... The golden day no longer seemed so impossibly far off.... It was here, now, happening under my eyes and in our hidden cells under the eternal eye....²⁴

The Prime Minister could see for herself these "sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn". Reaching the Mother's room, Indira offered her

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salutations and took a seat in front of the Mother. There was a long meditation, at the end of which the Mother gave these messages to the prime Minister:

Let India work for the future and set the example. Thus she will recover her true place in the world.

Since long it was the habit to govern through division and opposition.

The time has come to govern through union, mutual understanding and collaboration.

To choose a collaborator, the value of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs.

The greatness of a country does not depend on the victory of a party, but on the union of all parties.²⁵

Such were the Mother's guidelines for India's robust self-government, and for her imaginative future leadership of the world.

VII

The visit of the President and the Prime Minister one after the other caught the headlines and aroused speculation, but for the Mother herself, the dignitaries were but possible instruments for the Divine purpose. The outer routine of the Ashram continued as before, and Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi attracted devotees at all hours of the day and most of the night. And the Mother's Light in her rooms on the second floor maintained an unceasing vigil.

The Mother of course was still bombarded by the usual queries and requests for messages and SOS appeals, and she could hardly fail to respond appropriately in every instance. Auroville? It was "the ideal place for those who want to know the joy and liberation of no longer having any personal possessions".²⁶ How could persons having different values live and work harmoniously together in Auroville? "The solution is," wrote the Mother, "to go deep in oneself and find the place where all the differences combine to constitute the essential and eternal Unity."²⁷ What was the art of sleeping soundly? The Mother wrote in March 1969:

...begin by relaxing yourself physically (I call this becoming a rag on the bed).

Then with all the sincerity at your disposal, offer yourself to the Divine in a complete relaxation, and... that's all.²⁸

Several months later, in answer to a question on the control of one's subconscient, the Mother said that it was especially during the sleep of the

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body that one was in contact with the subconscient and that was the time to exercise control; "The control can become total when the cells become conscious of the Divine in them and when they open themselves voluntarily to His influence." Then, referring to her own recent experiences, she added,

This is what the consciousness that descended on the earth last year [1 January 1969] is working for. Little by little the subconscient automatism of the body is being replaced by the consciousness of the Divine Presence governing the entire functioning of the body.²⁹

When she was asked how the unending stupidities of the 'lower nature' were to be effectively countered, she wrote that one needed the will to change in sheer defiance of the excuses and intimations of what was low or false within, a persistence in the will in spite of every fall, and an unshakable faith in the help received from the Guru. A sadhika wrote that, whenever she heard about the Mother's ill-health, she felt as if broken herself; and the Mother replied -

It is not a question of health, it is a question of transformation. And it is always the Supreme's Will that is realised. Never forget that, and you will be in peace.³⁰

Or, when there was the request for a message from the New Age Association for their sixth annual conference in August 1969, the Mother approved the use of a statement she had written to a sadhak on another occasion:

Above all words, above all thoughts in the luminous silence of an aspiring faith give yourself totally, unreservedly, absolutely to the Supreme Lord of all existences and He will do of you what He wants you to be.³¹

And there was the sad occasion of the passing of Pavitra on 16 May 1969, and when asked about it the Mother recalled how, on the night before the end came, she felt him coming out of himself and gathering and pouring himself into her; this he did consciously and deliberately and ceaselessly for hours, and it ended at about one in the morning. And she added that what Pavitra had done - this willed transference of himself into her - was something quite extraordinary:

Not many Yogis, not even the greatest among them, could do such a thing. There he is within here, quite wakeful.... He is merged in me wholly, that is dwelling within me, not dissolved: he has his personality intact.

Amrita too, another of the most seasoned sadhaks, had lately passed away, but his situation was significantly different. "He is there outside," the Mother said, "one of you, one among you people moving about. At times, of course, when he wants to take rest and repose he comes and lodges [within me] here."³²

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