Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

4

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

An ocean of knowledge was poured by Sri Aurobindo in his monthly journal, Arya. By 1920, when Mother returned to Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo had already expounded in the pages of the Arya much of his studies which were not confined merely to philosophical and spiritual knowledge, but which extended also to fields of literature, psychology, and social and political thought. The all-embracing idea was, however, that of spiritual evolution, which subsumed within itself the latest knowledge of physics and biology. Warrior and hero of Indian independence, Sri Aurobindo had now scaled vast heights of knowledge and power and had launched upon an unprecedented revolution of the entire mankind. The struggle for the freedom of India was now only a part of a larger struggle of mankind. Sri Aurobindo had discovered that mankind was passing through a crisis, that this crisis was not merely economic, social or political, but evolutionary in character, and that the problems confronted by mankind could be resolved only by working out the evolutionary needs of the human species. As Sri Aurobindo wrote:

At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way.... Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it.... Man has harmonised life in the past by organised ideation and limitation; he has created societies based on fixed ideas or fixed customs, a fixed cultural system or an organic life-system, each with its own order; the throwing of all these into the melting-pot

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of a more and more intermingling life and a pouring in of ever new ideas and motives and facts and possibilities call for a new, greater consciousness to meet and master the increasing potentialities of existence and harmonise them. Reason and Science can only help by standardising, by fixing everything into an artificially arranged and mechanised unity of material life. A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life'.¹

The question was as to the ways and means by which this greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power can be attained. Sri Aurobindo found, and this was also Mother's discovery, that this could be done through the processes of yoga, many of which were known, and many of which had to be discovered, created, built and perfected, so that they could meet the needs of man's upward evolution.

This was the task in which Sri Aurobindo was engaged during the years since he came to Pondicherry. This was also the task in which Mother participated. The result was what he come to be known as a synthesis of yoga or integral yoga or supramental yoga. This yoga was developed jointly by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

In one of his letters, Sri Aurobindo has written the following:

Mother was doing Yoga before she knew or met Sri Aurobindo; but their lines of Sadhana independently followed the same course. When they met, they helped each other in perfecting the Sadhana. What is known as Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is the joint creation of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother....²

Stressing the novelty of the aim and method of his Yoga, Sri Aurobindo has written in one of his letters:

It is the descent of the new consciousness attained by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the Sadhana... a method has been preconised for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive. I

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¹ Sri Aurobindo; The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, pp. 1053-5.

² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 459.

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have not found this method (as a whole) or anything like it professed or realised in the old Yogas. If I had, I should not have wasted my time in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure.¹

Describing the difficulties of the hewing of the new Yoga, Sri Aurobindo has written in one of his letters to a disciple:

As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer—a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path.²

Sri Aurobindo had discovered yoga as a method of, accelerating the evolutionary process. He found, however, that each system of Yoga is a specialisation in a more or less limited field of achievement, and therefore none of them sufficient for the total movement of evolution. In his analysis of the systems of Yoga, he shows how an integrating principle of Yoga could be discovered and how on the basis of that principle, a synthesis of Yoga could be so achieved that Yoga could meet the total demands of evolutionary movement. He shows how the evolutionary movement itself is a secret Yoga, the Yoga of Nature, and how this secret could be used as a clue to a conscious integral method in our effort to lead Nature as rapidly as possible and as perfectly as possible towards its next momentous evolutionary stage, viz., the radical and complete transmutation of Man, the emergence

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¹'Ibid., p. 109

², p. 464.

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of a new species. All life is Yoga, declares Sri Aurobindo, but all life has been so far a subconscious Yoga of Nature. But we can study Nature consciously and apply scientifically the inner workings of Nature to our own evolution, and we can consciously make all life a conscious Yoga. As Sri Aurobindo puts it:

The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly coterminus with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: 'all life is Yoga.¹

Each system of Yoga selects certain activities of Nature, purifies them, develops them, perfects them, and achieves a contact, a union with the Object that is at the source of these activities. Each system chooses an instrument in our psychological complex by which the selected activities can be dealt with. The essence of each system is the method of concentration on the Object in view; and by this concentration is achieved a conscious acceleration of the evolution of Nature. Thus, Hatha Yoga selects the body and vital functionings as its instrument of perfection and realisation. The method is a concentration and effort of energy released by Asana and Pranayama in the outer and inner body for an object of physical perfection. Raja Yoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi, so that it can dwell constantly in a fixed poise and reflect the luminosity of the Object that is pursued. The triple Path of Works, Love and Knowledge uses some parts of the mental being, will, heart or intellect, as a starting-point and seeks by its purification, development and perfection, the liberating Truth, Beatitude, and Infinity. Its method is a direct commerce, a direct contact, a direct concentration of the human individual or Purusha in the individual body with the Divine, the Purusha who dwells in every body and yet transcends all form and name.

This analysis of the systems of Yoga indicates a solution to the problem of. their synthesis. The synthesis, as Sri Aurobindo points out, cannot be arrived at by a combination of these systems in mass. That

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¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, vol. 20, p. 4.

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is neither possible nor desirable, nor needed. Again, as Sri Aurobindo points out, synthesis does not mean a successive practice of the various e systems. It is effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the v Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on the central principle common all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles. While each system is a specific process of concentration, the synthesis of Yoga is an integral process of integral concentration; while each system makes a selection from the activities of Nature for purification and perfection, integral yoga would admit all activities of Nature for their transformation and perfection; while each system aims at a specific object or a poise or aspect of Reality of the Divine, the Object of the integral yoga would be the realisation of the Integral Divine. An integral concentration on the Integral Divine through the whole of our being for a complete perfection by a union with and manifestation of the Divine—this would be the natural formula of the Integral Yoga. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the Sadhaka of the Sadhana¹ as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection....²

In the integral yoga, the Divine Power in us uses all life as the means of our upward evolution. Every experience and outer or inner contact with our world-environment, however trifling or disastrous, is used as an occasion and opportunity for the yogic work, and every experience becomes a step on the path to perfection.

And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it

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¹Sādhanā, the practice by which perfection, Siddhi, is attained; Sādhaka the Yogin who seeks by that practice the Siddhi.

²Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 20, p. 40.

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becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.¹

By this integral method is proposed an integral realisation and perfection: the realisation of not only unity in the Self but also of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, world and creatures, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works, the perfection of freedom, purity, beatitude, and the perfection of the mind and body.

The integral yoga aims at an integral transformation. The word 'transformation' has a special meaning in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It does not mean merely what is known as conversion in the psychology of religious belief; nor does it mean a conversion that occurs as an inner change into sainthood or ethical perfection. Even what are known as Yogic Siddhis of spiritual experiences or realisations such as those of Mukti or Nirvana do not amount to 'transformation'. As Sri Aurobindo explains it in one of his letters:

'Transformation' is a word that I have brought in myself (like 'Supermind') to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga.... Purification of the nature by the 'influence' of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose. What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influence of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only purification, enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and

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¹ Ibid, p. 42.

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the entire replacement of the present consciousness by that. This we find unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture and effect the full spiritual transformation.... I may add that transformation is not the central object of other paths as it is of this yoga—only so much purification and change is demanded by them as will lead to liberation and the beyond-life....¹

The transformation that is sought after in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is that of Nature or Prakriti. The Spirit that is manifest to itself is to be made manifest to Nature. The Prakriti or Nature of sattva, rajas, and tamas has to be fully transformed by the Divine Nature, the Supramental Nature, so that Nature itself would be liberated from its limitations and be the direct and full expression of the Divine Supermind. In the supramental transformation of Nature, there is not merely the transcendence of the three gunas of Nature (sattva, rajas and tamas) but the three gunas themselves become purified, refined and changed into their divine equivalents; sattva becomes Jyoti, the authentic spiritual light; raja becomes tapas, the tranquilly intense divine force; tamas becomes shama, the divine quiet, rest, peace. But this can be done, according to Sri Aurobindo, in its fullness in the physical only when the physical life is finally transformed by the supramental power.

One of the first questions that was raised when Mother met Sri Aurobindo was whether they should do the yoga and go right to the end without involving others, and to see about them afterwards or let the suitable individuals come to them and take them along on the adventure of yoga. As Mother explained much later:

Truly speaking, it was the first question that arose when I met Sri Aurobindo: should we do this yoga and go right to the end, then afterwards to see about the others, or should we immediately let all those who have an identical aspiration come to us and walk all together towards the goal?... The two possibilities were there: either to do an intensive individual Sadhana by withdrawing from the world and having no more contact with others, or else to let a group form in a natural and spontaneous way without preventing

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¹Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 109-10.

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it from being formed, and then setting out all together on the path.¹

But the aim of yoga was not individual salvation; the aim was collective, even cosmic. And, as Mother explained years later, no individual, however great he may be, can by himself achieve a collective realisation. A representative collectivity—at the very minimum—is needed. Here the yoga was the yoga of conscious evolution, and it needed an evolutionary laboratory. Thus, as noted earlier, an 'Ashram' began to be formed out of a nucleus of the few who had already joined Sri Aurobindo since his arrival in Pondicherry. Later, hundreds joined so as to make a small representative world consisting , of specimens of each type of human consciousness and development. This collective formation was a sort of spontaneous development. In the words of the Mother:

The decision was not at all a mental choice; it came spontaneously. The circumstances were such that there was no choice; in other words, the group formed very naturally and spontaneously as an imperative necessity.

And then once it begins in that direction, there is no question of going back—you have to go right to the end. ²

The yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is, in fact, a programme of yogic research. This is as it ought to be. For Yoga is not a closed book. It is not a body of revelations made once for all, unverifiable and unsurpassable. It is not a religion; it is an advancing Science, with its field of inquiry and search always enlarging; its methods are not only intuitive but include also bold experimentation and rigorous verification by means of abiding experience, and, finally, even by physical change and transformation. It is in this spirit that Sri Aurobindo and Mother went on testing day and night their experiments and results over decades and decades. Their programme of yogic research took within its sweep all the domains of life, all aspects of culture, and arrived at a synthesis of yoga based upon the discovery of the supermind resulting in an ever-growing methodised discipline for the transformation of man and the eventual transmutation into a new species.

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¹The Mother, Questions and Answers, 21.12.1955.

² Ibid.

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It is this discovery which is at the base of the affirmation that 'spiritual liberation' or Mukti is not the highest possible aim for Man on the earth, and that there is a farther aim imperatively demanded by the concealed intention of 'evolutionary' Nature. Not merely the liberation of the Spirit from Nature, but also the liberation of Nature itself from its limitations by a radical transformation; not an escape into the acosmic static Reality of featureless Nirvana or into supraterrestrial planes of heavenly existence, but the establishment of the kingdom of the Spirit on the earth; not merely an individual achievement but a collective one for the earth; not merely the realisation of the Divine, but the realisation of the integral Divine and its integral manifestation in the physical life,—this is the aim which, according to Sri Aurobindo and Mother, is demanded of us, and which can be fulfilled only by the descent and manifestation of the Supermind.

There is, indeed, an ascending path which, by various processes or by the combination of various processes takes us to higher and higher levels of consciousness. And then there is a descending path for bringing down the higher levels of consciousness, including supermind, into lower levels of Matter, right up to the lowest, which is the Inconscient, in order to bring about transformation. Speaking of these paths, Mother said:

When you follow the ascending path, the work is relatively easy. I had already covered this path by the beginning of the century and had established a constant relationship with the Supreme—That which is beyond the Personal and the gods and all the outward expressions of the Divine, but also beyond the Absolute Impersonal. It's something you cannot describe; you must experience it. And this is what must be brought down into Matter. Such is the descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense.

The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental Plane, unless one practised a perfect surrender). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to "take it take one step forward—oh, not even a real step, just a little step!—everything starts grating; it's like stepping on an anthill....

The path is difficult....

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I could have begun this work on the body thirty years ago, but I was constantly caught up in this harassing ashram life.... It does not mean that thirty years were wasted, for it is likely that had I been able to start this work thirty years ago, it would have been premature. The consciousness of the others also had to develop the two are linked, the individual progress and the collective progress, and one cannot advance if the other does not advance.¹

The words 'ascent' and 'descent' have a relative significance—relative to our present composition and status of consciousness. But, as Mother explained:

... once the border has been crossed, there is no more 'ascent' and 'descent'; you have the feeling of rising up only at the very start, while leaving the terrestrial consciousness and emerging into the higher mind. But once you have gone beyond that, there's no notion of rising; there's a sense, instead, of a sort of inner transformation.²

***

In his magnum opus, The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo has explained at length the philosophy of ascent and descent in the context of spiritual evolution and provided a detailed exposition of the entire process of integral transformation, consisting of a triple transformation, the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental.

Sri Aurobindo uses the word 'psychic' in the Greek sense where it does not connote merely the inner psychological powers, but stands for the inmost soul. The psychic entity is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the true soul secret in us, screened behind the body, life and mind, and its presence burns in the temple of the inmost heart. It is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by the dense unconsciousness which obscures our outward nature. It is this psychic entity which puts forwards gradually a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops. At first, the psychic being can exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, for it permits these parts of Nature to develop as its instruments of self-expression. But in due course, it can

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¹ Mother's Agenda, Vol. 1, pp. 300-1.

² Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, p. 379.

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come forward and lead our entire growth, internal as well as external. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness....¹

The coming forward of the psychic person marks a momentous stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It then begins to govern overtly and entirely our outer nature of mind, life and body, and these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful, and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory. A transformation of the mind, life and body by the presence and powers of the psychic being is effected. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the resistance in our developed nature. But ultimately, by the greater and greater infusion of the psychic light every part of the being is psychicised. As Sri Aurobindo describes it:

... every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order....²

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¹Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 18, p. 226.

²Ibid., Vol. 19, pp. 907-8.

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The psychic transformation is the one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence, but that is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. As explained by Sri Aurobindo:

... since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and transcendence. By itself the psychic being at a certain stage might be content to create a formation of truth, good and beauty and make that its station; at a farther stage it might become passively subject to the world-self, a mirror of the universal existence, consciousness, power, delight, but not their full participant or possessor....¹

While the psychic is the inmost and deepest being in us, the spiritual is the higher and transcendental. While the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms, the spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live in the infinite and the eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation beyond time and space. When we go deeper behind the mental we enter into the field of the psychic, when we go above the mental we enter into the domain of the spiritual experiences of the transcendental self or of the wide cosmic consciousness or of the One and the Supreme as the upholder of time-space.

For purposes of transformation, it is not enough in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo to have even these spiritual experiences and realisations. The realisations of the One and of the Unity of the Cosmic and Transcendental Peace, Knowledge, Power, Bliss,—these need to be expressed in our dynamic Nature. And for that, according to Sri Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind. It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the process of spiritual transformation.

This process is extremely complex and it is impossible to give any

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¹ Ibid., Vol. 18, p. 227. For some adequate idea, vide The Life Divine, Vol. 19, pp. 889918.

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idea of it here. Sri Aurobindo has written extensively on this subject,¹ but in the following passage from one of his letters, we have some indication of this process:

The Self governs the diversity of its creation by its unity on all the planes from the Higher Mind upwards on which the realisation of the One is the natural basis of consciousness. But as one goes upward, the view changes, the power of consciousness changes, the Light becomes ever more intense and potent. Although the static realisation of Infinity and Eternity and the Timeless One remains the same, the vision of the workings of the One becomes ever wider and is attended with a greater instrumentality of Force and a more comprehensive grasp of what has to be known and done. All possible forms and constructions of things become more and more visible, put in their proper place, utilisable. Moreover, what is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play of light—through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift discriminations. The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way—it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators. Only, each creates in his own way; he sees all but sees all from his own viewpoint. There is not the absolute supramental harmony and certitude. These, inadequately expressed, are some of the differences. I speak, of course, of these planes in themselves—when acting in the human consciousness they are necessarily much diminished in their working by having to depend on the human instrumentation of mind, vital and physical. Only when these are quieted, they get a fuller force and reveal more their character.²

The descent of the Overmind and the consequent transformation of the lower instruments of the mind, life, body and the inconscient mark a further decisive stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is the final consummating movement of what Sri Aurobindo has called the dynamic spiritual transformation. And yet, there are certain reasons arising from the status and power of the Overmind that prevent it

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¹ Some selected passages on the subject are given in Appendix III.

² Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Centenary library, Vol. 24, p. 1154.

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from being the final possibility of the spiritual evolution. As Sri Aurobindo explains it:

In the terrestrial evolution itself the overmind descent would not be able to transform wholly the Inconscience; all that it could do would be to transform in each man it touched the whole conscious being, inner and outer, personal and universally impersonal, into its own stuff and impose that upon the Ignorance illumining it into cosmic truth and knowledge. But a basis of Nescience would remain; it would be as if a sun and its system were to shine out in an original darkness of Space and illumine everything as far as its rays could reach so that all that dwelt in the light would feel as if no darkness were there at all in their experience of existence. But outside that sphere or expanse of experience the original darkness would still be there and, since all things are possible in an overmind structure, could reinvade the island of light created within its empire. Moreover, since Overmind deals with different possibilities, its natural action would be to develop the separate possibility of one or more or numerous dynamic spiritual formulations to their utmost or combine or harmonise several possibilities together; but this would be a creation or a number of creations in the original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities into itself and controlling them as parts of the unity, which must be the law of the new evolutionary consciousness, would not as yet be there. Also by this much evolution there could be no security against the downward pull or gravitation of the Inconscience which dissolves all the formations that life and mind build in it, swallows all things that arise out of it or are imposed upon it and disintegrates them into their original matter. The liberation from this pull of the Inconscience and a secured basis for a continuous divine or gnostic evolution would only be achieved by a descent of the Supermind into the terrestrial formula, bringing into it the supreme law and light and dynamis of the Spirit and penetrating with it and transforming the inconscience of the material basis. A last transition from Overmind to Supermind and a descent of Supermind must

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therefore intervene at this stage of evolutionary Nature.¹

Only the Supramental Force can, according to Sri Aurobindo, entirely overcome the difficulty of the resistance of the Inconscience. Only the luminous Supermind and its sovereign imperative can descend into the Inconscience without any diminution of its omnipotent power and thus displace or entirely penetrate and transform into itself the Inconscience. As Sri Aurobindo writes:

Only the Supermind can thus descend without losing its full power of action; for its action is always intrinsic and automatic, its will and knowledge identical and the result commensurate: its nature is a self-achieving Truth-Consciousness and, if it limits itself or its working, it is by choice and intention, not by compulsion; in the limits it chooses its action and the results of its action are harmonious and inevitable.... The whole radical change in the evolution from .a basis, of Ignorance to a basis of Knowledge can only come by the intervention of the supramental Power and its direct action in earth-existence.²

The results of the descent of the Supermind on the earth and the consequent supramental transformation of the mind, life, body and the inconscient would mark a momentous stage in the evolutionary process. It would mean the mutation of the human species into what Sri Aurobindo has termed the 'gnostic' species. It would mean a step which would radically alter even the human body, its structure and the principle of its working. It would mean the appearance of what Sri Aurobindo has termed the Divine Body, an ever-youthful physical envelope of the unveiled Spirit.

***

When Mother came back from Japan, she began to work with Sri Aurobindo. By that time, Sri Aurobindo had brought down the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. In Mother's words:

When I returned from Japan and we began to work together,

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¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, pp. 953-4.

² Ibid; pp. 917-8.

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Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. 'It's strange', he said to me, 'it's an endless work! Nothing seems to get done— everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.' Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: 'It will be like that until we touch bottom.' So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience... how to put it?... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.

Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old!... There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.¹ 'What has happened to you!' he exclaimed. He hardly recognised me. During that same period (it didn't last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. There!' he said, 'That's how you are now!' I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.

This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical—and all the trouble began.² But we didn't stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence—there, in the midst of Darkness.

It wasn't the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualised—that is, general—Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life). And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something 'like' that), and when it opened, I saw a being

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¹ Pearson came to Pondicherry in April 1923.

² In January 1925, Mother had an inflammation of the knee. On May 25 of the same year, Sri Aurobindo noted in a letter, The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane.' (Cited by A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 203.) Note that in 1925 the Nazi Party was founded.

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of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was the 'immanent God in the depths of the Inconscient,' who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness.

But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action.

One can realize the Divine in the Inconscient rather quickly (in fact, I think it can happen just as soon as one has found the Divine within). But does this give the power to TRANSFORM DIRECTLY? Does the direct junction between the supreme Consciousness and the Inconscient (because that is the experience) give the power to transform the Inconscient just like that, without any intermediary? I don't think so. I simply haven't had that experience....

One thing is certain—as soon as one goes beyond the terrestrial atmosphere, beyond the higher mind's 'highest' region, the sensation of 'high' and 'low' totally vanishes. There are no longer movements of ascent and descent, but (Mother turns her hand over) something like inner reversals.

 'It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent... that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY... it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature.' (This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions....)¹

This durable transformation necessitated the descent into Inconscience with the power of the Supermind. Necessarily, owing to the resistance of the lower levels of consciousness, particularly of Matter and Subconscience and Inconscience, the process is long, and, Acre are several stages. Higher and higher levels of consciousness

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¹Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, pp. 379-82.

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had to be fixed in Matter. By 1926, the Overmind was brought down into Matter, and an overmental creation came into view. Something momentous was being worked out. As Mother explained:

In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of 'Mother."¹

Yes, in fact I wanted to ask you what this realization of 1926 was.

It was this: Krishna consented to descend into Sri Aurobindo's body—to be FIXED there; there is a great difference, you understand, between incarnating, being fixed in a body, and simply acting as an influence that comes and goes and moves about. The gods are always moving about, and it's plain that we ourselves, in our inner beings, come and go and act in a hundred or a thousand places at once. There is a difference between just coming occasionally and accepting to be permanently tied to a body— between a permanent influence and a permanent presence.

These things have to be experienced.

But in what sense did this realization mark a turning point in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana?

No, the phenomenon was important FOR THE CREATION; he himself was rather indifferent to it. But I did tell him about it. It was at that time that he decided to stop dealing with people and retire to his room. So he called everyone together for one last meeting. Before then, he used to go out on the verandah every day to meet and talk with all who came to see him... I was living in the inner room and seeing no one; he was going out onto the verandah, seeing everyone, receiving people, speaking, discussing

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¹From 1926, Sri Aurobindo officially introduced Mother to the disciples as the 'Mother'; previously he often called her 'Mirra'.

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—I saw him only when he came back inside.

After a while, I too began having meditations with people. I had begun a sort of 'overmental creation', to make each god descend into a being—there was an extraordinary upward curve! well I was in contact with these beings and I told .Krishna (because I was always seeing him around Sri Aurobindo), This is all very fine, but what I want now is a creation on earth—you must incarnate.' He said 'Yes'. Then I saw him—I saw him with my own eyes (inner eyes, of course), join himself to Sri Aurobindo.

Then I went into Sri Aurobindo's room and told him, 'Here's what I have seen.' 'Yes, I know!' he replied (Mother laughs) 'That's fine; I have decided to retire to my room, and you will take charge of the people. You take charge.' (There was about thirty people at the time.) Then he called everyone together for one last meeting. He sat down, had me sit next to him, and said, 'I called you here to tell you that, as of today, I am withdrawing for purposes of sadhana, and Mother will now take charge of everyone; you should address yourselves to her; she will represent me and she will do all the work.' (He hadn't mentioned this to me!— Mother bursts into laughter)

These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: 'Why, why, why?' He replied, 'It will be explained to you.' I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her death—a person who received 'inspirations'.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishna's adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.

This was in 1926.

It was only... (how can I put it?) a participation from Krishna. It made no difference for Sri Aurobindo personally: it was a formation from the past that accepted to participate in the present creation, nothing more. It was a descent of the Supreme, from... some time back, now consenting to participate in the new manifestation.

Shiva, on the other hand, refused. 'No', he said, 'I will come

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only when you have finished your work. I will not come into the world as it is now, but I am ready to help.' He was standing in my room that day, so tall (laughing) that his head touched the ceiling! He was bathed in his own special light, a play of red and gold,. magnificent! Just as he is when he manifests his supreme consciousness—a formidable being! So I stood up and... (I too must have become quite tall, because my head was resting on his shoulder, just slightly below his head) then he told me, 'No, I'm not tying myself to a body, but I will give you ANYTHING You WANT.' The only thing I said (it was all done wordlessly, of course) was: 'I want to be rid of the physical ego.'

Well,... (laughing), it happened! It was extraordinary!... After a while, I went to find Sri Aurobindo and said, 'See what has happened! I have a funny sensation (Mother laughs) of the cells no longer being clustered together! They're going to scatter!' He looked at me, smiled and said, Not yet. And the effect vanished.

But Shiva had indeed given me what I wanted!

Not yet, Sri Aurobindo said.

No, the time wasn't ripe. It was too early, much too early ¹

As for the overmental creation, in which Mother had asked various gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body, the fact was that the gods were beginning to manifest. But as Mother explained:

In the end, Sri Aurobindo told me it was an overmental creation, not the Truth. These were his very words: 'Yes, it's an overmental creation, but that's not the truth we're seeking; it's not the truth, the highest truth,' he said.

I made no reply, not a word: in half an hour I had undone everything—I undid it all, really everything, cut the connection between the gods and the people here, demolished absolutely everything. Because you see, I knew it was so attractive for people (they were constantly seeing the most astonishing things) that the obvious temptation was to hang on to it and say, 'We'll improve on it'—which was impossible. So I sat down quietly for half an hour, and I undid it all. We had to start over again with something else. But I said nothing, I told no one about it except Sri Aurobindo. At the time I let no one know, because they would have been completely discouraged.²

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¹ Ibid., pp. 298-301.

² Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 3, pp. 463-4.

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Overmental creation would have meant the possibility of the establishment of a new religion, but as Sri Aurobindo pointed out:

... it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old, for humanity.... A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded is my conception of the matter.¹

The descent of the Supermind into the Inconscient, and the manifestation of the Supermind in material life—this was the clear object on which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother worked together. A major portion of this work, in its external aspect, was the development and organisation of their research laboratory, which was named 'Sri Aurobindo Ashram'. This laboratory consisted of an increasing number of individuals who represented a special difficulty in the process of transformation. Each individual received from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother all the care and attention that were required for his or her growth. This was a daily affair, and this implied a gigantic task. Members of the Ashram used to write letters to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Sri Aurobindo wrote in answer to these letters. This required daily 12 hours, three hours in the afternoon, and the whole night up to six in the morning. Mother herself used to meet each individual daily or periodically in various ways and in various contexts. Each individual was given a specific work, and every one was expected to spend at least 8 hours a day on a work useful for the entire collectivity. The work had to be done with a certain attitude and in a certain state of consciousness in consonance with the demands of the Yoga of transformation. The Ashram was not created for renunciation of action, but for a dynamic Sadhana which would accelerate the evolution of the Supermind in the life on the earth. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out:

This Ashram has been created... not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life....²

The entire organisation of the Ashram embodied the dynamic Principles of the supramental yoga. Each must find his own truth, and this cannot be done by imposing uniformity or external rules of

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¹ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 22, p. 139.

² 811 Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 23, p. 847.

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behaviour. Everybody was given a work appropriate to the needs of his or her growth—work relating to the agricultural fields, gardens mechanical workshops, printing press, laboratories, carpentry, smithy painting, music, teaching (from the kindergarten to the university stage), physical education, bakery, laundry, or even washing dishes The work changed, if it was necessary for a new development of consciousness. The idea behind this organisation was that each individual carries in himself a truth and that it is with that truth that he must unite himself. The road that he or she follows to join and realise that truth becomes also the road which would bring him or her the nearest possible to the anvil of transformation. All activities were under the minute observation of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; everything was under test. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out: "... I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane....'¹

***

The Mother was Shakti in action. After a full day's work starting from 4 a.m., she would go at 1 a.m. to Sri Aurobindo's room. With Sri Aurobindo, there was hardly any talk, but silence and gaze. They were perfectly attuned and in the same vibration. As she said:

When there was a special force that came down or an opening or a supramental manifestation, we knew it at the same time, in the same way. And we did not even need to speak to each other about it; only for consequences, for the practical results in the work, did we sometimes exchange a word or two. I never had this with anyone except Sri Aurobindo.

The work was microscopic; the work was complex; the work was both external and internal. After the overmind was fixed in Matter, the next step in the work was to fix the Supermind in Matter.

It became clearer that the task of fixing the supermind in the physical had to be done by opening up the physical cells. It also became clearer that the physical cells contained the whole evolutionary past, all the layers, not only human but animal and vegetal. And the process of crossing these layers, of clearing them, was found to be interminably fraught with resistances, constant negations, obstinate refusals.

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¹Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 469.

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At the same time, there were expectations. Questions were pressing on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: 'So, when will this supramental descent take place?' 'When will it be?' 'Is it for now?' 'Is it possible?'

In an answer to a disciple, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

I find that the more the Light and Power are coming down the greater is the resistance. You yourself can see that there is something pressing down. You can also see that there is the tremendous resistance.¹

By 1935, the Pressure and the Resistance had grown. A disciple, feeling that the resistance came from the members of the Ashram, research laboratory, from the 'staff, asked Sri Aurobindo rather innocently as to why the whole 'staff should not be retrenched and then get the Supermind down quickly. In answer, Sri Aurobindo wrote back:

I am not Hitler. Things cannot be done like that. You might just as well ask the Mother and myself to isolate ourselves in the Himalayas....²

In another context, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

If we had lived physically in the Supermind from the beginning nobody could have been able to approach us nor could any Sadhana have been done. There could have been no hope of contact between ourselves and the earth and men....³

In 1935, there was a significant breakthrough, and Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter:

Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing—like a very Einstein I have got the mathematical formula of the whole affair (unintelligible as in his own case to anybody but myself) and am working it out figure by figure.⁴

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¹ A.B. Purani, Evening Talks. II: p. 317.

² Nirodbaran, Correspondence, 25.11.35, p. 72.

³ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 450.

4 Nirodbaran, Correspondence, 16.8.35, p. 70.

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Again, in November 1935, he wrote:

The tail of the Supermind is descending, descending.... It is only the tail at present, but where the tail can pass, the rest will follow.. My formula is working out rapidly.... It is my private and particular descent.... The attempt to bring a great general descent having only produced a great ascent of subconscient mud, I had given up that...¹

But once again, the situation was growing difficult and grim. There were dangerous developments in Germany with the rapid growth of Nazism, which had, behind it, the Nietzchean philosophy of the Superman. The Nietzchean concept of the superman was exactly the opposite of Sri Aurobindo's concept of the divine superman. As Sri Aurobindo has pointed out:

... a supermanhood of the Nietzchean type... might be at its worst the reign of the 'blonde beast' or the dark beast or of any and every beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength of self-fulfilment would be the type of a Rakshasic supermanhood: but the giant, the ogre or devourer of the world, the Rakshasa, though he still survives, belongs in spirit to the past; a larger emergence of that type would be also a retrograde evolution. A mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, a self-possessed, self-held, even, it may be, an ascetically self- restrained mind-capacity and life-power, strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit. But what has to emerge is something much more difficult and much more simple; it is a self-realised being, a building of the spiritual self, an intensity and

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¹ Ibid., 25.11.35, p. 72.

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urge of the soul and the deliverance and sovereignty of its light and power and beauty,—not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving for birth within it. This the sole true supermanhood and the one real possibility of a step forward in evolutionary Nature.¹

The emergence of Nazism was, in fact, the emergence of barbarism, a terrible threat to the advancement of culture and to the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It signalled even a possibility of an attack on the physical being of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Indeed, this possibility became a concrete event when Sri Aurobindo himself sustained an accident; he slipped and fractured his right leg above the knee. This was on 24th November, 1938.

Within a year, the Second World War broke out. The ferocity and speed of the Nazi victories were so great that Sri Aurobindo concentrated on the War and declared that he had put all his Yogic Force on the side of the Allies. Sri Aurobindo wrote:

The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.²

By 1942, the War had led the world to a precipice. Surrounded by "laps, reports from all the war fronts, day and night Sri Aurobindo was in the thick of the battle against Nazism. And Mother, too. As she said in the Agenda:

During the last war [World War II] I had some dealings with him [the Asura of Falsehood, who called himself The Lord of Nations'] again, but not through Richard—directly. The being who used to appear to Hitler was the Lord of Nations. An incredible story!... And I knew when they were going to meet... and on one

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¹Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, pp. 1067-8.

²Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 396.

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occasion I substituted myself for him, became Hitler's god advised him to attack Russia. Two days later he attacked Russia. But upon leaving the 'meeting' I encountered the other one [the real Asura] just as he was arriving! He was furious and asked m why I had done that. 'It's none of your business,' I said, 'it's what had to be done.' 'You will see,' he replied, 'I KNOW, I know you will destroy me, but before being destroyed I will wreck just as much havoc as I can, you can be sure of that.'

When I returned from my nocturnal promenades I would tell Sri Aurobindo about them.

What a life!... People don't know what goes on. They know nothing—nothing. But it's fantastic.

Occasionally some people were slightly conscious. For instance, during the last war I spent all my nights hovering above Paris (not integrally, but a part of myself) so that nothing would happen to the city. Later it came out that several people had seen what seemed to be a great white Force with an indistinct form hovering above Paris so that it wouldn't be destroyed.

Throughout the war Sri Aurobindo and I were in such a CONSTANT tension that it completely interrupted the yoga. And that is why the war started in the first place—to stop the Work. At that time there was an extraordinary descent of the Supermind; it was coming like that (massive gesture), a descent! Exactly in 1939. Then the war broke out and stopped everything cold. For had we personally continued [the work of transformation] we were not sure of having enough time to finish it before 'the other one' crushed the earth to a pulp, setting the whole Affair back... centuries. The FIRST thing to be done was stop the action of the Lord of Nations.¹

The War ended in 1945, with the victory for the Allies, as Sri Aurobindo had willed. And yet, the difficulties were not over for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They saw that even though Berlin and Nuremberg had marked the end of the dreadful chapter in human history, other blacknesses were threatening to overshadow or even engulf mankind'.

In July 1948, Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter to a disciple:

... Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible—and anything...

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¹ Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, pp. 373-4.

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seems possible in the present perturbed world... all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid f if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time... the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern... it must come by other means—from within and not from without....¹

***

The Indian situation at that time was particularly bad, considering the fact that after the Independence (15th August, 1947),² the partition provided most disconcerting opportunities for the worst communal riots. Hitler was destroyed but the Force that was working behind Hitler was still there; and there was Stalin, too. As Mother explained later on:

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¹Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 171.

²15th August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo, assumed a vast significance when India became free on that day in 1947. Regarding this significance, Sri Aurobindo said as follows in his message for the occasion to the nation:

'August 15th, 1947, is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.

August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition....' In the same message, Sri Aurobindo spoke of the unfortunate partition of the country and made the following statement:

'... India today is free but she has not achieved unity.... the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled; civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India's internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form—the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for (he greatness of India's future.' (Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 404-5.)

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Hitler was destroyed because he had a whole nation and physical power behind him, and had he succeeded, it would have been disastrous for humanity; but we had no illusions. The death of either one of them (Stalin or Hitler) serves no great purpose—it goes off elsewhere. It is as if you were doing something very bad while wearing a particular shirt, then you throw away the shirt and say, 'Now I won't do anything bad anymore'—but you continue with another shirt!'¹

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother went on 'digging' and 'digging' to accelerate the process of descent and transformation. In December 1942, Mother had started organising a School for children whose parents had brought or sent them to the Ashram. From then onwards the activities had increased manifold. It would, in fact, require a separate volume to give even faint glimpses into what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did for the entire field of education through the most revolutionary experiments done at this school. In consonance with the emphasis in the Integral Yoga on the integral development of personality, Mother put the child in the centre of the totality of the life of the Ashram and provided the facilities, equipment, guidance, inspiration, atmosphere and all the necessary aids, internal and external, to ensure harmonious and accelerated development of the physical, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual aspects of the personality. In particular, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother laid an emphasis on physical education, which is normally absent in the current system of education. This was as it should be, considering that the aim of education was to help each individual discover the Divine Reality and work for Its manifestation in physical life. A decision was taken to bring out a quarterly Bulletin dedicated to Physical Education, and Mother prayed to Sri Aurobindo to write a Message and articles for this Bulletin. The first issue of the Bulletin of Physical Education came out on the 21st February 1949 with Sri Aurobindo's Message.

In the succeeding issues eight momentous articles of Sri Aurobindo appeared. These articles bring out some of the latest experiences and realisations that Sri Aurobindo had regarding the supramental manifestation on the earth. Of particular significance was his vision of the transformed human body in the chapter entitled: 'The Divine Body'. He declared quite unambiguously:

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¹The Mother, Questions and Answers, 8.3-51, 25.11.53.

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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....¹

In fact, Sri Aurobindo gives us in this chapter some very valuable indications of the psychological and physical characteristics of the new species of superhumanity. He points out:

A radical transformation of the functioning and, it may well be of the structure and certainly of the too mechanical and material impulse and driving forces of the bodily system would be imperative....²

In the concluding paragraph of this chapter, Sri Aurobindo states:

The new type, the divine body, must continue the already developed evolutionary form; there must be a continuation from the type Nature has all along been developing, a continuity from the human to the divine body, no breaking away to something unrecognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and in part perfected. The human body has in it parts and instruments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still further perfected, their limitations of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their capacities of cognition and dynamic action carried beyond the present limits. New powers have to be acquired by the body which our present humanity could not hope to realise, could not even dream of or could only imagine. Much that can now only be known, worked out or created by the use of invented tools and machinery might be achieved by the new body in its own power or by the inhabitant spirit through its own direct spiritual force. The body itself might acquire new means and ranges of communication with other bodies, new processes of acquiring knowledge, a new aesthesis, new potencies of manipulation of itself and objects. It might not be impossible for it to possess or disclose means native to its own constitution, substance or natural instrumentation for making the far near and annulling distance,

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¹Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, p. 24.

²Aid., p. 34.

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cognizing what is now beyond the body's cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame. These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to what we can now imagine as possible. There could be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the utmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders of the supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure existence, consciousness and bliss which constitute the worlds of a highest truth of existence, dynamism of Tapas, glory and sweetness of bliss, the absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.¹

***

In 1949, things began to become very serious. In early 1950, Sri Aurobindo told the Mother: 'One of us must go, we can't both remain upon earth.' While recounting this later in I960, Mother said:

You see, I'm doing the sadhana really along a... a path that has never been trod by anyone. Sri Aurobindo did it... in principle. But he gave the charge of doing it in the body to me.

That was the wonderful thing when we were together and all these hostile forces were fighting.... (They tried to kill me any number of times. He always saved me in an absolutely miraculous and marvellous way). But you see, this seemed to create very great BODILY difficulties for him. We discussed this a great deal, and I told him, 'If one of us must go, I want that it should, be me.’

'It can’t be you,’ he replied, 'because you alone can do the material thing.’

And that was all.

He said nothing more. He forbade me to leave my body. That's all. 'It is absolutely forbidden,' he said, 'you can't, you must remain.’

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¹Ibid., pp. 39-40.

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After that (this took place early in 1950), he gradually... you see he let himself fall ill. For he knew quite well that should he say 'I must go’, I would not have obeyed him, and I would have gone. For according to the way I felt, he was much more indispensable than I. But he saw the matter from the other side. And he knew that I had the power to leave my body at will. So he didn't say a thing, he didn't say a thing right to the very last minute...

(silence)

Once or twice I 'heard' certain things about him and I told him (for I told him all I saw or heard), and I said that I was... that these suggestions were coming from the Enemy and that I was violently fighting against them. Then he looked at me—twice—he looked at me, nodded his head and smiled. And that's all. Nothing more was said. 'How strange!' I thought. And that's all. Then I myself must have .forgotten. You see, he wanted me to forget. I only remembered afterwards....¹

Speaking on the subject in a different context, Mother said:

... the body's formation has a very minimal, a quite subordinate importance for a saint or a sage. But for this supramental work, the way the body is formed has an almost crucial importance, and not at all in relation to spiritual elements nor even to mental power: these aspects have no importance AT ALL. The capacity to endure, to last is the important thing.

Well, in that respect, it is absolutely undeniable that my body has an infinitely greater capacity than Sri Aurobindo's had.

That was the basic problem—because the identification of the two (Sri Aurobindo and Mother) was almost child's play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasn't difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that... (there were many other things, too, but this isn't the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot

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¹Mother's Agenda, Vol. 1, pp. 488-9.

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Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (Darshan)

(1950)

be done. After that, I said no more....¹

Signs of illness had begun to appear in Sri Aurobindo's body, but they did not seem to be serious; things returned to normalcy. Then, in October 1950, Sri Aurobindo said to his secretary, 'I am finding no time for my real work... Take up SAVITRI, I want to finish it soon.'²

This was rather shocking. Savitri was being composed and revised, composed and revised, over a long period of time. The first versions were written as early as 1899, in Baroda. This was his epic poem of nearly twenty-four thousands lines—all packed with mantric force brought down from higher and higher ranges of consciousness and inspiration. The ancient story of Satyavan and Savitri, in which Savitri, on the death of Satyavan, whom she had married by her own choice (even after being told in a prediction that he would live only for a year after the marriage), succeeded in bringing back his soul from Death and reviving him. This story or legend narrated in the Mahabharata served as a symbol of the inner story of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Speaking of this poem, Mother has said:

This analogy between the ancient form of spiritual revelation and Savitri, this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic revelation is... what could be called the most exceptional part of his work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri he went along changing it as his experience changed. It is clearly the continuing expression of his experience. There were whole sections he redid completely, which were like descriptions of what I had told him of my own experiences.... The breath of revelatory prophecy is extraordinary! It has an extraordinary POWER!

What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin³ was really a heavy sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, but when he was asked to do so, he replied, "No, I don't want to go down to that mental level!' '

Savitri comes from somewhere else altogether.

And I think Savitri is the most important thing to speak about.⁴

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¹Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, pp. 261-2.

² Nirodbaran, I am here, I am here! p. 8.

³ Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram Bulletin. These Writings were later published as The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.

4 Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, pp. 333-4.

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Presently, Sri Aurobindo was correcting 'The Book of Fate' Significantly, the last lines that he dictated indicated what was to happen within the next few weeks:

A day may come when she must stand unhelped

On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,

Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,

Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole

To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge.

Alone with death and close to extinction's edge,

Her single greatness in that last dire scene,

She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time

And reach an apex of world-destiny

Where all is won or all is lost for man.¹

The day when The Book of Fate' was completed, Sri Aurobindo remarked: 'Oh, it is finished? What remains now?'

His secretary answered: The Book of Death and The Epilogue.'

'Oh, that? We shall see about that later on...'

It was November 10.

Then 'illness' took of at a gallop.

'Why don't you use your force and cure yourself?' his secretary asked him.

'No', replied Sri Aurobindo in his tranquil, neutral and indisputable voice.

'But why?' his secretary insisted.

Sri Aurobindo answered, putting all questions to a stop: 'Can't explain, you won't understand.'

What was happening? Days began to pass.

A faithful disciple, a surgeon from Calcutta arrived. Sri Aurobindo was on his bed eyes closed, like a statue of massive peace. He opened his eyes.

Trouble?'

'Nothing troubles me—and suffering! One can be above it.'

And he asked for news of the Bengal refugees. Then he plunged into a coma.

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¹Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Centenary Library, Vol. 29 , p. 461.

Page 100

But it was a peculiar coma. Whenever Mother came to offer juice or water, he would open his mouth and take it, and plunge back again. The surgeon remarked: 'a very strange type of coma,—a body which for the moment is in agony, unresponsive, labouring hard for breath suddenly becomes quiet; a consciousness enters the body, He is awake and normal. He finishes the drink, then, as the consciousness withdraws, the body lapses back into the grip of agony.

Sri Aurobindo was suffering from uraemia, and he was having this peculiar coma, a coma controlled by yogic consciousness!

On the 4th December, Mother said: 'He's withdrawing.' But Sri Aurobindo got up again and he sat in the big green armchair.

The surgeon remarked: The Master seems cheerful again and taking interest.'

'Hmm...' Mother replied, without commenting.

Then Sri Aurobindo went back to bed, and the condition worsened at a gallop.

At eleven o'clock at night, Mother came back and gave him a little tomato juice which he drank, placidly emerging from coma. Then, at midnight, she stood at the foot of his bed, without a quiver of movement, without a gesture. He opened his eyes. They looked at each other for one last time.... Then she went out.

Describing this moment, years later, she said:

I didn't want to believe it. As long as I was in the room, HE COULD NOT leave his body. So there was a terrible tension in him: the inner will to leave and then this kind of thing [Mother] that was holding him there, like that in his body—because I knew that he was living and that HE COULD NOT be other than living.... He had to make a sign so that I would go into my room, supposedly to rest (which I didn't do), and as soon as I had gone out of the room, He left. Then they called me back immediately.

It was 1.26 a.m.

For the next 111 hours, Sri Aurobindo's body remained intact and undecomposed. The Mother announced:

..... His body is surcharged with such a concentration of Supramental Light that there is no sign of decomposition and the body will be kept lying on his bed so long as it remains intact.

In another message, The Mother said:

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When I asked him to resuscitate, he clearly answered:

'I have left the body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way.'

In a prayer, the Mother said:

Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.

It was on December 9, after the Light had begun to withdraw, that the body was laid in a rosewood casket and placed in the Ashram courtyard.

Years later, Mother described her experience of that moment:

I'd already had all my experiences, but with Sri Aurobindo, for the thirty years I lived with him (a little more than thirty years), I lived in an absolute, an absolute of security—a sense of total security, even physical, even the most material security. A sense of absolute security, because Sri Aurobindo was there. And it help me up, you know, like this (gesture of being carried): not for ONE MINUTE in those thirty years did it leave me. That was why I could do my work with a Base, really, a Base of absoluteness—of eternity and absoluteness. I realised it when he left: THAT suddenly collapsed.

... The whole time Sri Aurobindo was here,... individual progress was automatic: all the progress Sri Aurobindo made, I made. But I was in a state of eternity, of absoluteness, with a feeling of such security, in every circumstance. Nothing, nothing unfortunate could happen, for he was there. So when he left, all at once—a fall into a pit. And that's what projected me wholly .... (Mother gestures forward.)....¹

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¹ Mother's Agenda, Vol. 3, p. 437.

Page 102

A few days later, explaining the above, Mother said:

The real truth is that it projected me DIRECTLY towards the Supreme, with no intermediary.

I'd had the contact with the inner Divine, I'd had the realisation of Eternity, I'd had all those realisations, but... as long as I was living with Sri Aurobindo I felt the absolute through him, and (what shall I say?).... All those imperative 'needs' I called the seeds of evolution are the levers or spring-boards to make man realise that ONE AND ONLY, the one and only absolute is the Supreme; the one and only permanence is the Supreme; the one and only security is the Supreme; the one and only immortality is the Supreme. That the only purpose of manifestation is to lead you THERE.

That's essentially it: from my experience of the Supreme through the manifestation of Sri Aurobindo, I was projected into a direct experience, with no intermediary.

It's poorly expressed, that's not really it, but... (Mother closes her eyes).

I felt very strongly—so intensely it was inexpressible—that there was but ONE THING to lean on, ONE THING sure and unfailing: the Supreme; all the rest comes and goes, it stays, then disappears.

(silence)

For the sake of the Work, that's obviously what had to be understood.

(silence)

It is difficult to explain, but it was.... You see, in the eternal Play, everything is unstable and everything fails you. And that's how it was: 'All will fail you, except the Supreme.'

And it becomes such an absorbing and absolute experience (Mother seems to be enveloped in white light)... The uncertainty, the instability, the fleeting, inconstant and impermanent nature of all things—everything collapses, there is nothing to lean on, except THE SUPREME, for He is all.

One thing alone is unfailing: the absolute All.

(silence)

Words are stupid—it's an experience.

Once you have the experience, that's that: all the rest simply

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follows from it—details.

And I had it then [on December 5, 1950].¹

Elaborating upon this experience, when asked if she did not have experience of the Supreme before Sri Aurobindo's departure Mother said:

Spiritually, you have that experience as soon as you come into contact with the Divine within; mentally, you have the experience as soon as the mind is purified; vitally, you have it as soon as you get out of the ego. But it's the consciousness of the BODY—the consciousness of the cells—which had the experience at that moment. Everything else had had it long before and was constantly aware of it, but the body.... It had been told about it and relieved in it, but it didn't have the experience in such a concrete, total and absolute manner that it can't be forgotten for a single second.

At that moment, the physical being and the individual, personal body had the experience once and for all.

The body always used to let itself be carried along. It was one in consciousness with Sri Aurobindo presence, and depended on it without the least worry; it felt that its life depended on it, its progress depended on it, its consciousness, its action, its power all depended on it. And no questions—it didn't question. For the body, it was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE that things could be otherwise. The very idea that Sri Aurobindo might leave his body, that that particular way of being might no longer exist for the body, was absolutely unthinkable. They had to put him in a box and put the box in the Samadhi for the body to be convinced that it had really happened.

And that's when it had that experience.

This body is very conscious, it was BORN conscious, and throughout those years its consciousness went on growing, perfecting itself, proliferating, as it were; this was its concern, its joy. And with Sri Aurobindo, there was such peaceful certitude, there were no more problems, no more difficulties: the future was opening up, luminous and peaceful and certain. Nothing, nothing, no words can describe what a collapse it was for the body when Sri Aurobindo left.

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¹Ibid., PP. 440-1.

Page 104

It's only because Sri Aurobindo conscious will entered into it—left one body and entered the other.... I was standing facing his body, you know, and I materially felt the friction as his will entered into me (his knowledge and his will): 'YOU will accomplish my Work.' He said to this body: 'YOU will accomplish my Work.' It's the one thing that kept me alive.

Apart from that.... There's nothing, no physical destruction I can think of, comparable to that collapse.

It took me twelve days to get out of it—twelve days during which I didn't speak a single word.

So the experience I mentioned is the PHYSICAL experience.' ¹

A few weeks after the passing of Sri Aurobindo, Mother said, in one of the conversations with a disciple:

As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light ² got realised here....

The Super mind had 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 Sacramental light; the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the Sacramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.

Two months after Sri Aurobindo withdrawal from the body, Mother wrote the following note, explaining briefly the main reason for Sri Aurobindo departure:

The lack of the earth's receptivity and the behavior of Sri Aurobindo disciples³ are largely responsible for what happened to his body. But one thing is certain: the great misfortune that has just beset us in no way affects the truth of his teaching. All he said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events

_______________________________

¹ Ibid, pp.445-6.

²see chapters 7 and 8 of The Sacramental Manifestation upon Earth, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, pp. 67-74, which deal with the Mind of Light.

³In an 'official' version, Mother had omitted 'and the behavior of Sri Aurobindo disciple..

Page 105

will make this abundantly clear.¹

In I960, Mother explained a little more explicitly the reason for Sri Aurobindo decision to leave his body:

... He wanted to go.

You see, he had decided to go. But he didn't want me to know that he was doing it deliberately; he knew that if for a single moment I knew he was doing it deliberately, I would have reacted with such a violence that he would not have been able to leave!

And he did this... he bore it all as if it were some unconsciousness, an ordinary illness, simply to keep me from knowing—and he left at the very moment he had to leave. But...

And I couldn't even imagine he was gone once he had gone, just there, in front of me—it seemed so far away... And then afterwards, when he came out of his body and entered into mine, I understood it all... It's fantastic.

Fantastic.

It's... it's absolutely superhuman. There's not one human being capable of doing such a thing. And what... what a mastery of his body—absolute, absolute!

And when it came to others... He could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mother were calmly extracting an illness from the body with her fingertips)... On others, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery... Absolutely superhuman...

I would like very much to ask you something... Why did he have to go?

Ah! That can't be told.

(long silence)

I can tell you why, but in a purely superficial way... Because for him to do IMMEDIATELY—without leaving his body, that is— what he had to do, well...

(silence)

We can put it this way: the world was not ready. But to tell you the truth, it was the totality of things around him that was not ready.

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¹Mother's Agenda, Vol. 1, p. 27.

Page 106

So when he SAW this (I only understood this afterwards), he saw that it would go much faster if he were not there.

And he was ABSOLUTELY right, it was true.

Once I saw that, I accepted. When I saw it, when he made me understand, I accepted; otherwise...

There was a difficult period.

(silence)

It was not long, but it was difficult.

When he left, I said twelve days, twelve days.¹ And truly, I gave it twelve days, twelve days to see if the entire Work... Outwardly, I said, 'After twelve days I will tell you if the Ashram (the Ashram was nothing but a symbol, of course), if the Ashram will continue of if it is finished.'

And later (I don't know—it didn't take twelve days; I said that on December 9, and on the 12th it was all decided—seen, clear and understood), on the 12th, I saw people, I saw a few people. However, we began all the activities again only after 12 days from December 5. But it was decided on the 12th.

Everything was left hanging until the moment he made me understand the COMPLETE thing, in its entirety... But that's for later on.²

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¹ Mother stopped all her activities for twelve days from December 5, 1950, the day Sri Aurobindo departed.

² Ibid., pp. 439-40.

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