“What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest”—that had been the single Mantra for the Mother throughout her life. She made it one with the Will of the Lord. She was born in it. She worked in it. She withdrew in it. She withdrew into it. She withdrew, but not to go away. She withdrew to fulfil the Lord’s Will in another way. She was here to carry out that Will. She is there to carry out that Will. The Birth of the New World, Manifestation of the Divine upon the Earth—that is the Lord’s Will.

 

The Lord wills. She executes. His is the samkalpa. Hers is the kriyā. Both together form the divine action or daivī kārya. In that action is the glory of this evolutionary earth.

 

When the Mother was young she already knew what she had come here to do. She grew in its splendour. When she was engaged in a thousand activities of the day she founded them all in its efficacy. When she was facing the dark forces in this creation, more profound became her will one with the Will of the Supreme. More powerful became the Mantra. For her it was the Conqueror’s Sword and nothing could come in the way of its victory. No weapon could cleave it, can cleave it, no enemy slay it—nainam chhindanti shastrāņi. That is the nature of the soul, particularly her Soul bright in the blaze of the Will of the Supreme. Be it the darkness of the night with her ghastly powers of destruction, or be it the occult world with its dubious beings, or be it the bright heaven with unconcerned gods reluctant as yet to participate in the work of transformation, she walked through them all in the ardency of “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.” The sunlight of her soul was “What Thou Willest, Lord, What Thou Willest; Ce Que Tu Veux, Seigneur, Ce Que Tu Veux.” And therefore there was no fear in her. Her spirit had the power to change Nature’s doom. Her mind could contain the world. Her heart was moved by the passions of the gods. She was celestial beauty walking on the earth. When had arrived the death’s tremendous hour she sowed the heavenly seeds.

 

But to make the Mantra dynamically operative the Mother had to do triple sadhana. She had to do intense and ardent Tapasya. It is in Tapas that there is the Reward, the Boon of the Divine, and it is that she won. She had to kindle the yogic fire and make the flame bright in the Sacrifice offered to the Supreme. She had to acquire siddhis in the inner world. She had to carry in her psychic being the psychic being of the earth. She had to make her spirit ready to be one with the transcendental Spirit, ready for the work of transformation. The Lord had given her the work of the Supramental Descent and Transformation. She knew that she could not exist without Him. But she also knew her responsibility, that He remains unmanifest without her. She spared no effort towards that, even if it meant pain and suffering.

 

But to do this difficult work she had to gather the Divine Force in her soul. Whatever had to be done was to be done in it. The Lord sanctions and she executes. This she knew well and in it she worked. This involved her acquiring the occult siddhis, and the siddhis of surrender, and the siddhis of the spirit one with the supreme Spirit. Her biography is a celebration of these siddhis. The glory and the marvel to come are in it.

 

The occult, the psychic, and the spiritual disciplines practised by the Mother are integrally fulfilled in one Mantra, the Mantra of Transformation: “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.” Indeed, the Mother comes down in order to bring the Supramental which in turn makes her manifestation complete. Then only the powers of the full Mahashakti can become operative here. In their free and progressive operation is the birth of the new world, the beginning of the new creation, the appearance of the divine superman.

 

The Mother attended to it and achieved what she was to achieve. And she is always there, the one who mediates between the call of the aspiring soul and the boon that comes as a sanction from the Supreme. Since the beginning of the earth wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of light, of the supreme Consciousness, she was there. And so she is always there. The Mother’s presence means that.

 

If Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga-Tapasya was to make the descent possible, the Mother’s task meant its manifestation. For the fulfilment of their work this division of work was functional, and necessary; in fact in the very nature of things it ought to be so. And they did it in their full glory. This implied their coming together on the physical plane also.

 

The Mother came to India to meet Sri Aurobindo. She was already aware of her mission but she was in search of the light that would guide her on the way. She was already an initiate, as Sri Aurobindo had told Nolini Kanta Gupta. But the path had to be taken up yet. She knew there is one who will guide her and so she was guided. Even before their meeting on 29 March 1914, Sri Aurobindo was in spiritual and material contact with the Mother. She came to India to meet Sri Aurobindo. She continued to live in India to do Sri Aurobindo’s work. The purpose of her life was to serve the Truth in order to hasten the Rule of Love upon earth. This was her prayer to the supreme Lord. Her approach was to entrust destiny to him who guides us, who illumines us, moves and inspires us. The moment on 29 March 1914 she met Sri Aurobindo, she at once recognized him as the Supreme himself incarnate. Now all was settled for her.

 

The Mother had started doing yoga already at the age of 4. She used to sit on a small chair and meditate. A brilliant light would descend over her head. She knew that she was here to do some tremendously great work. She was conscious even at the age of 3. The beginning was made in her mother’s womb itself. Before she was born she had decided the place of her birth and her parents. So flaming was her psychic being!

 

She was here to realize the highest ideal—so did her mother tell her. There was force in it and it worked. Hardly was she 12 when she started practising occultism. This was a necessary preparation for her future work. Between 11-13 the Mother became aware of the possibility of the life divine upon earth.  When 13, for about a year, she used to go out of her body and rise above the house, above the city, and men and women and children would come and touch her robe. The Man of Sorrows would encourage her to do so. She felt she was living at the centre of each thing.

 

When 25 the Mother came in contact, in Paris, with a group engaged in occult practices. This was in 1903. She came to know of Cosmic Movement and its publication in Review Cosmique. Max Théon was the leader of this group, the Cosmic Movement. Soon she was in Algeria in 1905 first, and again in 1907. There she met Théon and his wife Alma who herself was a great occultist. This was in the autumn of 1905. A new phase began in her life. Théon used to say: “The righteous will shine like stars, but those who have guided others towards the truth will shine like suns forever.” The cosmic tradition sees the present creation as the seventh and the last. It is based on the qualities of equilibrium and progress. Six times the creation was dissolved earlier. There were six pralayas. But it will not happen now. With the descent of the Supermind the universe will continue to progress. This is what Sri Aurobindo told her.

 

Théon had a remarkable intuition about the coming down of the Supermind and about the new race of Supermen. But he knew that he was not meant to succeed, that he had come only to prepare the way to a certain extent. The Mother learned under him to exteriorise herself. She could go out of the body and move to different places in the occult world. In fact she would successively leave body after body 12 times, all the way up to the limit of manifestation. She had absolutely no fear and she could explore these regions in detail.

 

On one occasion the Mother found the Mantra of Life. Théon was watching her during the process. The Mantra was sealed in a case with the Mother’s name in Sanskrit written on it. She started describing its character to Théon. Théon got interested in it and wanted her to break the seal. But she refused. She was prompted by something in her not to do so. Théon became violent and cut her life cord malevolently. But she returned by exercising her will and with the help of the power within her. She said that she had something on earth to do and hence she would not go away in such a manner. She always had the Divine’s Protection in all the circumstances. We all know how Sri Aurobindo protected her against a hostile force in 1938, resulting in his accident. Later, the Mother found the Mantra of Life again and gave it to Sri Aurobindo. It is said that Théon was the Asura of Death and therefore his interest in the Mantra of Life is perfectly understandable. It seems he wanted to marry the Mother which, of course, she promptly refused. Just imagine the calamity that would have befallen in the eventuality of her consent! What she had to learn from living Death she learnt, and that’s all. There was no further necessity to live with him.

 

If her life was guided by the Master himself, she had now to move from the occult to the psychic-spiritual. The occult training had served its purpose. By it one can explore the inner worlds, know the working of the forces of Nature in the material formulation of this complex creation. Behind them stands the luminous psychic being as the surest leader to take the aspirant soul to the Divine. It is also the alchemic agent to transform this crude instrumentality of ours into the working of the higher Nature. In fact it is the sine qua non of the Mother’s work of Physical Transformation. It is this flame which has to materialise in the form of a new body. Savitri describes this in detail.

 

Savitri’s Yoga begins with the entry into the inner country. There she meets several occult powers or shaktis and occult gods. If some of them are hostile, and hence harmful, there are also powers in the subliminal that offer their help to the seeker. They can lead him to the place where dwells the soul. While the occult science gives precision and certainty to spiritual knowledge, the spiritual knowledge takes care of the danger involved in occult practices. As for the Mother, there never was hesitation to enter into the place where operate the beings of the puny sub-life. Actually, to be in command of the working of the lower nature it was necessary for her to get an understanding of things over there. She got it and now she had to move on to do what she had come to do.

 

For the Mother another phase of life begins in 1912. Her prayers to the Lord and her deep meditative communions with him in fact usher in a new era in the spiritual history. She calls these as her confessions to the sublime Master. But they are not only a revelation of her intimate relationship with him; they are as well meant for those who aspire for an utter consecration to the Divine. New doors of Bhakti have opened through these. “I shall be Thou,”—that is the identity she seeks first. She has definitely found him and the union is constant. Knowledge comes when it is necessary to know things. To see things in his way, to see what really they are, that is the new sadhana that has now begun.

 

With this identity, with this knowledge, what exactly does she expect or want to achieve?

 

She would like to build a solid foundation for the terrestrial work. Heavens have been conquered but earth is still to be made. She is born to new life and now the work of new creation has to commence. Earth is her concern. Integral manifestation of the Divine is her divine concern. The Lord has willed; she has to get ready to execute. She has found the pearl of great price and she is there now to pay whatever be the price.

 

The meeting of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo on 29 March 1914 is a great event. The Mother writes in her diary that his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light. And Sri Aurobindo? That was the first time he knew that perfect surrender to the last bit of the physical was possible. The complementary aspects have come together and in their incarnate fusion is now to be born the future. In the fire of their Tapasya is to take the birth of divinity in this world.

 

Later, the Mother told something significant. When she first met Sri Aurobindo she was in deep prayerful concentration. In it she saw things in the Supermind; she was seeing things that were to be but somehow were not manifesting. She told Sri Aurobindo what she saw and asked him if they would manifest. He simply said, “Yes.” And immediately she saw that the Supramental had touched the earth and was beginning to be realized! This was the first time, she says, she had witnessed the power to make real what is true, the power of that “Yes”.

 

The Supermind had touched the earth on 29 March 1914. The yogic sadhana was now directed to fix it permanently in the earth’s physical. The Mother’s total surrender to the Lord is the only means to achieve the glorious miracle. The change has already occurred. The Mother writes:

 

29 March 1914: O Thou whom we must know, understand, realise, absolute Consciousness, eternal Law, Thou who guidest and illuminest us, who movest and inspirest us, grant that these weak souls may be strengthened and those who fear be reassured. To Thee I entrust them, even as I entrust to Thee our entire destiny.


30 March 1914: He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall indeed be established upon earth.


1 April 1914: I feel we have entered the very heart of Thy sanctuary and grown aware of Thy very will. A great joy, a deep peace reign in me… now all is changed: a new stage has begun.

 

2 April 1914: … the new period opening now before us… a period of expansion rather than of concentration. It is in the activity of each moment that we must serve Thee and identify ourselves with Thee rather than in deep and silent contemplation or in meditation…

 

3 April 1914: It seems to me that I am being born to a new life… I know that I must now definitively give myself up and be like an absolutely blank page on which Thy thought, Thy will, O Lord, can be inscribed freely… Oh, to belong to Thee without any darkness, without any restriction!

 

A resplendent change has taken place in the Mother. It was the direct physical contact with Sri Aurobindo, the incarnate Supreme, which had brought about this change. She says she was born to a new life. She has become the twice born, dwija. Her second birth in the consciousness of the Divine Guru has taken place. Its power is now fixed in her. Yet she has to do a long silent Tapasya. The dynamism of the Divine has to find the necessary support or ādhāra getting ready for the work that must be done.

 

And about Sri Aurobindo? His focus is more and more on bringing down the Divine Light and Force in the working of this terrestrial life, that they become operative in it. The Yoga of Parama Purusha has to precede the Yoga of Parama Shakti. In it there is at once the certainty that the things will start happening. It will no more be the old fiasco, it cannot be in their working together.

 

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are one in Consciousness, but for the purposes of the work they have different roles to play. If one is the Spiritual or Vedantic, the other is the Occult-Psychic or Tantric. In that fulfilment begins the work of Krishna and Kali.

 

In the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations there are a few themes which constantly recur. She herself becomes a hope for this sorrowful earth. She offers in the name of the earth thanks to the Supreme for the boons received from him. She invokes peace and in it entrusts herself to the Will of the Lord. She says: “May Thy peace reign over all.” It is the Vedic prayer renewed in the fire of her soul:

 

Om! May there be peace in heaven. May there be peace in the sky. May there be peace on earth. May there be peace in the water. May there be peace in the herbs. May there be peace in trees and plants. May there be peace in the gods of the universe. May there be peace in the Eternal, the Brahman. May there be peace in all. May that peace, real peace, be mine.

 

E’n la sua volontade è nostra pace”—in his will is our peace, wrote Dante in the Divine Comedy, the Mantra of Peace. The Mother was invoking it not for herself but for the Soul of the Earth. Peace and Love in the Will of the Lord to make her an instrument of which he has the need—such identity and such spiritual certitude she has acquired.

 

Then a great thing happened just within six months of the 29-March meeting of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. In her diary she writes on 25 September 1914 as follows:

 

A new Light shall break upon the earth,

A new world shall be born,

And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.

 

The promise was fulfilled on 29 February 1956:

 

A new Light breaks upon the earth,

A new world is born

The things that were promised are fulfilled.

 

The Supermind descended, making the earth’s subtle-physical its operating station. About it the Mother told that this was not just the descent; it was a manifestation. She even said that the work Sri Aurobindo had given to her at the time of his passing away was completed. The seed was already cast on 5 December 1950 at 1.26 am on Tuesday, in the Death’s “tremendous hour”. At that time the Mother received from Sri Aurobindo the Mind of Light as his parting gift to her. From now on the Purusha Yoga of Sri Aurobindo turned into the full Shakti Yoga of the Mother.

 

There were a few landmark events which took place before 29 February 1956. Of course the most important was the withdrawal of Sri Aurobindo in 1950. There were difficulties also, serious difficulties of the physical nature. As far as supramentalisation of the mental and the vital were concerned, this was accomplished long ago. But regarding the body consciousness, the Supermind could be brought into it only for a while. It was coming and going. It was indeed a God’s Labour and Sri Aurobindo recorded its difficulties in 1935. In 1938 it would enter into his brain and throat and heart and feet, but the Golden Light would not stay on. Things were becoming “ominous”. In 1942, again, we have his “brain wrapped with overwhelming light” which he describes as Aswapati’s experience in the World-Soul of his epic Savitri.

 

In the Vedic past there were attempts made to bring down the Supermind into the physical. But there was not enough Tapasya done in the body. The body had remained as atapta tanu or unbaked vessel. The work of the Avatar now became imperative.

 

Things were becoming serious, ominous, and something drastic had to be done. Not too long before 5 December 1950, in fact in 1948 or so, the Mother felt like leaving the body—because things were not happening. One of them had to go, it seemed, if the physical transformation were to become a possibility in the working of the lower nature. When she told so to Sri Aurobindo, he spoke in a firm voice: “No, this can never be. If necessary for this transformation I might go; you will have to fulfil our Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation.”

 

It is entirely beyond us to be au fait with the occult mystery of Sri Aurobindo’s leaving the body. It was about 1 o’clock past mid-night on 5 December 1950. The Mother was standing by the side of Sri Aurobindo’s bed. They were looking into each other’s eyes for a long time, for a long time. Then Sri Aurobindo signaled with his eyes, tells me Nirodbaran, and the Mother went to her room. She knew he was withdrawing. It would have been impossible for Sri Aurobindo to leave his body in the presence of the Mother, she standing there. How could he? But she already knew that Sri Aurobindo was withdrawing and she said so. She went to her room. It happened at 1.26 am. The Mother stood at Sri Aurobindo’s bed for about half an hour, with his body charged with Supramental Light and Force.

 

On an earlier occasion Sri Aurobindo had said that he would leave his body only under three conditions: successful completion of his work; if it was shown to him that it was not going to be this time; accident. This he had recorded long ago, in 1913. There are people who say that by 1950 Sri Aurobindo saw that the final descent was not to be in his body. So he left the body, it is maintained. We don’t know.

 

Was Sri Aurobindo shown that it was not going to be this time? In that case he would not have told the Mother that she had to carry on the work of Supramental Descent and Transformation. It turns out that to complete his mission successfully, to fully accomplish yogically, he left his physical body. This was a strategic sacrifice, says Amal Kiran. His was a strategic withdrawal, strategic death if it was death.

 

That is the way we can perhaps understand the Mother’s prayer, of 9 December 1950:

 

To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.

 

Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn. There was a danger also in it—the Mother too would do so immediately. Her psychic being was one with Sri Aurobindo’s and that would follow his immediately. It would have been sort of automatic and she had to make a very special effort not allow that to happen. She told Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, her young personal attendant, not to leave her even for a moment. The physical support was provided to her by him.

 

While explaining the significance of Sri Aurobindo’s departure, Amal Kiran wrote in his 1951-article its causes. His draft contained a phrase, about the “mortal remains” being put in the Samadhi. Before its publication when the Mother saw it, she at once struck out that phrase and told Amal that there was nothing mortal in Sri Aurobindo.

 

What does that mean? There was nothing mortal in him and yet he was put in the Samadhi? But Sri Aurobindo’s withdrawal itself was a great act, an unprecedented yogic act. He had gathered in his body Supramental Light and Force and, with the Supramental’s incontingent immortality, fixed it permanently in it in the act of leaving it. His body remains charged with it. There is nothing mortal in it. It has become a base for the Supramental working in the gross physical. Perhaps it is in that way we might recognise what indeed the Mother said in her prayer to the Master’s “material envelope”. He attempted all and achieved all. Yes, he achieved all. Sri Aurobindo had gathered the Supramental Light and Force and fixed the Supermind in his body. He yogically attempted all and achieved all. Whatever was to be done was done. Not for himself, nor for humanity; but all that he did, he did for the Divine, did it divinely.

 

One definite result of this was that the Mind of Light got fixed in the Mother. When he left his body she was standing near his bed at that tremendous hour and the Supramental Light and Force flowed into her uninterruptedly. She even felt the friction of the passage. What he had established in him was passed on to her.

 

The Mind of Light—that was the parting gift the Mother received from Sri Aurobindo. By one account this was on 5 December 1950 between 1.26 and 2.00 am when the Mother stood by the bed. She was 72. Long ago the Silent Mind was the first gift the Mother had received from Sri Aurobindo, after the Guest House meeting on 29 March 1914 at 4.30 pm. She was then 36.

 

But what is this Mind of Light? It is the mind of the physical, the body’s mind, the very physical’s, receiving the Supramental. Unless that is first established, complete transformation is out of the question. The physical’s mind has to open, must open to the Supramental if this is to happen. Sri Aurobindo saw, in the collective context, the necessity of the Intermediate Race governed by this Mind of Light. It is the precursor for the appearance of the Supramental Race, the Superman proper.

 

The Mother says that Sri Aurobindo attempted all and achieved all. If he had achieved all, then what was exactly left for her to do? And didn’t Sri Aurobindo also say that she would have to carry on their work of Supramental Descent and Transformation? Is there a contradiction between these two statements?

 

If so, it will be a strange rather frustrating climax of their joint work. But then for the work it was necessary that they should have come together. If without him she exists not, without her he remains unmanifest. We have to recognize that there is the work of the Purusha and there is also the work of the Prakriti. But without the work of the Purusha as the divine Incarnate, the work of the incarnate Shakti cannot begin.

 

When the first has been completed, when all that was attempted has been achieved, the second can come into operative mode. Without that success the other half cannot even begin. Sri Aurobindo has done his job. The Mother must attend to her task. The Anandamayi Mata or the Mother of Delight had come with the splendour of her Power and Love. But if she is to stay here and carry on her part of the job, she must also meet with certain receptivity. The foundational Nature has to receive her, that she may be here permanently. That was the difficult task of the Mother. That was the work Sri Aurobindo had given to her. And she did it. What was promised got fulfilled: “A new Light breaks upon the earth, a new world is born,”—she declared on 24 April 1956. The event had taken place earlier on 29 February 1956. The golden Supermind had leaped down on the golden Wednesday. This was in the Playground during the evening meditation. Things remained no more the same since then. Supramental Manifestation—and not just the Descent—took place in the earth’s subtle physical. The Mother even said that what Sri Aurobindo had asked her to do that she had accomplished, that her work was done. What did exactly happen on 29 February 1956? The Mother says:

 

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

 

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

 

Then the Supramental Light and Force and Conscious-ness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

 

She also declared: “A new world is born, born, born.” It was not the old world transformed, but it was a new world that had taken birth. Her task was done and she was not overstaying after 1956. She was preparing us to receive the Grace.

 

Once the Mother asked Sri Aurobindo: “After the descent of the Supermind, how long do you think the process of transformation will take?” Sri Aurobindo looked up and told her: “Perhaps 300 years.” Later the Mother added: “He said 300 years, but you know there is something like Grace—anything can take place.” Oh! How wonderful! And we are not aware of it! She wanted to make even the will of the physical to be one with the Will of the Supreme. She was now occupied with it.

 

She is vishvadravyāvati embracing and containing all these gods and goddesses. She is urūvyachā, the matrix from which all have taken birth, the widely expanded. She is dhārayatkshitim, coextensive with all that is manifest. She is devi, the luminous divine Goddess as the giver of the Boons. And she toils to receive the boons from the Supreme, the Boon for the Soul of the Earth. Her work goes on, as has been since the beginning of the earth, the Work of Divine Manifestation here on Earth. Pause she cannot and there is no terminal point. Progress, and Progress, and more Progress in the Possibilities of the Infinite. The Supramental manifestation has taken place and now more and more of it shall be in its great sequel. And, at the same time, she is a spiritual pragmatist, a pragmatist par excellence.

 

The Mother’s prayer to Sri Aurobindo on 7 December 1950 was: “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.” To make us worthy of that marvellous Presence was the thing the Mother was occupied with.

 

If there is to be a divine Destiny for earth, it must be because of its free choice. Not pressure or impulsion from above or just solicitude, but a glad spontaneous urge from within has to be there to get ready to receive that Destiny. The mother was at it. Her occult and yogic sadhana got focused to make the mind of the physical, the mind of the body’s cells ready for that. The divine Will must be awakened even in the physical. Presently, it is actually the question of manifestation in the physical.

 

It looks paradoxical that in the last years of her physical existence here upon earth, she should say that “the more we advance on the way, the more the need of the Divine Presence becomes imperative and indispensable.” It is not that she realized this imperative on 21 February 1973. It is the very physical that realized it on this day. It means, the physical was making a direct response for the Divine Presence in it. Marvellous, indeed! On her last birthday! Glory to the Physical!

 

In the meanwhile the Mother obtained the consent for collaboration from the material Nature. That was a great advance in the evolutionary process. Nature saw the distinct possibility and gained confidence in the work, as if she knew that this time she will not be duped. She discarded her earlier frustrating reservations. The Mother experienced the Divine alone acting in the body. In fact the Divine had become the body, with the power of omniscience and omnipotence operating in it. She was busy with the formation of the new body. She was trying to fuse this material body with that Supramental body. The Mother would simply walk into that body without dying. This happened on 17 November 1973. She walked into the New Body.

 

So there was no question of the physical transformation being “put off for the present”. The complete psychisisation of the cellular consciousness was the assurance of immortality of the physical itself. A golden light, transparent and benevolent, very strong, very powerful filled the body’s cells. It is said in the Veda that the body of Agni is made of gold, hiraņya tanu. The Mother did it as a part of the evolutionary process.

 

Did the Mother take the decision to leave the body and left it on 17 November 1973? “It cannot be so,” says Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya. “Nobody can convince me that she had decided and therefore she left the body. I am absolutely sure that if she had not the conviction that she would bring about the supramental transformation in her present body, she would not have been able to do the work that she has done. This conviction has made it possible to establish this truth firmly in the earth consciousness.”

 

But the Mother’s main work was to bring down the supramental consciousness in the material world, so that the physical transformation of the body could take place.

 

She did it. Now this consciousness will go on acting, that there shall come the promised change. It is absolutely certain. That is the significance of the Mother’s passing away, justifying also the significance of Sri Aurobindo’s passing away. For the work of transformation he had to go and it was she who had to try. The Mother’s failure would have unquestionably implied the failure of Sri Aurobindo’s strategic move. That would have meant their failure. The Avatar would have come and did all in vain. The old story would have continued, but it didn’t.

 

If we have to mark a few important stages in the process of physical transformation, here are these: Sri Aurobindo’s descent into death, 1950; supramental manifestation in the earth’s subtle physical, 1956; realization of the surhomme consciousness, 1958; consent for collaboration from the material Nature, 1958; the descent of the surhomme consciousness in 1969; the psychic being itself getting materialized, 1970; supramental body, 1972. It is the psychic being which will materialize itself and become the supramental being, she told on 1 July 1970. It is precisely the psychic being which survives death. So, if it materializes itself, it means the abolition of death. That is the central importance of the psychic being. Whatever is not in accordance with the Truth thus just disappears. Materialization of the psychic being gives continuity to evolution. In the material world immortality therefore means the materialization of the psychic being. The New Body makes it possible. Perhaps that is the process. Now it is the New Body which will do whatever is to be done. It is not an inert lump of matter, but is charged with the luminous dynamism of the Divine. It is going to exert pressure upon the material in the evolutionary process.

 

Sometimes people ask if the Mother really succeeded in her work. Did she complete it? It is said that she did not achieve all that she was to achieve. They even say that her work of physical transformation has been postponed. Is it believable? But all that sounds rather strange. The statement that the work has been postponed is an incomplete statement. There is an obligation that those who speak of “postponed” must tell us when it will be resumed. Otherwise what will be its validity? But if the work of physical transformation has been postponed in the Will of the Lord, then that becomes a greater achievement for the Mother, that now whatever has to happen will happen in the Will of the Lord. Isn’t that glorious?

 

The Supramental Presence is a sufficient, a necessary and sufficient basis for that to happen. That surely is a greater gain than perhaps the transformation itself—the working of the Will of the Supreme in this Creation.

 

Yes, the twin Avatar has achieved what was to be achieved.


 

RY Deshpande

 


"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine." (The Mother, Vol. 25, p. 20)

 

Similarly, can one say that the Supreme Divine carries the Mother in his eternal consciousness?

 

The Mother answers:

 

Beyond all question.

 

They are ONE in essence and manifestation.

 

[CWM, Vol. 16, p. 389, 5 December 1968]