Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, The Divine Mother, The Life Divine, Auroville, the Ashram, Avatars, new Age, India, Human Unity, Divine Life on Earth, MSS, Roy Posner, Supermind, Supramental Consciousness, The Agenda

His Life | His Teachings | 'The Life Divine' | Additional Information

See Article for an Overview of the Life of Sri Aurobindo

See Additional Entries about His Life and The Mother's

Overview

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo is the sage and seer who, along with his partner The Mother, dedicated their lives to bringing about the next stage of evolution of life on earth. Throughout his life Sri Aurobindo worked outwardly on his massive body of writings, and inwardly to connect to the divine consciousness, to bring down its properties into the world.

Sri Aurobindo's vision begins with the assertion that humans may not be the final rung on the evolutionary scale. That we might witness the emergence of a new species, one that is above and beyond the present human race as we know it. Or, perhaps we could say that it is perhaps the same human species, but that is evolving to a new level that appears very different in functioning, inwardly and outwardly, from the current humanity. Different, emotionally, mentally, spiritually -- even one day physically!

Sri Aurobindo gave us a vision of what a future society could be like if we transcended the limited thinking of the old religions, the old superstitions, of both East and the West; if we saw beyond our physical/material view of the world; if we went beyond an analysis of existence based solely only on a scientific method that did not include the realm of consciousness and spirit. Sri Aurobindo invites us to walk through the doors that he has opened, and journey into a new frontier of understanding and experience; into a new future of infinite, never before thought of possibilities.

Sri Aurobindo believed that there is a future before us so utterly different than what we might expect, that there are forces and possibilities so staggering, that we must reevaluate our entire belief system, dismantle much of our intellectual underpinnings, and relearn a new vocabulary of life so we can understand this new future.

The Integral View of Spirit and Life Emerging in the World

The source teachings of the great religions of the world are available to each of us without having to follow that teacher exclusively. Jesus brought Love to the world, but we can follow the path of true Self-givingness without following Christianity. We can perceive that attachment, possessiveness, ignorance, and ego are essential causes of suffering, something Buddha professed, without having to follow the religion that arose after his passing. We can surrender to the True Self within and the Divine Reality above in the activities of life without having to follow Krishna who professed that profound teaching in his time and are several of the central precepts of Hinduism. We can embrace the fact that evolution is constantly occurring in life without exclusively becoming proponents of the works and principles of Darwin.

Thus in the modern era, we can take the integral approach to understanding the nature of the Reality. E.g., new spiritual teachers and evolutionary thinkers are taking the wisdom of the past and putting it into a modern context -- creating more dynamic, integral insights into the nature of existence. Because we have made great advances in our mentality in the past hundred years or so, we are able to perceive the variety of truths from all time and traditions, as well as new, modern insights, and integrate them in new holistic and uniquely perceptive integral views of Reality.

That is one reason that the current era is often referred to as 'The New Age.' It is a dynamic period in which we are able to develop a fresh, new perspective of existence, including the knowledge gleaned from multiple cultures; the various paths of wisdoms from a variety of traditions; the vast array of material, psychological, and spiritual insights from around the world; and meld them into a comprehensive view of existence. Interestingly, it includes new, unprecedented insight into the true nature, flow, and workings of life. For example, the recent interest in the principle of the Law of Attraction and the phenomenon of Life Response are merely the first wave of insights into how higher levels of consciousness can evoke instances of sudden good fortune. Of course, such laws and phenomena are not new at all -- as they were expressed in ancient traditions, such as the Indian Vedas and Upanishads thousands of years ago -- yet they are now being integrated into a modern context, giving them added dynamism and power.

The Indian sage and seer Sri Aurobindo drew on most if not all of the great spiritual precepts to come with an integral view that harmonizes such perceived dualities as spirit and matter, science and faith, and evolution and determination. Writing from the deepest poise of intuitive, spiritualized mind, he had the vision of the integral view of existence. He then formulated an evolutionary, spiritual philosophy that was unprecedented in human history. He also had all of the essential experiences of the past masters and the ancient wisdom, and in a spontaneous expression of spiritual insight, developed his dynamic, unprecedented integral view of existence. He would then go on to describe a future humanity in which we would transcend our current human functioning, ushering in a new, divine life on earth.

There are many signs that we are moving towards this new integral view of life. We see nations forging closer political and economic ties and alliances; we see the embracing of one another's cultures; we see the communications of a plethora of beliefs and spiritual teachings over the Internet; we see a society more open to new ideas that go beyond one's traditional culture. This cross-pollination of wisdom and personal experience is enriching the world and every individual in it.

While many focus on the technological means of communicating the wisdom, the all-important knowledge itself is formulating into a new, integral, evolutionary, consciousness-oriented view of life. It is surely a sign of humanity's progress -- which I believe is in fact a New Awakening. It is also an expression of Sri Aurobindo's great precept of ''Unity in Diversity;"� that as we move towards ever-greater levels of human unity, we absorb an ever-expanding diversity of views and precepts about the nature of existence. As a result, an integral view of life begins to emerge that is infinitely profound, comprehensive, and dynamic.

Through Practical Results the Public Will Take to Sri Aurobindo's Teachings
('Application of Sri Aurobindo�s Yoga')

From its inception, The Mother's Service Society has conceived of Yoga as a continuum or a spectrum or a pillar whose two ends are yoga and life. Life, though at a lower end, is the life in the full spirit of yoga, not the human social life of today. In a democratic country or a religious society, there is the hierarchy, but the lowest member fully owes his allegiance to democracy or that religion.

The dictum �All Life is Yoga' is what guides us and we take yoga in its best sense possible at the psychological level we are. We accept all disciplines of yoga, not as a realised yogi but a practicing householder. Our spirit in life is Yoga.

For the last three decades, the work of MSS has been one of a token nature, from rural development to international public life. Our belief is Mother begins where we end. Where man honestly exhausts his human capacities, Mother's Force will begin to work, giving a glimpse of the finite changing to the infinite. In our own conditions, we have seen the results aimed at multiplying two-fold, ten times, twenty-four times, 1500 times which is understood as a practical expression of infinity.

Personally, I believe that the Force has been making itself more and more felt since Feb. 29, 1956 and all my experiences are growing confirmations of that belief. In my view,

The FORCE is pressing down on humanity. Any individual, family or organisation that responds will burst forth into an infinity of abundance in their field.
International issues like disarmament on which The Master and the Mother worked will yield final results, if the TOKEN effort vitally connects the Force and human affairs. The world no longer is under the stress of food scarcity and is no longer threatened by the fear.
The community of scientists lives by a strong sentiment of social superstition but their minds are not closed. Sri Aurobindo's views of Science, when presented to them in a very diluted form to meet their mental curiosity, I believe, will evoke a ready response.
The world will not respond to the theory of management based on Sri Aurobindo, but will readily recognise it if in a highly placed company these results are produced.
The medical profession will welcome his ideas with open arms when His ideas and their practice are brought down to abolish the gap between them.
The general population will welcome Sri Aurobindo not as a philosophy, but as,

- an answer to their spiritual quest;

- an operational device in their daily lives;

- a hope to reconcile philosophy and religion;

- a model organisation or an individual who, in practice, embodies the successful results of such a practice. (MSS)

Sri Aurobindo's Broad Ideas

Sri Aurobindo's Vision of Future Existence
Sri Aurobindo said that humans may not be the final rung on the evolutionary scale. That we might witness the emergence of a new species, one that is above and beyond the present human race as we know it. Sri Aurobindo believed that if we could make the ascent to overcome our limiting nature, if we could further rediscover the hidden spirit in life, if we could come in contact and open ourselves to supramental truth Consciousness, then we can change life as we know it. He invited us to take a journey on a path from our current human functioning to a vastly different superfunctioning that opens the doors to infinite accomplishment, success, and happiness in life.

Spirit in Life, Not Apart From It
The old spiritual teachings ask us to experience spirit and its delight apart from life. The new spiritual understanding is to bring spirit into every moment into life, in every act, releasing its infinite potential, and enabling us to experience the infinite delight of existence.

Religion & Science are Failing Us
Though religion has provided a moral foundation, it has lost touch with its spiritual roots. In the coming age each individual can experience the spirit directly, not merely worship the founder. Also, each religion has but one ray of spiritual truth. We need to experience the vast multiplicity of truths of spirit. Science likewise is failing us, despite the great benefits it has brought. Like religion, it sees one truth -- the material -- and misses the vast multiplicity of vital, mental, and spiritual existence that are also the great determinants of life. Thus for every benefit it creates, it creates an equal harm. (e.g. nuclear bombs with nuclear energy.)

Path to Evolutionary Spiritual Being
For those who wished to undertake the effort, Sri Aurobindo laid out a path from our current human functioning to a new evolutionary spiritual-based functioning; rooted in a new supramental consciousness. One could open to this Force to totally transform our mental, vital, and physical nature into their higher counterparts.

Delight of Being
The ultimate purpose of life is to discover the delight of existence. We reach that delight when we discover our higher nature. The highest nature we can discover is our spiritual nature. When we discover our highest spiritual nature we experience delight; the very reason that the Divine created this universe of forms, for even greater delight.

Going Beyond Our Ignorance to an Integral Knowledge
We are divided beings, born of an essential Ignorance due to our exclusionary view that takes the part we know as the whole. Sri Aurobindo says that as we rise discover our True Self within and the spirit we rise in in consciousness, where we rise above the ego that supports the Ignorance. We begin to see the multiplicity of truths, going beyond our part knowledge. This helps break down our ignorance, and the falsehood and evil that derives from it. In other words, we move toward an Integral Knowledge of the whole, including seeing the oneness of the spirit and matter, and the creator and the creation. I.e. the vision of Brahman.

The Evolutionary Aspect of Spirit in India
In an earlier entry, I discussed the great contribution of the ancient Vedic worshippers of the Divine Reality through natural forces, as well as the later more-mental Rishis who collectively melted into that Reality, though apart from life. These were the great spiritual voyagers seeking connection with the Divine, both individually and collectively. I then followed that up with a discussion of Buddha, who confronted the issues of suffering and impermanence in life that the ancient Indian Vedics were less concerned about, as they were immersed in transcendence and blissful experience. In the end, Buddha discovered a void, a place of emptiness -- Nirvana -- from which he could escape from the trappings of life, including the desire and attachment that is the root cause of all suffering.

And yet the spiritual search continued in India, as many returned to the ancient Vedic tradition, looking this time not for transcendence apart from life, but a way to link spirit and life together. And so in the Bhagavad Gita, warrior prince Arjuna is directed by Lord Krishna to find wholeness in his being by connecting to the transcendent Divine and yet performing all his duties and works for Its sake. In this way, spirit and life activity are melded together. In addition, by recognizing that the same transcendent Being is there in one's own Soul, one has the method of integrating self with spirit, enabling wholeness in one's own being. This was a revolution in spiritual insight and experience, just as Buddha's was for his time.

Now in the modern era, there is a desire to go further -- to not only integrate life and spirit, but to see it in a progressive, evolutionary context. Embracing the ancient Vedantic and Gita influence, seer and sage Sri Aurobindo described the evolutionary process by which the universe emerged from a Divine Source, as well as how we can progressively develop our own higher nature leading to a supernature. He has taken the message of earlier ancient wisdom and given it an upward arc that is supported by the modern scientific and philosophical influences of the West.

Besides revealing the universal process of creation, Sri Aurobindo adds two powerful dimensions to the spiritual story. First, he speaks not only of a soul, but of an Evolving soul that uses the experiences of the person it inhabits through successive births on its journey for fulfillment. When we come in touch with that ''psychic being"� within, we begin the process of personal evolution and transformation. Second, Sri Aurobindo speaks of an ultimate power in the universe: a Supramental Consciousness and Force that not only enabled a universe to emerge from an Infinite, Divine Source, but is a power that can aide in the transmutation of our nature and set right all condition of life.

Through these internal and external powers, we engage in a clearly delineated evolutionary process, which helps us evolve a supernature, which in turn can set the stage for the emergence of a new type of spirit-oriented human existence, a divine life on earth.

Sri Aurobindo's Theory of Creation

The Involution
The Involution is the process by which the Omnipresent Spiritual Reality became the cosmos.

The original Omnipresent Reality (The Absolute in the West, Brahman in the East) in its desire to create a universe of forms (for the purpose of extending its own Delight into the experience of delight by those forms in life) extended to the Triune of Existence/Being/Spirit -- Conscious/Force -- Delight. It then spun off the Supramental Plane to enable the plane of Mind to divide the Conscious Force, which provided the energy that is the basis of all forms in creation. When that energy began to move the universe was born.

The Evolution
From the point that energy is created in the involution, the evolution begins.

The universe essentially began as energy at rest, becomes energy that moves, and eventually coagulates into forms of matter (plasma, galaxies, etc.), further evolving on earth (and elsewhere) as vital animus of life, and culminating in humans (and perhaps other intelligent life forms) as mind. Man continues this evolutionary process by rising to his higher nature above mind and within through sprit. When he touches Supermind and the pure spirit above and uses that power to integrate all aspect of his being, he fulfills his evolutionary purpose.

-Utilization of Truth Consciousness Power
Man utilizes the same spiritual supramental, truth consciousness power that enables the Reality to manifest the universe to aid in his own ascent from vital and mental-based humans to spiritual and supramental truth consciousness evolutionary beings. This is the culminating of the evolution.

The spiritualized evolutionary individual and collective existence fulfills the purpose of the universe, which is delight of being.

-Evolution is Reverse of Involution
The involution, which is from spirit to matter, is reversed in the evolution; i.e. is a return to spirit from matter. The involution goes from the Real Idea of the Omnipresent Reality to manifest a universe for the delight of being, creates the planes of mind, life, and matter, and then hides them before creation; whereas the evolution is the reverse process where matter appears, where the plane of life emerges from matter, where mind emerges from life, and spirit from mind, and in that process enables man to discover the delight of being, the purpose for which the Divine manifest through Supermind the universe.

-Subprocesses in Involution and Evolution
In the involution a process of self conception is used by the Divine to conceptualize the universe as a Real Idea, and through supermind converts that Real Idea into the planes of matter, life, and mind. Then thorough a process of self-absorption the Divine hides those planes just as the universe begins so that through the evolution man can discover the hidden spirit, Godhead in objects and experience the delight of existence.

In the evolution matter emerges, and from matter life, and from life mind, and from mind, spirit. In that way Nature reverses the self-absorption of these planes as they emerge as realities. Also man similarly self-conceptualizes what he would like his own life to be to enable his own evolution, experiencing the delight of being for which the universe was created, culminating in his spiritual nature and the evolutionary spiritual being and divine collective life.

Teachings of Sri Aurobindo
-Man is not the final rung of creation. A greater being awaits the world.

-Man will evolve out of his current nature into a super-nature, organized around the Spirit.

-Man evolves when he overcomes the limitations of his current nature and discovers the higher elements, including his spiritual essence and being.

-When man goes within, he can discovers his Soul being; the spark of the Divine. As he comes in touch with this Psychic Being, the evolving Soul within, he rises in consciousness.

-Man can also open to the spiritual Force that is descending to enable his evolution.

-That Force aids in the transformation of his physical, vital, and mental nature.

-The more man moves within away from the surface of life, the more he recognizes the descending Force, and the more he surrenders to it hastening the transformation of his nature.

-Man must change his nature because it is born of Ignorance-

-In the process of the unfolding of creation from a Divine source, life and then Man was created divided and ignorant.

-The Divine brought division to creation to enable the greatest multiplicity of forms and possibilities of existence. (E.g. night and day are divided from one another, but allow for greater possibility.)

-Since the purpose of the universe was the extension of the Delight of the Being/Creator to a universe of forms, the greatest multiplicity of those forms could only occur through division and duality.

-Man thus recovers the Oneness of the Being/Creator in his evolutionary ascent out of his divided Ignorant Nature.

-When he does so he has the Delight of discovery, fulfilling the Divine's purpose in creating the forms of creation -- which is to extend its Delight into the Delight of the forms of the universe.

-Man begins that process by moving within, discovering his soul, surrendering himself to the descending Force, transforming his nature.

-Meanwhile he rejects all of the wanting qualities of his nature of in the process.

-When man ascends to his ultimate supramental nature, he develops the true integral knowledge, knowledge and will are reunited, his emotions are one with others, and the environment; he feels the Oneness of life, and the transcendent Reality about him, he feels his purpose bound up in the universal and transcendent purpose, he becomes an instrument of the Divine Will, even his body's functioning is transformed, ushering in a supramental nature and Being.

-When enough of such Gnostic individuals appear, there can be the beginnings of a Divine Life on earth.

Sri Aurobindo's Teachings

There is a transcendent Reality, unknowable, timeless, spaceless.
It extended itself into a universe of forms for the purpose of Delight in those forms.
It did so through the action of the supramental plane, which divided the Consciousness-Force of Sat-Chit-Ananda, producing the energy that is the source of all forms in creation.
The Consciousness was involved and hidden in the involutionary process from Satchitananda to Supermind to Mind to Life/Energy to Matter. The evolution back towards Spirit begins with Life/Energy to Matter to Animated Forms & Universal Life to mentality to Spirit.
When those forms, including us, discover our higher Nature we experience the Delight for which the Divine manifest the universe.
In order to create the greatest variety, it allowed for all manner of forms and consciousness, from darkness to light; from truth to Ignorance
Man is born of Ignorance to enable the greatest variety of shadings of life; for the greatest variety of self-discovery of our Higher Nature.
When we move into a deeper consciousness within down to the Evolving Soul (Psychic being) we shed that Ignorance
As we move deeper within, we move up in mentality to spiritualized mind of illumination, light, intuition, revelation, culminating in supramental perception.
We evolve through an psychic (evolving soul), spiritual, and supramental transformation.
As individuals rise in consciousness, they become harbingers of a new humanity; of a Divine life on earth.
By becoming realized we realize our true Individuality. In that process we fulfill the Universal Intent, which is in turn fulfilling the Transcendent Purpose and Intent of the Divine.
Our purpose is to bring the Spiritual Being into the becomings of our lives.
The ultimate Reality, Brahman is the unmanifest and the manifest and their integral unity.
When we rise to Supramental perception then we can perceive this ultimate Reality, Brahman, the Absolute.

Overview of Sri Aurobindo's Thought

The human is a transitional being. A new spiritual life, a divine life on earth awaits him.
We can attain this new life on earth by making the effort of transformation.
We must not only cope with the problems of life but transform them so they are changed permanently.
Religion has failed to change the essential nature of man. It has not focused on permanent transformation, and has lost its relevancy in that regard.
(Also each religion only expresses but one or two major rays of the spiritual reality; and hasn't the multi-rayed integral truth. The spiritual reality, which can be experienced by anyone at any time, expresses this multiple, integral, dynamic aspect of the Divine.)
The individual consists of the physical, vital, and mental plane. As we grow and evolve, we move from the lower to the higher aspect of each of these planes
Our physical, vital, and mental nature are filled with the limitations that need to be transformed -- the inconscience, inertia, and incapacity of the physical plane of our being; the passions, irrationality, attachments, and ego of the vital/emotional plane of our being; to the knowledge, perceptions, and insight of the mental plane.
Most individuals are centered in their vital functioning. In the last 50 years or so there has been a rapid movement toward a centering in the mental consciousness.
Mind proper ranges from the sense-based mind (focused on interpreting that which our senses experience) to reasoning and conceptive mind.
Though mind proper is the highest of the three functionings, there are planes of spiritual mind above mind such as higher (silent) mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, and Truth consciousness itself (supermind).
We begin the process of evolution, development, and transformation by becoming aware of the deficiencies of our nature, having the aspiration to overcome them, and then making the effort to change them.
We also make the movement within to touch our inner being (our psychic being, our personal soul force), which helps us move away from our ego sense and nature, our separateness, which also helps us overcome the limitations of our physical, vital, and mental nature, and also creates an opening to the spiritual Force above.
In his opus The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo explains the nature of the immutable Divine source of all, the Absolute (also called Brahman in the East); how the Absolute manifest the universe we live in; the nature of what was created, including matter, life, and mind in the universe, including man; and the purpose and destiny of the universe and the humanity.
The process that created the universe from the Divine Source, the Absolute, is the involution. That process begins when the Divine Absolute self-conceives a formation of forms. To begin this process the Absolute separates from a unitary Divine Reality and extends itself into a trinity of Existence, Consciousness-Force, and Bliss. Out of Consciousness-Force comes Energy, energy at rest, which then begins to move, and thus the beginnings of existence in the universe. The point up to the movement of energy is the involution. The process by which the universe though the emergence of the consecutive planes of matter, life, mind, and spirit reconnects with the underlying hidden spirit that enables the experience of the delight of being is called the evolution.
The purpose of the creation from the Divine Source is Delight of being. When we discover our higher nature we experience the delight of this discovery. In experiencing that delight we fulfill the very reason the Divine created the universe of being -- delight of being. [Also the greatest discovery is Self-Discovery of our True Self and Spirit, which creates the greatest Delight.]
The Divine Source was at first the Omnipresent Reality (the Absolute, Brahman); timeless, spaceless, ungraspable, immutable spirit. To begin the process of extending that spirit into a material universe it first became Existent, i.e. it began to exist as a reality beyond its unknowable state. This Existence (or Being) then extended Itself as a self-conscious Force. It further extended itself as Delighting in its existence, in Its being conscious of its existence. The Reality had become the triune of Existence-Consciousness Force-Delight (Sat-chit-ananda) to begin the process that would enable its Being/Spirit, its Force, Its Delight to extend to a created universe.
A fourth aspect, Supermind, emerged from the three to enable the universe to emerge. The Supermind (i.e. Supramental Consciousness) is the intermediary plane that enabled the cosmos, the universe to manifest from the conscious, delighting Being, the Spirit. Supermind thus in essence enabled the creation. It became the ordering mechanism that enabled the Absolute/Brahman to move from its original status of Existence, Consciousness-Force, and Bliss (Delight) into a universe of matter, life, and mind.
Supermind was/is the ordering mechanism that enabled the Force of the original Divine Spirit to manifest as material formations of that Force.
All of existence in the universe are forms of the original Force of spirit. I.e. matter, life, mind, etc. are all forms of this Force.
The universe, and hence the life within it was created in division and duality to enable the greatest multiplicity and variety of forms.
The struggle from the original inconscience of matter to life to mind to spirit is the evolution. The goal of the evolution, of life in the universe is to enable the spirit, the Force, and the Delight of being to emerge in all forms in the creation, including us.
We can make this effort of growth, evolution, even transformation on our own, but we can also be aided by the same Force that enabled the universe. This (Supramental) Force enables us to overcome the limitations of our own physical, vital, and mental nature; to overcome the inconscience, ignorance, falsehoods in our own lives and life in general; and enable a radical transformation of individuals and humanity into a higher functioning, perhaps a enabling a new species to emerge beyond the human, culminating in a divine life on earth.
We can also utilize the Force to effect life's actions and results. We can learn to bring in the Force to release the infinite potential in life, including our ability to bring about infinite accomplishment, success, and joy in our lives; to make every activity, action, situation, and circumstance end in perfection, in ways never thought of, releasing the infinite potential and unity that lurks behind.

We can learn the secrets to literally move and effect the world outside ourselves from within ourselves by connecting with our Inner, Psychic Being, personal soul; and then further opening to the infinite, ever creative, ever unifying, timeless, spaceless, causal actions and powers of the Supramental Consciousness.
The discovery of our inner, personal soul or psychic being is the way out of our ego, separateness, universal Ignorance, and the divisions and dualities of existence. Connecting thus within and a further opening to the Supramental Force and Consciousness is the key to our progress and transformation, and to the transformation of the society out of its ignorance, falsehood, division, suffering, and pain.
When we open to spirit it expresses as any of Truth, Knowledge, Power, Oneness, Peace, Delight, Beauty, and Love.

One of the experiences of the Divine Consciousness is the experience of harmony, Oneness, and Unity of being; oneness within ourselves; and oneness with that which is outside ourselves. Through Oneness we broaden our perspective beyond our ego, ourselves, to the all, and thus to that vaster realm of possibility. From that deeper and broader status we can much more easily find greater solutions to the mysteries, issues, and problems of life. Likewise institutions and nations functioning from this status of Oneness within itself and outside itself can see the solutions to all problems, as well as the development of new, unthought of possibilities.

"All problems in life are problems of harmony." Any problem that exists can be resolved by finding a higher harmony than currently exists between and among parties, entities, and individuals. There is therefore no problem that cannot be solved by rising to a higher harmony that resolves the contradictions that exist at the previous level. When we live in our higher consciousness we are far more able to see the higher harmony that is emerging, that is in potential, which then known we can help bring about in the world. We develop this higher consciousness by living more within in the depths, and by opening to the Force around us.

The individual has not only his individual purpose, but a purpose and destiny that relates to the social environment, the collective, and the universe itself.

Through the individual the collective purpose and the universe's purpose is fulfilled. The ultimate status of the individual then is to find his true Individual Self (his psychic being, i.e. the personal evolving soul), and to also discover his Universal Self and even his Transcendent Self.

By overcoming one's limited propensities one begins on the path of personal growth. By moving within into the depths one begins to rise in consciousness to the point where he discovers his personal evolving soul. He is then open to universal truths and powers, his inner guide which guides him along the way, and to the higher truth and knowledge that is emerging in the atmosphere at any moment. He discovers the unity with everything around him. He then can more easily open to the Force living a consecrated life so all actions he takes end in perfection and infinite results, and he can further surrender his very existence to this Force in all aspects of his life so that his own will and purpose is one with the Divine purpose.

Man's ultimate evolutionary possibility is the supramental transformation of his being. By opening to the Supramental Consciousness and calling in its properties, we see the emergence of a new type of individual, living in a unitary consciousness that is one with all parts of his being, one with everything around it; with the total knowledge, comprehension, and understanding of the truth of every moment, that enables him to take the right and most perfect action at any moment in time. He becomes one with the flow of the universal action and the Divine spirit. Individuals living in such a poise has great positive influence and oneness with the activities, projects, institutions, organizations, communities, nations, societies that he is engaged in or connected to. His involvement lend itself to fantastic successes for any of these, enabling the greatest efficiencies of success; i.e. enabled the greatest results with the least effort in the shortest period of time.

Eventually we begin to see the emergence of a coming together of such individuals in a collective life. These individuals become harbingers of a new type of existence; a society steeped in the inner consciousness and spirit, releasing its infinite potential, culminating in a new type of life, a divine life on earth.

Sri Aurobindo -- On Himself
The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and all.

Sri Aurobindo's teaching states that this One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection. (Sri Aurobindo)

Sri Aurobindo's Vision: Reuniting with the Omnipresent Reality (Brahman)
-Sri Aurobindo describes our Ignorance which prevents us from experiencing the true nature of things ("the Reality"), and how we can rise in consciousness, overcome our essential Ignorance, giving us the vision of the omnipresent Reality. Here then is the problem and the process:

-There is an infinite Reality that is One. (It is the Absolute, Brahman).

-Our divided consciousness born of creation has lost its connection with that Oneness.

-We view life from our ego-sense, our separateness that divides us from the Oneness of life. It is the main cause of our essential Ignorance.

-In the Ignorance we experience finiteness instead of the infiniteness; we are bound to the exigencies of time instead of living in timelessness; we live in separateness instead of oneness with others and the world around us; and we are limited to mind's ignorance instead of having infinite, integral, true knowledge.

-In terms of knowledge, we see only the part instead of the whole. Our knowledge is cut off from its original source of Truth.

-We don't even know who we are or our purpose in existing.

-We have lost touch with the timeless, spaceless, infinite, undivided, oneness of the Reality. This is our essential Ignorance.

-We can however overcome all of these limitations, and thus our Ignorance.

-To overcome our disconnect from the Reality, we begin by a movement within away from the surface of life, dominated by the senses and Mind processing sense impressions alone.

-We must first become rational and clear thinking, and overcome our wanting nature.

-We can more easily do so by discovering our True Selves within, our evolving soul, and as a result make vast leap in consciousness. We are able to overcome ego, finiteness, separation, time, and Mind by moving into the depths, into our subliminal being culminating in our evolving soul.

-consecutively we can open to the descending Force which will aid us in our journey to overcome Ignorance and reunite us wit the reality at each step.

-From there we begin to see the unity of the Creator and the creation, actually their total integration. This is the vision of the reality, of Brahman.

-We overcome the division between Being (Spirit) and the Becoming (life) bringing the Being into the Becoming. Likewise we bring the infinite into the finite, and simultaneous time eternity into time.

-The omnipresent Reality (Brahman) is the One and the Many; the Spirit and matter. Actually it is beyond the addition of each of the two, but the full integration of each of these pairs. Thus Brahman is both the Divine and Life, and beyond these two in their integral Oneness.

Gods, Overmind, and Ignorance

Sri Aurobindo used to say that he never wanted to be limited by the gods. The gods belong to the overmental plane. Their dimension, Mother says, belongs to the dimension of earth. Overmind is a plane where the full power of truth does not exist. It is a plane where truths can protect themselves and act, eliminating the destructive influence of ignorance. Overmind brings together several truths to act in unison. Krishnavatar came from this plane. The color of this plane is blue. Sri Aurobindo explained to Mother that the overmental truth had no power to transform ignorance into knowledge. It can function successfully protecting its truth and avoiding the warping influence of ignorance. Truth is self-existent in the next plane of Supermind. Here there is no ignorance. Power of Supermind can enter into ignorance, reach its foundation of truth, unite all of them and from there transform ignorance into knowledge. Without that seed of truth, however little, neither ignorance, nor evil, nor falsehood, nor even hostility can exist. Beings of the supramental plane are of the dimension of the universe. On February 29, 1956 when the Supermind descended, Mother found herself as big as the universe and in a golden form. The gods have a limitation when they come to function in the supramental plane. Sri Aurobindo had declared he never wanted to be limited by the gods in his work.

Converging Views of Science and Spirit
In recent years, the scientists and spiritual evolutionists are coming to a common understanding of the nature of Matter in the universe. The inevitable realization of scientific inquiry is that the the basis of all material existence is Spiritual, while the inevitable result of spiritual experience is that Spirit reaches its full flowering and apex when it is expressed through the details of material life.

The recent discovery by scientists of Dark Energy in the universe confirms this trend. Invisible Dark Energy is now believed to be the source of all forms in the cosmos. The Indian spiritual sage and seer Sri Aurobindo came to the same conclusion, but from a different angle; namely that this subtle, invisible Energy is an end product of a Divine process. In fact, the Dark Energy of material science and subtle Energy of the modern spiritual metaphysician may simply be the same thing.

Let's examine this invisible Energy from the spiritual perspective, since the scientific one is more commonly discussed. Sri Aurobindo says that there is an ultimate Reality -- ineffable, immutable, timeless and spaceless. At some point that Reality took its first step toward manifestation when it became conscious of itself and as a result generated a Force. Conscious-Force thus became the original non-substance "substance" of creation. In reality, that Conscious-Force split in that creation process, leaving only the Force component. That Force became the invisible sea of Energy that permeates the universe, and out of which all forms come into being.

As science continues to explore, it finds itself in endless conundrums; at dead ends, as their discoveries confound their minds. That is because the Reality is beyond the normal functionings of mind. It only can be perceived through intuition, revelation, and supra versions of mentality, which is precisely the way the spiritual seekers of the modern era are beginning to perceive the world. They sense this Reality, and are thus coming in touch with it, and by identity explaining it. Sri Aurobindo has provided this profound knowledge in great detail, saving humanity perhaps 1000 years of spiritual and metaphysical inquiry. Scientists are merely coming to the same understanding through the faulty logic of empiricism, of the material view, which sees only the part, not the Whole; and surely not the Essence.

Life is more than matter. It contains vital movement, energy and force; mental knowledge and awareness; and spiritual expressions taking shape as Oneness of being to Infinite Creation Power to Divine Love to rhapsodic Delight of Being. Science can learn to embrace these other dimensions of the Cosmos. When they do, they will perceive a core Spirit behind all things. Then they will be on their way to a true understand of life in the universe.

On Sri Aurobindo's Greatness
There are many great spiritual figures like Dr. D who are coming into realization of great truths. Truth is there outside of all individuals, waiting to be discovered. Aurobindo's revelations were for me the most profound insight ever devised by man, even going beyond the known avatars. I realize that is a bold statement, yet it seems plain to me once you penetrate his teachings -- especially his explanation of creation (how life came to be), the True Self (psychic being), the planes of reality including the supramental, the reason for creation, our evolutionary destiny, and so forth. There is nothing quite like it in all the world's experience. It strikes me as a direct revelation of the Truth by someone who has had a deep experience of each and every aspect he described. There is nothing mental here. It appears as the pure revelation of the Divine, especially helpful for modern life that embraces the evolutionary unfolding. Interestingly, almost none of his followers understand it!

His expressions like Being in the Becoming, Timelessness in Time, Practical Concept of Infinity, and hundreds of others are unique in the annals of spiritual experience and explanation, embracing and then going far beyond traditional Vedanta. I have spent many years trying to make sense of them. Though I have come a long way, I am just beginning to penetrate their truths so that it becomes a living reality through which our daily lives are dramatically changed. His discovery and bringing down of the supramental Force is I believe the single great spiritual achievement in this history of spiritual man. When we open to it at any moment in time, everything starts going right. It is the power of Truth Consciousness. Such results I call instances of 'Life Response.' Dr. D seems to speak in similar language as I do. Aurobindo strikes me as far beyond this, as he is at the source of the Truth we are all beginning to grapple with.

Chopra, Tolle, and the Emerging Integral Spirituality
Today we see ever-increasing cross-pollination of ideas moving across a variety fields, enhancing each of them and creating new possibilities and vistas for the individual and society. This movement also occurs in the realm of the practical application of spirit in daily life. Older, fixed, traditional, hard-line religious views of God are being cast aside by the educated and disaffected, and are being replaced by deeper truth about the nature of life and Spirit, and how those insights can be practically used by the average person.

Two popular thinkers who have captured this synthetic, integral view are Deepak Chopra, who carries forward the ancient wisdom of India, and Eckhart Tolle, who has synthesized the Buddhist tenets with the teachings of more modern Indian sages.

In addition to a scientific bent, Deepak Chopra's teachings are deeply rooted in the Indian spiritual tradition of Vedanta. In essence, he says that if we move our reference to a deeper poise within -- through meditation, concentration, prayer or other methods -- we raise our consciousness and thereby open to a universal realm where we experience intuitions of knowledge, vast creativity, life synchronicities, profound oneness, love, communion with the transcendent being, and deep joy and delight in being alive.

Eckhart Tolle's teachings emphasize the ways we can become truly mindful and alive by keeping ourselves focused on the moment at hand. He tells us that there are factors that distract us from the present experience of life -- including preoccupation with the past, desire for something in the future, allures of the outer life, and the negative influence of the human ego. In particular, Tolle indicates that it is the feeding of our ego that is the source of inner and outer conflict, which in effect deflects us from the needs of the Now.

I find it interesting that Chopra expresses his affection for Tolle's spiritual bestseller 'The Power of Now' on the book's front cover. It is Tolle's mindfulness of the present and the serenity and stillness that follow that can be seen as providing the foundation for the profound consciousness experiences described by Chopra. By being rooted in the present moment (which parallels being stationed in the stillness of inner self), one is able to open to the non-local, universal domain where one experiences intuition, love, creativity, synchronicity, attraction, oneness, transcendence, and blissful delight.

These two teachings along with the Power of Attraction as described by the book 'The Secret' -- i.e. the capacity to quickly attract the object of our desire -- have begun to coalesce into a modern, dynamic, practical method of applying Spirit in life. Together they begin to form an integral view of the nature of consciousness and our infinite human potential.

Interestingly, this integral approach to personal and spiritual fulfillment has precedence; for the Indian sage and seer Sri Aurobindo has combined and integrated these modern approaches into an all-encompassing teaching. After embracing and extending the profound Vedantic view and that of the Eternal Now, he adds to the mix a Spiritual Force that is descending into the earth's atmosphere that we can open that instantly resolves problems, rights the conditions of life, and brings about instant good fortune. Being the Force that created the universe, we can use that power to evolve all parts of our being, enabling the evolution and transformation of our nature. Sri Aurobindo then concludes that we will begin to see the arrival of a number of spiritualized individuals, who will usher in a new stage of humanity, culminating in what he calls a ''Divine Life on Earth."� Through this integral, evolutionary process, he has devised a method for humanity to come out of its Ignorance and suffering, and fulfill its infinite potential.

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother as Avatars and Beyond
Many CAN understand a Jesus or Buddha now. The teachings are not that complicated. But few are ready to seriously take up their lessons. Few of us are SERIOUS in this way. Perhaps it WAS complicated for the people of that time to pick up that knowledge because it was so new to the world. Certainly Sri Aurobindo's teachings as expressed in The Life Divine (the essence of his thought) is very difficult to understand.

I and others have therefore put in a great effort over the last decade or two to truly understand his mind. (For me now it is relatively easy to understand, though there are endless shadings that are constantly being revealed to me.) SA's teachings and experiences are so radically different than anything before it, that even scholars of His teachings are missing its essence; mainly because they are looking at it from the lens of the tradition of Indian thought. 90% of what I have read from the followers and disciples of SA have missed His essential points

In my mind, I am beginning to think of Sri Aurobindo as more than even what we ordinarily think of as Avatar. He is the direct expression of the nature of God, the divine Reality transcribed from the Infinite Source. He intuitived God and the creation. Does that not make him close to the Divine itself; which is consciousness? He has intuitivized and become the supramental consciousness he writes about. (His power is now greater than ever.

The Mother was an emanation of the Divine Mother and Force that is the source of all creation in the universe. Her mission as Mother was that of The Divine Mother coming to see if she could create the supramental being (of perfection and undying nature) of the Divine Mother in a physical human body. She succeeded in part.

Individual Transformation

Sri Aurobindo's Path to the Future
Sri Aurobindo presents a theory of creation and offers a path for a seeker to delve into these fundamental mysteries and to find answers through a different form or state of consciousness that knows things directly rather than through the constructed consciousness of the sense mind. In his theory, he argues that one must use an appropriate instrument that is capable of the knowledge we are trying to discover. He argues that for humanity to answer these fundamental questions, it must give up the reliance on mind and its self-constructed knowledge and seek a new poise of consciousness that can know the nature of the reality directly. Based on this premise, he explains how man must move away from his surface consciousness and break through to the inner being that is closer to his true Nature. But this is not the final poise of consciousness needed to answer these questions fully. From this point of consciousness, one must continue to reach further back until he finds the psychic being and its connections with higher states of consciousness, which are the direct extension of the original consciousness that created the material universe. (MSS, Robert Macfarlane)

Sri Aurobindo's Roadmap of Transformation
Sri Aurobindo provides the seeker with a road map to discover the truth of his theory and their true Nature. Once that discovery has been made, he invites them to transform the world into the kingdom of heaven on earth. The broad principles of the search he advocates are clear.

1. Man must begin by detaching from his surface personality, time, space, ego and selfishness.

2. Man must disengage from the constructive consciousness of the mind and its divided awareness.

3. Man must discover his psychic center which is the secret entrance to the ascending grades of higher consciousness.

4. Man must climb back to and station himself in the Supramental consciousness where he will rediscover the Oneness of Existence.

5. Man must act from a poise of consciousness that permits him to live in Status and Extension simultaneously.

6. Man must act from that center as a point of self-conscious manifestation to transform life on earth to that of heaven on earth -- God in manifestation. (MSS, Robert Macfarlane)

All In Life Can Express Spirit
Sri Aurobindo explained that in all activities, situations, circumstances in life one could bring in a spiritual force to uplift those acts. Whether you were a businessman, a writer, a sportsman, a politician, it didn't matter. Everyone and everything is to be included.

Everyone and every thing could go one step further, could grow, develop, and evolve; could find the spiritual planes within it, so that the real, infinite, potential of the thing could be let loose.

The Supramental Plane and Consciousness
Sri Aurobindo discovered the supramental plane and consciousness, which not only was the agent of the Spirit that enabled creation, but is the descending Force that we can open to that enables our ultimate possibility and transformation.

The Makeup of the Individual According to Sri Aurobindo
Life in the universe began as physical matter, evolved to the vital animus of life, and evolved further to mind. The individual human embodies the matter of the universe as his physical body, experiences the vital animus of life as his vital life force, energy, emotions, and feelings, and he is the highest embodiment of the plane of mind. He can also enable spirit in his life

Subdivisions of Physical, Vital, and Mental
The individual consists of physical, vital, mental, and spiritual planes. Each of these can be subdivided into at least three more levels. E.g. three planes of mind--

Levels of Mind Proper -- The mind of man consists of a first level where thoughts are processed into ideas, a still higher level where thoughts are turned into sentiments, values, and ideals, and higher still where he engages in reason, pure thought, and can conceptualize new ideas and that which he wishes to be.

Levels of Spiritual Mind -- There are level of spiritual mind beyond our normal minds; beyond mind proper. There is an ascending scale of mentality that starts with the lower fact-gathering and sense-based mind, that rises higher to that part of mind that expresses sentiments and values, rises higher still to the rational, objective pure mind, and then finally breaks through to spiritual mind. It is in spiritual mind that we have experiences of knowledge through silence, light and illumination and vision, and intuition. It is in those realms that the object of knowledge that we pursue simply drops into our minds without the hard thought-churning processes of mind proper. From these levels of mind we simply know that which we want to know. When we have the intuition, then the information, the object of knowledge we wish to know, enters our mind in full, with all of its details.

Vertical and Horizontal Scales of Consciousness
The planes of man that go from matter to vital to mind to spiritual mind to supermind can be thought of as vertical scale of consciousness. The movement from the surface of life to the depths of life within culminating in connection to the psychic being, the personal evolving soul can be thought of as the horizontal scale of consciousness. When we evolve, move deeper within on the horizontal scale, and we move up among the planes in the vertical scale. The evolutionary spiritual being has reached and embodied the greatest depths of the horizontal -- the True Self, the personal evolving soul, the Psychic Being (these three are the same), and the heights of the vertical, the supramental consciousness.

Details of the Consciousness Within on the Horizontal Scale

Overview -- This horizontal scale of human consciousness ranges from our outer surface consciousness to an inner consciousness in the depths of our being. One way to imagine this is a series of concentric circles expanding out from the center of our being to the outer surface. The outer circle would be the surface of life we experience at the most material level, the inner circle would be our deepest parts within. We can choose to live on the surface of life or be centered in the depths of our being. The more we are influenced by the positive elements of the depths (there are also negative elements there), the higher our consciousness. The more we live on he surface, i.e. the outer rings, the less conscious we are of the world. As we bring the higher consciousness of the depths (which are influenced by the spirit) to our surface life -- replacing the current surface occupations of the outer material world experienced through our sense -- the more we evolve. This movement is a key to our future growth and development as a species.

Details of Inner Positive -- The inner consciousness (or being) consists of unconscious parts and very conscious parts. The unconscious parts include the inconscient and the subconscient (subconscious), while the conscious parts consist of the subliminal, or subtle physical, vital, and mental parts, and more conscious still, the personal evolving soul, the True Self, the Psychic Being behind the subliminal being.

As we move our consciousness away from the surface of life and more towards the inner positive Subliminal being and even greater still to the Personal Evolving Soul (the Psychic Being) we break the bonds of our limited nature. We begin to come in contact with greater forces and powers within, which enable us to have greater control of the outer live; which breaks down our limiting, separative ego-sense, which overcomes our fundamental Ignorance which prevents us from having true, integral Knowledge, open us up to universal forces and powers, and enables us to experience the greatest Delight of existence.

Details of Inner Negative -- Let's consider the limited and greater parts of our inner being. The bedrock of all matter in the universe is unconsciousness, which we can call the Inconscient realm. That unconsciousness, inconscience of matter lives inside the human in the mostly negative Subconscient realm within. It is the cause of difficult dreams, pessimism and negative outlook of life born of millennia of human misery and difficulty. It is the foundation for our physical existence.

However, sitting atop the Subconscient is the very positive Subliminal, which throws up positive influences to our surface being. Within the Subliminal is the Personal Evolving Soul (the Psychic Being), which is the great aspect of our being that enables us to discover our true evolutionary nature. As we make contact with the Subliminal and Psychic Being, we evolve. We begin to do this in life by moving from living on the surface of life to moving into these depths. Ultimately we must also evolve the unevolved subconscient realms within, which we do by opening to the Superconscient realm, which is essentially the spiritual domain. When the spiritual domain evolves the subconscient, and we are firmly living in the depths of our being in the Subliminal and Personal Evolving Soul, the human individual will have begun the process of being transformed into his ultimate evolutionary possibility.

Individual's Center of Consciousness
Each individual lives at all of these levels simultaneously, though he tends to be centered at one; e.g. some people are more physical (e.g. rigid and of one mind), vital (emotional, passionate, energetic), or mental (cerebral, logical, etc.). Most people are centered in the vital of their needs and desires. Fewer are centered in the mind, though more and more are centered there. Fewer still are centered in the highest part of mind proper focused on reason, logic, and conception. A very few are centered in spirit, including spiritual mind.

The Transformation of the Individual

Consecration and Surrender
The relatively simple method of human growth and development is to open to the Force before an activity. This is to open to the Power of the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother is the feminine personification of the Divine, God. In that way the individual suffuses all actions taken with this power, releasing its infinite potential. At a further stage man surrenders to the Force, and makes the Divine the whole reason for his existence, carrying out the Divine Will in the details of his life. Sri Aurobindo also explains an ultimate process of yoga to enable his ultimate human evolution. This he calls the triple transformation (explained below).

The one thing demanded of those serious in following Sri Aurobindo's path is a sincerity in its pursuit, and an intense aspiration for the descent of the Power and the transformation of one's nature.

Triple Transformation
For those who undertake the path of personal transformation (i.e. yoga), Sri Aurobindo describes three successive phases of this transformation -- the psychic, the spiritual, and the supramental.

In the first phase of the Triple Transformation one moves from the outer surface consciousness to the inner consciousness; the inner mind, the subliminal within, until one reaches the personal soul, i.e. inner psychic consciousness. At the psychic one has withdrawn from the ego consciousness, one is able to understand and control the limitations of one's physical, vital, and mental being, and one is put in touch with the cosmic, universal forces and truths. This is the Psychic transformation.

At a further phase one rises higher in one's being toward higher planes of mind, including Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuitive Mind. It is an opening to the presence above, an elevation of one's lower consciousness to the higher, and the descent of the higher into the lower. This is the Spiritual transformation, beyond the Psychic transformation.

Beyond that still is the Supramental transformation, where one rises to the level of Supermind, for a radical transformation of the being out of the ignorance that is the foundation of our nature, and into a new functioning that transcends beyond the mental, vital, and physical. One can become the Supramental being. The Triple Transformation are three stages that would happen in succession. (There is of course room for endless variety.)

The Triple Transformation of the Individual
One of the key aspects of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is how Man is born an Ignorant divided being since he is a product of the original inconscience of Matter. He does not know who he is, nor the parts of his being, what purpose he serves, what the universe and the Reality is made up of, what the purpose of life is, etc. In addition he sees all life in division and duality, as his limited Mind can only know the part, not the integral truth (i.e. the many parts, the whole and essence) of any matter or of life; or of the true integral nature of the relationship of the Unmanifest and the Manifest in making up the omnipresent Reality.

To overcome these, as explained above, Man must embark on a process of self-discovery in which he uncovers his Divine nature. Aside from perfecting the limited parts of his psychological nature, he makes a double movement (1) above mind to intuitive mind and above, and (2) a movement within, inside to his true self and evolving soul (the Psychic Being). The latter enables him to overcome his ego sense that supports the limited and divided nature and knowledge that is his Ignorance.

These two movements allow him to move beyond the divisions and dualities of life and see instead them as harmonies and complementary aspect, including that which exists between Spirit and Matter. As he goes deeper within, he also opens to the spiritual Force that is descending in the atmosphere, which enables him to make the decisive change.

Eventually the spirit works to overcome his limited nature, which is followed by the (ultimate) supramental transformation. Thus, we see three stages through which man emerges from his original Ignorance nature: the Psychic, the Spiritual, and the Supramental change. This is Sri Aurobindo's Triple Transformation. At that point, his essential Ignorance born of creation is turned into an Integral Knowledge, and his vital, psychological and physical parts are transformed, ushering a new supramental individual (Gnostic being), and in tandem with others a supramental social existence (Divine life on earth).

Traditional Spirit as Ascent vs. Sri Aurobindo's Ascent & Descent
In our own [I.e. Indian] spiritual tradition, realization means to rise to a height of Spirit - e.g. Self, immutable self, mutable self, Sat, Absolute, Non-Being etc. - and know it fully or possess it partially or fully. Sri Aurobindo calls it ascent to the Spirit. Up above there are dozens of spiritual statuses that can be realized. Yogis were most enamoured of different states of Ananda and when realizing them called themselves by that name.

In Purna Yoga, realization is not in the ascent but in the descent. The descent such as the one of which Sri Aurobindo speaks is not part of our traditional aims, but in view of the mighty souls that attempted YOGA, the strength of their spiritual personalities has invariably led to several unintended or unsought openings. Any descent in their experience was taken as a side effect. With Sri Aurobindo, there were essential differences. They were:

1) His yoga was an ascent for the purposes of the descent of the higher Force.

2) His ascent was not partial as a release from the being or its parts, but an ascent of the whole being that was released from ego and falsehood.

3) Also, the path of His ascent was the same as the path of descent.

4) He did not exclude the parts of being he exceeded.

5) Each stage of his ascent is completed by a descent from that height into the entire being, thus completing the transformation at that level.

6) He ascends to Supermind, trying to bring it down into his being.

7) His instrument is not mind, though he begins with the soul in the mind, but Supermind.

8) At every point, as well as every moment, there is a double opening towards the heights as well as depths.

9) The Brahman is directly reached when he reaches the Supermind, as it is in constant touch with Brahman.

10) He has gone beyond Supermind, Satchidananda and into the Brahman and realized it not as a partial experience but the Brahman in its fullness. Mind cannot fully grasp the Brahman, but Supermind can.

11) As descent is the main thrust of his yoga, the Brahman he realized descended.

12) That descent Mother says, reached his physical body.

13) Mother went beyond that, BECAME the Supreme and tried for a descent into the very physical substance of her body, not the mere physical consciousness. (MSS)

The Force of Sri Aurobindo We Can Open to
The birth of Sri Aurobindo opened the earth to the Power and Force of The Hour of God. It is an hour when aeons of work will be done in a trice. This Hour of God came as a result of long cosmic labour. We are likely to mistake Sri Aurobindo as a Rishi.

It may not be entirely wrong. We may take him to be an Avatar. That too may not be exactly true, as He was NOT and His Force now is NOT subject to the laws of earthly life, particularly karma.

If you find yourself in such a position as Yudhisthira or Shiva and feel entirely helpless and find the onset of forces of Life is imminent, call Sri Aurobindo's Force. Better still, call Mother. In either case, you will see karma is NOT binding on you. (MSS)

The Role of the Divine Mother
Sri Aurobindo asks his followers to surrender to the Divine Mother so that She can be the instrument that enables the Force to descend into and transform their nature.

Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of Self-Perfection
Sri Aurobindo calls His yoga the Yoga of Self-Perfection. His attempt at Perfection at the level of the Self is His yoga.

"All Life is Yoga" Not Truly Perceived
[Sri Aurobindo's statement] "All Life is Yoga" is a theme unperceived by the greatest sadhak beyond a truism. (MSS) [Interpretation: We do not perceive that anything we do in life can be a basis of vast growth and spiritual progress (i.e. yoga). We don't actively, consciously take up every thing around us, what we come across in life as an opportunity, a field to raise ourselves in consciousness, to enable a decided progress.]

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga
[Sri Aurobindo's famous statement is] 'All life is yoga'. His Integral yoga says the Spirit should evolve in Life and make earth heaven. It is an approach which considers Man as a whole, an integrated whole, a whole of which the Divine is the centre. (MSS, with addition)

Sri Aurobindo's Yoga

Click here to see entries

The Transformation of Humanity

The End of Suffering and the Spiritual Evolution of Man
The great spiritual teachers and avatars in history have confronted the issue of suffering in a variety of ways. Krishna who was to his followers God incarnate said that suffering was part of the Divine plan -- i.e. it served a useful purpose in creation. Buddha was shocked by suffering and death, and saw life as impermanent as a result. He therefore sought a way out of this state by moving within where he found permanence in the eternal-like bliss of Nirvana. Jesus said the way out of suffering was Love. However, the church turned him into an icon of suffering -- i.e. that he suffered for our sins so that we could live in life after death heaven without suffering.

Each of the insights of these great beings are profound; yet each inherently are lacking in something. Krishna has the most profound view, though suffering and pain still remains unsolved. Buddha addressed suffering head-on, but found no solution other than being detached from it in silent bliss within. Jesus' followers twisted his message; that the end of suffering could only be found in heaven, not on earth.

The Indian sage and seer Sri Aurobindo agrees that suffering is part of the Divine plan -- i.e. it creates more diversity/multiplicity through which Divine action can unfold. But he also acknowledged that we needed to overcome, abolish suffering, disease, and death in life once and for all. He said that this was accomplished by bringing the Spirit into the becomings of life; by opening ourselves to the spiritual Force which would overcome all human limitation, including suffering and death.

As he indicated, this Force is the Creator power that enabled a universe to emerge from a Divine Source and Reality, and it also available to us to overcome the limitations of life, including disease, suffering, and death. When we open to that Power, they begin to quickly give way. Sri Aurobindo thus brings the evolutionary spiritual process of Creation to bear to overcome the limitations of humanity, ushering in a new stage of life on earth. He links consciousness and spirit to the modern evolutionary evolution to overcome suffering in life. He asks us to bring the spiritual Force and Being into the becomings of our life to transform humanity.

The Evolution of Society According to Sri Aurobindo

Stages of Social Evolution
Just as the universe evolved from matter to life to mind; and the individual parallels that development in his body, his vital, and his mind, so too the society has evolved from a physical state of survival beginning say 100,000 years ago, to a vital stage during the middle of the last millennium, focused on trade, and interaction with others; to a mental stage that he is now currently emerging in which we see the emergence of freedom, democracy, higher organization, education, and individual self-fulfillment.

There is now the possibility of the mergence of the spiritual individual and the spiritualized society.

Spiritualized Collective Existence
When a number of spiritualized evolutionary individuals appear they can come together and form a collative existence, the beginnings of what Sri Aurobindo calls a divine life on earth.

Nature of Spiritualized Collective Existence
-In this collective divine life, based on the principles of harmony and integrality, he would feel a complete oneness between his individuality and the collective purpose. For example, he would know how and when to lead or rule; or, as necessary, how and when to subordinate himself to the needs of the group. This will be a creative, spontaneous action because he is centered in this truth consciousness that knows the true Truths and experiences the oneness of all at any moment.

-He feels the essential unity and connection with all; because he feels the commonality of spirit, even of substance between himself and others. He is, in one sense, an extended being. Perhaps we can call him a universalized individual.

-What connects such supramentalized individuals into a bond of essential harmony, unit, and oneness is that each individual feels all selves to be an embodiment of a single self. This single self is the physical and soul experience that we are all in essence of the same spiritual Reality, each playing a role in a symphony of Divine unfolding. We feel that same spiritual essence within ourselves, with the environment, and with others. It is a spiritual bond that translates not only as a spiritual connection but as a deep emotional bond; perhaps even a physically sensational bond.

Sri Aurobindo's Multi-Faceted Dream for Humanity
The great seer and sage Sri Aurobindo imagined five steps that would usher in the evolution and transformation of humanity, enabling what he called a Divine Life on earth. The first was the emergence of Asia into prosperity and cultural influence. That has surely begun, especially in the past decade or so. Her influence upon the thought of the world is bound to grow by leaps and bounds in the years to come.

The second was the prosperity and emergence of India. That too is well under way. For until she attains economic well being, she cannot ascend to her rightful role as the spiritual Guru of the world -- another of the five steps Sri Aurobindo dreamed of.

Another mighty step towards a spirit-base Divine life on earth is the emergence of human unity, which is presaged by world alliances, culminating in world governance. The European Union (EU) is perhaps the first step in that direction in that it creates an alliance and unity of closely aligned nations. In the EU, disparate cultures are aligned to create a single entity that unifies all of them. Even the united states that make up the USA is not such an alliance. In the USA, the coming together of the states, actually gave the individual states identity, whereas in the EU the identify of each nation is fully formed, and yet they are wiling to unify for a higher identity and purpose.

Other such regional unifying alliances, along with a world parliament and perhaps a world army would be further steps in the march towards the unity of nations and the unity of the world.

There is also a spiritual component to Sri Aurobindo's vision. One is for India and one for the individuals of the earth. For India, she can rediscover the great spiritual wisdom of the ancient Rishis -- perhaps the greatest inner spiritual wisdom and experience ever known to Man -- and apply that spiritual knowledge to the economic, social, and cultural life of her people. In that way, she can become a living experiment of the power of the spirit. If she succeeds, she can take her rightful place as the Guru of the World.

Finally, disparate individuals around the world can begin to come to know the spirit in their individual lives; discovering it within in the depths of their being down to the evolving Soul and by opening to and surrendering to the descending Force above, and then applying that Spirit existence in the details of their lives. In the process, they will invariably transform all aspects of their being -- mental, psychological, vital/emotional, and physical, and develop capacities to attract good fortune around them instantaneously from within. When a cadre of such individuals emerge around the world -- especially when they have made what Sri Aurobindo calls the ultimate Supramental change, where the descending Force and Truth Consciousness has permeated all aspects of their being -- then they will create the fifth and final condition for a Divine life on earth to come about.

The emergence of Asia, the prosperity of India, the movements towards world unity, the spiritual emergence of India and her ascent to become the Guru of the world, and the full blossoming of transformed spirit-oriented individuals are the intervening steps that can usher in a Divine Life on earth and fulfill Sri Aurobindo's ultimate dream for humanity.

World Unity
Like individuals, nations are evolving. So is the world collective. There is an ever accelerating movement towards world unity. The emergence of the European Union (which he called for 75 years ago.) is an example. There is a movement from the ego of individual nation to collective association. Unity in multiplicity explains it.

Sri Aurobindo explains his vast philosophy in this area in such books as The Human Cycle, and The Ideal of Human Unity.

August 15th
August 15th is the birthday of Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian spiritual seer and sage. It is also the day of Indian independence. He intensely worked inwardly for that goal, after giving up outward revolutionary struggle in that pursuit; and it was achieved on his day of birth. (It is also the day of the surrender of Japan and the end of the Asian part of the war of WWII, which he also inwardly worked for from within, and it also occurred on his birthday.)

Other

Ancient & Modern Spiritual Wisdom Emerging in the World
India and China have cultural and spiritual values that are deep, penetrating, and profound, and yet the West caught up in its semi-rational modernity can hardly perceive it. The Upanishads, the Vedas, the Gita, the Tao te Ching, et al, plus all of the spiritual evolutionary Eastern teachings of the modern era can allow the world to fulfill the individuality that the West championed for humanity.

Asia will outgrow its current superstitions -- religious and material -- and discover the profound basis of culture that is at its roots. She will also take the evolutionary Science and perceptions of the West and integrate it into their subtle, spiritual view, opening open up a new era of consciousness and awareness for humanity.

The Indian sage and seer Sri Aurobindo presaged this all 50+ years ago, and the world is now taking its first small major steps in that direction. Cultural, social, and spiritual integration will follow the current economic basis of unity rising in the world. When the spirit is applied to the details of life, then the ancient wisdom and modern evolutionary spirituality will begin to take hold, ushering in the next stage of human evolution.

Significance of the Vedic Discovery
Sri Aurobindo, a Cambridge scholar, said that the Vedic discovery of Reality -- Brahmam -- is of greater significance to the world than the scientific discoveries of Copernicus or Galileo. (MSS)

Education as Mental Bridge to Sri Aurobindo's Teachings
Education is the bridge that can remove the mental barrier and equip the population to receive Sri Aurobindo's technology. (MSS)

Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
There is nothing in the world that is not found in the Mahabharatha is a saying. The Mother says there can be nothing in the universe even in the distant future that is not in Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri. (MSS)

Assent vs. Dissent in Communications; Utilizing Sri Aurobindo's Thought
The question of another and our answer are in the plane either as assent or dissent (assent is not different from dissent). When we want to please him and be pleasant to him, his dissent changes into assent. Any thought of Sri Aurobindo taken into a context and allowed to express itself in the context has that quality. (MSS)

Sri Aurobindo's Whole
Sri Aurobindo's WHOLE is the whole creation including the Superconscient above and the subconscient below spreading all over the universe with the evolving godhead as the center. (MSS)

Writing about Sri Aurobindo's Life
Sri Aurobindo once said that his biography could not be written by others, as his life was mostly inside. (MSS)

First Principles
Underlying "first principles." Right philosophy, metaphysics, etc. are not dead expressions; but the foundation of dynamic new possibilities that are truly alive and creatively helpful.

Life Response and Sri Aurobindo
Life Response is a concept that brings Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy home to the commonest of perceptions. Life Response will introduce Sri Aurobindo to the life of the world. (MSS)

Living Sri Aurobindo's Teachings
To express our gratitude to Sri Aurobindo we can do nothing better than to be a living demonstration of his teaching. (The Mother)

'The Life Divine'
(top)

Also See 'An Analysis of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine'

The Life Divine
The Life Divine is Sri Aurobindo's major philosophical opus. It combines a synthesis of western thought and eastern spirituality with Sri Aurobindo's own original insights. The Life Divine covers topics such as the human aspiration, the emergence of life in the cosmos from out of a Divine Source, the evolution of matter to spirit in the universe, the division and dualities inherent in human consciousness, the way out of Man's Ignorance though an evolution of consciousness, and the spiritual destiny of life on earth.

Many consider The Life Divine to be the single, most important and richly developed metaphysical treatise to come out of India in the last 100 years. (The book was written over the course of forty years up to the time of his passing in 1950, containing over 1150 pages of dense, though logic-filled metaphysical argument.)

Sri Aurobindo also wrote, amongst others -- the 10,000 line spiritual poem Savitri, an exposition of spiritual progress The Synthesis of Yoga; books on ancient Indian spirituality (e.g. Essays on the Gita); various volumes on historical evolution of humanity (The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity); critiques on literature (e.g. The Future Poetry); as well as hundreds if not thousands of letters on yoga (personal evolution) to his disciples (Letters on Yoga). The thoughts of his partner The Mother are captured in dozens of other volumes, including her conversations on her own personal transformation, The Agenda.

Structure and Summary of The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo has designed The Life Divine in two books. The first book contains 28 chapters, and the second book consists of two parts, each containing 14 chapters, for a total of 56 chapters.

Book I is entitled The Omnipresent Reality and The Universe. Here Sri Aurobindo lays out a comprehensive knowledge of the true nature of the Spiritual Reality, variously known as as God, Brahman, the Infinite, and Absolute. He also explains the true nature, origin and characteristics of the manifest universe we live in, including mind, life, matter, the individual, the soul, the ego, and other planes. Furthermore, he tells us that through the power of Truth Consciousness (or Supermind, a manifest universe emerged from a Divine source. Finally, he explains that Man is born into this world as a divided being, unable to fulfill the deepest human aspiration of God, Light, and Immortality. And yet if he moves to a deeper consciousness, culminating in his evolving soul within, he will overcome his divided nature and bring out the divinity inherent in his being and in all things around him.

In Book II is entitled The Knowledge and The Ignorance: The Spiritual Evolution. Here he explains the process by which the One, Infinite consciousness becomes a finite, temporal universe populated by an infinite variety of forms, as well as the process by which the finite universe of the Many is evolving back to the One so that it can manifest the true spiritual nature of the Creator. Also, in this book, he explains that in the process by which the One created the Many, an Infinite Knowledge has manifested as a world of an Ignorance that is opposite of Itself. He then explains the process by which the Ignorance in Man and creation evolve back to its source integral, supramental Knowledge so that the Spirit can manifest in all aspects of life, including Man. By connecting with our evolving soul and rising to spiritual planes beyond Mind, including Supermind, Man not only rediscovers the essential Knowledge of the Infinite Source, but can embark on an ultimate journey of spiritual transformation, and become a forerunner of a new divine life and existence on earth.

The Life Divine
The Life Divine is the story of how the universe came to be from a Spiritual Source; how life is now evolving in universe; how we lost touch with the spirit in the creation of the universe and its unfolding; and how we can regain that Power to enable Spirit to uplift and transform all of the divisions and dualities of life; all of the Ignorance, Falsehood and Evil of life; and all the currently unresolved contradictions and problems of existence.

The Life Divine tells us how and why we became trapped by the pleasures and pains of the surface of life; and how we descended into the abyss of Ignorance and Falsehood. It also takes us on a path to discover our deeper parts, the depths within ourselves where we discover our True Selves; even as he points to the Spirit above and around us. As a result we develop a new, elevated consciousness, enabling us see beyond the social allures; we move well beyond the material and the religious trappings, and the moral dilemmas of the current period. We rise to discover the Being within, the Spirit that is everywhere, in every thing; that, if tapped into, can enable far more accomplishment, success, and joy than we are currently experiencing; overcoming our bondage to the error and falsehood of the social milieu, and our lives lived at the surface.

The Life Divine explains why we fail to see the Spirit in our lives, how we can come to recognize it, what Its many great attributes are, and how to make it an integral part of our existence to enable its power of Being to enter into the daily Becomings of our lives.

What is Addressed in The Life Divine

It has been said that great men think of the world, but great souls think of creation; i.e. they grapple with the theories and issues of creation in their minds. Ordinarily, most of us don't think about such things. However, The Life Divine was written for those whose minds are racked by the eternal questions about the origin of creation and the destiny of the universe, and, in particular, man.

Among the major questions that Sri Aurobindo addresses and answers in The Life Divine are:

What is man's purpose in the universe?
What is the source of everything in the universe?
Why was the universe created; i.e. what is its purpose?
How was the universe created from a Divine source? What is the process by which the Divine became this universe?
What is the nature of the cosmos; and specifically what are the nature energy, matter, life, mind, and spirit? And how do these each relate to another?
What is the meaning of consciousness? What is the relationship between our consciousness and the consciousness of the Divine Source, the Absolute?
Why is there division and duality, pain and suffering in the universe?
Why does the individual live in Ignorance of knowledge and truth, and how can he move to a vast Integral Knowledge

What is the path that overcomes all of the universe's, and our own limiting nature?

How are humans in the future going to function?

What are the changes we must undergo to move from our current human functioning to a new superhuman functioning?

What is the destiny of the human collective?

What is the nature of the future evolutionary Divine Life?
How can we bring that future into the present?

Summary of Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine'

Man aspires for God, immortality, truth, delight, and perfection.
That aspiration remains unfulfilled because Man's nature is divided.
He can come to fulfill his aspiration when he discovers his higher nature, i.e. his higher consciousness.
The division and dualities in Man's nature -- i.e. his essential Ignorance -- has its origins in the creation of material life in the cosmos.
The most predominant form of that Ignorance is that Spirit and Matter seem at opposite poles.
However, when we develop the higher consciousness we see that they, like all other divisions and contradictions are not so, but are complementary and One.
The omnipresent Reality, aka Brahman is in fact that Oneness, and includes all planes from spirit to Matter. In fact, all planes are simply different forms of the one Reality, Brahman, the Absolute.
To see everything, and all planes as One is essence is to have the Vision of Brahman.
To show how Brahman gave birth to, includes both Spirit and the Universe, he explains the emergence of Sat-Chit-Ananda. It will also serve to explain why Man is born a divided, Ignorant Being.
Out of the Conscious Force of the Infinite Divine emerged a universe of forms. He explains how:
The process of the cosmos emerging from a Divine Source to cosmic mind to energy to matter is the Involution. The emergence of matter to life to mind and to spirit is the Evolution.
The first step that the Absolute takes out of Itself towards creation is Existence (Sat), Consciousness-Force (Chit), and Delight (Ananda).
Supermind, i.e. Truth Consciousness is a fourth stage.
Acting to fulfill Real Ideas of the Infinite, Conscious Being, Supermind enables a universe in space and time.
Supermind created out of the Conscious Force of Being, the cosmic Mind and Energy that would be the basis of forms of life in creation.
Supermind using the dividing power of cosmic Mind divides the Energy of the Force down to the atomic level, enabling Matter and a universe of unique, individualized forms to emerge.
The Spirit (as Existence, Consciousness-force, and Delight) that was the source of creation is involved in, embedded and hidden in matter.
The forms in creation emerge in contradiction and Ignorance, which was the Divine intent.
The Conscious Being intended the forms to be ignorant to allow for the greatest multiplicity and diversity of possibility in creation.
Because the forms in the cosmos originate in nescience and unconsciousness, man shares that quality. It reflects in his divided and Ignorant nature. It is the reason for suffering, pain, and death.
Through Man's evolution of consciousness, he overcomes his limited nature, bringing the spirit to the surface of life. As a result, the involved Being, Consciousness, and Delight come out.
As he experiences his higher nature, he has the wonder of Discovery, which brings infinitely variable delight, which is beyond the status Delight of Ananda.
Man can follow a process to raise his consciousness.
When Man moves his attention away from the sense inputs of the surface, and discovers his inner being -- down to the depths of Soul within -- he begins a vast ascent in consciousness.
In the depths, he begins to move out of his ego and become more connected with, sensitive to, and unified with the world around him, including others. He loses that sense of division and duality in life.
As Man perceives the world from this deeper perspective, he perceives a vast array of truth, which enables him to come out of his fundamental Ignorance. He begins to develop an Integral Knowledge that is in identity with all aspects of the object under consideration or that he pursues.
As he moves within, his minds opens to light and intuitions and revelations of knowledge. He also begins to perceive all parts of a subject or object of knowledge, including its whole and essence, instead of the part he sees through ordinary sense and rational mind. He develops a super-rationality, which he experiences as Integral Knowledge, the opposite of his original Ignorance.
He then sees beyond duality and contradiction in life, such as pleasure and pain, good and evil, positive and negative, two sides of a dispute, etc., perceiving them as necessary, complementary, and One.
He also comes to see the Oneness of Spirit and Matter. That matter is a form of spirit, and that spirit expresses itself in creation through matter (and all other planes).
As a result, he perceives the dual pairs of the Unmanifest and the Manifest, the Creator and Creation, the original Being and the Becomings of life as integrally One. It is the Vision of the Reality, Brahman.
As man discovers his true self and highest consciousness, he experiences ultimate Delight of being, which is far beyond the transient happiness of the normal human.
Delight of being is in fact the very reason that the Infinite set in motion the process that enabled a universe to emerge from a Divine Source.
When man discovers his higher nature, he feels the delight for which a universe of forms was created. The static Delight of the conscious Being is then extended to the dynamic delight experienced by individual humans in creation.
Through man's evolution and transformation of consciousness, the Divine Intent is fulfilled. When Man becomes fully spiritual in nature, he completes the circle from whose Source he and the cosmos originally emerged.
As he develops his consciousness to the full, he becomes the fully transformed Gnostic being; the supramentalized Individual.
As a certain number of gnostic individuals raise to the fore, a collective Divine Life becomes a real possibility, fulfilling the Divine Intent in enabling a universe of forms, while also fulfilling man's deepest aspirations for Truth, Light, Love, God, and Immortality.

Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine

The Life Divine is a book of philosophy that describes the creation as the involution of God and His evolution.

Whatever He has written there is a fact of His own spiritual experience, not an intellectual argument valid or invalid in itself.

Of course, He had ONE idea or vision or Experience, which He has expressed in 56 chapters.

The Book is split into two books and the second book is divided into two parts.

The first book is of creation, the second book is on evolution.

The first part of the second book speaks of ignorance becoming knowledge.

The second part describes Spiritual evolution. (MSS)

Self-Absorprtion and Remergence of Consciousness

Sri Karmayogi has written an astonishing booklet called Sri Aravindam in which he grapples with many of the core principles of The Life Divine. In the Introduction, Appa gives an overview of the first book from the perspective of the self-absorption and reemergence of the Infinite consciousness.

"In the first book, He explains how Brahman became the universe. When He ventured to explain the cause for this creation, He tells us that the Absolute - Brahman - desired Delight. Delight is to be had through discovery. The greater the difficulty in discovery, the greater will be the Delight.

The greatest Delight will be there in Self-discovery, especially when He forgets Himself. With this end in view, the Brahman hid Himself within Himself and forgot the fact that He had reversed Himself by Self-absorption into the universe.

Satchitananda has inverted himself into the lower triplicity of this world of ours and at the end of involution, He forgot that He, Sat, had become Matter. Now is the challenge of remembering his forgetting and emerging out of Matter [the evolution]. The Delight He seeks is in the reemergence."

Or to put it another way, in order to extend His Delight into creation, The Infinite hid Its spiritual nature in the universe He created, so that the forms (we humans) could rediscover that Spirit in Matter and Life and thereby experience the same Delight of the Divine. This is the process of creation.

Pride and Prejudice and The Life Divine
It struck me that Appa has enabled the global, super-popularity of Pride and Prejudice, which has soared just in the last 10 years, AND by that fact made it a vehicle for the expression of The Life Divine and the spreading of Sri Aurobindo's infinite wisdom.

[I concur. Mother's force has been poured into this 200 year old story and raised it to the surface of human consciousness. What Appa is doing now is to literally convert it into a case study of the Life Divine. (MSS)]

Sri Aurobindo Wrote Life Divine in Silence
The entire Life Divine was written by Sri Aurobindo in pure Silence without a thought in his head according to Mother.

Short Summation of The Life Divine
In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo describes the process by which the universe was created from the Real Idea of the Absolute that ended in the manifestation of our universe; i.e. the "Involution;" and then describes the process by which the created universe evolves from matter to life to powers of mind and spirit; i.e. the "Evolution."

He states that since the universe came into being as a result of powers of an Original Consciousness and Force, which we can consider "Spirit," then what we are made up of -- as matter, as animus of life, as power of mind -- must also somehow consist of spirit. That spirit is hidden deep down in these three planes that we are made up of. It is "involved" there, and it is our destiny to discover the spirit in life, in all existence, so that we can release it in life, infuse and elevate all of life with its spiritual attributes of peace, power, knowledge, wisdom, love, beauty, and delight and joy of being. We can learn to bring the Spirit Being into the Becomings of our lives, enabling the infinite powers and possibilities to become practical realities in life, including infinite accomplishment, success, and joy.

We begin this process by overcoming our inherent Ignorance born of creation. Through a movement into the soul within and to the Force above we connect with spirit, rise in consciousness, and thus change our perspectives of life, including overcoming our inherent Ignorance born of creation. Thus where we now see division and duality, pleasure and pain, good and bad, positive and negative, etc. we now see Oneness and Unity. Where we saw limitation, we now see and realize unlimited possibilities. Where we were limited to time, we now experience the timeless in our time-based lives, even as we experience the past, present, and future in the ever-present Now. As a result, we bring the potentials of the future into the present. They are made real now. The future enters the present, in timeless, infinite possibility, reality, and wonder.

To accomplish this first we acquire an Integral Knowledge of existence, overcoming our inherent Ignorance. In addition, through that process of gaining an Integral Knowledge we come to discover the spirit within, where we begin to know the unity of all, and we begin to experience the descent of the Force, the Supramental spiritual light and Force into our being; into our vital and physical parts, transforming them into their ultimate evolutionary status.

Our spiritual destiny is then to become ultimate spiritualized evolutionary individuals, where we have transcended by far our current human status. We have gained all of the powers and possibilities of the infinite Divine in the realities and Becomings of life. When a number of such beings develop, there is then the real possibility of the emergence of the basis for a Divine collective life on earth.

Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine': The Ultimate Adventure of Consciousness & Joy
Over the millennia, great religious and spiritual works have emerged to remind humanity of life's deepest purpose and meaning. The Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, the Gita, and others have served to show us the spiritual nature and potential of existence. More recently works from Darwin, Einstein and others have tried to explain the nature and unfolding of life from a scientific point of view, reflecting the vast expansion at the physical plane in the material age that we are now passing through.

However, time marches on, and new understandings of life's mysteries reveal themselves. Some of these newer works of psychological and spiritual wisdom attempt to synthesize the old with the new. Then there are the definitive works that mark a profound new understanding in the world, ushering in a new age of humanity, in which a new synthesis is developed, embracing and then going beyond all previous knowledge and understanding. Such a work is Sri Aurobindo's epic metaphysical tome on the meaning and development of life in the cosmos, 'The Life Divine.'

In 56 chapters, he has explained the unexplainable, synthesizing the old and the new -- i.e. the ancient spiritual and modern evolutionary views -- and then going far beyond a mere synthesis. In this work, he explains in vast detail the nature of the Spiritual reality, the process by which the universe came to be from that Divine Source, the evolutionary unfolding of life in the cosmos and on earth, the purpose and destiny of human existence, a detailed account of the nature of our human makeup, our individual evolutionary potential and purpose, the methods to achieve that purpose, and so forth. He even describes the nature of our future evolutionary existence -- both as individuals and as a society. No work in human history has ever had such a cosmic scope, nor fulfilled that intention; and that is simply because that many-sided, integral knowledge of the nature of cosmic existence was never known before; until now.

'The Life Divine' is not an easy work to comprehend because it is explaining cosmic realities and future possibilities that are in no way common to our daily experience. In addition, the book brings forth these cosmic insights through a rather dense philosophical and metaphysical style. That is so because Sri Aurobindo explores every spiritual truth in great detail and depth, considering every nuance and possibility in his arguments that allows him to come to logical ultimate truths about life in the universe.

How was he able to do this; how was he able to come to these conclusions? Aside from examining the deepest mysteries from virtually every conceivable side, it is a fact that he actually experienced and realized these realities in his own life. Some say that he had to become the Divine in order to reveal the Divine's purpose and secrets -- and perhaps that is really the case. Still, for us to grasp what seems on the surface to be the ungraspable and ineffable, it would be helpful if someone were able to predigest the essence of this vast, epochal work for those of us just setting out on the path.

Fortunately, several pioneer individuals have sifted through the work to make it digestible for those inspired to learn and acquire this greatest of all universal knowledge. For one, Garry Jacobs, a member of Mother's Service Society, has studied the work for several decades; and at one point did a lecture tour across several continents to present his practical approach to understanding the master's work. The result is "Lectures on Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine," in which Mr. Jacobs not only presents the wisdom of Sri Aurobindo, but shows how we can practically apply this knowledge in our daily lives.

Anyone seeking the answers to the major questions of life, as well as the levers that will enable ultimate achievement and joy would be served well by reading Mr. Jacobs' brilliant summation. That person would then have the basic framework to tackle 'The Life Divine' itself, where the deepest truths of life will more easily reveal themselves. If you decide, at that point you can then begin to live the ultimate adventure -- the adventure of consciousness and joy.

Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine
It has been said that no one can explain the process by which the Divine became the universe. It is explained here. It is said that no one can explain the meaning of life, including the myriad of details that explains its organization. It is explained here with great clarity, using the most beautiful of prose. It is said that no one can explain the purpose and future evolution of life on earth. It is also explained in exquisite detail.

In sum, this is the most profound spiritual work of the last hundred years. If you have the patience, you can discover the answers to most of the major questions of life within the bounds of this book.

This work is a synthesis of western evolutionary teachings and the most profound spiritual teachings of the East. And yet it is beyond even a synthesis of the two. It is a revelation of truth and insight never before expressed in all the annals of spiritual literature.

There is no work like it on earth. The expression does not feel like something that is spiritual, as we've come to know that concept. Instead it feels "FUTURE spiritual." That's so because he EXPERIENCED that supra-spiritual future in the present of his extraordinary life.

Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo describes in his tome The Life Divine, the makeup of the Divine (the Absolute, Brahman), how the creation came about (the involution), our evolutionary destiny, the Being in the Becoming, the movement to the psychic being, etc. To know this he needed to rise to those planes to express them. Therefore, to truly understand these ideas when reading them, we too must try to rise to a higher level of consciousness.

Levels of Reading The Life Divine
Reading a serious philosophical BOOK certainly has different levels of appreciation. The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus, is NOT a book for reading in any sense of the word. Now that He has written it as a book, of course, it is to be read. He addresses the book to the European intellect. At that level, the book is logical, reasonable, and intelligible. Many Westerners are able to read it with appreciation, if not with commensurate comprehension. The mental energy the pages demand is exhausted in the first few pages, then sleep overtakes. For those who persevere, all the intellectual arguments are there, especially if one is as painstaking as a translator to arrange the arguments. It is a feat for us.

He who has successfully completed this course would see behind each intellectual argument an insight opens, where logic mysteriously opens into an experience. Whether it is an intellectual mental experience or an experience in Silence, it is a gateway into the higher reaches of the Book. Having mastered the Book intellectually, if one is patient enough to avail of each spiritual experience that each argument offers, certainly he can congratulate himself on the achievement. The partial mental world of ours will give way to a fuller world, a world that informs us of its fullness. At the next stage, one is ushered into a spiritual atmosphere that is more than that of Silence, perhaps a world of creative Silence. Persisting there, one enters into the cosmic consciousness, a realisation given to those who chant OM with the right spiritual attitude, not mechanically.

At this stage, the reader will have completely crossed the first inversion of life where he realises obstacles are opportunities and partially crossed the second inversion of Pain is Ananda. The final stage of appreciation of the Book is when the reading reveals the Golden Purusha Sri Aurobindo is, in His supramental Form. Then he has glimpses of the MARVEL He speaks of - the world of Delight Mother spoke of. From another line of thought, intellectuality is a bar, Faith and Devotion are keys. To such people all the arguments come fully through life analogies and the vision of His Supramental Form reveals even in the beginning, if they are endowed with subtle vision. One argument of His yields to concentration and consecration a flash of all these splendours at once. It is a rare spiritual realisation to hold all the arguments of the Book simultaneously in the head, if not in the Soul. (MSS)

Understanding Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine'

-This BOOK is unique in the sense that one can see the emergence of the ideas of all the chapters in any one chapter. In that sense the first and the last chapter can be found as admirably short and long summaries of the BOOK.

-Another important approach that will vastly help the lay reader who is not a practicing yogi is, to know the distinction between the Indian tradition and Sri Aravindam emerging in the particular chapter he has chosen to study. ... Discovering the difference between the tradition and the ideas of the chosen chapter becomes an instrument to know the chapter better. One who studies the chapter on Divine Maya will be helped in his comprehension enormously if he asks, "How does this definition of Maya differ from the traditional definition?" (MSS)

The Infinite Benefit of Knowing 'The Life Divine' in Terms of the Evolving Spirit
It is 85 years since the book The Life Divine was completed as a serial in the monthly Arya. It is taught in the Ashram school as a text optionally. For someone who has finished reading it, perhaps a few times, it is possible to summarise its ideas in his mind or on paper. It will be considered a formidable task by those who have attempted it. The subtle intelligence of the Indian spiritual mind has several ways of achieving it, even to the satisfaction of an ordinary reader. It is a great aim worth attempting. Not all devotees evince keen interest in this Book. Finding one's keen interest in the other concepts of His yoga, such a project was attempted by a few around him.

One way of doing it is to take the central idea of each chapter and string them together around His basic theme of the evolving Spirit. The first part of it is academic, while the second is spiritual. There are those who conceive of Infinity fairly well from their background of mathematics. They can extend their mathematical conception by imagination to life and see Infinity as a practical concept. Should that succeed, they will enter the thought of The Life Divine. It is man's seeing endless scope all around for JOY, Peace, Wealth and Success. For such a man, the book will unfold its Supramental wealth. If you were in a big crowd on which police fired, you would remember the fashion in which the crowd scattered in minutes. Presently human life, in its urge for achievement, scrambles in that fashion. A military drill organised over a big area responding to bugle and trumpet, organised as a music drill is a Marvel of human orderliness as against the chaos of a scattering crowd. The Force descending on chaos organises it into a Marvel. One who is able to see such an organisation of God behind the apparent chaos, cruelty, disorder, etc., can fully understand The Life Divine. In our tradition, they gave this idea as a formula, ''Everything is for Good''.

The stringing of the central ideas of the chapters is an academic exercise which will surely succeed. The appreciation of the Practical Concept of Infinity is a mental effort that can be more beneficial for this purpose. To be able to assume an orderly MARVEL behind the utter disorder we see is a spiritual effort to qualify one to know the summary of The Life Divine. One more way of getting to know that summary is to take one chapter and patiently grasp every idea in the sequence given. After that, discover the central ideas of other chapters before and after in this chapter written explicitly or implicitly. It will reveal the entire book to the reader. Each chapter of this book contains the entire book in one form or another. One has to explore and emerge out of the treasure. In the Indian tradition, the whole knowledge of the world is buried. One thing is not there. The tradition does not know that the Spirit evolves. If you have a consummate knowledge of the sacred tradition of Indian spirituality, and are willing to explore it in the context of the evolving Spirit, the FORCE will enter you, expand the mind to Infinity and charge life with a limitless energy. Thereafter, The Life Divine can be read as an interesting novel, as they call it, a page-turner. (MSS)

How Professionals can Utilize The Life Divine to Enable Vast Success

Anyone can appreciate the power of the great Insights and Principles expressed in The Life Divine. Evolutionary theorists will appreciate his evolutionary philosophy. Businessmen will be heartened by his methods to bring out the infinite in life, as they discover a power that can enable ten or a hundred times their current accomplishment. Likewise, social scientist will newly perceive the solutions to the problems of the world as they use spirit to enable deeper perceptions of the problems in life; to perceive their multi-faceted facts, qualities, and nature of any subject; and from such deeper perceptions and insights into the truths of the world develop far more effective solutions and action to overcome these problems of life. Also, educators will become aware of a Higher Knowledge that can be disseminated to students and other learners, who themselves will discover new ways to absorb knowledge through the higher capacities of Mind born of Spirit.

Knowing The Life Divine Expands the Mind's Scope of Thought, Creative Thinking
Greater comprehension of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine gives the reader greater scope of thoughts in life. He sees things from so many more directions, levels, relations. It also increases one's creative thinking abundantly.

Sri Aurobindo's Participating in Class on The Life Divine
Classes where The Life Divine is explained or taught are common among the devotees. It is also discussed at various levels. In these circumstances, a conscious attempt is made to explain the concepts. It is usually explained through an argument which is elaborated by an explanation. Sometimes an example or analogy or parallel is employed. Devotees enjoy sitting there and are happy at the end of it. Sometimes they feel a thrill.

In one such meeting it was decided to speak out the gist of a chapter in the beginning and the chapter should be read out later. The reader or the other participants could stop at any point for clarification. It was proceeding on some good lines, to the satisfaction of all concerned. One day one of them decided to invoke Sri Aurobindo's Presence in their midst. A mild blue light covered the reader. His face brightened. Suddenly the person who had invoked Sri Aurobindo saw HIM in his heart. But there was no Mother.

Instead of his listening, the devotee wished that Sri Aurobindo listen from inside. The atmosphere was quickly saturated with intense bluish light. No one could keep his eyes open. It was Sri Aurobindo who was listening to the reading. What used to take an hour was completed in half an hour. No one could speak. It looked as though they were under a spell. Who heard what, what entered the soul and what escaped the ear no one knows. Everyone was full to overflowing. The body was tingling with an unusual energy. A spiritual Atmosphere of intensity was created. Perhaps it is this atmosphere that cures illnesses. (MSS)

Coming to Know the Life Divine and Sleep
Should someone read, summarise, takes notes of, deliver lectures on or relate to The Life Divine in some fashion, he deserves our congratulations. Reading two or three pages evokes endless sleep. All mental energies are sapped. (MSS)

On Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual Guide to the Universe
It has been said that no one can explain the process by which the Divine became the universe. It is explained here. It is said that no one can explain the meaning of life, including the myriad of details that explains its organization. It is explained here with great clarity, using the most beautiful of prose. It is said that no one can explain the purpose and future evolution of life on earth. It is also explained in exquisite detail.

Sri Aurobindo's Expression in The Life Divine
The Life Divine was written to explain the mystic secrets of creation to the intellect, particularly the European intellect. Coming down from the heights of realizing Satchidananda, Sri Aurobindo addressed that point in the mind where it can still see its original relationship with Supermind. In every explanation, at least one in each chapter, Sri Aurobindo goes straight to this point and expands on both sides of the Truth which are the opposite facts of mind. He does so until the branching sides join to create the original whole. And that point can be explained in more than one way.

A point at which ego disappears.

That point in the part that enables us to reach the other part without deserting it.

Those contraries that are really complements.

The point where Time and Timelessness meet.

The point where reversal of consciousness begins.

The fulcrum of the evolving Spirit or evolving God, etc.

That point where the finite is revealed as the infinite. (MSS)

Reading The Life Divine

Reading The Life Divine brings His atmosphere. Should it mature HE comes. We can see Him on the pages of the Book. (MSS)

See An Analysis of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine
(includes a chapter by chapter analysis.)

Main Ideas and Principles of Sri Aurobindo

Additional Information
(top)

ARTICLE: Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future

INTERVIEW on Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future
In this interview Roy Posner, president of Growth Online, describes what attracted him to the teaching of Sri Aurobindo, what Sri Aurobindo's vision for the future for humanity is, and how we can use his ideas in a practical way in our own lives.

Sri Aurobindo's Yoga

Thoughts on 'The Life Divine'

An Analysis of Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine' (by Growth Online)
(includes a chapter by chapter detailed analysis.)

Sri Aurobindo's Ideas as it Relates to Science

Main Ideas and Principles of Sri Aurobindo

New Insight into the Life & Teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Web Site

The Mother; The Divine Mother
(top)

The Mother (the person, personality, avatar)

The Mother
The Mother was the individual who collaborated with the Indian seer and sage Sri Aurobindo to bring about a fundamental change in human life on earth. For fifty years The Mother ran the ashram founded by Sri Aurobindo, located in Pondicherry, South India; and together with him embarked on perhaps the greatest spiritual experiment in human history.

Sri Aurobindo dedicated himself to the transformation of the human race from out of its current status of duality, division, ignorance, suffering, falsehood, even death itself to a new existence of Light, Knowledge, Wisdom, Power, Truth, Peace, Peace, Beauty, Delight, Infinity, and Oneness of Being. Along the way, he discovered a new spiritual power and extension of the Divine consciousness, which he called the Supramental or Truth Consciousness. He believed this new force and power had only recently descended into the earth's atmosphere, and it could effectuate this new evolutionary status for humanity. He believed that if he along with a handful of followers could bring this power down into the earthly realm, and into their own individual consciousnesses, they could be the harbingers of a new dawn for the human race, and serve as pioneers for a Divine life on earth. In the 1920s, The Mother, born in Algeria and raised in France, joined Sri Aurobindo in this endeavor.

For years thereafter Sri Aurobindo and The Mother opened themselves to this Force, attempted to draw it into the earth's consciousness, and experimented with its power. They became conduits of the Force for their disciples, and were able to utilize the Force to effect world events.

One of The Mother's other primary roles was to serve as an intermediary between the followers in the ashram (and others around the world) to this new evolutionary spiritual Force, the Truth Consciousness or Supramental consciousness, discovered by Sri Aurobindo years before.

Because the Mother had accumulated a great amount of this Force in her consciousness, she became a great conduit of it for her followers. Since she was living in close proximity to her disciples, they had an accessible and personal way to connect with the Force by opening to her consciousness. By opening themselves to this force the disciples could transform themselves; from ignorance to knowledge, from incapacity to capacity, from ill health to health, from difficulty to happiness and joy. By developing themselves, the disciples could collaborate in the effort by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to bring about the transformation of humanity. For the most part the disciples failed, but the relationship of theirs to new followers carries on throughout the world.

Even now after the passing of The Mother, people across the globe continue to open to her power and force. Many people doing so are said to have been relieved from problems, overcome very serious illness, seen miraculous turnabouts in their fortune, and so forth In fact, most would agree that the effectiveness and responsiveness of the Force through her is ''greater'' now since her passing.

The Mother's other great role occurred in the later years of her life. From about the age of 70 until her death at age 94 in 1974, she made the difficult attempt at the transformation of her own physical body, to be the forerunner of a new type of human being, perhaps a new species beyond man. Whereas most disciples and followers around the world needed to first overcome the normal, typical weaknesses in their mental and emotional parts of their being (such as their ego-sense, falsehoods, ignorance, poor attitudes, habits, limited knowledge and skills, etc.), the Mother had mostly attained that perfection at birth, and endeavored to make the more difficult transformation of her physical body her chief preoccupation. The first goal was to find the secrets to illness, suffering, and pain. A second goal was to overcome the inevitability of death itself, to the decay of the cells over time; to find the secret to unending life based on one's will for continuous existence. The most important goal however was the transformation of the physical substance of the body into a new type of human being, a Supramental being, with powers of consciousness, plasticity, creation, truth, and unity beyond anything the world has ever known or conceived. By utilizing the Force, this physical transformation would lead to a new type of individual, a new species beyond man, leading to a divine existence and life on earth. She was the pioneer individual for the ultimate physical transformation to this new existence.

In 1968 The Mother founded Auroville, the international community of peace and spiritual growth. Its purpose is to be an experimental community where individuals can make the effort to evolve beyond their present limitations. Auroville has been established as an experiment in Human Unity where each individual is freed from bondage to moral and social conventions and the necessity of working for material possessions. There is no religion practiced there, no money used, no ownership of property. The emphasis is on each person discovering his/her own inner center behind the social, moral, cultural and racial heredity and appearances, and actively living from that center, expressing it in outer work for the community. Auroville is a UN sponsored endeavor that attracts people worldwide because of its openness, new age lifestyle, and dedication to a vision of a new humanity.

The Mother
Mirra Alfassa, later Morisset and Richard (February 21, 1878 - November 17, 1973) but better known as The Mother, was the spiritual partner of Sri Aurobindo and a prominent Hindu Yogin. She was born in Paris to Turkish and Egyptian parents and came to his retreat on March 29, 1914 in Pondicherry to collaborate on editing the Arya. Having to leave Pondicherry during the War, she spent most of her time in Japan where she met the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Finally she returned to Pondicherry and settled there in 1920. After November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she founded his ashram with a handful of disciples living around the Master. With Sri Aurobindo's full approval she became the leader of the community, a position she held until her death. The Trust she had registered after Sri Aurobindo's death in 1950 continues to look after the institution.

The experiences of the last thirty years of the Mother's life were captured in the 13-volume work The Agenda. In those years she attempted the physical transformation of her body in order to become what she felt was the first of a new type of human individual by opening to the Supramental Truth Consciousness, a new power of spirit that Sri Aurobindo had allegedly discovered. Sri Aurobindo considered her an incarnation of the Divine Mother, hence her name "the Mother". The Divine Mother is the feminine aspect (Creative Energy) of the Divine consciousness and spirit.

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
Sri Aurobindo is the author and sage who, along with his partner The Mother, dedicated their lives to bringing about the next stage of evolution of life on earth.

The Mother and Our Aspirations
She says She collects all our aspirations and offers them to the Divine. (MSS)

Sri Aurobindo on Who the Mother Is

The One who we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence ... The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the Absolute Power and the ineffable Presence." (Sri Aurobindo)

The Divine Mother, the Mother, and the Avatar
The Divine Mother is above all avatars because She exists in and originates in the Unmanifest Brahman, the conscious Being. The human person we know of as The Mother was an incarnation of the Divine Mother. She is therefore certainly at least an Avatar (bringer of next stage of human evolution), and probably beyond that.

The Life of The Mother
The Mother was a lady who collaborated with the Indian seer and sage Sri Aurobindo to bring about a fundamental change in human life on earth. For fifty years The Mother ran the ashram founded by Sri Aurobindo, located in Pondicherry, South India; and together with him embarked on perhaps the greatest spiritual experiment in human history.

The Mother, the Force and Her Disciples
One of The Mother's other primary roles was to serve as an intermediary between the followers in the ashram (and others around the world) to this new evolutionary spiritual Force, the Truth Consciousness or Supramental consciousness, discovered by Sri Aurobindo years before.

Source of Faith in Mother

I am curious to know what it is that is energising their faith and devotion when physically none of them have seen her even at balcony darshans or in person? Something is nourishing their faith in the absence of a physical experience like mine. What is that something?" -Asokan Sir

It's a wonderful topic. A few random thought in my own case:

-I never saw Mother in person.

-I felt Mother through a close friend of mine who was a follower. He was the only devotee in fact I had ever met till then (1973).

-Then I felt Mother very strongly from this same person one day after he had begun growing a beard. I asked him why he did that. He said because Mother had just left Her body. I was gripped and spellbound.

-My Ideals spurred my interest in Sri Aurobindo and Mother. The Auroville community, the New World awakening, the possibility of a Divine Life on Earth. For me this was Utterly Irresistible, as it was in different ways for members of my generation.

-Garry Sir asked me one day in 1976 to not just sell for his company but to remember Her each time I entered the store. My life dynamic changed in that moment.

-I survived a Great Illness and Change in 1996, though physically nothing was really wrong with me. It was a Psychic Change of the Soul. Mother through Karmayogi pulled me out. I was Reborn into a New Life, not unlike what C's expressed in another thread. I was also fully catapulted out of Ignorance and into Knowledge of Sri Aurobindo's and Karmayogi's principle, which naturally compelled me to a deeper faith in Mother.

-Each miracle of Mother I experienced creates a greater faith. Each time I pulled out of a great or small problem, strengthened it.

-Most importantly, when Her Presence is felt within, and the experience is not just mental, but emotional, or emotiono-spiritual, then the real change takes place. In that sense, I am just beginning.

-Appa (Karmayogi) is so overwhelmingly devoted to Mother that it radiates and affects we devotees. In one sense, we simply may be absorbing and radiating his profound, multi-dimensional faith and devotion; even as we contribute a little of our own.

-Something in me relates to Mother as the Divine Mother as much as her physical incarnation. It is thus has an Infinite-like and Eternal feeling and vibration.

Mind in the Body Learns, is Transformed Directly With The Force
The hierarchy of the individual person is body, vital, mind, and Spirit. Body is the lowest and the Spirit the highest. Today when we want the body to learn a new skill - driving, typing, learning a new language, etc. - we use the instrumentation of the mind. The mind learns first all that the body needs to learn. The learning is then transferred to the body by training through the mind's knowledge and understanding.

Therefore we can conclude that if the mind were not available, the body would never fully learn. However Sri Aurobindo and The Mother brought a new perspective; that the body could learn directly, that there is within the body itself its own center of mind. Then the body, instead of receiving through the mind, is able to receive directly through the mind center within itself. This reception is infinitely greater. Thus the body is capable of learning and being transformed, (e.g. healing, infinite life, new organs, change in cell constituents, etc.) directly through its mind center from the Force directly, rather than having to go through the mind and vital centers of the being.

The Mother is a Force in Action
The Mother says she does not represent a philosophy, a religion or a sect. She says she is a Force of action, a creative force that can new-create. (MSS)

Sri Aurobindo on the Mother's Consciousness
The Mother's consciousness is the divine Consciousness, and the Light that comes from it is the light of the divine Truth, the Force that she brings down is the force of the divine Truth. One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mother's light, will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. (Sri Aurobindo)

Astonishing Spiritual Experiences of 'The Mother'
The lady born Mira Alfassa, and know to her followers in India as 'The Mother' had perhaps the most extraordinary life of any individual who ever walked the face of the earth. Her experiences were beyond the fantastic, they were the unfolding of the miraculous.

I was moved to think about her astonishing life as the partner of sage and seer Sri Aurobindo, as I thought about one of her lesser, but still remarkable experiences. One day well over thirty years ago, she had a vision that there would arise in Asia an astonishing number of cities with vast skylines reaching far into the sky. This at a time when hardly a skyscraper appeared beyond the confines of Hong Kong and Tokyo. In her vision, she saw an astonishing array of super-cities with fantastic architecture. Now we see that very thing taking place throughout Asia. She knew that Asia was about to emerge, which would be one more step in the evolution and unity of humanity. The next stages are to be the economic prosperity of India, her emergence as the Guru of the world, followed by the onset of a Spirit-based Divine life on earth.

And yet, this vision of hers was small compared to the hundreds if not thousands of supra-normal experiences she had in the course of her 94 years. For one, she imagined what the future human being would look like. Several times, she envisioned a tall, svelte being, flat in the chest, and devoid of the current mechanisms for breathing, digestion, and procreation. That individual was illumined from within, through the radiance of an inner spiritual light. In another instance, she not only envisioned this being, but for a while became it herself.

In yet another instance, she saw an entirely new aspect of the Divine spirit descent into the earth's atmosphere, ushering in a new power for the people of the world. In that experience, she envisioned that she had taken a golden hammer and knocked down a golden wall, which allowed a new Truth Consciousness and Force to pour into the earth's atmosphere, making its infinite power to change the world available to anyone. Such experiences were as real to her as anything we do in our moment-to-moment lives

Once during the Second World War, when she was concerned about the runaway power of the Nazis, she appeared before Hitler. He normally would see a white being clad in armor, who would instruct him on what to do. In this episode, The Mother sent her force and disguised herself in the form of that armored being. It now told Hitler to go and fight in the east in Russia. When he took up that advice and sent his troops there, he opened a second front in the war, which would prove to be his undoing. From that perspective, we could say she used her inner powers to end WWII. Over the years, she also used her inner power to overcome many other world problems, such as when she halted the invasion of India by the Chinese in the early 1960s.

In addition to working for world change through the subtle planes, The Mother also made the supra-human effort to transform her own being, including her physical body. Often she would experience descents of Light and spiritual Force into the very cells of her being, noticing how they responded with great joy and a desire to go, i.e. to live indefinitely. In that way, she made some of the first great experiments in bringing about unending life for the physical body through the power of Spirit. In other words, throughout her life she made the Herculean inner effort to end the aging process, disease, and death itself from within.

In other remarkable experiences, she would guide the souls of those close to her who were dieing to their resting place in the subtle realms; sometimes directing a soul into a new body, such as a very young child. In other moments, she would describe in detail important moments in her lives in the past, such as her experiences as Catherine of Russia, Elizabeth I, and Hatschepsut of Egypt, amongst others.

In Indian metaphysics, there is the notion of the 'Avatar'; i.e. one who comes on earth to enable the next stage of evolution for that community or society. Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus were several examples. There were others less recognized, but equally great. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were a dual-incarnation -- unprecedented in history -- there purpose being to bring about the next stage of human progress through the psychological and spiritual evolution of society.

Sri Aurobindo focused on connecting to a New Power of the Spirit, and tried to draw it down into the earth's atmosphere. The Mother focused on trying to bring it into her own physical body so that it could be transformed into a new type of being beyond the human, living in endless joy and creativity. The reverberations of their astounding lives live on today, as Sri Aurobindo is generally recognized as the greatest seer and sage of 20^th century India, and the Mother is admired as the interface to the great Force and Power that Sri Aurobindo brought down on earth. Their lives were indeed a great milestone in the history of the earth - even though until this point they are hardly known in the West.

The Mother's personal experiences could fill a hundred volumes, as she tried to be the forerunner of a New Species, and harbinger of a new Spirit-based life on earth. In one set of 13-volumes, called 'The Agenda' you can read about her astonishing experiences -- unprecedented in the history of the world. There you can also discover her plans to build Auroville, the UN-sanctioned world that she envisioned as a place for an experiment in world unity. That vision is a reality today, and continues to thrive in an area near Pondicherry, India.

The Mother's Surrender to Level of Physical
Sri Aurobindo said that in Mother he found surrender down to the very physical, the likes of which could not be found in any human being.

The Mother's Physical Transformation
The Mother's other great role occurred in the later years of her life. From about the age of 70 until her death at age 94 in 1974, she made the difficult attempt at the transformation of her own physical body, to be the forerunner of a new type of human being, perhaps a new species beyond man. Whereas most disciples and followers around the world needed to first overcome the normal, typical weaknesses in their mental and emotional parts of their being (such as their ego-sense, falsehoods, ignorance, poor attitudes, habits, limited knowledge and skills, etc.), the Mother had mostly attained that perfection at birth, and endeavored to make the more difficult transformation of her physical body her chief preoccupation. The first goal was to find the secrets to illness, suffering, and pain. A second goal was to overcome the inevitability of death itself, to the decay of the cells over time; to find the secret to unending life based on one's will for continuous existence. The most important goal however was the transformation of the physical substance of the body into a new type of human being, a Supramental being, with powers of consciousness, plasticity, creation, truth, and unity beyond anything the world has ever known or conceived. By utilizing the Force, this physical transformation would lead to a new type of individual, a new species beyond man, leading to a divine existence and life on earth. She was the pioneer individual for the ultimate physical transformation to this new existence.

The Mind of the Cells
Several decades ago, the French author Satprem wrote a book called 'The Mind of the Cells.' It was his interpretation of the experiences of Mira Alfassa -- later known to her followers as 'The Mother.' In the book, Satprem documents the life long pursuit of The Mother to transform her body in order to permanently overcome pain, disease, and even death itself. Satprem's book was entitled 'The Mind of the Cells' because in the process of experimentation and discovery involving her body, The Mother began to realize that the cells had a consciousness of their own, and if their 'perceptions' could be reoriented, they would not decay, and fall into disease, illness, and death.

Today if we look around, we see that science may soon be able to overcome several forms of illness, including heart attack and stroke -- leaving only cancer and other major forms of atrophy to be resolved in the future. It is said that individuals could live well into their hundreds as a result. One pioneering technologist even believes that it may be possible to live to 1000 or more through the wonders of modern science. I for one certainly do not doubt that possibility.

And yet, The Mother's approach to the transformation of the body's capacities was entirely different; and I believe, will prove to be far more effective in the long run. And it is for this reason: the effort she made is in fact the direction that the human body itself is evolving towards. Slowly man's greater consciousness is beginning to have an impact on the cellular matter that makes up our physicals bodies. The Mother's effort was an experiment to speed up the process; to overcome tens of generations of evolutionary change in a single lifetime. Though she succeeded only in part, she identified most of the subtle cellular constraints that need to be overcome.

Her approach was to enable unending life by changing the programming of the cells through the influence of the higher consciousness of the spiritual Force. By opening to the wider power and energy of that Force, the inbuilt programming of the cells, which now subscribes to the inevitability of suffering and decay, gives way to a wider 'understanding of possibility', including the belief and faith in its own unending health and immortality.

Even now, we are beginning to see the power we have over the body's illness. We have come to understand that the body often falls ill because a person is unwilling or unable to make a certain psychological change necessary for that individual's personal growth and progress. As a result, the body falls in. If that person, however, crosses over that threshold and makes the necessary life change -- perhaps a change in an attitude, or taking to a new level of psychological strength, or takes a new unprecedented action -- the body can relent and health is restored. This is but one of several insights into the subtle nature of health that others are discovering around the world. Of course, many are aware of the power of the Spirit to heal. Done in the right way, and with the widest understanding of the Spiritual Reality and its various powers, there can be ultimate effectivity through this approach.

It is then only a matter of degree for the tissues and cells themselves to become conscious and readjust their programming to believe in their possibility of unending longevity. As our bodies become conscious to their own possibility of unending health and life, they may evolve themselves and achieve what they have come to perceive. Yes, we can use medicines and genetic engineering to accomplish similar results, but it would not be the more fundamental evolutionary change that The Mother was after. We have not become more mental and spiritual beings because of technology, but as a result of a development in understanding and consciousness.

So while I encourage all scientific developments that try to improve the conditions for the physical body -- even those whose outcome might be unending life through technology -- I believe that it does not address the fundamental issue of our physical existence; how to reverse the functioning of the cells from its current status of disbelief to one of belief in unending health and existence. It is then just a matter of our becoming more conscious at various levels, which extends to the cells of our body, which then shares that wisdom and perception.

When we take up that challenge and learn to utilize the Spirit to alter the mindset and belief systems of our own selves, extending to the Mind of the Cells, then we will be creating the conditions for a permanent end to suffering, illness, decay, disease, and even death itself. It seems to be an inevitable part of our evolutionary destiny.

The Arrival of the Immortal, Supramental Being
Re: The Mother's attempt to transform her body and end the decay of their cells through infusion of higher consciousness there, enabling the beginnings of a new deathless (supramentalized) race of humanity:

I believe she had the ongoing experience of the consciousness of the cells, but not the fulfillment, power, and realization to overcome their decay on a permanent basis, thus her physical death.

She said the new, supramental being would come in a new person in a new body (perhaps a baby of some sort, but I don't know). There was even discussion by Mother in Agenda that it could be Sri Aurobindo in the new birth and body. It could however be anyone, like the vision she had of it coming from the devotee.

Several times, Mother mentioned that it would be too hard to transmute the current body and create a supramental being out of it. I.e. she was skeptical because of the complexity of the current system (digestion, breathing, etc.). She however had the vision of a svelte, sexless being without lungs and other internal body organs. "Functions" replaced those organs. E.g. a certain breath consciousness replaced breathing. This could have been the supramental being of the future.

The Mother and Auroville
In 1968 The Mother founded Auroville, the international community of peace and spiritual growth. Its purpose is to be an experimental community where individuals can make the effort to evolve beyond their present limitations. Auroville has been established as an experiment in Human Unity where each individual is freed from bondage to moral and social conventions and the necessity of working for material possessions. There is no religion practiced there, no money used, no ownership of property. The emphasis is on each person discovering his/her own inner center behind the social, moral, cultural and racial heredity and appearances, and actively living from that center, expressing it in outer work for the community. Auroville is a UN sponsored endeavor that attracts people worldwide because of its openness, new age lifestyle, and dedication to a vision of a new humanity.

The Mother & Flowers
There was a period when Mother was giving flowers spiritual names. She once smelt tulasi and said it was devotion. Later She was told that in our tradition tulasi symbolises devotion. Her knowledge was subtle, occult, comprehensive and consummate. She thus named 800 flowers with spiritual names. (MSS)

Article on the Life of The Mother

Article on Following the Path of The Mother

Also See Thoughts on Sri Aurobindo

Mother's Agenda
Mother's later life is captured in 13 Volumes in which she carried on conversations with her disciple Satprem. It is called 'The Agenda."

An Analysis of Mother's Agenda

He Guides The Mother's Yoga
Mother was continually in touch with Sri Aurobindo after his passing. He continually spoke with her from the subtle plains giving her instructions and guiding her own development as she attempted to live a supramental life, including physically do the transformation to a supramental being. Mother discusses these interactions between the two throughout discussions with her disciple Satprem in The Agenda.

Feb. 29th, 1956 - The Day of the Lord
While Sri Aurobindo was in jail, Swami Vivekananda appeared before Him, gave Him the Gita and showed Him the Supermind [the truth consciousness]. He did not tell Him how to reach the Supermind. It took Sri Aurobindo ten years to discover it. Like Buddha and Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo refused to accept moksha [liberation] for himself while all the other souls languished in the darkness of the earth. One should reach Supermind and bring it down so that it would transform the earth - abolish Ignorance, suffering, evil and death. Sri Aurobindo said that if twelve or a hundred yogis reached the Supermind, it would descend on earth. He could not find anyone, other than the Mother. So, He decided to leave the body and work from the subtle plane.

In 1956 on February 29th, while Mother was in meditation at the playground with all the sadhaks [spiritual aspirants, followers], She saw a golden door and a golden hammer. She broke that door with the hammer. A Golden Light, the Supramental Light, flooded the earth. Up rose the earth's tamas [resistance, inertia] and swallowed the descending Force. Mother said, ''Henceforth, February 29th will be the Day of the Lord.'' It is known as Supramental day and celebrated once in four years. Auroville was founded a day prior to that day. The Mother was watching that Force organise Itself on earth. She began to meet Sri Aurobindo in the subtle plane from 1959 and converse with Him. He told Her that the governments would come under the influence of that Force from 1967. The date 4-5-67 was thus chosen to be celebrated. She saw the Force organising itself as a person, the Consciousness of a Person, on the New Year day of 1969. Until 1973, She was speaking to a sadhak [spiritual aspirants, followers] about that Force organising Itself for action. When strange events were brought to Her notice, She commented how the Force expressed Itself through those events. Sri Aurobindo was always golden in the subtle plane, but after the descent, many sadhaks had visions of the Golden Purusha. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have not left us. They are very much there in the subtle plane. Devotees with subtle vision see them in their dreams or dhyana. One thing all those who have lived before the descent know is, any prayer now is more quickly answered, and more fully too. Mother was sorry that no one was aware of the descent. Even now, every four years we celebrate the descent. It is a pity we are so dense and unconscious. We do not see the Force. Of course, many feel it in the atmosphere as a powerful Presence. (Karmayogi, with slight additions)

Where is Mother?

Mother said she communicated with Sri Aurobindo regularly after his passing. She said He resided in the Subtle Physical; an invisible material plane that had a propensity to manifest as real. Perhaps this is the same or similar for Mother Herself.

Normally for an individual when they pass, they first shed the physical; then they move to the vital plane and shed the vital propensities; then the mental plane; etc. They then rest from that point forward, or they prepare for a new birth. How this process unfolds depends on their vital and mental propensities in life.

These are ideas I recall from the Bhagavan�s writings in Life Divine and elsewhere.

Then what of a divine being like Mother? Long before Her passing, the Divine Mother descended into Her being. How does that fact alter or enhance the process of after material life described above? Mother's is not just a normal person passing, but a Goddess; an incarnation of the Supreme.

We also know that the Divine Mother is born in the Conscious Force (Chit of Sat-Chit-Ananda). Does the once incarnated Mother go back to or reinherit that level of Conscious Force in the subtle plane? Mother is also the Force of Supermind, so she is stationed there perhaps as well. I.e. she has that consciousness. (Supermind in the body was not obtained; has not been, though it is said that Sri Aurobindo had manifest it at the material level.)

We also know our own experience of Her, which expresses in a variety of subtle ways, as readers in previous entries explained. It is clear that She is clearly Alive without the physical body. Appa and others have said that Her power is in fact even greater now than when she was encumbered by Her physical body. (She even perceived this possibility while in the body.)

We are waiting for Supermind to manifest in the material; eventually evolving into a supramental being. How will the Supramental being manifest? Before She passed, Mother mentioned that she could enter a new supramental body after her physical death, and that others there in the ashram, including Satprem, would prepare for that possibility by not burying her so fast. That way She thought she could spontaneously become a supramental being. But She also doubted that fact, for what would enable such a possibility. She also mentioned that Sri Aurobindo indicated He would return in a supramental body. She thought it might have already occurred in one of the children born then, or if not, would occur later on.

These are all sketchy clues of where Mother is. And yet, the more we open to Her in our lives, the more we realize our true selves and purpose; the more we are open to the Truth of such things, including our perceptions of the workings of the subtle planes where divine Beings reside. We can more readily know Mother�s whereabouts, when we surrender to Her, which enables our mind to expand to intuitions of Her and His location.

Also, by discovering our psychic being, while opening and surrendering to Her, we create a wider opening and pathway for the supramental Force to descend on earth; for supramental beings to manifest in life; and to enable a supramental, divine life on earth to take shape.

Gods, Overmind, and Ignorance

Mother's Vision of Sri Aurobindo's Force 1000 Years from Now
Once, during a conversation, Mother entered into meditation for some time. On coming out of it, She said She had gone into the future a thousand years hence to see the Force of Sri Aurobindo acting in the world then. Avatars bring down Forces that change the course of mankind. (MSS)

Their Influence on World Events
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had their own unique experiences with world events throughout their lives. For example, when the British were in retreat at Dunkirk, trying to avoid the German bombardment, Sri Aurobindo through a power of consciousness is said to have helped put the famous fog over the water, hiding the retreating boats from the Germans. Also in the early 194os when the Nazis raced across Europe, The Mother made a visit to Hitler himself. He regularly saw a bright illumined being in front of him who directed his actions in the war. It was in fact the god that he had worshiped and followed. One time Mother came in the being's place, though looking the same, telling Hitler to move some of his army to a second front in Russia. Hitler obliged. It was this decision that was to prove to be perhaps the main course of his downfall in the war.

The Mother Ends Cold War
The Mother's Force through Gorbachev enabled the end of the Soviet system that ended the Cold War. Certain individuals took inner and outer action that helped Her Force bring this result about.

Choice, Success, and The New Atmosphere in the World
2000 years ago life was murky, there was little opportunity for individual choice. When Jesus chose the life of Love, he and his fellow saints were destroyed. In Greece, where democracy was born, in Socrates we see the mind of the individual was developed. He chose to express himself. He was killed. The mind of the collective was developed in the 16th century, as represented by Hamlet. The social life was dark and cruel. Shakespeare's wrote of these times in his tragedies. E.g. Hamlet lived in these times, and expressing his will died with six others in a tragedy.

Slowly over the ages the negative intensities were shed. In the earth's atmosphere today Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have worked for the earth, to remove the atmosphere of suffering tragedy from the vital atmosphere of the earth.

This opens us to the possibility of our making choices in the world that will lead to great boons, instead of death and tragedy. The Boon they spoke of us is there in life for us to take.

Results Process, Essence of Knowledge The Mother Gave Us
The Divine Mother has Supramental Knowledge. She constantly gave it to us. It is all in writing. First SHE gives the results. Now we have to know the process by which SHE gave it to us. It is the Mystery. Beyond lies the essence which is Supermind or Brahman in Supermind. (MSS, slightly modified)

The Background of The Mona Lisa
There are many theories that have circulated over the years about da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Let me add another. In the background of the painting, something not often considered, we see an extraordinary scene. It is outdoors. There are high peaked mountains in the distance, against which sits at least one great glacial lake. From the lake are rivers that extend and flow downstream into the lowlands. There is even an aqueduct carrying waters across the land. Is there then any meaning to the woman calmly sitting in front of this spectacular, though dimly lit scene?

It is said that Sri Aurobindo was Leonardo in his past life. (Or rather the soul that was in Sri Aurobindo was in the man Leonardo previously.) The Mother in The Agenda also identified herself as the woman in the painting the Mona Lisa. Thus, we can conclude that Sri Aurobindo in a past life is painting The Mother in her past life. Who the Mona Lisa is, what she is thinking, what is being expressed, whether there is a smile, etc. are the inquiries of legend.

What if the background were symbolic of the Divine Mother. She is the creative Force in the universe; that created/continues to create in the creation. The background shows the source of all life stored in and emanating from the glacial lake that flows into the rivers and penetrates the land. Life thus takes root from these source waters. That is the process. Mona Lisa/The Mother represents that same creative process in the universe. All life flows from the Divine Mother, her Shakti and action. Mona Lisa is then the source of life in existence. She sits before that process.

Maybe da Vinci had no such intent; but it still can be seen expressing from a symbolic point of view. Where the truth lies remains unknown. There is however a peculiar yearning for truth surrounding this enigmatic work of art which seems to endure time.

See Additional Entries about Her Life and that of Sri Aurobindo

The Divine Mother

The Divine Mother
The Divine Mother is the Force of consciousness acting in the world whose origins are in that Conscious Force of the Supreme.

Sri Aurobindo on Who the Mother Is

Power of Opening to the Divine Mother

Through the Supreme Will, the universe emerged from the Conscious Force ('Chit' in Sanskrit). The Divine Mother, the Energy and Force of the Infinite (i.e. Shakti), was born there. Thus, when we open to Her in this life, we gain the same causal power that enabled the universe to arise from a Divine source. Its results, like creation itself, can be overwhelming, eliciting the infinite from the finite; overcoming causality, possibility, space and time.

For example, a player whose team had endlessly failed in international competition stopped before serving the ball and concentrated on the Divine Mother. He not only won that point, but every succeeding one, enabling his team to win the match his country had repeatedly failed at until that self-offering to the Higher Power.

Origins of the Divine Mother
-Satchitananda is the conscious Being (Sat), which enabled a conscious Force (Chit).

-Where that Force issues out of consciousness, The Divine Mother resides.

-Supermind is the objective version of Satchitananda.

-The Divine Mother emerges in Supermind as supramental force (mahashakti).
-It is the 3rd dimension of time, where instant results occur. (Thus when we open to It, Her we enable these results in life.)

Mother's Force and Supramental Force, Plane
Q: Is the Mother's Force the same as the Supramental Force or Supermind?
A: Mother's Force is Supramental force. This is true, but Mother is situated at the point that force issues out of consciousness, which is prior to the birth of Supermind. Mother's Force originally is above Supermind, but it can come through Supermind and mind or any other plane. (MSS

Origins of The Mother
The Mother has an origin in consciousness-force, in understandable terms it can be said as Mother is Sakthi of Iswara. Iswara is the Sakthi in Supermind. (MSS)

Origins of the Divine Mother
The knowledge in consciousness needs the executive power of force for expression. Alternately we can say Purusha which is Being is full of potential for manifestation and prakriti which is force helps to bring out the potential into reality.

In Sacchidananda The Mother resides in chit (consciousness-force) while in supermind which is only the objective version of Sacchidananda she emerges as supramental mahashakti (great force) who dwells in the 3rd dimension of time known as simultaneous integrality of time (a plane of time where time eternity and timeless eternity coexist). It is the plane of instant results which is characteristic of Mother's force. The rishi who enters the timeless plane in meditation cannot make that plane have an impact on the time plane when he comes out of meditation and reenters the time plane as these two planes are separate and have no effect on one another. But in the plane of simultaneous integrality they coexist and thus the timeless plane impinges on time and brings about instant results cancelling the requirement of duration which is the characteristic of time plane. (MSS)

The Source and Nature of the Divine Mother
Here is what I understand so far in terms of the metaphysics of the nature and source of the Divine Mother-

-From the Reality emerged Satchitananda on the way to extend Itself into creation.

-The Mother has her origin in conscious Force (Chit of Sat-Chit-Ananda).

-Conscious emerges as knowledge and will (on the further road to creation) with Consciousness as knowledge; force as will.

-The knowledge in consciousness needs the executive power of force for expression.

-Supermind, which is the objective version of Satchitananda, creates the universe through its supramental power.

-In Supermind the Divine Mother emerges as supramental mahashakti (great force). It is the great force that creates.

-She expresses there in Supermind in the 3rd dimension of time, known as simultaneous integrality of time.

-Thus we can say that the Mother is the Force that created the universe. Her power is the power of Supermind.

-Thus calling the Mother calls the power of the universe; enables simultaneous time -- i.e. the instantaneous miraculousness that overcomes space and time, turning the finite into the infinite.

-If we find Mother in the Psychic Being, we do the same.

Where Mother Originates and Her Workings in the Cosmos
The first step out of the Infinite Brahman is the conscious Being, otherwise perceived as Spirit and Truth. As a result of that self-conscious Pure Existence, a Force is emanated (Chit). It is here that Mother is born. It is this force that is her Shakti. It is here that the intention of creation takes shape. It is the invisible, causal non-substance substance out of which Energy will form which will become the basis for the forms of creation. It is the willed intention of that Force, of the Divine Mother for that creation. Supermind will render that force to create the cosmos.

In creation, the Consciousness and Force (together Chit) are however separated, creating ignorance and division in creation. IT IS THE DIVINE INTENT FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE DELIGHT OF REDISCOVERY OF OUR HIGHER NATURE. We however can reconnect to the conscious Being through the Divine Mother, causing the Consciousness and Force to be reunited within us. (It is a movement from lower Nature (Prakriti) consciousness to higher Spirit (Purusha) consciousness.) It enables ultimate spiritual capacities in us including synchronicity (life response), oneness, wisdom, creativity, infinity, timelessness, love, and delight. In that process, we rise to our ultimate supernature.

It all begins with consecration to Mother and the Force. Gradually through that consecrated effort, we penetrate to the Psychic Being within (the evolving soul) and the Supramental, truth consciousness Power above, enabling the reunion of Consciousness and Force (of Satchitananda), and therefore timelessness in time; life response, and all other spiritual attributes. It enables our spiritual evolution, culminating in our supramental transformation.

Who is the Mother?
Most of us know intimately the power of the Mother. She has saved us on countless occasions. She has also turned the activities of our lives into moments of magic. But who is this Mother who has done this for us all?

Sri Aurobindo worked to discover and bring down the supramental truth consciousness in the world. He said it was the Force that enabled the universe to emerge from Satchitananda. The supramental plane and force is where the infinite energy is being molded into forms. In the last 50 years, the supramental Force through Their action has moved down to the earthly level. It continues to lean down with ever-greater intensity, effectivity, and power. When we open to it, we participate and enhance in that cosmic process.

Is Mother then this Force, the Supramental Truth Consciousness? In Mother's Agenda, someone familiar with her called her the Mediatrix of the Force, i.e. she was the intermediary that funnels this Power, though not necessarily the Force itself. In this scenario, when we open to Her, we essentially open to His supramental power through Her.

And yet She seems to be more than the conduit of His Force. She is perhaps the Supramental Force itself. In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo says:

"She is the Force, the inevitable Word.
The magnet of our difficult ascent ..."

Is this the supramental Force, or a deeper force still?

In 'The Life Divine', in the chapter Brahma, Purusha, Ishwara, He speaks of Sat-Chit-Ananda, the unmanifest powers from which the universe takes shape. The first aspect is "Sat," which is Being, i.e. Existence. I.e. the omnipresent Reality (Brahman) has come to exist. He then indicates that there are three aspects of Sat. The third is 'Ishwara' -- i.e. the Divine Being, the Creator. The Ishwara uses the power of Shakti to conceptualize and determine the creation of a universe of forms. The supramental power, which is the nature of Satchitananda, then executes the process of creating the universe as determined by Ishwara.

He says that we in creation connect to this creator power, Ishwara through the Divine Mother.

In essence, the Mother would then seem not just to be the intermediary of the supramental Force, or even that Force itself, but is there before -- as Ishwara through its Shakti determinating power in Sat/being. She is the Shakti that is the instrumentality of Ishwara, the Lord of Creation.

This may seem mere philosophy and metaphysics, and be of little concern to any of Her followers. For we are happy enough to surrender to Her power, no matter its source; and enjoy Her grace. Yet knowing who She is will help us understand Her true nature, and how to relate to Her. Through our aspiration and interest, we can come then to know Mother in all her dimensions, which is to say we will come understand the underlying divinity in the cosmos.

Mother's Force and Supramental Force, Plane
Q: Is the Mother's Force the same as the Supramental Force or Supermind?
A: Mother's Force is Supramental force. This is true, but Mother is situated at the point that force issues out of consciousness, which is prior to the birth of Supermind. Mother's Force originally is above Supermind, but it can come through Supermind and mind or any other plane. (MSS)

The Mother and the Force
Q: Is the Force exclusive to the Mother?

Modern teachings can be evolutionary or regressive. Certainly, The Mother's was the former.

Man is much more aware of things that he wasn't cognizant of in the past, even at the spiritual level. The Mother drew/is drawing on all the knowledge of the great teachers, teachings, and traditions. She also has at her disposal the astounding leap in knowledge of consciousness that Sri Aurobindo brought to the world. This is even aside from Mother's advanced spiritual, evolutionary status at birth. In this life, she also had overwhelming inner -- spiritual or otherwise -- experiences, perhaps unprecedented in human history.

I don't believe that The Mother ever felt the Force was exclusive to herself. It is a Divine, supramental, truth-consciousness Force. If, however, you take the Divine Mother in its deepest and broadest sense, then she is more than the instrument, but the embodiment of the Shakti power that was there in the Unmanifest that has come to us as the Force in the Manifest. In other words, she IS the Force. We could thus say that The Mother was/is The Force. At the level of being Mira, however, the human incarnation and avatar, she may be considered "just" the instrument of the Force, the conduit through which it flows, and through which we bring it into our lives. It depends on how we relate to her, as The Mother or Divine Mother, or somewhere in between.

Finally, since their --i.e. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother's -- approach is a synthesis of spirituality and evolution, the latter being a more modern concept, there is an opportunity for wisdom, knowledge, and therefore experience unprecedented in human history. We too living in this modern existence are capable of having unprecedented life and spiritual experience that can even exceed the ancient Masters.

The Divine Mother In Hinduism
In Hinduism, ''divine as Mother"� concept is called as ''devi"� worship is formed with sakthii as divine power. Lalithambigai manifests five elements and its combination as external. Intelligence, discrimination, physic power, will, ego as internal. Humanity is her visible form. This concept is based on ''keno upanishad'. So God worship as Mother is worship of her glory, greatness and supremacy with all the quality and character we wish that ''She"� should have. This is called as ''energy of super power"� -- parasakthi which is creator of all other gods for individual knowledge and activities. Since energy cannot be worshipped as energy itself, it is conceived as Mother in various forms- from Kali, Lakshmi, Saraswathi etc., to the gods of village levels.

Miracles of the Divine Mother

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo describes the process by which the universe emerged from a Divine source. He indicates that a plane of consciousness called �Supermind� (or �Truth Consciousness�) divided the Force and Energy of the Infinite to create the forces and forms that emerged in creation. All that has emerged and continues to emerge, including we humans, are a product of that process. What is perhaps most interesting for us is that this Supramental Force is also available to us, and if we open to it, we can create infinite-like results as well.

Over the years, I have known of hundreds if not thousands of examples where individuals followed this method -- evoking staggering, often life-changing results. Many of the people I am familiar with practice this approach by opening to the �Divine Mother� -- who is in essence the Divine conduit for the Force. Maybe She is the Force Itself. They usually open to Her power in a variety of situations: e.g. before undertaking an important activity, such as a major business meeting or an upcoming wedding; or when a serious challenge or problem arises, such as financial or health crisis; or when they wish to change a wanting part of their nature, such as a poor attitude or belief. Each time they offer it to the Divine Mother, the Force moves into action, producing astonishing results. Here are a few recent examples:

---An Indian national working in the US in the software industry could not get back to his country because his deputation had been delayed. The intensity of the experience also caused him to develop a serious skin problem. He and his mother then intensely offered the difficult situation to the Divine Mother. In very short order, she quickly learned that her son�s trip to the US has been cleared by the officials, and he would be arriving in two weeks! Moreover, his skin problem was finally diagnosed properly, and, as a result, easily treated. The woman could not believe that both of her problems had vanished so quickly and miraculously.

--A man and woman in India ran a business. However, due to repair work going on nearby, the enterprise began to lose customers, and, as a result, they incurred substantial losses. The woman then learned that because creditors were now increasingly pressuring them to pay back loans, her husband had run away. As a result, she plunged into an inconsolable state. But then a friend came along and recommended that she sit quietly before a picture of the Divine Mother. A short time later, there was a call from her husband informing her that he was fine, and then indicated the place where he was staying. That night, he returned home safely.

--A man was very concerned that fires burning out of control in Northern California for nearly a month could soon lead to the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, as the smoke in the air had turned dangerously toxic. He prayed intensely to the Divine Mother, hoping for some change. The next morning when he awoke, he saw that the skies had suddenly turned perfectly blue, essentially clearing out the month-long orange-brown smoke and ending the crisis in the region. What happened was that an unexpected weather system had swept through the area clearing out the smoke, potentially saving the lives of scores of people. What had actually occurred was that the Force had moved into action and changed the conditions of life.

--A woman was called to jury duty, even though it meant she had to take time off from her job and engage in what she considered an unpleasant activity. As juror selection proceeded, it looked like she was going to have to remain there for several weeks. She then offered the entire matter to the Divine Mother. Shortly after, she was question by an attorney who explained the nature of the crime and asking her if she would be prejudiced in any way. She then responded that she had in fact been a victim of a similar crime. As a result, she was immediately dismissed from jury duty! Because she consecrated the situation, the Force created and aligned with conditions that pardoned her from the case.

--A man in India was being set up with a wife through arranged marriage. One after another, problems ensued with prospective partners. Along the way, he even lost his job. Getting tired of the situation, he offered the matter to the Divine Mother. Suddenly another marriage proposal came in from one of his relatives. She turned out to be a very good girl, but he thought he could not accept it because he did not now have work. He offered the matter to the Force again, and soon found out that she too was a follower of the Divine Mother! They were then soon married -- and it occurred on the date the physical Mother made her yearly appearance at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

--A woman and her son were experiencing many delays in their travels as they navigated the various airports since there were no direct flights. As a result, they were continually fatigued and irritable along the way. Moreover, she began to rail against the system that did not provide more direct flights to her destination. Finally, she realized that the problem was in her attitude, which she then offered to the Divine Mother. She later learned that for the first time, direct flights were available to and from her local city to the desired destination, making the need for transfers unnecessary! Through the spiritual Force, she evoked a response not only for herself, but for the collective!

--A man was on the edge of financial ruin because all orders in his business had dried up due to the recession. He then offered the matter intensely to the Divine Mother, and immediately after an order came in that provided months of financial sustenance.

--A man suddenly felt intense gratitude to the Divine for having helped him secure such a fine and dedicated staff. Instantaneously, the phone range and he received a very large order for products her business was offering. He saw the direct relationship between his intense gratitude to the Divine Mother and the immediate arrival of the requisition.

These are common every day experiences of people who have opened themselves to the spiritual Force. You can multiply these by a hundred or a thousand to include all of the incidents I have been privy to over the years. Some are startling and touching beyond believe. And yet this Power is available to every one of us each, every minute of the day. In fact, Its power is growing, as It is increasingly penetrating the earth�s atmosphere -- meaning it is more accessible to more people, and is more concentrated, producing even more powerful results.

We have entered a New Age of possibility -- not only of freedom, accomplishment, and fulfillment, but of inner power via access to the Spirit. It is at once the Infinite consciousness that is pouring into life, becoming the source of all things, as well as a Power that we can access through the Divine Mother, evoking an endless procession of the miraculous.

Both

(Sri Aurobindo & The Mother)

Their Lives

Little Known Facts about Sri Aurobindo and Mother

1. The Mother's instruction to people cleaning Sri Aurobindo's Room was that they should do the cleaning without looking at him even once.

2. Her second instruction was that anybody who dares to speak in Sri Aurobindo's presence should be asked to leave the room at once.

3. During the 40 years he lived in Pondy it never occurred to anybody to record his voice though Ashramites remembered to record Mother's voice.

4. According to Mother Sri Aurobindo nearly went blind due to the daily writing he did in the night answering the letters of Ashramites and visitors which were many in number.

5. All through her 30 year long association with Him The Mother never questioned anything he did.

6. Sri Aurobindo could not leave his body while the Mother stayed nearby and he left only when She withdrew temporarily to Her Room with instructions to the attendants to call Her when the time comes.

7. She called him "My Lord" while He called Her "Mother".

8. While Sri Aurobindo praised Shankara as a great intellect, Mother described the same Shankara as a man who wrote some useless words.

9. A famous French Photographer took photos of Sri Aurobindo either in April or august 1950. Within a few months he gave up his body. It very much looks like there is a connection between taking photos of Him and his departure.

10. The Mother has announced that in Her next birth She wants to be known as little as possible.

11. Sri Aurobindo has announced that He will be reborn as the first supramental being.

12. The mother did not value meditation like we do. She only consecrated every one of her movements and that was enough for Her. (N. Ashokan for MSS)

Interesting Incidents and Facts in the Lives of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

Though born to Indian parents Sri Aurobindo grew up without even learning his mother tongue due to his father�s preference for English culture.

He absented himself for the horse riding test which is a must for ICS Officers as he did not want to become a civil servant for the British Raj.

During his final years of stay in Britain money inflow from his father virtually dried up and he lived in extreme deprivation for some time.

In the beginning he took to yoga and spirituality not out of a spiritual interest, but to use these powers for the liberation of his mother land.

When the fever of his brother Barin proved incurable for more than a week, he was surprised to find a Naga Sannyasi cure that fever in a few hours by chanting a manthra and sprinkling some water on his brother during the chanting.

While at Baroda he visited a Yogi named Brahmananda who lived on the banks of the Narmada who was said to be more than 200 years old.

While working as a professor at Baroda he used to keep his money on his study table for everybody to see and perhaps take.

He learnt Tamil with the help of Subramanya Bharathi and studied the hymns of Vaishnavite Alwars and was particularly impressed by the Psychic touch he found in Nammalvars hymns.

Tamil Poet Subramanya Bharathi�s poetic inspiration was most active during the years he visited Sri Aurobindo while staying at Pondicherry.

Sri Aurobindo smoked and ate Non-vegetarian food just to show the orthodox people in India that spiritual purity is an inner condition which is not easily affected by outer habits. He gave up smoking only after Mother expressed dislike of the smell of tobacco.

When a storm raged in Pondicherry not a drop of water entered His room though the windows were open and Mother found him writing calmly and not even noticing that a storm was raging outside.

He sent his first chapter of Savitri to a poet-disciple for comments who wrote back that the final line of the chapter� that was the day Satyavan was to die� does not sound well. Sri Aurobindo wrote back that he thought that was his best line.

Ashramites who were assigned cleaning service in His room were instructed by Mother never to even look at him while doing their cleaning. May be The Mother believed that their very act of looking at him would lower His consciousness. When he talked to disciples he would not look at them straight but speak looking somewhere else. Only on darshan days will he give them a kind look as He gives His Blessings.

Though He assigned the spiritual responsibility of guiding the Ashramites to Mother, for some strange reason he took upon Himself the task of answering all their letters and enquires to Mother. Mother says he nearly went blind writing replies to all those letters as it involved giving up his sleep for days on end as he wrote the replies mainly in the night.

When the British offered dominion status to India during 2nd world war he urged Congress leaders to accept the offer but his advice was not received well. He shocked the congress leadership by supporting the Allied cause as against Nazi Germany saying that the Allied Powers were defending Truth and Civilisation as against the falsehood of the Nazis and the fascists.

When Subhash Chandra Bose befriended the Japanese and sought their help to evict the British from India he warned that Japanese imperialism would be much worse than British Imperialism as Japan was politically an immature nation.

Rabindra Nath Tagore came and met Him here at Pondy and said that the Word (spiritual Wisdom) was with Him.

He told Mother that Her body was more fit to undergo the rigors of transformation and that if one of them had to leave their body, He will go and that Mother should stay on and carry on with the work.

During the final hours of his departure he found it terribly difficult to leave His body while the Mother was present. She sensed His difficulties and withdrew for some time which allowed Him to depart.

When the Mother wondered Why She did not display any great genius or talent in any field He replied that it had been curbed on purpose.

Though He finished most of his writing by 1920 Savitri is the only book that he kept on revising till the end of his life.

Though he was in coma due to Uremia in his final months, he had the amazing ability to come out of the coma as and when he wished and continue with his Savitri revisions.

Though he physically left his body, he set up his own home in the subtle plane and the Mother regularly visited him and interacted with him there.

When the Mother attempted to clean up Her subconscient personality She experienced great pain and her very body felt as if it was on fire. Only then did She understand that Sri Aurobindo must have experienced worse pains and fiery heat though he never complained about it.

He has remarked that He was able to reach sacchidananda very easily. But that it took Him more than ten years to even access the Supermind which is only the objective version of sacchidananda.

He used to call The Mother not by her name Mirra but as Mother only while She called Him as Lord.

The Mother used to go into trance even when she was less than five years old. Once her mother questioned her as to why she falls asleep so often. She replied that she was not sleeping but working for the betterment of the world. Her mother thought her daughter had gone crazy.

At the age of seven She was able to subdue a much older bully at school by mere verbal disapproval.

At the age of ten she once went to a forest near German border and found little fairies called gnomes at play.

Her brother Matteo hears an Inner Voice asking if he wanted to be a god. He replied that he only wanted to serve humanity. Mother says it was stupid of him to have refused the offer.

While hearing music at a Jewish wedding she felt uplifted and went and stood by a window gazing outside. A force entered Her body like a bolt of lightning and made her feel vast and powerful.

The Mother�s father experienced a period of poverty during a time of recession and bank collapse. At that time She passed by a textile shop and saw some fancy dresses. She longed to buy them but did not have the money. Soon afterwards a dozen such dresses came to Her as gift.

While trying to access the Inner Divine all by Herself without any outer support She comes across Vivekananda�s book on Raja Yoga. It helps her to accomplish in a few months what might have taken years to accomplish.

On the very first day of Her occult training under Theon She calmly tells him that Her Psychic Being governs Her and that therefore She is afraid of nothing.

While staying with Theon at Tlemcen, Algeria She leaves Her body and reaches Paris where she meets her friends and writes with a pen on some paper and later even travels by a train. But she does not develop this occult faculty any further after finding out that she can do this successfully.

She sees Alma Theon come out of her body and shed one subtle body after another for twelve times in succession.

At another time she sees Alma Theon suck the energy out of a grape fruit by sheer will-power without cutting open the fruit at all.

She says that the lord of snow brought snow to the dry Atlas mountains in Algeria when by mistake some saplings of cold-loving fir trees were planted there instead of the pine trees that had been ordered.

While standing on the terrace of Theon�s house a bolt of lightning descends straight towards Her. But She sees Theon deflect the lightening at the last moment with his occult power.

When she meets a clergyman going to China in the ship that was taking Her to India She tells him that long before his religion was even born the Chinese had discovered the path leading to the divine.

After meeting Sri Aurobindo She has a realization that it is not by concentration that She will realize oneness but by spreading out in all.

She has the kundalini experience wherein a column of light rises from the base of her spine and spreads out as a moon-shaped disc of light above her head. Later it rises very high and expands into a very big sun from which a shower of light rains down on the earth.

British request to the French for expulsion of Sri Aurobindo goes to Mother�s Brother Matteo who was serving as a diplomat in the French government. Mother arranges with her brother that this request is never processed and that the British letter is consigned to some old file that will never be opened.

She writes a letter to Sri Aurobindo from Paris describing an experience where she identifies herself with earth and then the Universe and finally the Supreme. Sri Aurobindo clarifies that the identification with the earth meant an identification of the physical consciousness with the divine consciousness and the earth served only as a symbolic image.

She spends four years in Japan visiting Tokyo and Kyoto and describes the Japanese nation as a nation dedicated to the ideal of beauty. She feels calm, rest and exterior silence there but not the sense of the presence of the Infinite which comes from a living nearness to the Unique.

She declares in an essay entitled � Myself and my creed� that She belongs to no nation, no civilization, no society, no race but to the divine.

When She returns to Pondy in 1920 Sri Aurobindo remarks that His Sadhana and work were waiting for Mother�s coming back.

Richard has a quarrel with Mother and insists that She choose him as her spiritual partner and not Sri Aurobindo. When Mother remains firm in Her choice, he leaves her for ever to pursue his own independent quest.

In 1955 She receives Nehru, Kamaraj, Shastri and Indira at the playground and interestingly both Shastri and Indira later become prime ministers.

She makes a comment about Russian gymnasts who visit the Ashram school that the perfection of their bodies has been solely achieved by material means and enlightened use of Will Power. Further She adds that had they used spiritual knowledge in addition to these two the results would have been remarkable.

She begins to give talks about Her prayers and meditation to a small group of children and later it becomes a regular wednesday class for all present in the playground.

She remarks that with those whom She has accepted as Her disciples there is not only a spiritual bond with Her. But more than that there will be an emanation of Her residing with that person.
She remarks that when her body received the supramental force She felt a freedom in the very cells of her body which came as a result of an awakening that they experienced.

Mother works on two cats she owned and in their next birth they were born as human beings and they became Ashramites. They were very fond of milk and butter and when this was brought to Mother�s attention by dining room authorities She asked them to be generous with them with respect to milk and butter saying that they were cats in their previous birth.

Mother had a vegetable garden and whenever She used to visit the garden some flowers and vegetables used to ask Her to pluck them while others will protest and say no and declare that they are not ready to be plucked yet.

In her experience She has found that roses have a certain individuality and resent being grouped with other flowers. When She put some roses along with other flowers one rose pricked Her in protest.

The Mother found the world�s treasure in some cave in the subtle plane. But the cave was guarded by a fierce-looking serpent which said that the condition for entry was control over the sexual impulse of the whole of humanity. As Mother did not have that control She had to retreat and not press with Her demand.

A black kali residing in a temple in a village adjacent to Pondy tried to make a deal with Mother saying that She will share with Mother half of the chicken sacrificed in her temple on condition that Mother should not disturb Her presence there. Mother did not want a share in the chickens and did not disturb her either.

An Ashramite who came to Mother�s room wanted some drinking water. Mother offered her own glass of water. The lady refused saying that Mother has sipped that water and that Indians do not drink water sipped by somebody else. The Mother was speechless hearing these comments.

Many parents who left their children in Mother�s custody for studying in the Ashram school did not obey her when she told them to leave the children in the school during December Holidays and not insist on taking them to their home town. When one parent was insistent She reprimanded him saying � where are your children? They are not yours, they are mine.� The bewildered man then became submissive and let Mother have her way with his children.

A devotee who came for Her darshan wanted to see all Her four aspects of Mahasaraswathi and Mahalakshmi etc. She obliged and he was thrilled beyond measure.

While discussing music with Satprem Mother made fun of the traditional beliefs of the Hindus that Krishna plays the flute and Saraswathi plays on the Veena etc. These gods immediately came and protested to Her saying that they really like playing on the flute and Veena and Mother should not make fun of it.

She has remarked that the French Architect who designed the township of Auroville was Alexander the Great in his previous birth.

The Mother has remarked that so long as Auroville is there, there won�t be a Third World War.

She was offered the Nobel Peace Prize for founding Auroville. But she declined saying that her body is a mere instrument for carrying on Sri Aurobindo�s work and as such she felt her body didn�t need any recognition.

In Her understanding only those who give their all to the Divine are worthwhile in the eyes of the Divine. As for the rest they are all useless for Him.

She kept one senior Ashramite as her bodyguard during the night as she felt that he was a totally fearless man which is a requisite for anybody who wants to be part of Her work.

Satprem who wrote the Agenda for the Mother was lamenting that he never had any great spiritual experience. But the Mother corrected him saying that his transcription of the audio recordings of the Agenda is the most perfect transmission of Divine knowledge she has known.

When Sri Karmayogi Appa met Mother to get blessings on his birthday she gave him one of Sri Aurobindo�s poem entitled �The Invitation�. Some of the lines in the poem were as follows:

�Who will climb with me? who will walk with me?

Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger

Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.�

On reading this poem, Sri Karmayogi Appa understood that integral yoga was a very difficult spiritual adventure and that Mother was asking him whether he was ready for such an adventure.

She has remarked that till Sri Aurobindo passed away he bore the main burden of doing the integral yoga and that she was simply receiving the benefits of his labour without any great effort on her part. Only after he passed away the burden of bringing down the Supermind fell on her shoulders. (N. Ashokan for MSS)

Differences between Sri Aurobindo and Mother

Sri Aurobindo

The Mother

1. He was not interested in having an Ashram around himself.

1. She wanted to have a spiritual laboratory around Her where she can experiment on transformation and thus formed an Ashram around Herself.

2. He wrote voluminously on spiritual philosophy, yoga and spiritual poetry.

2. Her writings are not much compared to His. She spoke a lot and they have been recorded and put in writing. She was more a creative force in action than a creative intellect.

3. He did not show any great interest in Occultism though he tried automatic handwriting, pranayama and fasting etc.

3. She trained Herself enough in occultism to go out of Her body and travel in the subtle planes.

4. He was effusive in his praise of the Great overmental gods particularly Sri Krishna and described his experience of the Universal divine as Vasudeva darshan.

4. She dismissed them as mere showpieces to be ignored and urged her disciples to focus on the supermind only.

5. He was not directly involved with the administration of the Ashram or in guiding their sadhana.

5. She was directly involved not only in the running of the Ashram but also in guiding the ashramites in their sadhana.

6. He laid a great emphasis on the rich past spiritual heritage of India as the foundation for the future realizations.

6. She was more focused on the past realizations being an impediment to the oncoming future realizations.

7. He used to circulate his writings among his disciples for comments and criticisms.

7. The Mother never cared to know who thought what about Her activities. She felt she was answerable only to the Lord.

8. He did not have a personal confidant with whom He shared everything.

8. She had a personal confidant with whom she shared much valuable information regarding her sadhana and her views about ashram inmates.

9. On Indo-Pakistan relationship he confined himself to simply saying that the unity of the Indian subcontinent will be very weakened if the partition persists.

9. She went one step ahead and asked Shastri during the 1965 war to unite Pakistan back with India using force if necessary.

10. He kept the pains of transformation to himself without telling even the Mother.

10. She shared her pains and sufferings during the process of transformation with her confidant.

11. He was indifferent to the financial angle of his life.

11. Securing the money necessary to run the ashram was a big concern for Mother.

12. He sat for hours in silent meditation and inner introspection.

12. She was active throughout the day and carried on her sadhana more through consecration than through meditation.

13. He did not take any major initiative except send a telegram to Cripps commission offering His support to the Allied Cause and send his emissary to the congress party asking them to accept Cripps commission�s proposals.

13. She took a number of initiatives such as found the Ashram, the Ashram school, Auroville and construct Matrimandir, asking Sri Krishna to descend into Sri Aurobindo, and asking Ganesh to send money to Ashram etc.

14. He used to talk to disciples without looking at them straight and looking somewhere else.

14. She used to look into their eyes first to know their soul condition even before talking with them.

15. He was keen on supramental transformation from the beginning.

15. Unable to bear the evil and suffering afflicting the earth, She had an urge to go for overmental transformation as a temporary relief to the earth before permanent relief comes with the manifestation of the supermind.

16. There are not many photos of him after he came to Pondy and the available photos may not number more than ten.

16. She allowed Ashram photographers to take many photos of her.

17. He described Shankara as a great intellect and Sri Ramakrishna as a spiritual prodigy.

17. She dismissed him as a man who wrote useless words and described Ramakrishna�s experiences as only spiritual experiences in the vital.

18. He did not have any personal relationships with his disciples or ashramites in general.

18. She related to all of the ashramites and her disciples as a loving mother.

19. He took the descent of Srikrishna into his body calmly and continued with his writing as usual.

19. She celebrated the event as a great spiritual victory and named the day as Siddhi day and turned it into a darshan day.

20. He patiently replied all letters written to him by ashramites and visitors.

20. She refused to entertain suggestions and requests that she thought were silly and meaningless.

21. He had a personal attendant to take care of him but no bodyguard.

21. She had a personal attendant as well as a bodyguard who offered protection to her body during the nights when she went out of her body to travel in the subtle planes.

22. He had his education away from his motherland in a foreign country.

22. She had her school and college education in the city of Paris only where she was born.

23. He was involved in politics before turning to spirituality.

23. She had no political involvement prior to or after taking to spirituality.

24. He has announced that he will come back as the first supramental being.

24. She has made no such announcement and has only said that in her next birth she would like to be known as little as possible.

25. He specialized in the study of literature and had little exposure to music or art.

25. She was a good artist as well as a good player of the organ. (N. Ashokan MSS)

Their Purpose, Meaning, etc.

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are One

He and She are One.

Often I have thought of Him [Sri Aurobindo] as "Being," and Her [The Mother] as "Force/Shakti," but of course she was born in Being (already realized; mental and vital perfection, and connected to Spirit), and He had vast power over the Force, the Supramental Force, making the floor ripple, and evoking the fog at Dunkirk and placing It with Churchill, helping win WWII.

Still as Ramanan has said, they are One. And they are One in a way we cannot fathom. Only the Divine can. Or only one can from the perception of the Divine.

Perhaps when we have supramental perception we can understand Their individual roles and purpose better. Also their Oneness, a specialty of supramental vision.

Mother indicated that His is not a mere teaching, but a direct Evocation of the Supreme on earth, or words to that effect.

Appa indicated that She was born when Conscious-Force (Chit) emerged from Being (Sat).

In the bible it is said that Eve emerged from the rib of Adam. It might be symbolic of Force emerging from Being.

She is the Creator. He is the Real Idea of the Supreme that is behind what is created.

He knows all that She knows, and vice versa.

In Sri Aurobindo�s epic poem, Savitri, She/Savitri (meaning Mother) came to save the world from Ignorance and limitation. King Aswapathy (symbolic of Sri Aurobindo and his aspiration in one sense) laid out the need for Her to come and overcome suffering and death, and bring about the evolution of humanity and supramental existence on earth.

He imagined a supramental being and indicated that he might come back as such. Mother tried to become It, overcoming the limits of the cells -- decay, negative programming et al -- through the action of the Force and ultimate Faith in it. She even once became that supramental individual, losing all of the gross body functions, manifesting a future being from perhaps thousand years hence. It is there in the Agenda.

She tried to realize Sri Aurobindo�s vision while in the body. He explained the nature and purpose of the Divine Mother which she learned from.

His and Her purpose are ultimately the same, and represent a Oneness originating in the Supreme where all is One.

Sri Aurobindo's Theory of Creation

The Involution The Involution is the process by which the Omnipresent Spiritual Reality became the cosmos.

The Evolution From the point that energy is created in the involution, the evolution begins.

The Involution
The Involution is the process by which the Omnipresent Spiritual Reality became the cosmos.

The Evolution
From the point that energy is created in the involution, the evolution begins.