Can we say that the Mother’s work of physical transformation is a triumph? There are people who express doubts about it; they maintain that both she and Sri Aurobindo had promised it in the here-and-now, at this particular juncture, during this birth of theirs, right today, in our own lifetime, and not in some other age, in the distant future. In the strictest literal sense, for those who put forward scholarly dialectical arguments, the answer to the question if transformation is a triumph would then simply be ‘No.’ This is particularly so when they even go to the strangest extent of saying that Sri Aurobindo's retirement after getting the Overmind siddhi in the physical, in November 1926, was due to "inner despair". If not this assertive ‘No’, at the best, as if to accommodate or patronize the believers of the Avataric success, their line of thinking would be to concede a highly condescending ‘Yes’. But then is that the kind of a report the Guardian Spirit is going to give to the Eternal that she who had come "to open the doors of Fate, the iron doors that seemed for ever closed" forgot her mission, that the power he kindled in her body failed,

His labourer returns, her task undone?[1]

However, such a question simply belongs to the category of the physical mind and could perhaps be ignored. Or else the answer itself would be in the manner of the physical mind passing judgements on matters beyond its domain, matters that are totally occult-spiritual. Both lack perception and in the deeper sense one need not be much concerned about the question. There has to be another vision and another observant intuition, intuition born of wide luminous knowledge that comes only by identification with the spirit of the things. But in the absence of it one can at least be perceptive and try to understand the situation more open-mindedly, open-heartedly. Rational mind surely has the capacity to grow; it can acquire gnostic sense cognisant of spiritual shades and nuances and it should be promoted. The discerning insight of enlightened reason could be a sufficiently good guide.

Firstly, it should be recognised that what the Mother accomplished was something not only marvellous; it was also unique in the earth’s entire evolutionary history and that it is in full harmonious conformity with the aims and objectives of the Yoga of the Supramental Descent and Transformation. We must not forget that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were dealing with the problem of the material world, a world that arose out of the Inconscience and that their method was more concerned with the basics than with the transient flashing miracles which avail nothing.

Although this world arose out of the Inconscience, both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother found that there is also sufficient truth in it to become overtly and manifestly truth-conscient in its truth-dynamism. The Mother’s intense yoga-tapasya proceeded in the depths of Matter, invoking in it, in the very density of darkness, the Will of the Lord himself. She suffered greatly in the process, painful as the resistance of the tamasic and brute ignorant material Nature is; at the same time, and undaunted by it, she won several grim battles while carrying this God-given mission.

One of the first victories after the descent and manifestation of Supermind in the subtle-physical in 1956 was the victory that came within two years of the event, in 1958. This was in the Mother getting a positive consent from the material Nature to collaborate in the task of transformation. Then events followed in a pretty quick succession. She had in 1969 a marvellous experience of the superman consciousness, la conscience du surhomme, when her body felt “a golden light, transparent and benevolent”; it gave her a very definite assurance, even with a certain kind of infallibility in it, a confidence that things are going to happen sooner than later, much sooner than expected. She had set herself on the path to achieve its wondrous goal. The physical mind, or more precisely the mind of the body, receiving and manifesting the supramental Influence was the next definitive stage reached in 1971.

In the wake of the momentous 1956-event the Mother saw for the first time her supramental body, pretty-looking and harmonious in form; the body was ready, ready with an extra-luminous density for use in the divine assignment. The Mother could step into it and occupy it to continue her work, the work which she could now do with another degree of freedom, freedom that comes with supermind in the physical. In the present gross materiality of existence that spontaneity and sovereignty are absent. Although this supramental body is in the subtle-physical, we should also appreciate that it has the concreteness and solidity more than that of the gross. When the Mother stepped into it her work suddenly acquired the supramental certitude, of its materialisation. Another landmark in yogic-occult working was established. This was in 1972. However, the great mystery of transformation lies deeper yet.

While this tremendous yogic-occult endeavour was going on, moving apace, the Mother also spoke several times about the physical mind’s opening to the supramental Light and Force, that is, about the Mind of Light. The physical’s mind, the mind of the physical proper, receiving the supramental light is her definition,—and also Sri Aurobindo’s as can be surmised from his writings,—of the Mind of Light.

The Supermind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.[2]

Only when this Mind of Light is realised can the divinely dynamic Truth-Consciousness be securely fixed in the world of material inconscience. Indeed, it becomes a necessary functional milestone, a step towards the ultimate supramentalisation of the body itself. A creation based on this Mind of Light is the one that can link the present creation upon earth to the intended supramental creation. This new creation, the new world in its transcendentality has already been formed in the Transcendent and the work of actualising it here is what has got to be attended. This means, making the Mind of Light operative in its unfolding dimensions.

In the Mother’s message of 29 February 1972 we have a very clear statement about it:

It is only when the Supramental manifests in the body-mind that its presence can be permanent.[3]

On one earlier occasion also she said that for the

Supramental to manifest upon earth the physical mind must receive it and manifest it.[4]

She had correspondingly averred that this was precisely what was going on, and going on well, though there were many difficulties and problems on the way and things were not all that easy or straightforward. Manifestly enough, as her work proceeded, this mind of the physical acquired a greater wideness and its entire perspective of seeing things and events became altogether different. The yoga-tapasya in the Will of the Supreme was to move on in it.

In this context the Mother's account given in December 1972, regarding her experience at the time of the withdrawal of Sri Aurobindo twenty-two years earlier, is extremely revealing:

He had gathered in his body a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left... . You see, he was lying on his bed, I stood by his side, and in a way altogether concrete—concrete with such a strong sensation as to make one think that it could be seen—all this supramental force which was in him passed from his body into mine. And I felt the friction of the passage. It was an extraordinary experience. For a long time... I was standing beside his bed, and that continued. Almost a sensation—it was a material sensation. For a long time.[5]

We also have another statement from the Mother:

As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he called the Mind of Light got realised in me.[6]

With this epoch-ushering gift of the Mind of Light, this beautiful marvellous parting gift, received by the Mother from Sri Aurobindo,[7] we may say that their Yoga of Physical Transformation, the Yoga proper, had  really commenced. And we should also recognise that, already by 1972, supramental body in the subtle-physical was available to the Mother. If the human mind refuses to acknowledge this exceptional Yogic-spiritual triumph, then it can only be dubbed the stupidity of the human mind. In that sense the physical's mind is less, far less stupid than the human mind! In fact, it is a wrong comparison but made only to highlight the wonderful achievements made in the Will of the Divine. The work of long centuries, of long, very long centuries, nay of endless and untiring aeons, was here compressed to that just of a quarter of a lifespan. Times of Eternity have begun with it.

But the merit of this triumph is far more than that, far more than that compression of time. What the Mother has done is, she has fixed that power of the manifesting Supreme, its instrument to receive and manifest the Supermind: the Mind of Light has become an inalienable part of the earth-consciousness. But it is not just a passive neutral instrument, a mechanical gadget; it is the very spirit of breathing dynamism in the inertial milieu, the conscient truth-force itself; in it is the substantiality of an ever-growing delight. Which means, this is a major breakthrough after 1950, after Sri Aurobindo’s incredible withdrawal, that bringing closer the promised Future. With it is hastened the arrival of the new millennium, the Millennium of the tremendous Divine.

In the wake of this Mind of Light, now operative in the terrestrial process, progress is being made constantly, constantly without any pause, without any hesitant movement. It has sufficient thrust, the propelling force in it to overcome whatever obstacle it may encounter on the way. Therefore the suggestion or any residual doubt which might give a feeling that the work of Transformation has been ‘postponed’ must be considered to be altogether incorrect, misplaced. For, after all, the Mother is not sitting quiet there in her beautiful and harmonious supramental body. And did she not declare that Sri Aurobindo, after passing away, possessed more power for action than when he was in his body here? It was precisely “for that that he left, because it was necessary to act in that way.”[8] The same must be true in the case of the Mother also.

Sri Aurobindo introduced the term ‘Mind of Light’ with a specific suggestion, with a kind of technical connotation; he introduced it in his very last prose writings when he was, at the request of the Mother, contributing a series of articles to the Bulletin of Physical Education during 1949-50. To this term he gave a special technical connotation involving a whole world of luminous yogic and psychological sense. It is indicative of the fact that his own yoga-tapasya had progressed to a stage from where the envisioned manifestation of a fuller divine life could come within the realisable range of the evolutionary ascent. The role of the Mind of Light as an active principle, in fact an effectuating power, is seen to be that of the leader of a type of new mental beings, of a presiding official over the intermediate race, the race governed, in the Mother’s phrase, by la conscience du surhomme, the superman consciousness. This new race, the new humanity, will be “not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of the Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it.”[9] This surhomme is not simply 'aboveman' or 'overman'; it is already governed not by Overmind but by the delegate power of the Supermind itself. Indeed, the appearance of the Mind of Light is the first definite and assured entry of the Supermind itself in the earth-consciousness, the beginning of the process of supramentalisation. It is that which will carry out the preparatory work and bring mortality’s travail closer to its end. It will be the initiation of termination of the presently death-processed evolution.

But the occult alchemy in the terrestrial circumstance can be performed only with the positive-assertive consent of the material Nature. It is under these conditions that, initially, the Mind of Light will gather the necessary shaping constituents or ingredients and develop them sufficiently well, luminous and responsive, till it can, without the encumbrances of the Ignorance, step again into its own native Light. Having achieved that it will develop further in that greater Light to join the Supermind. It is at this point that the possibility of the arrival of the supramental race, the race of the gnostic beings,—Sri Aurobindo’s supermen higher than the beings of the intermediate race,—can truly be visualised. The Mind of Light is therefore a crucial operative step in between.

The consent of the material Nature—this was precisely the work the Mother, taking a very revolutionary step in the direction, had triumphantly accomplished. She is there now in her supramental body waiting for the Mind of Light to do its work in the sequel of which will follow the luminous unfoldment giving to the earth her promised divine Glory, the Glory of the Physical. It having done the groundwork in the physical mind, supramental materialisation can then occur. Superman, the Being of eternal Knowledge, Vijnanamaya Purusha, shall then be, if we are to use the Upanishadic term, netā or Leader of the terrestrial evolution. Even as the difficult yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother progressed, knowledge of these aspects also came, that knowledge further accelerating the work in a decisive way.

But what will be the actual role of the Mind of Light in bringing out the physical transformation in Nature, its effectivity? Will it be the long-drawn process stretching over millennia, the things and events simply allowed to open out in their own manner now with the push given by its presence, or will it be something radically different? Will it be still in the slow evolutionary way, or will it hasten it by forcing issues in the dynamism of its own truth?

But it appears that it will not be necessarily in the old manner, in fact it cannot be so and, though the natural sequence has to be always followed, there can be another kind of mechanism by which the decisive change might take place. There can be the unexpected precipitation of the subtly dense supramentalised body when the gathering in as well as the gathering up of the Mind of Light has sufficiently advanced to a stage where the process becomes unfailingly sustainable. This is quite understandable if we recognise that the supramental body is not just an inert mass sitting over there, secret there in the subtle physical, passive and without a will of its own. Indeed, there is always the pressure from above to bring about the divinely willed change. If both these processes can take place through the agency of some luminous occult working, then the feasibility of the revolutionary evolution as a bright and comprehendible possibility could be very much there. We are perhaps pretty suggestively told that this is actually what is being pursued.

When such a radical change is to be brought about, and that too on a full collective level, the difficulties also begin to assume almost a sort of frightening proportion. The entire past of the evolutionary process with its deep samskaras or karmic habits seems to suddenly turn into a monstrous shape standing across the path of the event, blocking the progress. In fact it can even become hostile as an antagonist power opposing all that which will threaten its existence. This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were concerned with, grappling it unfrightened but in full awareness of inclement might of the dangerous disputant. The first problem in the realisation of the objective lay exactly in making the physical mind or the body-mind receive permanently the supramental Light and Force in it. When this was realised in the Mother in 1950, as she herself narrated later, a decisive victory for the collective work was won and the evolutionary march at once soared into the flight of a high-flying eagle. New Time had begun in that flight.

But a question, a strange question, is at times asked whether Sri Aurobindo had realised the Mind of Light in himself at all. This may appear somewhat odd with its oddity implying that he was only theorising about the Mind of Light when he wrote those eight articles for the Bulletin of Physical Education during 1949-50. It is however hard to believe that the convincing Agenda he had put forward in his absolutely the last sequence of prose-writings could have originated without any experiential basis: that would have reduced him to a mere armchair philosopher and denied the status of a Yogi par excellence who indeed he was. Nor would it have concerned us in any deeper sense.

His was a world-redeemer’s task[10] and tirelessly he had carried out the God’s Labour and “willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all”[11] for this woe-begone mortality. His dynamism was committed to the action of the Spirit in the very inertia and resistive opacity of the material life.

Sri Aurobindo had repeatedly said that bringing down the supramental Force and Light “is not an easy matter”. Various powers of the Supermind may even come down, but these would not be sufficient for the most decisive transformation, changing the prevalent ignorance and obscurity into godly awareness and luminosity. If there has to be the full supramentalisation of the earth-nature it is absolutely necessary that the Supermind proper descends upon earth and takes charge of everything. “The mere descent of the suns into the centres, even of all the seven suns into all the seven centres is only the seed: it is not the thing itself done and finished. One may feel the descent of the suns... and yet in the end one may fail, if there is a flaw in the nature or a failure to pass through all the ordeals and satisfy all the hard conditions of the perfect spiritual success... Till then there may be descents of the supramental influence, light, power, Ananda, but the supramental Truth cannot be possessed, organised, put in possession of the whole nature.”[12]

That was the travail, that was the “severe and painful” work Sri Aurobindo was occupied with,—of putting the supramental Truth in possession of the whole Nature. He himself had said that, as far as he was concerned, there was no need of the Supermind for him: the concern, the toil and the ordeal, all that labour, that “severe and painful” labour was essentially to organise Nature to receive the supramental Truth. It is in this context that we could recognise the implication of the Mother’s statement that she used to see the Supermind descending in his physical as early as in 1938; but what could not be done at that time was to fix it in it.

About the obstinacy of the physical and the struggle to be waged on that plane there are hints dropped by Sri Aurobindo in some of his letters also. Thus he wrote in August 1936: “We have not sought perfection for our own separate sake, but as a part of a general change... . That could not have been done without our accepting and facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes—but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane.”[13] A little earlier than this he also wrote of being “very near” to taking “complete possession of the supramental”.[14] His yoga-tapasya was taking care of that “sufficient degree” to which it had got to be done.

It is therefore perfectly right for us to assert that all this could not have happened without his being aware, through direct and definite experience if not realisation of the physical mind, “the body-mind”, receiving the supramental light, without he having acquired the siddhi of the Mind of Light. Written during the same period is a letter with a very pointed reference to what he then called the “body-mind” and its conversion: “This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and rejection of the new,  we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the Supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature.”[15] The focus of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga-tapasya during this period was therefore on converting this body-mind, making it open to the supramental Light and Force, and by now he was “very near” in getting it done. Yet it appears that its toughness was unyielding.

Apropos of the siddhi, realisation, of the Mind of Light, we could also appropriately look for autobiographical suggestions Sri Aurobindo made in Savitri. The epic is indeed a profound and luminous record of his and the Mother’s spiritual experiences and achievements, their siddhis, and can provide us insights into these deep occult-spiritual aspects of the work. Aswapati the Yogi has taken upon himself the burden of changing the lot of this mortal creature and is set to find a solution to it. Eventually he realises that this can be effected only if the divine Power deals with it. It is she who must descend and accomplish this miracle. She must take mortal birth and pass through the portals of a life that is death. In the course of his long explorative search Aswapati leaves behind the imposing hierarchy of the mental planes, climbing one above another, and enters into the realm of the World-Soul. There he feels the intimacy of God, God everywhere. It is in this wonderful pace that he meets the omnipotent Goddess, one who reigns over the entire universe; he sees that she is not only the sovereign ruler; he witnesses that it is with her power that things are set into motion. In her excellence blaze the cosmic suns, the sun of beauty, the sun of love, of joy and knowledge and truth and light and force. Aswapati surrenders to her, to the Gnostic Sophia, the all-manifesting Wisdom-and-Might of the Absolute. Half-parting the luminous veil that separates her from this creation, she admits him to her world, the Kingdom of the Greater Knowledge. Across that veil Aswapati sees the vastnesses from where all here comes,

...saw the splendour of the spirit’s realms,

The greatness and wonder of its boundless works,

The power and passion leaping from its calm,

The rapture of its movement and its rest,

And its fire-sweet miracle of transcendent life...

Out of the neutral silence of his soul

He passed to its fields of puissance and of calm

And saw the Powers that stand above the world,

Traversed the realms of the supreme Idea

And sought the summit of created things

And the almighty source of cosmic change.[16]

His main objective, his resolution is to discover that by which the desired cosmic change can be effected. Aswapati is at the very source and fount of that Effectivity. From it flows every kind of effectivity, with the assuring calm of effecting whatever is to be effected. Not only that; he has become a portion of that tremendous Majesty who harmonises all life. As he proceeds further in his search, he meets the World-Spirit and the World-Force, Jagat-Atma and Jagat-Shakti, and experiences that his body, delivered to the soul, is a “conscious edge of the Transcendent’s might”.[17] Consciousness, idea, sight, life, feeling all reach their absolutes and he hears the voice of a deep and luminous silence:

Neighbour his being grew to Nature’s crests.

The primal Energy took him in its arms;

His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,

An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart...[18]

With this unique and incomparable realisation “His will takes up the reins of cosmic Force.”[19] He becomes Aswapati, the Lord of Life. This Lordship would come only when his brain is invaded by the overwhelming Light, the physical mind receiving the supramental. Aswapati, “with each grey cell bursting to omniscient gold”, established in him the Mind of Light. Having done that he invoked the Divine Mother to incarnate herself here and “with one gesture change all future time.”[20] The Mind of Light thus seems to be the precondition for her birth here. This is fulfilled.

When was this prerequisite complied with, fulfilled? At what point of time in Sri Aurobindo’s yogic life? We may do a bit of archival exploration while going through his relevant Savitri-drafts looking for possible clues if they are anyl. And the findings are interesting indeed. Fortunately for us the drafts at places do bear the dates of composition and these are pretty useful.

The “Mind of Light”-line—“His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light”—in this form belongs to a revised version in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand and the date at the end of the Canto put by him is 6 September 1942. The first occurrence of this line pertains to a manuscript of the period prior to 1936 and it runs as follows: “His brain was swathed in overwhelming light.” At this stage of drafting Aswapati’s cosmic ascent on the world-stair occupied only one page which now stands expanded into several Cantos, in thousands of lines. The revision of “swathed” and “light” to “wrapped” and “Light” should be considered of capital importance. It suggests the definite entry of the Mind of Light in him by 1942. The yoga-tapasya of the next eight years was chiefly concerned with the collective action of this achievement. Indeed, it is because Sri Aurobindo had realised the Mind of Light in him that he could gift it to the Mother at the time of his passing away on 5 December 1950. The subsequent saga presenting the Mother’s work, dealing with the cellular transformation, unfolds its manifesting aspect, it by now having become a part of the earthly evolution heading brightly towards the Supramental Descent and Transformation.

References