From the Book Patterns of the Present

REMEMBER ALWAYS THE 4 AIDS OF THE OVERMAN and our turning into a Life Divine!!!

AND WHY VREKHEM MADE HITLER AND HIS GOD: THE BACKGROUND TO THE NAZI PHENOMENON

"Imagine not the way is easy..." The reader may remember Sri Aurobindo's poem A God's Labour, in which he writes about his avataric ordeals; a testimony of what the Mother went through can be found in some of her conversations in Mother's Agenda. The world does not yet realise the scope and the difficulty of their avataric sadhana, nor scarcely do their followers. They repeatedly said that their labour would make the path easier or possible for those following them, but "easier" does not mean "easy".

The difficulty of the path makes us understand why those who want to follow it have to be called to it. It is not an aim one can set oneself by a simple mental decision; the dedication to such an aim can only be the consequence of an increasing aspiration throughout many lives, a selfless dedication to share the divine Work in the manifestation. This also explains why "surrender" is "the Alpha and the Omega" of the Integral Yoga: the souls who have given themselves to it cannot expect the realisation of the goal in this lifetime, because the goal of the Integral Yoga is the supramental transformation, which can only be reached after centuries. The second reason is that nobody can practice the Integral Yoga for selfish aims. A necessary condition of the supramental transformation is the acquisition of the cosmic consciousness, something that is impossible in the ego-state. Besides, the acquisition of the supramental consciousness, even in a single cell of a human body, is a cosmic event with repercussions throughout the cosmos. "We want a race without ego..."

All this would be unattainable without the four supramental aids, totally new in the history of spirituality.

1. The presence of the Supermind

The presence of the Supermind. Thanks to the avataric sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the supramental Consciousness was established in the earth-atmosphere on 29 February 1956. This date marks the exact end of the old world order and the beginning of the new. "This is becoming more and more true from day to day, from hour to hour: the feeling that this [supramental] Force, when it is directed by what we call 'the Divine', that it can, it truly can - you understand? It has the power to make Matter move. It can produce a material event, and it can efface the consequences of an absolutely material event: it is stronger than Matter. This is what is altogether new and incomprehensible, and therefore it produces a kind of bewilderment in the ordinary consciousness of people... It is no longer as it was. Truly, there is something new: it is no longer as it was. All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground - useless! It has no force any more, no reality. It no longer corresponds to what is. This truly is a new world...

"But there is one essential condition: the reign of the ego must have come to an end. The ego is now the obstacle. The ego must be replaced by the divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo called it 'Supermind'. We too can call it 'Supermind' so that there is no misunderstanding. Because when one speaks of 'the Divine', people immediately think of a 'God', and that spoils everything. It is not that. No, it is not that: it is the descent of the supramental world, which is not merely something of the imagination. It is an absolutely material Power, but it has no need of material things. A world that wants to incarnate within the world."286

In 1954 the Mother had already mentioned a change in the composition of gross Matter, perceptible in the presence of particles which had all the colours of the rainbow. In the course of the transformation of her body she will mention this changed Matter more and more often. The body of the supramental being cannot consist of the same substance as ours. Gross Matter is the direct outcome of the Inconscient; therefore a supramentally conscious body can only incarnate in a transformed, supramentalised substance. It was this supramentalisation of Matter that she perceived.

"This manner of being is still very undefinable. In this research, though, there is a constant perception, translated by a vision, of a multicoloured light comprising all the colours - all the colours not in layers but as though (gesture of dotting) as if connected by dots of every colour. It is now two years - perhaps a little more, I don't remember any more - since I met the Tantrics. I was in relation with them and I started seeing this light, and I thought that it was the 'tantric light', the tantric way of seeing the material world. But now I see it constantly, in relation with everything, and it seems to be what one might call a perception of 'true Matter'. All possible colours are connected without being intermingled (same gesture of dotting) , and connected by luminous dots. Everything is made of that, as it were. And this seems to be the true manner of being. I am not yet sure, but in any case it is a much more conscious manner of being."

And the Mother painstakingly tried to describe her perception of this new substance: "And I see it all the time: with eyes open, with eyes closed - all the time. And one has a strange - for the body, that is - a strange perception at once of subtleness, of penetrability if one may say so, of suppleness of the form and positively not of an eradication but a considerable diminution in the rigidity of the forms. Eradication of rigidity, not eradication of the forms: a suppleness in the forms. And when the body for the first time felt this in one part or another, it had the impression - it felt somewhat confused - the impression that something was escaping [from its control]. But if one keeps very quiet and waits quietly, that is simply replaced by a sort of plasticity, of fluidity, which for the cells seems a new way of being."287

2. The presence of the Consciousness of the Overman

The presence of the Consciousness of the Overman. The manifestation and the first workings of the Consciousness of the Overman have been extensively described elsewhere.288 Let us recall that it is a special formation of the supramental Consciousness intended to bring about the appearance of the transitional species or various kinds of transitional beings between man and superman. It continued being active after January 1969: the Mother mentioned it throughout the remaining years of her life, and she was always grateful for its presence and guidance.

"My impression was that of an immense personality - immense!" the Mother said when trying to describe this consciousness for the first time. "By this I mean that the earth was small for it, small like this (gesture as if holding a little ball in the palm of her hand) , like a ball. An immense personality, very, very benevolent, that came for (the Mother seems to lift the little ball gently from the palm of her hand) . It gave the impression of a personal divinity who comes to help. And so strong, so strong! and at the same time so gentle, so all-embracing."289

"It is a guide. It is a consciousness, after all... Strange, it is as if I were given the task of putting it into contact with all those who come near me,"290 the Mother said. Afterwards she often mentioned the practical guidance of this Overman Consciousness, glad that she had found some concrete assistance on her perilous adventure in "the virgin forest", where as yet there was no beaten path. "Many of the activities [of her avataric yoga] I have left to this Consciousness", she said in 1970. "I let this Consciousness work actively because I found that it really knows."291

It is this Consciousness of the Overman, an activated aspect of the Supramental Consciousness adapted to the present circumstances, which is at work now. It is changing the world through its formation and guidance of beings who are open to it, the overmen and overwomen. The turmoil of the present world in which we live is caused by this Consciousness - to which the ongoing change is not an unpredictable vortex, but a process guided in the smallest details. Before the descent of the Supermind the transformation of the lower into the higher hemisphere was a certainty, for the Avatar never comes without accomplishing his mission, but the way in which it would come about could not be foreseen, as Sri Aurobindo said so often. At the very moment of the manifestation of the Supermind the process of the supramental transformation of our world was initiated, but it could still take "thousands of years". The sadhana of the Mother induced the Consciousness of the Overman, which manifested on 1 January 1969 and effected the unseen presence among humanity of the first overmen and overwomen. Through them is worked out the guidance of the Overman Consciousness, which is sometimes detectable in the world events.

3. The presence of Sri Aurobindo

The presence of Sri Aurobindo. Death is a laying down of the physical body by the soul. The soul remains "sheathed" in its vital and mental bodies to the extent that these have been developed. But what happens if the vital and mental sheaths are supramentalised? Supramentalisation means divinisation which means immortality. Sri Aurobindo's vital and mental sheaths had been supramentalised for many years when he entered voluntarily into death with all his conscious powers. This means that he exists in a supramentalised vital and mental body somewhere in a corresponding supramental world. The Mother often referred to "Sri Aurobindo's abode" in "the subtle physical", i.e. in a supramental world292 where she and many of the followers still among the living went to visit him, and where some of the disciples who had left their body stayed with him, in his company.

In 1953 the Mother wrote in a letter: "[Sri Aurobindo] has not left me, not for a moment - for He is still with me, day and night, thinking through my brain, writing through my pen, speaking through my mouth and acting through my organising power."293 She would often report his presence with her - "he is here all the time" - or in the Ashram (especially on darshan days), and his advice or decisions, his interventions in world situations. "I see now", she said in 1970, "I see how his departure and his work so vast, yes, and so constant in the subtle physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much it has helped to prepare things, to change the physical structure."294 And two years later: "He himself has more action, more power for action, now than when he was in his body. Besides, it is for this reason that he left, because it was necessary to do so. It is very concrete, you see, his action has become very concrete. Evidently it is something that is not mental at all, it is from another region. But it is not ethereal nor... It is concrete. One could almost say that it is material."295

One of the many statements and messages the Mother gave after Sri Aurobindo's passing was the following: "In the eternity of becoming, each Avatar is only the announcer, the forerunner of a more perfect realisation. And yet men have always the tendency to deify the Avatar of the past in opposition to the Avatar of the future. Now again Sri Aurobindo has come announcing to the world the realisation of tomorrow; and again his message meets with the same opposition as of all those who preceded him. But tomorrow will prove the truth of what he revealed and his work will be done."

4. The presence of the Mother

The presence of the Mother. From 1950 till 1958 the Mother worked at realising the surhomme: overman. Let us recall what she said close to the achievement of this realisation: "It is quite obvious that intermediary beings are necessary, and that it is these intermediary beings who must find the means to create beings of the Supermind. And there is no doubt that, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this, he was convinced that this is what we have to do. I think - I know - that it is now certain that we shall realise what he expects of us. It is no longer a hope, it is a certainty." Towards the end of 1958 she withdrew to the second floor of the central Ashram building in Rue de la Marine in order to take up the following phase of her sadhana: the transformation of her human body into a supramental body. What this attempt meant, we have a glimpse of in the volumes of Mother's Agenda, her conversations with a French disciple, and in Notes on the Way, extracts from these conversations published in the Ashram's Bulletin of Physical Education from 1965 onwards.

On 24 March 1972, the Mother reported: "For the first time, early in the morning, I saw myself, my body. I do not know whether it is the supramental body or - how to say it? - a transitional body. But I had a body completely new in the sense that it was sexless: it was neither a woman nor was it a man. It was very white, but this is because my skin is white, I think, I don't know. It was very slim. It was beautiful, really a harmonious form. So, this was the first time. I did not know at all. I had no idea how it would be like or whatever, and I saw: I was like that, I had become like that."

The next day she returned to the subject: "I was like that. It was myself. I did not see myself in a mirror: I saw myself like the (Mother bends her head down) ... I did not look to see how it was because everything happened quite naturally, so I cannot give a detailed description. Simply, it was neither the body of a woman nor the body of a man, that much is clear. And the outline [in English in the text], the silhouette, was almost the same, as of a very, very young person. There was as it were the remembrance of the human forms: there was a shoulder and a waist. The remembrance of a form, as it were... I saw it in the way one sees oneself. And there was a kind of veil that I had put on, like this, to cover myself. It was not surprising to me: it was a natural way of being. It must be like that in the subtle physical."296

Without going into details, let us consider the following. A transitional body, generated as all bodies are now, is not sexless. As the body the Mother saw was sexless, it must have been a supramental body, for this is how she said the supramental body would be. At the time she saw her new body, "as of a very, very young person", she was ninety-four. What she called "the subtle physical" in her conversations, she sometimes also called "the true physical" and used this term to locate "Sri Aurobindo's abode" in the supramental. Putting these elements together - and there are more - there is little doubt that the Mother had built a supramental body that would be the prototype or archetype of the supramental bodies to come. With the descent of the Supermind, the establishment of the Overman Consciousness and the realisation of the prototype of the supramental body all the foundations were laid for the development of the New World.

This also means that, like Sri Aurobindo, the Mother lives in an immortal body. Hers is even more fully supramental than Sri Aurobindo's because not only the mental and vital sheaths of her adhara were supramentalised, but also part of the material sheath. (This is what most of her conversations from 1958 till 1973, recorded in the Agenda, were about.) Consequently she, like him, is omnipresent in a supramental form, doubtlessly always there to ensure the progress of the Work and help the souls who are dedicating their present incarnation to it.