From the Mother's anecdotes

"Madame Théon was born on the Isle of Wight and she lived in Tlemcen with her husband who was a great occultist. Madame The on herself was an occultist of great powers, a remarkable clairvoyant, and she had mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself; that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in succession. That is, she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in the physical body, and then again put that subtler body into trance, exteriorise herself from it, and so on twelve times successively, to the extreme limit of the world of...... I shall speak to you about that later, when you can understand better what I am talking about. But I am going to tell you about some small incidents I saw when I was in TIemecen myself, and a story she told me I shall also tell you.

The incidents are of a more external kind, but very funny.

She was almost always in trance and she had trained her body so well that even when she was in trance, that is, when one or more parts of her being were exteriorised, the body had a life of its own and she could walk about and even attend to some small material occupations.... She did a great deal of work, for in her trances she could talk freely and she used to narrate what she saw, which was noted down and later formed a teaching - which has even been published. And because of all that and the occult work she was doing, she was often tired, in the sense that her body was tired and needed to recuperate its vitality in a very concrete way.

Now, one day when she was particularly tired, she told me, "You will see how I am going to recover my strength." She had plucked from her garden - it was not a garden, it was a vast estate with ancient olive trees, and fir trees such as I have never seen anywhere..., it was a real marvel, on a mountain-side, from the plain to almost half way up - and in this garden there were many lemon trees and orange trees... and grapefruit. Grapefruit has flowers which have an even better fragrance than orange blossoms - they are large flowers and she knew how to make an essence from them herself, she had given me a bottle - well, she had plucked a huge grape- fruit like this, (gesture) very large and ripe, and she lay down on her bed and put the grapefruit on her solar plexus, here, (gesture) like this, holding it with both hands. She lay down and rested. She did not sleep, she rested. She told me: "Come back in an hour." An hour later I returned... and the grapefruit was as flat as a pancake. That meant that she had such a power to absorb vitality that she had absorbed all the life from the fruit and it had become soft and completely flat. And I saw that myself! You may try, you won't succeed!"


The Mother, Questions and Answers, 1957-58, Centenary Edition, vol.9, pp.58-63

"Occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, for the me who uses it as for others, if it falls into impure hands. Spiritual knowledge without occult science lacks precision and certainty in its objective results; it is all-powerful only in the objective world. The two, when combined in inner or outer action, are irresistible and are fit instruments for the manifestation of the supramental power. "

Mirra Alfassa (Mother)

Into the New Body

Posted by Barindranath Chaki

The Mother, Mira Alfassa, walked into the New Body on the 17th day of November 1973. She left Her physical body and walked and entered into the then newly formed Supramental Body. The World knew and told that She has passed away.

It is said that The Mother withdrew Herself on the 17th day of November in 1973. However, we will see that in reality, in the highest meaning and sense of the term ‘reality’, The Mother continues eternally — in a NEW BODY.
She wanted to walk into Her new supramental body along with Her old body. But that did not and could not happen. The cooperation and preparation that She deserved from the fellow human beings was not received.

Medically, The Mother was ill. It was said that She was sick. Though, She was really at the concluding stage of preparing and entering into a New Body, the Supramental Body. Many others heard of it — some believed it. Some could not believe it — some did not believe it.

On 24-03-1972, The Mother told Sujata on the New Body :
For the first time, early this morning, I saw myself: my body. I don't know whether it's the supramental body or ... (what shall I say?) a transitional body, but I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was sexless: it was neither woman nor man.

It was very white. But that could be because I have white skin, I don't know.
It was very slender (gesture). Really lovely, a truly harmonious form.
That's the first time.
I hadn't the least idea, the faintest notion what it would look like, nothing, and I saw - I WAS like that, I had become like that. I thought Satprem should know, so he can note it down.
I don't know if I'll remember, that's why I am telling you. Because today is Friday and I won't see him till tomorrow. This way, I am sure I won't forget. You'll tell him, won't you?


Sujata: Yes, Mother.

The next day, the 25th March 1972, Satprem had asked The Mother about the new Body:

Sujata told me about the experience you had the other day, that vision you had of your body, the transitional body.

The Mother replied:

Yes, I WAS like that. It was me; I didn't look at myself in a mirror, I saw myself like this (Mother bends her head to look at her body), I was ... I just was like that.
That's the first time. It was around four in the morning, I think. And perfectly natural - I mean, I didn't look in a mirror, it felt perfectly natural…… [Mother’s Agenda, vol. 13]
The Mother revealed Her Agenda and Her Work before Satprem and Sujata, and they were told by Her of Her programme of creation and preparation of the New Body as a very important step in the Supramental Manifestation.

OOOOO

K D Sethna has said in this matter:

We are aware that the Supramental Body was already with Her, waiting to fuse with the human form She had worn for our sake. We are aware also that the lengthy struggle she recently went through was only the Yogic endeavour of the human form to open completely to the Supramental Body. Perhaps this form did enough and its exalted agony was needed no more to enable the Supramental Body to manifest. Perhaps that Body having assimilated the achievement of the other and thereby gained sufficient density for its subtle-physical substance, can now materialize itself on its own in a not too distant future.

OOOOO

What M P Pandit said is highly relevant :

A new body was under formation, the supramental body, in which She was to take Her embodiment as the end-result of the transformation of this body. The body was being prepared. She gave in “Notes on the Way” descriptions of this body, described how it looked. And about a year ago, She told someone, “I am trying to fuse this material body into that body but I have not been able to get the clue.” She said, “Nobody on earth has tried this, the secret is not given to me. On that point, She said, there was no help from above. She was searching.


Thereafter ……… one day it flashed to me that as soon as that luminous body was ready, the Mother would just walk into it without dying, “without dying” means not necessarily keeping the body, but without the gap in consciousness; keeping up the continuity of the personality, She would just cross in to that luminous body. It just flashed, and the way it came I thought it was more than just an idea: I noted it down in my diary. I looked up it the other day, it was dated the 24th of July 1973. I did not think it wise to speak of it to people except in my closest circle, which I did… …


Then on the morning of 17th November at about nine o’clock, a particular friend of mine — he has a certain grounding in occult experience, occult knowledge, and normally when we meet we exchange notes — told me, “I have seen the Mother’s body of light.” I got interested. “The new body is full of light but it is not dense enough to function is earth conditions. It is there, and as I was looking at it I got the feeling that the Mother would enter this body the moment it became dense enough to stand and function in the earth atmosphere, seen or unseen. But there is no question of revival of the material body.” And he added, “Those who are capable of seeing the Mother’s halo, aura, they will be able to see that luminous body.” It confirmed what I had perceived some four month’s earlier; I told him as much.


That evening at 7-25 p.m., as you all know, the Mother withdrew from her body. They say the cause was heart failure, but let me tell you the heart failure was not the cause, the heart failure was the result of her withdrawal. She had decided, the moment things were ready she walked into that body.


She has not passed away, She has just changed her body. Not changed in the manner of the Gita — soul changing bodies — consciously ; keeping the full personality she has gone into that body. And, as it was revealed to me.…, she will function in that body, work through those instruments who are open to her, expedite the remaining work — the working out of the consequences — but her activity will not be confined to the Ashram or to Auroville; for her the whole world is her Ashram. As I was led to put it on radio the next day, "The sea of Love that is the Mother swells into an ocean": not a perception, not an idea, not an image, but an experience.* [Underlines are mine]

A divine possibility had to change its course due to the lack of preparation and consequent non-co-operation on the part of Man. The negative force and will prevailed for the time being and the Destiny of Mankind and the Evolution had to have a different Course. When the Old Form could not walk into the Supramental Body, a New Course was taken by the divine possibility — The Mother entered into the New Body.

The Mother, in Her subtle body, walked into the New Body. That was the triumph of which the mankind did not know. She is continuing Her work of the Supramental Manifestation and Transformation through those instruments who are open to Her, throughout the world and Her activity or Her Presence will not be bound by any spatial limitation. Her work is now for the entire world and for the entire humanity and is to be carried out throughout the world.

OOOOO

Satprem had a great experience on the next day, on 18th November 1973, which assured him that Mother’s Work is done, and the inevitable New World is now, here, on earth. He experienced: The whole world was ringing in a torrent of rapturous, irresistible, triumphant joy.  And NOTHING can stop the Coming of the New World.

Satprem narrates his experience:

On that November 18, 1973, she said something. I was stunned, aching from head to toe amid those hundreds and thousands of people staring at a "dead body." The fans were droning, the neon lights were glaring; there was a scent of incense and jasmine in the air; they were making her coffin with all dispatch. But my heart was filled with such an enormous "This-is-not-possible," as if the entire earth and all the sorrowful men of this earth were crying out in my heart. So then, this was the "end," as it always was - as at Thebes and Babylon and Buchenwald. It was the end. And we start all over again. It was so overwhelmingly not-possible. Never, ever will I go through it again. Never, ever will there be "another time" with its sorrow and prayers and fruitless pain of being. There were a thousand men in my heart, all alike, who had waited and waited for THAT MOMENT. And there was no moment. We will have to come again in another life and learn again about Euclid and the law of gravity, and sorrow and "happiness" - and end up in a hole again? I was so broken, shattered on that November 18 - there was only a splitting headache and a blank look staring and staring at that procession of dead people. But, suddenly, I had the most stupendous experience of my life. I who had so much complained to Mother of never having any "experience"! I was in no condition to have an experience, or concentrate or pray, or will anything - I was nothing but a headache, an aching body, a kind of frightful nonentity staring at a small white form. An unintelligible masquerade. It was false, screamingly false. A dream. Not real.


All of life was not-real.


Then she lifted me in her arms. She lifted me above my headache, lifted me above that crowd, above all those meaningless little bodies. And I was in a sound-burst. I entered a stupendous peal of bells - vast as the universe, exceeding all universes, all lives, all bodies, and yet WITHIN - A colossal ringing that swept away the worlds, swept away the pains, swept away the whys and the hows; I was one with that formidable SOUND ringing over the universe:


NO OBSTACLE, NOTHING WILL STOP
NO OBSTACLE, NOTHING WILL STOP
NO OBSTACLE, NOTHING WILL STOP ...
... ringing and ringing. The whole world was ringing in a torrent of rapturous, irresistible, triumphant joy. NOTHING WILL STOP.... It was the inevitable new world.


Here.
Done.
My whole body was trembling. [Mother’s Agenda, vol. 13]

OOOOO

The spiritual journey of Man has a revolutionary and evolutionary turning since Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. They have given Spirituality a completely new turn and definition, a completely new purpose and value.
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother came to earth in order to lead the earthly Evolution beyond Man, beyond all the imperfections and incompleteness of Man, beyond all the sorrows and miseries of Man, beyond Death : and They have, jointly, advanced and almost completed Their Task to a very great extent. Only what They have done has to be finished — this is the Task that has to be taken up by some of the followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and it will surely be further taken up and advanced by some. What They have done in Their individual lives has to be extended to the collective life.

Sri Aurobindo has said :

A divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. But what will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are now bound? … … …
The process of the evolution upon earth has been slow and tardy– what principle must intervene if there is to be a transformation, a progressive or sudden change?


It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence, free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit … … …


Into that truth [supramental] we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit… … … [Supramental Manifestation]
The most essential aspect of the Work of the Supramental Descent and Transformation has been realized and advanced by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother aimed at and worked for a Descent, on earth, of the Supramental Consciousness, what He otherwise named as Truth Consciousness. They declared that Their main aim and objective was to manifest on earth the principle of Truth-Consciousness, of the Supramental Consciousness on earth, and set it on earth as a basic principle that will operate and function here and transform the human life into a divine life, progressively and step by step. And the divine life is defined by Them as a life where the main principle in function and operation is the principle of Supermind, while at present the main principle is Mind. They pointed out that no other power can bring the transformation except the Supramental Consciousness and Force. For more than fifty thousand years man has endeavoured to make perfect and flawless himself, his life and existence and his environment, but he has failed for the reason that all his endeavours came from an inferior power, the power of Mind. Mind is not a power of Truth — it is an indirect derivation from Truth, covered by pulls of flesh and upheavals from the vital forces and the smokes of the inconscience.

In the course of earthly evolution of Man, there were previous manifestations from the Supreme consciousness in order to cause from the Highest heights the Descent of the highest power suitable for the mankind at those times, and establish them on earth. Sri Rama came with the ideal of the enlightened mind, and Sri Krishna manifested the Overmind consciousness and revealed for us the aspect of Ananda of the Supreme. Thereafter, we find the Buddha who taught us the Way of Nirvana to transcend beyond the mental consciousness. And then, the next step required was / is the descent and manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness and Force. Sri Aurobindo took the Leadership, and along with The Mother, He did all that He had to do. With the Sacrifice of His body, He caused to get manifested the Mind of Light in The Mother, which the first effect of the Descent of the Supermind. This has to be done not for a course of an individual realization and perfection, but the whole earth and, at least, especially for a community open to the Supreme Consciousness. And Sri Aurobindo and The Mother wanted us to make efforts to progress towards the Supramentalization.

OOOOO

Sri Aurobindo told The Mother that She had to stay and complete the Work. Indeed, the entire responsibility of the Supramental Manifestation and of the Work for having a Divine Body came upon The Mother, when Sri Aurobindo passed away and the Mind of Light manifested in Her.

As we know, due to The Mother’s unique, intense and unparalleled Endeavours, the Supramental Consciousness finally descended on earth on 29th February 1956. I am again quoting below the oft-quoted declaration by The Mother :

First Supramental Manifestation
(During the common meditation on Wednesday
The 29th February 1956)
This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the door, I knew and willed in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come', and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
And then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

The Mother spoke of the New Body. It was around 1972. The New Supramental Body was already there. Only, The Mother was trying unveil the Way for entering that Body. She expressed that She will walk into That Body and merge the gross physical body into That Body. She said: I am trying to fuse this material body into that body but I have not been able to get the clue. … Nobody on earth has tried this, the secret is not given to me.
But Events were different, and Her entire Being had to leave the physical body. And then She has entered the New Body, which is eternal and immortal, which is very near to earthly consciousness.

OOOOO

The Eternal Mother shows Her example before all of us — the human race — and given us the Task and the Aim : the Supramental Transformation.

Out of Man, the Superman is to manifest. And Man is the basis for the advent of the Superman. He shall have to become the Superman. The purpose of the appearance of man must now be fulfilled. Man must surpass himself for that. Man has to collaborate with the Eternal Mother and the Master for the new Evolution, or the evolutionary forces will ignore him and go beyond him and find out its own means.

Sri Aurobindo has said :

A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. … … …


The first gleamings of the new Light would carry in themselves the seed of its highest flamings; even in the first beginnings, the certainty of their topmost powers would be there; for this is the constant story of each evolutionary emergence: the principle of its highest perfection lies concealed in the involution which precedes and necessitates the evolution of the secret principle.

The Mother is waiting for us. In order to complete the Task of the Supramental Change and bring in the Supramental Race, there should be, at first, a “new humanity” — in the Words of Sri Aurobindo. That is the Aim now, before all of us.

The Mother is presiding over the entire Wrok of the Transformation. Of the birth of the New World, of the Advent of the New Species, the Supramental Race.


Barindranath Chaki


17-11-2009

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