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The Mother: Individual, Universal, Transcendent
The Mother and the Purpose of Her Embodiment
Do you not refer to the Mother (our Mother) in your book ? Yes. Is she not the “Individual” Divine Mother who has embodied “the power of these two vaster ways of her existence”1 —Transcendent and Universal? Yes. Has she not descended here (amongst us) into the Darkness and Falsehood and Error and Death in her deep and great love for us? Yes. There are many who hold the view that she was human but now embodies the Divine Mother and her Prayers, they say, explain this view. But to my mental conception, to my psychic feeling, she is the Divine Mother who has consented to put on herself the cloak of obscurity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us —human beings —to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to Him. The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine
1 Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 14. Other letters on the book The Mother are pub — lished in Letters on Himself and on the Ashram, volume 35 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 102 17. —Ed.
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consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood, so the view held by “many” is erroneous. I also conceive that the Mother’s Prayers are meant to show us —the aspiring psychic —how to pray to the Divine. Yes. 17 August 1938 The Mother and the Supramental Descent
Am I right in thinking that the Mother as an individual embodies all the Divine Powers and brings down the Grace more and more to the physical plane . . . Yes. and that her embodiment is a chance for the entire physical to change and be transformed? It is a chance for the earth —consciousness to receive the supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible. Afterwards there will be a farther transformation by the supramental, but the whole earth consciousness will not be supramentalised —there will be first a new race representing the supermind, as man represents the mind. The more we open individually to the Mother’s Light and Force, the more her power is established in the universal —is it not so? It is the transforming power that is established —the universal Power is always there. 13 August 1933
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The Mother has come down to work on the earth, not in another world. The thousand petalled lotus and the plane or world that corresponds to it is only a means of communication between the The Mother and the Purpose of Her Embodiment
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I know that all here is unreal. The Mother alone is real. It is the higher reality that the Mother brings into the world —without it all else is ignorant and false. 3 August 1934
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The Mother does not work on the sadhak directly from her own plane above, though she can do so if she wants to —she can even supramentalise the world in a day; but in that case the supramental Nature created here would be the same as it is above, and not the earth in Ignorance evolving into the supramental earth, which will not be quite the same in appearance as what the Supermind is. That is a very important truth. 17 June 1935
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Some people seem to be quite misled in understanding the Mother’s status with regard to the higher planes. When they are in these planes or receive something from them, they begin to think that they have reached a great height, and that the higher planes have nothing to do with the Mother. They value them more than they value the Mother! Especially about the Supermind they have such queer notions —that it is something greater than the Mother. If they have a greater experience or consciousness than the Mother, they should not stay here but go and save the world with it. 18 September 1935
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Is there any difference between the Mother’s manifestation and the descent of the supramental?
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The Mother comes in order to bring down the supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible. 23 September 1935
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Is the attitude that I am the Brahman not necessary in the Integral Yoga? It is not enough to transform the whole nature. Otherwise there would be no need of the embodiment. It could be done by simply thinking of oneself as the Brahman. There would be no need of the Mother’s presence or the Mother’s force. 27 December 1935 Sri Aurobindo’s Recognition of the Mother
I believe that on the 24th November 1926 Sri Aurobindo realised that the Mother is the Divine Consciousness and Force. No. I knew that long before. 2 November 1935
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