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Three Aspects of the Mother
Individual, Universal, Transcendent
I am or was under the impression that Mother is the Cosmic and Supracosmic Mahashakti. I don’t quite understand the question. I have explained in The Mother that there are three aspects, transcendent, universal and individual, of the Mother. 31 May 1933
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As I see it, there are two Shaktis in the world: the Cosmic Shakti and the individual Shakti —our Mother. I believe it is difficult to remain in direct connection with the Cosmic Shakti, while the individual Shakti is always here before us. I would like to know more about these Shaktis. There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all three, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here —it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose. She is that in the body, but in her whole consciousness she is also identified with all the other aspects of the Divine Force. 16 June 1933 The Universal Mother and the Individual Mother
The universal and individual Mother are the same —these are two aspects of the Supreme Mother —but the differentiation is for the multiple action and play. So also one feels the self as one’s own self in an individual way but also that there is the same self
Page – 50 individualised in others and all are one. 4 November 1934
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What people mean by the formless svarūpa of the Mother, —they mean usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits —that is her svarūpa. One meets this more often by rising in consciousness above the head where one is liberated from this limited body consciousness and feels oneself also as something wide, calm, one self with all beings —free from passion and disturbance in an eternal peace. But it can be felt through the heart also —then the heart too feels itself wide as the world, pure and blissful, filled with the Mother’s presence. There is also the Mother’s personal and individual presence in the heart which brings immediately love and bhakti and the sense of a close intimacy and personal oneness. 9 June 1935 The Mother’s Universal Action and Her Embodied Physical Action
Being sincere to the Mother demands communication of all our secret thoughts. There should be no secrecy between the mother and the child. But apart from this, is there any other utility of confessions? There is the utility of the physical approach to the Mother —the approach of the embodied mind and vital to her embodied Power. In her universal action the Mother acts according to the law of things —in her embodied physical action is the opportunity of a constant Grace, —it is for that that the embodiment takes place. 12 August 1933
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Is there any law of the working of the Mother’s Grace? Why does the Mother in her universal action act according to the law of things, but in her embodied physical by constant Grace?
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It is the work of the Cosmic Power to maintain the cosmos and the law of the cosmos —transforming it by a slow evolution. The greater transformation comes from the Transcendent above the universe, and it is that transcendent Grace which the embodiment of the Mother is there to bring into action. 13 August 1933 Concentration on the Embodied Mother
When calling down the Force, should I concentrate on the embodied Mother or open to and concentrate on the consciousness of the Universal Mother? The embodied Mother must be the foundation of the concentration —even when you receive from the universal Consciousness above you, it is from her consciousness that you are receiving. 5 March 1934 The Transcendental Mother and the Embodied Mother
There are many Mothers in the cosmic and spiritual planes who help people in their search for the Divine. Above them, I have read, is the transcendental Mother and above her comes the supreme Mother. X and Y profess to have seen and spoken to the transcendental Mother in her embodied aspect. This is hard to believe. There are not many Mothers, there is One in many forms. The transcendental is only one aspect of the Mother. I don’t know what is meant by the embodied aspect of the transcendental Mother. There is the embodied aspect of the One Mother —what she manifests through it depends on herself. 7 July 1936 The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
"At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal
Page – 52 Power.”1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane. There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti: (1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness. (2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Sat-Chit —Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness. (3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind. (4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere. Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is पर [para], the Supreme Transcendence is परात्पर [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English. 27 January 1932
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X asked me the meaning of the term “transcendent”. He also asked if the Supermind is a world of transcendence. So far as I can see, the gradations of the upper hemisphere are, in a sense, the heights of transcendence, with the Mother at the summit. Yes. Is it here at the summit that the Mother is the Transcendent Mother and the Divine is the Transcendent Divine? Yes; but from the point of view of the present triple world of mind, life and body governed by the Overmind (Maya), the Supermind and the supramental Divine (all the upper hemisphere in fact) can be spoken of as Transcendent. 27 January 1932 1 Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 15.
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X came to our house. I asked him, “First, one Mother must be born, then another Mother, then another Mother, is it not so? Who is the Mother who was first born before the others were born? How did She come to exist?” He said he did not know, but that Sri Aurobindo and Mother would know and can tell me. Therefore please reply so that I can know everything clearly. The first mother is the “Mother” —the eternal Mother; she always exists, she has no beginning or end. 4 March 1933
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