January 19, 1972

Last time I told you I was looking for the twelve attributes (Mother takes out a sheet of paper). Here they are, someone found this.

Sincerity	Humility	Gratitude	Perseverance
Aspiration	Receptivity	Progress	Courage
Goodness	Generosity	Equanimity	Peace

The first eight concern the attitude towards the Divine, and the last four towards humanity.

And we also found a text from Sri Aurobindo (with a colored chart of the twelve petals):

Centre and four powers, white.

The twelve all of different color

 in three groups: top group red,

passing to orange towards yellow.

 Next group, yellow passing through green

 towards blue. And third group, blue passing

 through violet towards red.

 If white is not convenient,

 the center may be gold (powder).

March 20, 1934

The center is gold.

But what did you need these twelve attributes for?

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They're going to build twelve rooms around the Matrimandir, at ground level, and R. wanted each room to have a name: one of the twelve attributes of the Mother, and the corresponding color. [[It may interest the reader to know that according to Sri Aurobindo, these colors generally have the following significances, though the exact meaning may vary "with the field, the combinations, the character and shades of the color, the play of forces": red = physical; orange = supramental in the physical; yellow = thinking mind; green = life; blue = higher mind; violet = divine compassion or grace; gold = divine Truth; white = the light of the Mother, or the Divine Consciousness. (See also Agenda IV, May 18, 1963.) ]]

*^**

A little later.

Nirod is reading me his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. Strangely enough, there are all sorts of things that I said much, much later, I had no idea he had written them! Exactly the same things. I found that very interesting.

In the correspondence, he tells Nirod in one of his letters (he repeated it several times), "I may take a fancy to leave my body before the supramental realization ...." [[March 30, 1935. (Question:) Sri Aurobindo is bound to be wholly supramental and is being supramentalised in parts. If that is true-and it is-well, he can't die till he is supramental-and once he is so he is immortal. (Answer:) "It looks very much like a non-sequitur. The first part and the last are all right-but the link is fragile. How do you know I won't take a fancy to die in between as a joke?" (Question:) Some people say that yourself and the Mother would have been supramentalised long ago if only we had not kept you down. Is it really true? (Answer:) "I can't say there is no truth in it." (Cf. Bulletin, August 1975.) ]] He said that a few years before he died. He had sensed it.

(silence)

But he did speak of a transformation preceding the appearance of the first supramental being. That's what he had told me. He told me that his body wasn't capable of withstanding the transformation, that mine was more capable - he says it there too.

But it's difficult. As I told you the other day.

Especially, especially for food ... it's become a real labor.

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