Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation - Its Aid to Humanity and Human Species - Experimental Nature of the Integral Yoga

PART THREE

Experimental Nature of the Integral Yoga

The unique feature of the integral yoga is that it is not based on speculation but it has been built and is even being built by rigorous methods of experimentation, based on the relevant accumulated knowledge of the past experiences and realizations as also on the basis of a constant thrust towards what is needed unprecedentedly for the evolutionary manifestation of the supramental consciousness and power on the earth. Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's works testify to the long and arduous process of experimentation carried on day after day for years and decades. If we study the life and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we shall see that prior to their first meeting on 29th March 1914, both of them had a vast and laborious period of preparation. From that momentous date of the first meeting, when the Mother came from France to Pondicherry in order to meet Sri Aurobindo, they consecrated themselves entirely to the task of discovering the most effective means of meeting what seemed to be insuperable obstacles that the contemporary crisis presented. From that day, they began to prepare new conditions on the earth so that, by the process of the yoga of conscious evolution, humanity could not only survive the crisis but also arrive at the eventual fulfillment of the deepest aspirations for establishing on the earth the kingdom of mutuality, harmony and unity.

In this conscious yoga of evolution, both Sri Aurobindo

and the Mother interwove their entire being and their powers of consciousness into a living laboratory. As envisaged, they
nourished that trend in humanity shared by those who felt that there is no other solution than the spiritual. As a part of the
nourishment of this trend, there began to develop a collective form where individuals could organize under their guidance and leadership a growing group directed towards a concentrated collective effort, not towards other worldly spiritual seeking, but towards the transformation of the whole being, transformation of the mental, vital and physical nature by the increasing descent of the supramental consciousness. The creation of that collective laboratory of research at Pondicherry, which came to be known as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram24 from 1926 onwards, became a place of an unprecedented experiment in evolution. To this laboratory, a number of men and women offered themselves to respond to the yogic and evolutionary demands of the experiment. This laboratory reveals a continuous burning of the fire of aspiration and a continuous movement of achievement. At a certain point of achievement, this laboratory developed a new laboratory of integral education25 where a nucleus of children and teachers developed a new methodology of education suitable to the discovery of the psychic being and supramental power and their manifestation.

It is not easy to expound the enormous value of the work of these two laboratories of research and experimentation, and one cannot easily explain the reasons for Sri Aurobindo's passing in 1950. Fortunately, thirteen volumes of Mother's Agenda give an account of how Sri Aurobindo, even after leaving his body, has continued to hasten the process of the yoga of evolution, and how, day after day, the integral yoga has continued to develop through microscopic process of

research for the establishment of the supramental consciousness on the earth.

The enormity of the task and the enormity of the difficulties of the task are unimaginable. In the first place, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had to work out all ways, follow all methods, and develop a new method of integral realization and integral transformation. Besides, the aim was not only to hew the path but also to test every step and its results and to present to humanity a science of integral yoga. Sri Aurobindo has written of all these difficulties in one of his letters to a disciple:

"As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer— a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path."26

The evolutionary laboratory or The Ashram consisted, first, of a nucleus of a few. Later, hundreds were recruited so as to make a small representative world constituting of specimens of each type of human consciousness and development. The formation of this evolutionary laboratory had become necessary, first, to provide a secure atmosphere,

a place and life apart, in which the consciousness of the individual might concentrate on its evolution in surroundings where all was turned and centered towards the one endeavour and, next, when things were ready to formulate and develop the new life in those surroundings and in this prepared spiritual atmosphere. But it was also envisaged that while that laboratory would facilitate the effort in many ways, there are bound to be enormous difficulties as well. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"It might be that, in such a concentration of effort, all the difficulties of the change would present themselves with a concentrated force; for each seeker, carrying in himself the possibilities but also the imperfections of a world that has to be transformed, would bring in not only his capacities but his difficulties and the oppositions of the old nature and, mixed together in the restricted circle of a small and close common life, these might assume a considerably enhanced force of obstruction which would tend to counterbalance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution."27

In the integral yoga, apart from the difficulties of integration of different paths of yoga that would respond to each individual's need of free development, a special difficulty arises from the fact that this yoga aims at transformation of human nature, even while accepting what Sri Aurobindo calls the works of life-force, —the works that involve acquisition, possession, relationship, enjoyment and influence. These works of life-force are normally shot through and through with desire and ego, and the aim is to accept these works in the conduct of yoga and to dissolve from the very fibre all elements of desire and ego. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"The integral Yoga cannot reject the works of Life and be satisfied with an inward experience only; it has to go inward in order to change the outward, making the Life-Force a part and a working of a Yoga-Energy which is in touch with the Divine and divine in its guidance."28

In the integral yoga, the aim is the divine fulfillment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character. Life-Power is to be divinized, and the Divine Life Power is a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of the Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on the surface. This affirmation implies growth into the true divine Individual, who can emerge only by the subordination and disappearance of the ego. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"This is life's true object: growth, but a growth of the spirit in Nature, affirming and developing itself in mind, life and body; possession, but a possession by the Divine of the Divine in all things, and not of things for their own sake by the desire of the ego; enjoyment, but an enjoyment of the divine Ananda in the universe; battle and conquest and empire in the shape of a victorious conflict with the Powers of Darkness, an entire spiritual self-rule and mastery over inward and outward Nature, a conquest by Knowledge, Love and Divine Will over the domain of the Ignorance."29

In this yoga, where all life is accepted but all life is sought to be transformed, it becomes inevitable that a divine solution is sought for the problems connected with the integration of the supracosmic, supraterrestrial and cosmic aims of life and these problems become much more formidable when each individual is to be encouraged to aim at the perfection of the

mental being, vital being and the physical being under the guidance of the psychic being and of the Divine Will. For this perfection implies a constant effort of purification and renunciation of desire and ego. There is a constant stress in this yoga towards the perfection of equality, not only in status of being but also in action. There is also a continuous stress on the development of personality and of the powers of the personality that grows, — not under the impulsion of lower nature, Apara Prakriti, — but under the impulsion of divine nature and of divine shakti, Para Prakriti. The three gunas of Apara Prakriti need to be purified, quieted, brought under the control of all that is highest in Apara Prakriti, and that is to be followed by extremely long and difficult task of transformation of sattwa, rajas and tamas, the gunas of the Apara Prakriti, by the descent of their counterparts in the higher nature, Para Prakriti. Thus, in the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm .. .Rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, ...Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakāśa, but the self-existent light of the divine being, jyotih, which is the soul of the perfect power of being, and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and the divine will of action."30

The aim in this yoga is not only to arrive at liberation from Nature, Apara Prakriti, but also the liberation of Nature itself from its own limitations by the descending power of Para Prakriti or Supermind. Ascent to the supermind and the descent of the supermind are extremely difficult processes; the ascending path itself involves combination of various processes, and then there is a descending path for bringing down highest level of consciousness, including supermind,

into lower levels of matter, right up to the lowest, which is the inconscient, in order to bring about transformation.

It has been argued that there is no certainty of the reality of the descent of the supermind in our earthly being. It is pointed out that Light has often tried to descend upon the earth but the light remains unfulfilled and incomplete; it is further argued that even if the light descends, man may reject it. It may be acknowledged that this doubt is justified to a certain extent by the actualities of the past and still existing possibilities of the future because the endeavour is new and unprecedented. This doubt may itself be a factor of the difficulty of the endeavour. It is only when one is able to look straight at the whole truth of the world as it is and draw from there the right conclusion as to what the world must be and cannot fail to be that the trouble of uncertainty can be met. The effort of integral yoga demands that one is free from too hasty and one-sided facts of the world. Sri Aurobindo points out that there has been in the past an idea of the earth as a world of ignorance, suffering and trial and that our only future lies in an escape into the secret essence of the being or to the heavens beyond. This idea has disabling effect on the effort to bring down supermind into Matter. Against this disabling idea, Sri Aurobindo points out: "If we look closely, we shall see that there is a straining of mind and life on their heights toward their own perfection, towards some divine fulfilment, towards their own absolute
That and not only something beyond and elsewhere is the true sign, the meaning of this constant evolution... But it is only by the descent of supermind and the fulfilment of mind and life by their self-exceeding that this secret intention in things, this hidden meaning of Spirit and Nature can become utterly overt and in its totality realizable."31

Sri Aurobindo further states:

"In this vision of things the universe will reveal itself in its unity and totality as a manifestation of a single Being, Nature as its power of manifestation, evolution as its process of gradual self-revelation here in Matter. We would see the divine series of the worlds as a ladder of ascent from Matter to supreme Spirit; there would reveal itself the possibility, the prospect of a supreme manifestation by the conscious and no longer a veiled and enigmatic descent of the Spirit and its powers in their fullness even into this lowest world of Matter. The riddle of the universe need be no longer a riddle; the dubious mystery of things would put off its enigma, its constant ambiguity, the tangled writings would become legible and intelligible. In this revelation, supermind would take its natural place and no longer be a matter of doubt or questioning to an bewildered by the complexity of the world; it would appear as the inevitable consequencence of the nature of mind, life and Matter, the fulfilment of their meaning, their inherent principle and tendencies, the necessary perfection of their imperfection, the summit to which all are climbing, the consummation of divine existence, consciousness and bliss to which it is leading, the last result of the birth of things and supreme goal of this progressive manifestation which we see here in life."32

Central Objective of the Yogic Experiments of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

A progressive realization of this vision is interwoven with the life of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and after a series of experiences and realizations, particularly after the Mother's first meeting with Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914, the

central concentration was on the descent of the supermind on the earth. In 1920, when the Mother returned to Pondicherry from her sojourn in France and Japan, a decisive event took place on 24th April, when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were standing side by side gazing out through the open window in Sri Aurobindo's room. The Mother has described that moment as follows:

"We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER at exactly the same moment, we felt, 'Now the Realisation will be accomplished.' That the seal was set and the Realisation would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say —no words, nothing. We knew it was THAT."³³

Mother's Agenda

The entire development has been experimental and experiential, and glimpses of the rapid development that took place in the evolutionary moment of the earth can be studied scientifically in thirteen volumes of 'Mother's Agenda' (1951-1973). This tremendous document relates the Mother's explorations, which cover the discovery of the origin of Matter and of how the evolution of the earth came to be developed. It also gives us the accounts of how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had reached at the crucial moment in the twentieth century, as also of the descent of the supermind that took place in 1956, and of the subsequent story leading to the victorious fixing of the supermind in the physical consciousness. Satprem, to whom the Mother narrated day after day her experiences and realizations and

who has brought together these accounts in the Agenda, comprising more than six thousand pages in thirteen volumes, has stated the following about this fabulous document:

"It is a veritable document of experimental evolution. A revolution in consciousness that alters the laws of the species And it is the question of our times — for whatever the appearances, we are not at the end of a civilization, but at the end of an evolutionary cycle. Are we going to find the passage to the next species... or perish? As scrupulously as a scientist in his laboratory, Mother goes back to the origin where matter was first formed, to the primordial code, and there, 'by chance,' stumbles upon the mechanism of death—upon the very power that changes death — and upon a 'new' Energy that curiously parallels the most recent theories of atomic physics and Matter. The key to Matter contains the key to death... and the key to the next species."34

Based on the contents of the thirteen volumes of 'Mother's Agenda', Satprem has narrated the biography of the Mother in three volumes.35 Volume I, 'The Divine Materialism', concerns the Mother's life from her birth in Paris in 1878 to Sri Aurobindo's departure in 1950. It recounts the Mother's spontaneous early experiences as a child, her friendship with the great impressionist artists of the time, her first lessons of occultism with Max Theon in Algeria, her journeys to India, and her meeting with Sri Aurobindo and her evolutionary work and development of integral yoga jointly with Sri Aurobindo until Sri Aurobindo's departure in 1950. Volume II, 'The New Species', recounts the Mother's life from 1950 to 1968, during which the Mother continues the work of Sri Aurobindo with constant help of Sri Aurobindo, whom she discovers in his full majesty in his abode of the subtle physical. This volume describes the long and arduous

on that day, she stated:

"This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of 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, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.

Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow."36

From that momentous evening of 29th February, 1956, the Mother began to have from week to week, from day to day, various experiences of the supermind in Matter. On the 3rd February, 1958, the Mother had for the first time a radical experience in which she went strolling in a concrete way in an objective supramental world—a world that exists in itself beyond all subjectivity. Towards the end of 1958, the Mother came to a precision and formulated the central question that she was exploring 'How does one FIX the supermind in the body?' The entire enterprise was new in the history of the earth, and the Mother was obliged to hew a new path in a virgin forest. On July 24, 1959, the Mother recounted her unique experience, when for the first time the supramental light entered directly into her body. And during this experience, she found herself in another world, which was almost as substantial as the physical world. She stated:

"There were rooms — Sri Aurobindo's room with the bed he rests on — and he was living there, he was there all the

time: it was his abode.... And Sri Aurobindo was there, with a majesty, a magnificent beauty..... I remained there for one
hour ( I had looked at my watch before and I looked at it afterwards). ..."37

The Mother added that when she awoke, she did not have the feeling returning from afar. It was simply as though she was in that other world, and then she took a step backwards and found herself in this physical world again. She further added that the next two days were of absolute felicity. Sri Aurobindo was with her the whole time, — when she sat own he sat next to her. When she asked Sri Aurobindo when that other world, the world of the abode of Sri Aurobindo, would come to take the place of our world of falsehood, he replied "Not Ready".

After this experience, the Mother met Sri Aurobindo frequently in the subtle physical. There were ecstasies of experiencing the Supreme in the body, and there were excruciating pains when the work had to be concentrated upon the transformation of the subconscient and inconscient. Her discoveries were momentous, particularly in regard to the nature of Pain and Death. Gradually, she was building a new body within her own body — material body — of this supramental light and power. There were experiences from day to day, from hour to hour, and many of them have been recorded in the Agenda.

On January 21, 1961, the Mother spoke of the consciousness of the body, and she said that the body consciousness had the perception of the EXTREME RELATIVITY of the most material expression. She added,

"Suppose, for example, that there was a disorder here or there in the body, not actually an illness....not an illness, a

disorder, a functional disorder. Well, it was all utterly unimportant: IT IN NO WAY CHANGES THE BODY'S TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed when it is ill, when something is going wrong, it's not so. It isn't disturbed in the way we understand it. ....Oh, it's the physical mind, this stupid mind! It makes all the trouble, always. ... .The body is VERY enduring. ....Suffering also comes through the physical mind, because if this entity is calmed down, we no longer suffer — exactly what happened to me!

The physical mind, you see, makes use of the nervous substance; if we withdraw it from the nervous substance, we no longer feel anything, for that's what gives us the perceptions of sensation... .We know something is wrong, but we no longer suffer from it."38

On the night of April 12-13, 1962, after she had gone through a great ordeal that had threatened her physical existence, she had suddenly a formidable and decisive experience. She stated:

"Suddenly in the night I woke up with a full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the
formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation.

" And the certitude that what is to be done is done and the Supramental Manifestation is realized.

Everything was Personal, nothing was individual.
This was going on and on and on and on....

The certitude that what is to be done is DONE.

All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion — something that had no reality, no existence.... Only Love, and Love and Love and Love — immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.

And how, how to express in the world? It was like an impossibility, because of the contradiction.... But then it came: "You have accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth ... and it will be expressed totally, integrally". Yes, yes, .... And the thing is DONE."39

Things were becoming more and more incomprehensible. During a course of conversation with Satprem on 12th June,
1963, the Mother said:

"I don't know whether I am dead or alive."40

One of the most important processes of physical transformation that the Mother spoke of was that of the fusion of the subtle physical and the ordinary physical. She said:

"...The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, I've had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other — the subtle physical vibration was bringing about a sort of .. .almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration.

That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes. ..."41

The process of transformation, according to the Mother,

not only tends to eliminate the illness of the body but also the death of the body. More and more we find the Mother asking the question: "What is death?" In an enigmatic short statement during a conversation with Satprem on 9th March, 1963, the Mother said:

"On a few occasions, you know, I was like this (Mother makes a gesture of hovering between two worlds), as if I were really put in contact with what I have called "The death of death." It was the unreality of death. From a COMPLETELY material standpoint. It was a question of cells .. ."42

The important conditions that the Mother discovered for the physical transformation are the purification, universalisation and impersonalisation of the physical consciousness; but even more important thereafter was the process of PENETRATION, Permeation, of the supramental consciousness directly into the physical consciousness. A question was often raised by the Mother whether the process of transformation would continue uninterruptedly and produce a new "divine" body or whether it may be dissolved at a certain stage. On this question, the Mother made several statements from time to time, but She indicated that She had no assurance that a new "divine" body would emerge from her body or that her body would not be dissolved.

Between 1962 and 1967, the Mother had numerous experiences of the mastery over and liberation from the hold of the material mind. At the same time, she underwent the training of the cells resulting in the growth and development of the mind of the cells. These five years were marked by non stop illness and countless heart problems which led her to find

the key to the functioning of the cells. In order that the cells of the body could function 'purely' —without any intrusion of factors foreign to its substance, the body had to be emptied completely of its old habits and its old coatings. This meant irect contact of the Supermind with the cells without the need to pass through the layers of the intellectual mind, the vital mind, the sensory mind and the physical mind. All the protective walls of the species had to disappear so that the new species could emerge. In an important experience, the Mother spoke of the transfer of power, — the transfer of power from the state where the cells used to obey the psychic consciousness or the mental consciousness to a state where the cells would obey the supramental consciousness. She stated:

".. .A transfer of power.

The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness—the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones, rather, like the mind of all the states of being — do you know, it is educating itself. It is learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. ... That's very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this (gesture from above). But now it's a sort of memory being built from below, ...

... It's like a shift in the directing will. .... It's no longer the same thing that makes you act — "act" or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. .. ."43

Mind of the cells

In answer to the question about the material mind that underwent the transfer of power, the Mother made a distinction between the physical mind and the mind of Matter. The Mother stated:

"That isn't the physical mind. The physical mind, it's a long time since ... It is the material mind — not even the material mind: the mind OF MATTER. It is the mental substance that belongs to Matter itself, to the cells. ...That's the mind I mean, that completely material mind. The other one, the physical mind, has been organized for a long time..... The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isn't the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being... .And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years. ...

This cellular mind exists in animals, and there is even a faint beginning (but very faint, like a promise) in plants: they respond to a mental action. They respond. As soon as Life manifests, there is already the beginning, like a promise of mind, of mental movement. And in animals, it's very clear. Whereas that physical mind really began to exist only in man. That's what a very small child already has: it already has a physical mind; ...

No, the physical mind, as soon as you do an integral yoga, you are obliged to deal with it, while this material, cellular mind, I can assure you that it's absolutely new! Absolutely new.

It is the mind that was like an uncoordinated substance,

with a constant, unorganized activity (Mother gestures to show a constant tremor). This is the mind which is being organized. That's what is important, because Sri Aurobindo said it was unorganizable and the only thing to do was to reject it from existence. And I was under that impression, too. But when the transforming action on the cells is constant, this material mind begins to become organized, that's the wonderful thing! It begins to become organized. And then, as it becomes organized, it learns to FALL SILENT — that's the beautiful thing! It learns to keep calm, silent, and to let the supreme Force act without interfering.

The most difficult part is in the nerves, because they are so habituated to that ordinary conscious will that when it stops and you want the direct Action from the height height, they seem to become mad. Yesterday morning I had that experience, which lasted for more than an hour, and it was difficult; but it taught me many things — many things. And all this is what we may call the "transfer of power": it is the old power that withdraws. But then, until the body adapts to the new power, there is a period which is, well, critical. As all the cells are in a state of conscious aspiration, it's going relatively fast, but still... the minutes are long."⁴⁴

Three Inter-related Processes of the Yoga of the Body

The Mother's body had become a living and conscious laboratory of the next species. Three simultaneous and interelated processes were going on in the Mother's body. Firstly, there was a progressive dissolution of the Inconscience at its utmost bottom. Secondly, there was the infiltration, penetration, permeation and invasion of the Supermind in the cellular consciousness and in the physical consciousness so

as to counteract the Falsehood in Matter, Life and Mind. Thirdly, there was a gradual transformation of the body by means of collaboration and change of the physical and material mind and by means of radical changes in various functionings of organs and faculties.

At the same time, some radical changes were appearing in the functioning of the two collective laboratories that the Mother had organized, namely, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. There was felt a need to establish a third collective laboratory of evolution. A greater and greater stress was laid on the creation of collective consciousness, and as the Mother explains, the realization under community or group conditions would clearly be far more complete, integral, total and probably more perfect than any individual realization. In due course, the idea of an ideal city began to take shape, and the Mother took a decision to establish a new collective laboratory in the form of a small international township, which she named "Auroville"45

While Auroville was growing rapidly after its establishment on 28thFebruary 1968, there came about a great turning-point in the yoga of the Mother between 10th August and 22nd August, 1968. In a note of the night of 26th and 27th August, she had written: 'Powerful and prolonged penetration of the supramental forces into the body, everywhere at the same time....'

A radical operation was effected; the vital and the mind were "sent packing so that the physical may truly be left to its own resources."46

The Mother explained her experience of the night of 26th

to 27th August as follows:

"Penetration into the body. Yes, penetrations of currents I had had several times, but that night ..., what came all of a sudden was as though there was nothing anymore except a supramental atmosphere. Nothing remained except that. My body was in it. And it was PRESSING to enter, from everywhere, but everywhere at the same time—everywhere. You understand, it wasn't a current flowing in, it was an atmosphere penetrating from everywhere. It lasted for at least four or five hours. ... It's the first time. For hours. Only That remained. And this (the body) was like a sponge soaking up. ... Ah! I noticed that the cells, everywhere, you know, constantly, all the time, were repeating, OM NAMO BHAGAVATE, OM NAMO BHAGAVATE ... constantly, all the time."47

This entire experience was crucial and radical. One has to imagine a true body growing up in an old body at the very cellular level, where there is no intermediate between the supermind, on the one hand, and the cellular consciousness of the body, on the other. The cellular consciousness was liberated from all the intermediate levels, including the physical mind. Here was the possibility of infusing a new genetic code in the cell — the code of the supramental vibration of knowledge, power, harmony and immortality. A new mind in matter began to work. A new mind of the cells. The key to transform the body was turned.

Descent of the Superman Consciousness

The 1st January, 1969, marked the descent of the superman

consciousness, the consciousness of the superman, an intermediate between the human and the supramental being.
The Mother said:

"The intermediary between the two. May be the superman: it was very human, but a human of divine proportions, ...,"48

The Mother called the consciousness of the superman as "New Consciousness". The advent of this New Consciousness may be regarded as a crucial development of the Mother's yoga of the Body. Indeed, this consciousness was the supramental benevolent consciousness of Power working through an intermediate body — a body, human in origin but thoroughly purified and refined right up to the cellular level and thus capable of the operation of the Supermind directly in the physical body. True, the entire physical body was not yet fully transformed, but it was yet a vehicle in which the cells had begun to be so much supramentalised that their physical substance was that of real matter—which the Mother had described as something much more dense and compact and plastic than the gross physical that we see; that real matter could manifest, operate and produce results in and through the outer body. This 'New Consciousness', the Mother explained later, began to operate when her body lost all sense of separative individuality. Since the arrival of this consciousness, things began to precipitate and there was an extraordinary rapidity of movement in the circumstances. This method of working consisted of putting people in front of themselves and to apply a pressure so that all that resisted in the nature would come out on the surface. The Mother said that she saw all this all the time, for small things as well as for big things, for the political affairs of the country as well as for the organization of a household.49