17th Nov 1973 is regarded as the Mother’s Mahasamadhi day. This day and event has become the subject of much speculation. The sceptics wonder about the fate of
Integral Yoga without a spiritual successor, especially since they think that the task of physical transformation undertaken by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has been left incomplete. Some use the term postponed, others say it has been temporarily abandoned. The faithful however continue to repose their trust in the Mother and accept everything as part of Her Divine Lila even if they do not comprehend it.
This article (running in ten parts) is an effort to take a look at some of these issues with regard to the Integral Yoga and its many-sided fulfillment.
Part 5. The Song of Victory
However, though the Divine Promise was fulfilled, the Mother was aware that Her children expected more, much more. Some of them were even hoping to witness physical immortality in their own life-time. It is out of this Love that the Mother went beyond the mission to make the transition even easier by taking upon Herself the problems that the process of transformation would entail due to the human body and its structure and cells being driven by the old consciousness. This was an act of Divine Love and it bore its fruit. Her ‘human body’ bore the first brunt of the transition but in the process made the path of physical transformation easier for others who would follow this curve later. This physical transformation was beyond the Agenda for the present incarnation. Human body built in the animal way had a long, long way to go, pass through several successive stages of evolution like all previous species (to give an idea there were nearly ten transitional intermediate species between the Ape and Man as he stands erect today) before the supramental body could come into existence. Yet to shorten the process still further, at least in its most critical phase of ‘transfer of power’ as the Mother called it, She took the burden upon Herself. It meant a terrible fight within the body since the Asuric forces that held the physical consciousness of man in its grip were not ready to concede. Yet She fought this decisive battle for man and cleared the future path.
I am no more in my body. I have left the Lord to take care of it, if it is to have the Supramental or not. I know, and I have also said, that now is the last fight. If the purpose for which this body is alive is to be fulfilled, that is to say, the first steps towards the Supramental transformation, then it will continue today. It is the Lord’s decision. I am not even asking what He has decided. If the body is incapable of bearing the fight, if it has to be dissolved, then humanity will pass through a critical time. What the Asuric Force that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo will create is a new religion or thought, perhaps cruel and merciless, in the name of the Supramental Realisation. But everybody must know that it is not true, it is not Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, not the truth of his teaching. The truth of Sri Aurobindo is a truth of love and light and mercy. He is good and great and compassionate and divine…. Et c’est Lui qui aura la victoire finale….
Now, individually, if you want to help, you have only to pray. What the Lord wants will be done. Whatever He wills, He will do with this body, which is a poor thing.
(Sometime later, when the communication was read to her.)
The fight is within the body.
It can’t go on. They must be defeated or else this body is defeated…. All depends on what the Lord decides….
It is the battlefield. How far it can resist I don’t know. After all, it depends on Him. He knows if the time has come or not, the time for the beginning of the Victory – then the body will survive. If not, in any case, my love and consciousness will be there.
[Conversations with a disciple: April 3, 1962]
But the Victory did arrive making Death itself a passage to greater life:
(After a perilous month, Mother has suddenly had the formidable, decisive experience, and she gives her first message. She is lying on her bed in the room upstairs, and has become quite thin. It is around ten in the morning. Her voice has greatly changed. Schoolchildren can be heard playing in the distance.)
Suddenly in the night I woke up with the 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.
(long silence)
The individual consciousness came back, just the sense of a limitation, limitation of pain; without that, no individual. (from this point The Mother starts speaking in French)
And we set off again on the way, certain of the Victory.
The heavens are ringing with chants of Victory!
Truth alone exists; Truth alone shall manifest. Onward! … Onward!
Gloire à Toi, Seigneur, Triomphateur suprême! [Glory to You, Lord, Triumphant One supreme.]
(silence)
And now, to work.
Patience … endurance … perfect equanimity. And absolute faith.
(silence)
Compared to the experience, whatever I say is nothing, nothing, nothing but words.
And our consciousness is the same, absolutely the same as the Lord’s. There was no difference, no difference at all….
We are That, we are That, we are That.
[Conversations with a disciple: April 13, 1962]
