The Mother continued all her activities in the Ashram and on the Playground up to the end of 1958. She held her classes on Wednesday and Friday with the students of the International Centre of Education, which were also joined by many sadhaks, and they studied extracts from Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine and later Thoughts and Aphorisms. But on 9 December 1958 the Mother fell ill – we have to remember here that ‘illness’ always meant a crisis of transformation for her – and all these activities were stopped. Instead of that, from January 1960 collective meditations were held twice a week on the Playground, and this practice is still being continued today. The Mother was not physically there, but the sadhaks felt her presence and often at the beginning of the meditation her tape recordings were played or there was meditative music with Sanskrit invocations.
Another serious crisis came in 1962 when she fell ill after the balcony darshan on 18 March and suffered a break-down in the night of 3 April. All these events were connected with her inner development, her body-sadhana, and they did not diminish her powerful radiation. The Ashram work was being continued and a constant stream of new seekers and visitors arrived. The number of members was now 1200. Due to the Mother’s crisis there was no darshan for almost a year, but on 21 February 1963 the Mother appeared on the darshan balcony to give her blessings to sadhaks and devotees on her eighty-fifth birthday.
In a letter of 23 July 1964 she explained the difficulty of her work to Huta:
“If the transformation you are asking for depended on me alone, it is long since it would have been done. But the whole world is ONE and interdependent and this creates a situation that the Supreme Lord alone can alter.”[1]
In 1966 the Mother wrote to Huta:
“Whoever is sincere in his resolution to serve the Truth will know, or rather be made to know, at each moment, what he or she must do to serve the Truth, for there are many ways of serving It.”[2]
On herself and her own situation she commented in a talk: “I am all the while… all the while (gesture forward), on the march. Yes, the work of transformation of the consciousness is so rapid, must be done so quickly that there is no time to enjoy or dwell upon an experience… for any length of time.”[3] And she made the following statement regarding her sadhana of the body: “If it can be done in one single body, it can be done in all the bodies… I am not made of something else than the others. The difference is in consciousness, that is all…”[4]
Ten months after the inauguration of Auroville, on 1 January 1969, the Mother had another decisive experience of terrestrial or cosmic importance. It was the descent of a new consciousness-force:
“On the first, something truly strange happened… And I was not the only one to feel it, some others also have felt it. It was just after midnight, but I felt it at two o’clock and the others at four o’clock in the morning… It was something very material, I mean it was very external – very external – and it was luminous, with a golden light. It was very strong, very powerful; but even so, its character was a smiling benevolence, a peaceful delight… They all had felt it, like this, a kind of joy, but a joy friendly, powerful and… oh! very, very gentle, very smiling, very benevolent… My own impression was that of an immense personality… for it the earth was small, small… like a ball… It gave the impression of a personal divinity… who comes to help, and so strong, so strong and at the same time so gentle, so all-embracing… Since it came, the feeling of the body is a kind of certitude, a certitude as though now it was no longer in anxiety or uncertainty to know: ‘What will it be? What will the Supramental be like? Physically, what will it be physically?’ The body used to ask itself. Now it does not think of it any more, it is contented.”[5]
On 8 January 1969 the Mother said that it was the descent of the ‘superman-consciousness’, an intermediary between man and the supramental being. The special characteristic of this particular Force was its material character and its direct impact on the body. On 15 February the Mother said: “During these few hours (three or four), I understood absolutely what it was to have the divine consciousness in the body… But that state, which lasted for several hours, nothing similar to that happiness has this body ever felt during the ninety-one years it has been here upon earth: freedom, absolute power and no limits…”[6]
A mighty Force had descended on earth to help the Mother’s work. She said that all those who had been touched by it, would have a great certainty and precision in their thinking. Her message for 1969 was:
“No words – acts!”
Three years later, in March 1972, the Mother saw for the first time in an inner experience her supramental body, or a transitional body leading towards it. It was sexless, neither man nor woman. The trunk was very different from the human trunk, the chest only a semblance, even though the shoulders were broad. The figure was very slim and the stomach too was only a semblance.
“The two things very very different: first, procreation, of which there was no possibility there; secondly, the food… And now the question is to find a food which needs no complicated digestion… Evidently, what will change very much, which had become very important, was breathing. It is upon this that this being greatly depended.”[7]
[1] K. R. S. Iyengar’s On the Mother 2:707-8
[2] K. R. S. Iyengar’s On the Mother 2:726
[3] K. R. S. Iyengar’s On the Mother 2:727
[4] K. R. S. Iyengar’s On the Mother 2:738
[5] CWM 11:149-51
[6] CWM 11:157-59
[7] CWM 11:304
