WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The transformation of the body

22 November 1967

[...] It is the contradiction of all the spiritual assertions of the past: "If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, give up your body--the body cannot follow"; well, Sri Aurobindo came and said: the body, not only can it follow, it can even be the base for manifesting the Divine.

The work remains to be done.

But now a certitude is there. The result remains still far off, very far; much has to be done before the crust, the experience of the most external surface as it is, manifests what is happening within (not "within" in the spiritual depths: within the body). To enable that to manifest what is within... This will come last, and it is good it is so, for if it came before time, one would neglect the work, one would be so satisfied as to forget to finish his work; everything should be done within, should be well and good, should be thoroughly changed, then the outside will speak it out.

But it is all one single substance, all similar everywhere, and everywhere it was unconscious; and then what is remarkable is that automatically things are happening (gesture showing points scattered everywhere in the world) altogether unexpected, here and there, in people who do not even know anything.

(Silence)

The material cells have to obtain the capacity to receive and to manifest consciousness. And then what makes for a radical transformation is that in place of, so to say, an eternal and indefinite ascent, there is the appearance of a new type--it is a descent from above. The previous descent was a mental descent, [new p. 96]and this one, Sri Aurobindo calls it a supramental descent; the impression is that of a descent of the supreme Consciousness [old p. 96]which infuses itself into something that is capable of receiving it and manifesting it. And then, out of this, when it has been thoroughly churned (how long it will take, one does not know), a new form will take birth, which will be what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental form--which will be... it does not matter what, I do not know what these beings will be called.

How will they express themselves, how will they make themselves understood, and all that?... In man, it has developed very slowly. Only the mind has laboured much and basically has made things move quicker.

How is one going to reach there?... There will surely be stages in the manifestation, with perhaps a specimen that will come and say: this is how it is. (Mother looks in front) One sees that.

Only, when man came out of the animal, there was no means of recording--of noting down and keeping an account of the process--now it is quite different, so it will be more interesting.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, pp. 95-96