The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material World and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle. The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective. A total surrender, and exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or pretence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings.

The starting-point, it goes without saying, is the aspiration towards this transformation and the will to realise it; without that nothing can be done. But if to the aspiration is added an inner opening, a kind of receptivity, then one can enter at a bound into this transformed consciousness and remain there... I am not speaking of a simple change in the mental outlook, but a change of the consciousness itself. -The Mother

The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.

There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent. the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashkti, She creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces Individual. she embidies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.

At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of imfinite existence. consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knoweldge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.

A Divine life upon earth, the ideal we have placed before us, can only come about by a spiritual change of our being and a radical and fudamental change, an evolution or revolution of our nature. The embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils of mind, life and body into the full conciousness and possession of its spiritual reality and its nature also would have to be lifted out of the consciousness and power of consciousness proper to a mental, vital and physical being into the greater consciousnes and greater power of being and the larger and freer life of the spirit, it would not- lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete mental nature as that is above the nature of animal life and animated Matter, as it is immeasurably above the mere material nature.

The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciouness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own rightr; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possess the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self- manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free fom ignorance and error it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainites that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth - consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda.

Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created

All life here is a stage or a cirsumstance in an unfolding progressive evolution of a Spirit that has involved itself in Matter and is labouring to manifest itself in that reluctant sustance. This is the whole secret of earthly existence. But the key of that secret is not to be found in life itself or in the body ; its hieroglyph is not in embryo or organism. - for these are only a physical means or base: the one significant mystery of this universe is the appearance and growth of consciousness in the vast mute unintelligence of Matter. The escape of Consciousness out of an apparent initial Inconscince.- but it was there all the time masked and latent, for the inconscience of Matter is itself only a hooded consciousness-its struggle to find itself, its reaching out to its own inherent completeness. perfection, joy, light, strenght, mastery, harmony, freedom, this is the prolonged miracle and yet the natural and all-explaining phenomenon of which we are at once the observers and a part. instrument and vehicle. A Consciousness, a Being, a Power, a Joy was here form the beginning darkly imprisoned in this apparent denial of itself, this original night, this obscurity and nescience of material Nature. That which is and was for ever, free, perfect, eternal and infinite, That which all is, That which we call God, Brahman, Spirit has here shut itself up in its own self-created opposite. The omniscient has plunged itself into Nescience, the All Conscious into Inconscience, the All-Wise into perpetual Ignorance. The Omnipotent has formulated itself in a vast cosmic sefl-driven Inertia that by disintegration creates; the Infinite is self-expressed here in a boundless fragmentation; the All-Blissful has put on huge insensibility out of which it struggles by pain and hunger and desire and sorrow - Elsewhere the Divine is; here in physical life, in this obscure material world it would seem almost as if the Divine is not but is only becoming, theos ouk estin alia gignetai1 (GK) : God is not. but is becoming. The Divine is not in being but in becoming. This gradual becoming of the Divine out of its own phenomental opposites is the meaning and purpose of the terrestral evolution. Evolution in its essence is not the development of a more and more organised body or a more and more efficient life-these are only its machinery and outward circumstance. Evolution is the strife of a Consciousness somnambulised in Matter to wake and be free and find and possess itself and all its possibilities to the very utmost and widest, to the very last and highest, Evolution is the emancipation of a self-revealing Soul secret in Form and Force, the slow becoming of a Godhead, the growth of a Spirit. In this evolution mental man is not the goal and end, the completing value, the highest last significance; he is too small and imperfect to be the crown of all this travail of Nature. Man is not final, but a middle term only, a transitional being, an instrumental intermediate creature.This character of evolution and this mediary position of man are not at first apparent.

My difficulty is that you all seem to expect a kind of miraculous fairy-tale change and do not realise that it is a rapid and concentrated evolution which is the aim of my Sadhana and that there must be a process for it, a working of the higher in the lower and a dealing with all the necessary intervals- not a sudden feat of creation by which everything is done on a given date. It is a supramental but not an irrational process. What is to be done will happen- perhaps with a rush even- but in a workmanlike way and not according to Faerie. The process (the descent of the Supermind) is a spiritual evolutinary process, concentrated into a brief period - it could be done otherwise (by what men would regard as a miraculous intervention) only if the human mind were more flexible and less attached to its ignorance than it is. -Sri Aurobindo

It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question, but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and pain and strife. Then, even if they are less great than the men of the past, my object will have been achieved. For me mental conceptions cannot be the end of all things. I know that the Supermind is a truth. It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth-consciousness; I see it above and know what it is -1 feel it ever gleaming down on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half- darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution.My point about my Sadhana was that my Sadhana was not done for myself but for the earth- consciousness as a showing of the way towards the light, so that whatever I showed in it to be possible - inner growth, transformation, manifesting of new faculties, etc./ - was not of no importance to anybody, but meant as an opening of lines and ways for what had to be done. I have no intention of achieving the Supermind for myself only - I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) norsupramentalisaton. If I am seeking after supramentalisation, 'it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth- consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others. My supramentalisation is only a key for opening the gates of the supramental to the earth-consciousness; done for its own sake, it would be perfectly futile.

To try through outer gestures or arbitrary decisions which come from a mental consciousness aspiring for a higher life can be a means, not a very effective one but still a sort of reminder to the being that it ought to be something other than what it is in its animality-but it's not that, it's not that at all !... The only thing that is truly effective is the change of consciousness; it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, including all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences will be .... The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contact- constant, yes, constant- with the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight of the supramental consciousness. That is sincerity. All the rest is an imitation, it is almost a part one plays for oneself.Perfect purity is to be, to be ever more and more, in a self-perfecting becoming. One must never pretend that one is: one must be, spontaneously.
This is sincerity.
-The Mother

The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.

There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent. the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashkti, She creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces Individual. she embidies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.

At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of imfinite existence. consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knoweldge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.

Q: Is it possible to predict future events ? Is there such a thing as destiny ?

What is evident is that in the course of events there is an element of the predictable, predictable accurately in detail as well as in large points. But it is not true that all is predictable or that destiny is the sole governing factor of existence. Neither is it true that there is a complete free will. The popular view of the matter that all is destiny or else all is free will is quite summary and inconclusive.

Q: How is it that so many of Cheiro's prophecies have come true ?

One cannot put great confidence in Cheiro's ideas and prophecies - some have come true but most have gone wrong; in fact the number of his prophecies that have failed to come off is rather staggering. So it is not possible to conclude from Cheiro's evidence that everything is predetermined or that an unchangeable destiny governs everything and everyone.

Q: It is a known fact that a large number of astrological predictions have come true. Does this not prove that the stars rule our destiny ?

It we take all astrological predictions together, we have to admit that quite a mass of them have come true. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny. The stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed. They are a hieroglph, not a Force,-or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indicators.

Q: How is that in some cases astrological predictions fulfill themselves accurately up to a certain age and then no more come true ? In case of prophecies also some come true to the letter, others do not - they half fulfil or misfiere entirely.

Yes, that happens quite often, but it does not follow that the power of prediction is unreal or that the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance or coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfillment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only,, they are determined in part/only or else they are determined by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line one predicts accurately, otherwise not - or if the lines of power change, one's prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so.

Q: Is said that the motive power behind all the actions and endeavours of men is the search for happiness. Is this true ?

That is an easily made psychological proposition which can exist only by ignoring facts. If you say that it is the Ananda behind the veil which makes one act as a moving power, not as a "motive", that may be so, but that is a metaphysical, not a psychological generalisation. When a communist faces torture in a Nazi concentration camp, he is not doing it for the sake of Ananda or happiness, but for something else which makes him indifferent to Ananda or happiness or else compels him to face the loss of these things and even their very reverse, however painful it may be.

Q: But evidently most people are after happiness and make it the aim of their life ?

To say that all human beings are always wanting happiness untainted with sorrow is far too sweeping a generalisation. What can safely be admitted is that it is one very strong strain in human nature. But there are many men who are not after happiness and do not believe it is the true aim of life. And mark that it is the human physical consciousness only that seeks after happiness. The human vital tends rather to reject a happiness untainted by sorrow and to find it a monotonous boring condition. Even if it accepts it, after a time it kicks over the traces and goes to some new painful or risky adventure. The higher vital is ready to sacrifice happiness in order to satisfy its passions, search for power, ambition, fame or any other motive. If you say it is because of the happiness power, fame etc. give, that again is not universally true. Power can give anything else, but not happiness; it is something in its very nature arduous and full of difficulty to get, to keep or to use-speaking of course of power in the ordinary sense. A man may know he can never have fame in this life, but yet work in the hope of posthumous fame or on the chance of it. He may know that the satisfaction of his passion will bring him everything rather than happiness - suffering, Torture, destruction - yet he will follow his impulse. So also the mind as well as the larger vital is not bound by the pursuit of happiness. It can seek Truth rather or the victory of a cause. To reduce all into a single hard construction seems to be very poor psychology. Neither Nature nor the vast Sprit in things is so limited and one-tracked as that.

Q: Some say that even the wicked, the criminals, etc. sin because they are trying to find the self's happiness in the sins they commit. Is this true ?

This is really a very summary and misleading criminal psychology. To say that a Paris crook or Apache steals, swindles, murders for the happiness of stealing, swindling murdering, is a little startling. He does it for quite other reasons; he does it as his metier just as a doctor does his medical work. Can it always be said that the doctor does his work because of the happiness he finds in it ?

Q : Balzac, the famous French novelist, was of the opinion that indulgence in sex greatly hampers the high type of mental activity. According to him, "The man of genius is frigid. When he tries to lead both Hues, the intellectual life and the hue life, the man of genius dies, as Raphael died and Lord Byron." So also Hauelock Ellis, recognised as the world's greatest authority on sex, maintains that to increase artistic and menta! capacity and force it is necessary to restrain sexual activity. "The brain and the sexual organs," he says "are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigour and extreme sexual vigour, even though they may sometimes both appear at different periods in the same individual." We find this evidenced in the life of some great masters of art like Beethoven and Mozart, in whose life sexual indulgence phyed a much smaller part than in the life of an average man. This would seem to imply that it is necessary to conserve sexual energy for the energisartion and intencifi cation of higher intellectual and aesthetic life. How far is this veiw justifiable?

That is correct - the sex-energy can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of retas into eyas by Brahmacharya. Retas, the sex-fluid, consists of two elements, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged and the sexfluid is prevented from being spent away, it turns into o;as. The whole theory of Brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis. The European scientists generally pooh-poohed the idea, but now they are beginning to discover the same fact for themselves.

Q : What is the process by which retas is transformed into ojas?

The fundamental physical unit is the retas, in which the tejas, the heat and light and electricity in a man, is involved and hidden. All energy is thus latent in the retas. This energy may be either expended physically or conserved. All passion, lust, desire wastes the energy by pouring it, either in the gross form or a sublimated subtle form, out of the body. On the other hand, all self-control conserves the energies in the retas, and conservation always brings with it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess of energy must create a surplus which has to turn itself to some use other than the physical. According to the ancient theory, retas is;a/a or water, full of light and heat and electricity, in one word, of tejas. The excess of the retas turns first into heat or tapas which stimulates the whole system, and it is for this reason that all form of self-control and austerity are Called tapas or tapasya, because they generate the' heat or stimulus which is a source of powerful action and success; secondly, it turns to tejas proper, the light, the energy which is at the source of all knowledge; thridly, it turns to uidyut or electricity, which is at the basis of all forceful action whether intellectual or physical. In the uidyut again is involved the ojas, or pranasakti, the primal energy which proceeds from either.

Q:In modern times, especially in Europe, the phce of religion in life has not only been very much minimised and restricted but often religion has been violently attacked as a force making for retardation, oppresslion, superstition and ignorance. This revolt against religion has sought to keep science, philosophy and art, politics and practical life and euen ethics entirely immune to the influence of religion and its extreme form has tried to destroy religion altogether. To what extent is this indictment against religion justified ?

This aggressive indictment against religion in modern times has much to justify it, not in its conclusion but in its premiss-not that religion in itself must always be, but that historically and as a matter of fact the accredited religions and their hierarchs and exponents have too often been a force for retardation, have too often thrown their weight on the side of darkness, oppression and ignorance, and that it has needed a denial, a revolt of the oppressed human mind and heart to correct these errors and set religion right. Though we need not lay a too excessive stress on the superstitions, aberrations, violences, crimes even, which Churches and cults and creeds have favoured, admitted, sanctioned, supported or exploited for their own benefit, we have to note the fact that such a thing was possible.

Q: What is the explanation of so much evil perpetrated in the name of religion ?

The root of this evil is not in true religion itself, but in our ignorant human confusion of religion with a particular creed, sect, cult, religious society or Church. The human tendency to this error is extremely strong and the whole root of the historic insufficiency of religion as a guide and control of human society lies in this tendency. Churches and creeds have, for example, stood violently in the way of philosophy and science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo, and so generally misconducted themselves in this matter that philosophy and science had in self-defence to turn upon religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development; and this because men in the passion and darkness of their vital nature had chosen to think that religion was bound up with certain fixed intellectual conceptions about God and the world which could not stand scrutiny, and therefore scrutiny had to be put.down by fire and sword; scientific and philosophical truth had to be denied in order that religious error might survive. We see too that a narrow religious sprit often oppresses and impoverishes the joy and beauty of life, either from an intolerant asceticism or, as the Puritans attempted it, because they could not see that religious austerity is not the whole of religion, though it may be an important side of it, is not the sole ethico-religious approach to God, since love, charity, gentleness, tolerance, kindliness are also and even more divine, and they forgot or never knew that Goo is love and beauty as well as purity. In politics religion has often thrown itself on the side of power and resisted the coming of larger political ideals, because it was itself, in the form of a Church, supported by power and because it confused religion with the Church, or because it stood for a false theocracy, forgetting that true theocracy is the kingdom of God in man and not the kingdom of a Pope, a priesthood or a sacerdotal class. So too it has often supported a rigid and outworn social system, because it thought its own life bound up with social forms with which it happened to have been associated during a long portion of its own history and erroneously concluded that even a necessary change there would be a violation of religion and a danger to its existence. As if so mighty and inward a power as the religious sprit in man could be destroyed by anything so small as the change of a socialr.

Words of Sri Aurobindo.

By transformation I do not mean some change of the nature- I do not mean, for instance, sainthood or ethical perfection or yogic siddhis (like the Tantrik's) or a teranscendental (cinmaya) body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than that took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world. If anything short of that takes place or at least if a real beginning is not made on that basis, a fundamental progress towards this fulfillment, then my object is not accomplished. A partial realisation,"something mixed and invonclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life and yoga.

Light of realisation is not the same thing as Descent. Realisation by itseif does not necessarily transform the being as a whole; it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness at the top so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti- One mayh have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were. I have seen any number of instances of that. There must be a descent of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real transformation can take place. A light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change the mind or part of it in one way or another, but it need not change the vital nature; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge the vital movements or else silence and immobilise the vital being, but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was, or even leave in inert or shake its balance. And the descent of Light is not enough, it must be the descent of the whole higher consciousnes, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda. Moreover, the descent may be enough to liberate, but not to perfect, or it may be enough to make a great change in the inner being, while the outer remains an imperfect instrument, clumsy, sick or unexpressive- Finally transformation effected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramentalisation of the being. Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or another.

Transformation means that the higher consciousnes or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body - and if one keeps any connection with life, one has

At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's everactive mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cuitural machinery, an organised collective means for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. This new fullness of the means of life might be, by its power for a release from the incessant unsatisfied stress of his economic and physical needs, an opportunity for the full pursuit of other and greater aims surpassing the material existence, for the discovery of a higher truth and good and beauty, for the discovery of a greater and diviner spirit which would intervene and use life for a higher perfection of the being: but it is being used instead for the multiplication of new wants and an aggressive expansion of the collective ego. At the'same time Science has put at his disposal many potencies of the universal Force and has made the life of humanity materially one; but what uses this universal Force is a little human individual or communal ego with nothing universal in its light of knowledge or its movements, no inner sense or power which would create in this physical drawing together of the human world a true life-unity, a mental unity or a spiritual oneness. All that is there is a chaos of clashing mental ideas, urges of individual and collective physical want and need vital claims and desires, impulses of an ignorant life-push, hungers and calls for life satisfaction of individuals, classes, nations, a rich fungus of political and social and economic nostrums and notions, a hustling medley of slogans and panaceas for which men are ready to oppress and be oppressed, to kill and be killed, to impose them somehow or other by the immense and too formidable means placed at his disposal, in the belief that this is his way out to something ideal. The evolution of human mind and life must necessarily lead towards an increasing universality; but on a basis of ego and segmenting and dividing mind this opening to the universal can only create a vast pullulation of unaccorded ideas and impulses, a surge of enormous powers and desires, a chaotic mass of unassimilated and intermixed mental, vital and physical material of a larger existence which, because it is not taken up by a creative harmonising light of the Spirit, must welter in a universalised confusion and discord out of which it is impossible to build a greater harmonic life. Man has harmonised life in the past by'organised ideation and limitation; he has created societies based on fixed ideas or fixed customs, a fixed cultural system or an organic life-system, each with its own order; the throwing of all these into the melting-pot of a more and more intermingling life and a pouring in of ever new ideas and motives and facts and possibilities call for a new, a greater consciousness to meet and master the increasing potentialities of existence and harmonise them. Reason and Science can only help by standardising, by fixing everything into an artificially arranged and mechanized unity of material life. A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life.

..... there comes a moment when the body itself finds that there is nothing in the world which is so worth living for as this transformation; that there is nothing which can have as great an interest as this passionate interest of transforation. It is as though all the cells of the body were athirst for that Light which wants to manifest: they cry out for it, they find an intense joy in it and are sure of the Victory. This is the aspiration that I am trying to communicate to you, and you will understand that everything else in life is dull, insipid, futile, worthless in comprehension with that. We want an intergral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its ACTIVITIES. Formerly, when one spoke of transformation one meant solely the transformation of the inner consciousness. One tried to discover in oneself this deep consciousness and rejected the body and its ACTIVITIES like an encumbrance and a useless thing, in order to attend only to the inner movement. Sri Aurobindo declared that this was one enough; the Truth demanded that the material world should also participate in this transformation and become an expression of the deeper Truth. But when people heard this, many thought that it was possible to transform the body and its ACTIVITIES without bothering in the least about what was happening within- naturally this is not quite true. Before you can undertake. this work of physical transformation, which of all things is the most difficult, your inner consciousness must be firmly established, solidly established in the Truth, so that this transformation may be the final expression of the Truth - final for the moment at least. The starting-point of this transformation is receptivity, we have already spoken about it. That is the indispensable condition for obtaining the transformation. Then comes the change of the conscious- ness- This change of consciousness and its preparation have often been compared with the formation of the chicken in the egg: till the very last second the egg remains the same, there is no change, and it is only when the chicken is completely formed, absolutely alive, that itself makes with its little beak a hole in the shell and comes out. Something similar takes place at the moment of the change of consciousness. For a long time you have the impression that nothing is happening that your consciousness is same as usual, if you have an intense aspiration, you even feel a resistance, as though you were knocking against a wall which does not yield. But when you are ready within, a last effort-the packing in the shell of the being- and everything opens and you are projected into another consciousness.

The cardinal defect, that which has been always standing in the way and is now isolated in an extreme prominence, is seated or at least is at present concentrated in the lower vital being. I mean that part of the vital-physical nature with its petty and obstinate egoism which actuates the external human personality— that which supports its surface thoughts and dominates its habitual ways of feeling, character and action. I am not concerned here with the other parts of the being and I do not speak of anything in the higher mind, the psychic self or the higher and larger vital nature ; for, when the lower vital rises, these are pushed into the external personality. Whatever there may be in these higher parts, aspiration to the Truth, devotion or will to conquer the obstacles and the hostile forces, it cannot become integral, it cannot remain unmixed or unspoilt or continue to be effective so long as the lower vital and the external personality have not accepted the Light and consented to change.

It was inevitable that in the course of the sadhana these inferior parts of the nature should be brought forward in order that like the rest of the being they may make the crucial choice and either accept or refuse transformation. My whole work depends upon this movement ; it is the decisive ordeal of this yoga. For the physical consciousness and the material life cannot change if this does not change. Nothing that may have been done before, no inner illumination. experience, power or Ananda if of any eventual value, if this is not done. If the little external personality is to persist in retaining its obscure and limited, its petty and ignoble, its selfish and false and stupid human consciousness, this amounts to a flat negation of the work and the sadhana. I have no intention of giving my sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco, a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature. If, then, any sadak refuses in practice to admit this change or if he refuses even to admit the necessity for any change of his lower vital being and his habitual external personality, I am entitled to conclude that whatever his professions, he has not accepted either myself or my yoga.

I am well aware that this change is not easy, the dynamic will towards it does not come at once and is difficult to fix, and, even afterwards, the sadak often feels helpless against the force of habit. Knowing this, the Mother and myself have shown and are still showing sufficient patience in giving time for the true spirit to come up and form and act effectively in the external being of those around us. But if in anyone this part not only becomes obstinate, self-assertive or aggressive, but is supported and justified by the mind and will and tries to spread itself in the atmosphere, then it is a different and very serious matter.

The difficulty in the lower vital being is that it is still wedded to its old self and in revolt against the Light; it has not only not surrendered either to a greater-Truth of. to myself and the Mother, but it has up to now no such will and hardly any idea even of what true surrender is. When the lower vital assumes this attitude, it takes its stand upon a constant affirmation of the old personality and the past forms of the lower nature. Every time they are discouraged, it supports and brings them back and asserts its right to freedom,—the freedom to affirm and follow its own crude and egoistic ideas, desires, fancies, impulses or convenience whenever it

This new Title has been chosen by the Mother.