"Supramental Consciousness and Human Evolution"
In one of these (letters), around 1926 or just after, she had an experience in which Sri Aurobindo pulled her out of her body. She found herself floating above, held by his hand and drawn rapidly a great distance and brought over to Pondicherry. And then, she says she was taken into a room where she met a beautiful lady.
Sri Aurobindo said, “This is the Mother and hereafter she will be responsible for your sadhana.” Later, many years later, when she came to the Ashram physically, she was taken around to some of the houses. She was taken to the house which is presently the Archives. She said, entering that space, she recognised it as the location where she was introduced to the Mother. It was where the Mother had stayed in the very early period of the Ashram, before they all shifted to the present main building of the Ashram.
So, these were some indications of that time when he formally gave the responsibility of the sadhana to the Mother as the Divine Shakti. He withdrew himself from direct contact, physically, but maintained that spiritual contact inwardly and, of course, directly on the spiritual level and indirectly through correspondence with all the sadhaks.
Often his writing would go on for eight hours at a time. It was an arrangement between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that one of them would always be awake.
So, in the daytime, while the Mother had to look after the affairs of the Ashram as well, he would sleep, and then, when she would go to retire, he would be awake through most of the night, during which the writing of letters would go on.
The intensity of the Spiritual, the Supramental Consciousness building upon him, around his body, was so great that it would be unbearable to most people. Strict instructions were given by the Mother that those who were working on the first floor, outside Sri Aurobindo’s room, were not to look at him directly. They had to come, do their work and go away avoiding looking across.
Although, there were some who could not avoid having a casual glance at least, and the image was always described as one of great divinity and beauty. During the time of the darshan - in those days three times in a year - they would both be meeting all the sadhaks together - physically.
When someone wrote that the gap between the February darshan and the August darshan is too great and they would like to have another darshan in between; Sri Aurobindo wrote back that, for him, it would be a significant delay in the work, because every time that there was a darshan, he had to reduce the intensity of the spiritual power in and around him, so that it could be bearable for the people who came to see him. So, it would have affected his work if another Darshan was added in between.
As you are familiar, he has described how he had “caught the Supramental by the tail”, in an indicative but almost joking manner. Having caught it, to create a constant pull to bring it down into the physical was the task that he had dedicated himself to. In his consciousness, the Supramental had already been established - in the mind, in the vital and to a great degree in the subtle-physical. By the time he left his body, even the subtle-physical was fully transformed by the Supramental.
The last part of its establishment in the physical consciousness was the great challenge that they (Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) worked for. And it is here, that Sri Aurobindo makes a very important distinction - which is useful for us to understand - between the Overmind and the Supermind.
When he first wrote about the Supermind in the Arya, he said his experience and view of the Supermind was from the range of the mind consciousness, as distinct from, later the physical consciousness, and we will see the difference.
When he experienced the descent of the Overmind, it was seen as the lower working of the Supermind. But later, when that consciousness was established in the physical, and the resistance of the physical had to be overcome, then he said it became clear that the Overmind was not the lower working of the Supermind, but there was a gap.
The Supermind proper, which he referred to as the Gnostic Consciousness, Gnostic Supermind, Gnostic Knowledge, involved a distinction. The distinction is this: the Supermind proper is a separate grade of consciousness which is one of 'Oneness' - the 'Oneness' indivisible. If it were to manifest and become the world directly, it would have created a world which was Divine from the beginning, which would have never experienced the division of consciousness, which would have never experienced the involution, the loss into Inconscience and the emergence back through evolution.
In order to be able to experience division, it was then necessary for the Supermind to take a step down where the Overmind was the first entry. A step down to the division, but in the Overmind; and the highest part of the Overmind is still an experience of Oneness, but a Oneness that accepts the possibility of division.
