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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Supramental transformation

15 May 1957

"There are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely conscious frame and instrument, a conscious sign and seal and power of the spirit. As it grows in this perfection, the force and extent of its dynamic action and its response and service to the spirit must increase, the control of the spirit over it also must grow and the plasticity of its functioning both in its developed and acquired parts of power and in its automatic responses down to those that are now purely organic and seem to be the movements of a mechanic inconscience. This cannot happen without a veritable transformation and a transformation of the mind and life and very body is indeed the change to which our evolution is secretly moving and without this transformation the entire fullness of a divine life on earth cannot emerge. In this transformation the body itself can become an agent and a partner. It might indeed be possible for the spirit to achieve a considerable manifestation with only a passive and imperfectly conscious body as its last or bottommost means of material functioning, but this could not be anything perfect or complete. A fully conscious body might even discover and work out the right material method and process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body...."

The Supramental Manifestation, pp. 15-16 [new p. 107][old p. 106]

Mother, will the transformation of the body come after the transformation of the mind and vital, or will it follow spontaneously?

Usually this kind of transformation proceeds from above downwards, not from below upwards.

Obviously, if you are a thorough-going materialist, you will say that it is the development of the form which brings out new capacities; but still, this is not quite correct, it is not exactly like this that things usually happen, and I challenge you to transform your body before your mind has been transformed. Just try, let us see!

You cannot move a finger, say a word, walk one step without the mind's intervention; so with what instrument are you going to transform your body if your mind is not already transformed?

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 09, pp. 105-06