WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The three approaches to transformation

4 March 1967

This problem of transformation, I see more and more clearly that there are three approaches to it, three ways of proceeding, and to be complete the three must be combined.

One, naturally the most important one, is the way that may be called "spiritual", which is that of contact with the Consciousness--Love-Consciousness-Power, yes, it is that; it is these three aspects: the supreme Love-Consciousness-Power, and the contact, the identification: to render all the material cells capable of receiving That and expressing That--to be That.

Of all the means, this is the most powerful, and the most indispensable.

There is the occult way, which makes all the intermediary worlds intervene. There is a very detailed knowledge of all the powers and personalities, all the intermediary regions, and it uses all that. It is there that one makes use of the divinities of the Overmind. This is in the second way. Shiva, Krishna, all the aspects of the Mother form part of this second way.

And then there is the higher intellectual approach, which is the projection of a spirit transcending the scientific, which seizes the problem from below, and which has its importance also. From the viewpoint of detailed handling, this approach diminishes the approximations, brings a more direct and precise action.

If the three can be combined, then evidently the thing will go faster.

Without the first nothing is possible, without it the others are even illusory: they lead nowhere, you turn round and round indefinitely. But if you clothe the first with the other two, then I think the action becomes much more precise and direct and rapid.

This is the result of the "studies" these days.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, p. 60