Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

1. The Mother: Individual, Universal, Transcendent

Fragment ID: 19008

Averse from the Chandi on Mahalakshmi came tome a minute or two after the Mother began to meditate with me. Afterwards the Mother explained that three forms of Mahalakshmi appeared in the meditation in response to my invocation. The first, the Mother said, was the original (Overmental) form of Mahalakshmi, and the second was the traditional one. About the third, the Mother did not speak fully. The form was three-faced with something like a crown on top. Is there any tradition in India or outside of a three-faced form of Mahalakshmi? And what is the significance of the same goddess-personality of the Mother – Mahalakshmi – appearing in three successive forms?

The Mother told you all that she saw about the last form – it disappeared almost immediately. The first form was the true one, that which she wears on the Overmind Plane which is the home of the greater Gods – as soon as it touched your mind, it took the traditional form which is the one with which your mind is familiar. The third shape must be a symbolic one (not traditional) – it would seem to be a correspondent one on the Shakti side to the Trimurti, indicating the unity in difference of three powers in the Cosmic Consciousness – in it is the same manifestation in different forms,– the Overmind Power, the traditional Lakshmi and the One Power in the Mother here.

3 September 1936