Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His Published Prose Writings

Passages from The Mother [13]

“At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power” [p. 32]. Are we to understand that the Transcendent Mother stands above the Ananda plane? There would then be four steps of the Divine Shakti:

(1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.

(2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Sat-Chit-Ananda, where all beings move in an ineffable completeness.

(3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.

(4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.

Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is पर [para], the Supreme Transcendence is परात्पर [parātpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.

27 January 1932