3 The Sunlit Path There are two paths, Sri Aurobindo used to say, the path of effort and the sunlit path. The path of effort is well known. It is the one that has presided over our entire mental life, because we try to reach for something we do not have or think we do not have. We are full of wants, of painful holes, of voids to be filled. But the void never gets filled. No sooner is it filled that another one opens up, drawing us into yet another pursuit. We are like an absence of something that can never find its presence, except in rare flashes, which vanish immediately and seem to leave an even greater void. We may say that we lack this or that, but we really lack

Acknowledgments We wish to extend our gratitude and sincere appreciation to The Foundation for World Education, which has made the printing of this book possible. The Foundation was created by the late Mrs. Eleanor Montgomery, who was a friend and a devotee of the Mother. Our sincere thanks also to Eric Hughes, whose careful and professional proofreading of the manuscript and his love of the work have given the English polish this book deserves. Page-194

Man is a transitional being; he is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process. —Sri Aurobindo ON THE WAY TO SUPERMANHOOD OTHER BOOKS BY SATPREM Mother, a biography in 3 volumes: 1.The Divine Materialism (1980) 2.The New Species (1983) 3.The Mutation of Death (forthcoming) The Mind of the Cells, essay (1982) Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, essay (1984) MOTHER'S AGENDA 1951-1973

2 The Great Process The secret of a circle is in the very next circle, as the secret of the arrow is in the goal it pursues, and if we could retrace our steps to the Master Archer, we would have the secret of secrets, the central point that determines this circle and all circles, the goal of all goals. But the pursuit is said to be a long one, and we must go back one step at a time, from the tool to the Hand that guides the tool, since we ourselves started out by being that tool: a little vital antenna groping around a self of life before discovering itself as a moth or a millipede, a little mental antenna quivering inexplicably around a nimble self before discoveri

11 The Change of Power BUT, in truth, this Harmony of the new world is not expressed by great music or ecstatic joys. It is far more discreet and far more efficient-maybe we should say far more demanding. There is but one Harmony, as there is one Consciousness and one earthly body, which are those of the greater Self, but this Harmony and Consciousness are unveiled a little at a time, as we grow and the scales fall from our eyes, and their effects are different, depending at what level we grasp them. Harmony chants high above, and it is grand and sublime, but it has chanted for millenia and ages without changing much in the world and the hearts of men. And

10 Harmony We might be tempted to say that these are fantasies, unbelievable miracles. But in fact it is all very simple. There are no miracles. There is a vast Harmony which governs the world with a precision and delicacy as faultless in the meeting of atoms and the cycle of flowering and the return of migrating birds as in the meeting of men and the unfolding of events at a particular juncture. There is a vast, unique movement we thought we were separated from because we had built our little mental turrets on the frontier of our comprehension and black dotted lines on the softness of a great earthly hill, as others had built their hunting grounds, and the sea gulls, t

References & Notes Most quotations from Sri Aurobindo refer to the complete edition of his works in 30 volumes (the Centenary Edition) and are indicated by the volume number followed by the page. Reference is made in particular to the following volumes: 5- Collected Poems 15- The Ideal of Human Unity 17- The Hour of God 20- The Synthesis of Yoga 26- On Himself 28- Savitri 29- Savitri 1.Savitri, 28:256. 2.Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 28:370. 3.Sri Aurobindo, The Hour of God, 17:1. 4.The Synthesis of Yoga, 20:82. 5.Sri Aurobindo, "Musa Spiritus," 5:589. 6.Sri Aurobindo, "Journey's End," 5:570. 7.This as

1 The Mental Fortress Our difficulties always stem from the belief that we alone remedy them. As long as our intellectual power (or inadequacy) does not play a role and our greater or lesser capacities are not actively involved, we feel that our endeavor is doomed to failure. Such is the deep-seated belief of mental man. We know its results all too well. But even if they were flawless within their own scope, they would still conceal a supreme flaw, which is to bring in only what is contained in our own intelligence or muscles-except when life or happenstance frustrates our plans. In other words, our mental existence is a closed system. Nothing gets into it but w

7 The Fire of the New World But what is this new consciousness that suddenly appeared in the year of grace 1969 of our evolution? (There may have been many other years of grace before, now buried under the rubble of the earth, and other human cycles that reached the point we have now reached and were destroyed perhaps for the very same reasons that threaten us today. Are we the topmost crest of the great evolutionary wave or simply the nth repetition of an attempt that has taken place many times before, here or in other universes?) This new consciousness may not be so new after all, but it became new for us and entered the field of practical realizations the ve

14 The Victory Over Death The seeker has followed step by step the process of demechanization. Degree after degree, he has unraveled and cleared the various levels of entanglement that prevented the free flow of Harmony. He is no longer caught up in the mental machinery or the vital machinery; to a certain extent, he is no longer caught up in the subconscious machinery. The gray elf is still there, but like a shadow on a movie screen, a lingering memory of pain, a sort of old but still sensitive wound. It really no longer has any hold, except through that shadow,, which taints joy and leaves a dull feeling of uneasiness in the depths, an unfathomable something st