One of the few persons in modern times who could fully appreciate the greatness of a Divine transformation of humanity was Sri Aurobindo. While most of the pundits and orthodox religious leaders of India have regarded the writings of the Siddhas, with their claims of physical immortality as the product of imagination, Sri Aurobindo attempted for forty years to realize such a state. While he never claimed to be a part of the 18 Siddha Tradition, as will be seen below, it is evident that the transformative experiences of Thirumoolar, Ramalinga, Aurobindo and the Mother (Aurobindo's chief disciple) were all of the same nature. His contemporary accounts may therefore help one to appreciate the claims of the Siddhas.

Sri Aurobindo's inspired vision was expressed in The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, and his experiences in self transformation were expressed in his Letters on Yoga and the epic poem, Savitri (Aurobindo, 1935 [a], 1935 [b], 1969, 1950 [a]). The latter two works, in particular, describe in detail the many stages and difficulties involved in such a transformation. Far from being an end in itself, physical immortality, represented to Aurobindo the next stage in humanity's evolution. It was to be the result of spiritual transformation: the culmination of a process in which a Divine "Supramental" consciousness would descend into the lower planes of consciousness, even into the inconscient levels of Matter.

Aurobindo's descriptions of this transformative process and its results are strikingly similar to those of both the Eighteen Siddhas and Ramalinga described in earlier chapters, particularly in the references to the "golden dust" and "golden body". His deep love for humanity and his orientation towards the physical world and action are also similar to those of the Siddhas. This commonality of experience and orientation may provide us with some guidelines for our own discipline and lifestyles, to be explored in the next chapter.

Aurobindo Chose was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. He studied in England from the age of five to the age of 20. Returning to India in 1892, Aurobindo worked as a teacher of French and English and later as the private secretary of the Prince of Baroda. He married in 1901. However, in the intervening years most of his energies wore taken up by the fledging Indian independence movement, for which he had become one its principal leaders. He was charged by the British with subversion and jailed. but acquitted after a trial for lack of evidence. (Satprem, 1975, p. 27, 149-150)

Meeting with Yogi Lele

In the midst of all these political activities, on December 30th, 1907, Aurobindo met a yogi named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. It was the first time he had met a yogi intentionally. He said to Lele: "I want to do Yoga but for work, for action, not for sannyasa (renouncing the world) and nirvana. "(Aurobindo, 1972, p. 349). The two men spent three days together in a single room. Lele told him to "Sit in meditation, but do not think, look only at your mind you will see thoughts coming into it before they can enter throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence." (Aurobindo, 1972. p. 132). He later recorded: "The first result was a series of tremendously powerful experiences and radical changes of consciousness which I had never intended.. and which were quite contrary to my own ideas. for they made me see with a stupendous intensity the world as a cinema topographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahma." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 127)

"In the enormous spaces of the self the body now seemed only a wandering shell." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 132)

"It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought. unstained by any mental or vital movement.. there was no ego, no real world only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialized shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That featureless, relationsless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realization or something glimpsed somewhere above. - no abstraction. - it was positive, the only positive reality - although not a spatial physical world. pervading. occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial... What it (this experience) brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an infinity of release and freedom." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 132)

Aurobindo had entered into the state of "Nirvikalpa samadhi" or "That" of the Vedanta and Hindu sacred literature, or what the Buddhists referred to as "Nirvana", "liberation", the final goal of mystical traditions around the world, which so few ever attain, even after years of arduous effort. But this end point was to be just the beginning of much higher experiences. He records: "I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all... in the end it began to disappear into a greater Super- consciousness from above... The aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no re-imprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth... Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realization, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale. "(Aurobindo, 1972, p. 154). "Nirvana cannot be at once the ending of the Path with nothing beyond to explore... it is the end of the lower Path through the lower Nature and the beginning of the Higher Evolution." (Aurobindo, 1969 (a) p. 71)

Aurobindo continued in this state while editing his daily newspaper, organizing clandestine meetings and addressing political rallies. Before the first such rally, when he expressed to Lele his hesitation to speak, Lele "asked me to pray, but I was so absorbed in the Silent Brahman consciousness that I could not pray. He replied that it did not matter, he and some others would pray and I had simply to go to the meeting and make Namaskar (bow) to the audience as Narayan (the Lord) and wait and speech would come to me from some other source than the mind" (Purani, 1958, p. 120).

Aurobindo followed these instructions and "the speech came as though it were dictated. And ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity have so come to me from the same source above the brain mind" (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 83). This was his first experience with the Superconscient. His speech was wonderful: "Try to realize the strength within you, try to bring it forward; so that everything you do may be not your own doing but the doing of that Truth within you... because it is not you. it is something within you. What can all these tribunals, what can all the powers of the world do to that which is within you, that Immortal, that Unborn and Undying One, whom the sword cannot Pierce, whom the fire cannot burn?... Him the jail cannot confine and the gallows cannot end. What is there that you can fear when you are conscious of him who is within you?" (Aurobindo, 1922, p. 22)

Aurobindo was arrested by the British police a second time at dawn on May 4, 1908. It was during the daily exercise period in the yard of the Alipore jail that a series of spiritual experiences brought about a change in his consciousness. He began to see the Lord in everyone. In the iron cage in the courtroom during the trial, which lasted six months, the same vision followed him: 'I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the Prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there and smiled. 'Now do you fear? 'he said, I am in all men and overrule their actions and their words'." (Aurobindo, 1922, p. 58)

In Quest or "the Secret"

After his release from the Alipore jail, Aurobindo took up his revolutionary work again. Through his experiences in the Alipore jail, he had attained an "overmind consciousness" wherein the separate truths of existence - such as Peace, Love, Beauty, Power, Knowledge, Will, etc. - are experienced fully, but independent of one another. But the limitations of this consciousness were clearly seen too. In it, one experiences but one truth at a time. He sees all but sees all from its own viewpoint" (Aurobindo, 1958. p. 128). By its very structure, the overmind consciousness must divide the unit, and the more it descends into the lower mental planes, the more it becomes fragmented. What was needed, then, was a truth of the body and the earth, not just a truth of the spirit and heavens. Another Power was needed - one which could resist the downward, divisive power to which human nature was subject. Aurobindo began to search forthe key to a true life down here. "Life, not a remote silent or high uplifted ecstatic Beyond-Life alone, is the field of our Yoga "(Aurobindo, 1976, p. 10 1). Aurobindo said: 'It is clear that Mind has not been able to change human nature radically. You can go on changing human institutions infinitely and yet the imperfections will break through all your institutions... It must be another power that can not only resist but overcome that downward pull" (Satprem, 1975, p. 228).

Aurobindo referred to this hidden power as "the secret", the Supramental Consciousness".

In February, 1910, less than one year after his release from jail, he was warned that he was about to be arrested again and deported to the Andaman Islands. The Voice spoke to him: "Go to Chandernagore". He left ten minute later on a boat down the Ganges.

At Chandernagore, in 1910 he found "the secret" for which he had been searching. The circumstances surrounding its discovery were never related by him. However, from his later writings it is apparent that to reach it, he had to go through a living hell, because one could not ascend higher than one had descended. "On each height we conquer we have to turn to bring down its power and its illumination into the lower mortal movement". For if the Divinity is to descend into us, transforming our human nature, its progress will consist not so much in our rising up as in our pouring out all that holds us back, all that obscures. Cleansing of the subconscient, with au its fears, desires, pain and distortions becomes of primary importance. At the lowest level of human consciousness lies the subconscient, which is the result of the evolution of life in Matter. It contains all of the habits of life, including those of disease and death. At Chandernagore, Sri Aurobindo reached the final depths of the physical subconscient. As he said: "No, it is not with the Empryrena (heavenly) that lam busy, I wish it were. It is rather with the opposite end of things." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 222)

"At the same time he reached the upper frontier of the overmind where the 'great colored waves' merge with the white Light", Aurobindo touched correspondingly the black rock down below:

"I have been digging deep and long,

Mid a horror of filth and mire...

A Voice cried 'Go where none have gone!

Dig deeper, deeper yet

Till thou reach the grim foundation stone

And knock at the keyless gate." (Aurobindo, 1946, p. 6, 8)

He found himself at the bottom of the pit of the "inconscient" Matter when, without dissolution:

"He broke into another Space and Time." (Satprem, 1975,p. 259)

"A fathomless sealed astonishment of light." (Aurobindo, 1952 (a), p. 40)

"A grand reversal of the Night and Day

All the worlds values changed." (Aurobindo, 1950 (a), p.49)

"The high meets the low, all in a single plan." (Aurobindo,1950 (a), p. 615)

He broke through to the Supramental, which is the very basis of all matter, experiencing an illumination in the very cells of the body. The "Secret" of the transformation was this: the consciousness above is the consciousness below.

"They must enter into the last infinite if they want to reach the last infinite." (Aurobindo, 1969, p. 393) "Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven

They are kept from their oneness by enchanted fears (Aurobindo, 1950 (a), p. 768)

The "Golden" Supramental

The descriptions of the "supramental" are reminiscent of similar descriptions by the Eighteen Siddhas of soruba samadhi and the "golden samadhi", and by Ramalinga with the "golden body". Aurobindo's chief disciple, "the Mother", after her first experience of it, wrote:

"There was this impression of power, of warm the, of gold: it was not fluid, it was like a glow of dust. And each one of these things (they cannot be called particles nor fragments, not even points, unless one takes pointing the mathematical sense, a point which does not take up space) it was like vivid gold, a warm gold dust - one cannot say it was brilliant, one cannot say it was dark, nor was it made of light as we understand it: a crowd of tiny little points of gold, nothing but that. I would have said that they touched my eyes, my face. And with a formidable power. At the same time, a feeling of plenitude, the peace of all power. It was rich, it was full. It was movement at its fastest, infinitely more rapid than anything one can imagine, and at the same time it was absolute peace, perfect tranquility." "...it gives the feeling of a perfect immobility. It is absolutely indescribable, but it is this which is the Origin and the Support of the whole terrestrial evolution... And I have noticed that in that state of consciousness the Movement exceeds the force or the power which concentrates the cells to make of them an individual form." (Satprem, 1975, p. 28-81). This description is also reminiscent of that most pregnant of the phrases of the Siddhas: "Be Still and know that I am God". For immobility was the basis of the supramental power.

Pondicherry

After two months in Chandernagore, Aurobindo heard the Voice again asking him to "Go to Pondicherry". Shortly thereafter he left secretly by ship, narrowly escaping the British police.

Pondicherry was a French colony on the southeastern coast of India. It was during that period, a very quiet, seemingly dead backwater. It was the last place one would expect a spiritual revolution to begin. However, it had a fitting past. A French professor there, Jouveau Dubreuil, discovered that centuries ago it had been called Vedpuri, being a center of Vedic studies in the south, and that by tradition, the Siddha Agastyar was its guardian. He discovered that the once Vedic university was situated in the exact spot where Sri Aurobindo ultimately located his permanent residence. The current Tamil name, Puducheri (Now Town), went back several centuries and had been referred to as Poduka by the Greek, Ptolemy, in the second century A.D. and by earlier writers. (lyengar, 1972, p. 676)

Aurobindo had a difficult time during his first years in Pondicherry. A few of his revolutionary followers came and stayed with him, waiting for him to resume his activities in that field. But Aurobindo had other matters to attend to. When urged one day to resume his political struggle he quickly replied that what was needed was "not a revolt against the British Government, which anyone could easily manage... (but a revolt against the whole of universal Nature." (Purani, 1959, P. 45)

Aurobindo read the Vedas, the ancient sacred writings in their original form for the first time during the first few years in Pondicherry. He recognized in them experiences which he had had himself, and translated parts of them in light of his experience. But unlike the writers of the Vedas, the ancient rishis, it was not personal self realization that Aurobindo sought.

In 1910, Paul Richard, a French writer came to Pondicherry. He came a second time in 1914 expressly to see Aurobindo, and then proposed that they both start a bilingual monthly philosophical journal, the Arya, or Review of the Grand Synthesis. From 1914 to 1920 Aurobindo published this journal as well as most of his written work -- nearly five thousand pages, writing several books at a time. These included: The Life Divine, which give his fundamental philosophical vision for man's evolution; The Synthesis of Yoga, which describes his integral yoga, and contrasts it to other yogic disciplines; Essays on the Gita, which interprets the

Bhagavad Gita in the light of Aurobindo's vision of the descent of the "supramental consciousness"; The Secret of the Veda; The Ideal of Human Unity; and The Human Cycle. The last three described future possibilities of human societies.

The ideas in this works came in a torrent of inspiration, without effort, according to Aurobindo:

"I have made no endeavor in writing. I have simply left the higher Power to work and when it did not work, I made no effort at all. It was in the old intellectual days that I had sometimes tried to force things and not after I started development of poetry and prose by yoga. Let me remind you also that when I was writing the 'Arya' and also whenever I write these letters or replies I never think... it is out of a silent mind that I write whatever comes ready shaped from above." Roy, 1952, p. 247)

In 1920 he laid down his pen. The final edition of the Arya was published. During the next thirty years, his writing was limited to an enormous amount of correspondence, and to the writing of the epic poem, Savitri, of 23,813 lines, which summarizes most vividly his vision of humanity's evolution, his labors with the subconscient and inconscient, as well as his experiences with the higher realms of consciousness. (Satprem, 1975, p. 294)

The Crisis of Transformation

Aurobindo saw humanity at a crossroads in its evolution: "If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation,- mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceed sit, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermind and superman hood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the spirit manifesting in Nature." (Aurobindo, 1935 (a), p. 109)

We have reached, according to Aurobindo, "a crisis of transformation" (Aurobindo, 1949, p. 292), which is "as crucial as must have been the crisis which marked the appearance of life in Matter or the crisis which marked the appearance of mind in Life" (Satprem, 1975, p 308). Unlike the earlier crises however, mankind can be the "conscious collaborators of our own evolution". (Satprem, 1975, p. 308)

For Aurobindo, however, it was not to be our human forces which would bring about the transformation, but an increasingly conscious surrender to the Divine Force above. The limitations of the human mind, vital and physical nature were too great. With regards to the physical body, Aurobindo said: "In the spiritual tradition the body has been regarded as an obstacle, incapable of spiritualization or transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfillment in the supreme or to the dissolution of its individual being in the Supreme. But while this conception of the role of the body in our destiny is suitable enough for a sadhana (spiritual discipline) that sees earth only as afield of the ignorance and earth-life as a preparation for a saving withdrawal... it is insufficient for a sadhana which conceives of a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here. If a total transformation of the being is our aim. a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it,, without that no full divine life on earth is possible." (Aurobindo, 1952 (c), p. 43)

Supramentalized matter would respond to the conscious will and thus manifest the qualities of the spirit: immortality, malleability, lightness, beauty, luminosity and bliss. There would also be significant physiological changes: "Transformation implies that all this purely material arrangement will be replaced by concentrations of force, each having a different mode of vibration; instead of organs there will be centers of conscious energy moved by the conscious will. No stomach, no heart any longer, no circulation, no lungs; all this disappears and gives place to a play of vibrations representing what these organs are symbolically. " (Satprem, 1975, p. 312). The body would be made of "concentrated energy which obeys the will" rather than being "a little soul carrying corpse". (Satprem, 1975, p. 313)

'The change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial movement, the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a consequence." (Aurobindo, 1935 (a) p. 1009)

Aurobindo was no mere theoretician or writer of science fiction. He wrote on the basis of his experience, and his experiences with "the transformation" proceeded through three distinct phases: first, a bright phase, from 1920 to 1926, in which many miraculous powers and phenomena manifested through the power of the supramental consciousness which Aurobindo had first experienced in 1910; secondly, a phase of seclusion, in which Aurobindo and his chief disciple, the Mother, Mirra Richard, tested on their own bodies the effects of many experiments, working at the love of the subconscient and inconscient from 1926 to 1940; and a third phase, in which the field of his efforts encompassed the whole of humanity and the world, from 1940 to the present.

At the end of the first phase, on November 24, 1926, he suddenly ended the manifestation of miracles and powers and announced his retirement into solitude. The Ashram was officially founded under the guidance of the Mother. I-le declared at this time: "I have no intention of giving my sanction to a new edition of the old jiasco. a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature." (Satprem, 1975, p. 322)

From 1926 to 1940 he and the Mother experimented with fasting, sloop, food, laws of nature and habits, testing on their own bodies at the cellular level and subconscient. It was a race against time, not unlike what the Siddhars described in their use of Kaya Kalpa herbs to prolong the life long enough forthe more subtle spiritual forces to complete the divination. "Fundamentally", said the Mother, -the question is to know, in this race towards the transformation which of the two will reach first, the one who wants to transform the body in the image of the divine Truth or the old habit in the body of gradually decomposing" (Satprem, 1975, p. 330). The work proceeded at a level that Aurobindo called "the cellular mind" "an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles" "this body mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of I he most precious instruments of the stabilization of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature." (Aurobindo, 1969 (a), p. 346)

To prepare the cells, mental silence, vital peace, cosmic consciousness were pre-requisites to permit the physical and cellular consciousness to enlarge and universalize itself. But then it became apparent that "the body is everywhere", and that one could not transform anything without transforming everything.

"I have been digging deep and long Mid a horror of filth and mire A bed for the gold river's song A home forthe deathless fire...

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one..." (Aurobindo,1952, p. 6)

Aurobindo and the Mother found that complete transformation is not possible for the individual, unless there is a minimum transformation by all.

"To help humanity out", remarked Aurobindo, "it was not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually, (because) even when the Light is ready to descend it cannot come to stay till the lower plane is also ready to bear the pressure of the Descent." (Roy, 1952, p. 25 1)

"If one wants to do the work singly", said the Mother, "it is absolutely impossible to do it totally, because every physical being, however complete it be. even though it be of an altogether superior kind, even if it be made for an altogether special Work, is never but partial and limited. It represents only one truth, one law -and the full transformation cannot be realized through it alone, through a single body... so that if one wants to have a general action, at least a minimum number of physical beings is necessary". (Satprem, 1975, p. 350)

The Third Phase

With this realization, the period of individual work ended in 1940, and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother began the third phase of their work of transformation. During this phase the orientation was towards a global transformation. "This Ashram has been created... not forthe renunciation of the world but as a center and a field forthe evolution of another kind and form of life. " (Aurobindo, 1969 (a), p. 823). It was organized so as to be open to all types of activities of a creative nature, as well as all types of individuals, men, women and children, of all social classes.

Activity in the world was a primary means: "The spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of Yoga... It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine". (Aurobindo, 1950 (b), p. 10)

"Each one of you", said the Mother, "represents one of the difficulties which must be conquered for the transformation. And this makes many difficulties It is even more than a difficulty; I believe I have told you before that each one represents an impossibility to be resolved,- and when all these impossibilities are resolved, the Work will be accomplished "...and 'You do not any longer do your yoga for yourself alone, you do the yoga for everybody, without wanting to, automatically"..."Accepting life, he (the seeker of the integral yoga) has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more the nature of a battle than others'' - but this is not only an individual battle, its a collective war waged over a considerable coutry. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often hefinds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe." (Aurobindo, 1935 (b), p. 87)

The Dilemma of the evolutionary leaders and the "atmospheric gulf""

This third phase grew out of a dilemma which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother tried to resolve at the end of the second phase. Faced with the collective resistance of the subconscient and inconscient, they questioned whether they should work out an individual self transformation in isolation from others, and then later return to help humanity, as its evolutionary leaders. They decided against this strategy for in Aurobindo's words, it would result in an "atmospheric gulf" between them and their follow humanity (Aurobindo, 1935 (b), p. 414). Notwithstanding their opinion that such a strategy was not feasible, Aurobindo also expressed a somewhat conflicting opinion, in saying: "It may well be that. once started, the (supramental) endeavor may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage,. it may be that it will take long centuries of effort to come into some kind of permanent birth. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swift gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the new birth, a rapid conversion, a transformation that in its luminous moment figures like a miracle. Even when the first decisive change is reached, it is certain that all humanity will not be able to rise to that level. There cannot fail to be a division into those who are able to live on the spiritual level and those who are only able to live in the light that descends from it into the mental level And below these too there might still be a great mass influenced from above but not yet ready for the light. But even that would be a transformation and a beginning far beyond anything yet attained." (Aurobindo, 1949, p. 332)

Is there a significant difference between such an inevitable "division" and the "atmospheric gulf? If not, then this was not the reason why Sri Aurobindo and The Mother did not bring down the supramental" into their own body and fix it there. Furthermore, might not the attainment of the "golden body", by the Eighteen Siddhas, by Ramalinga Swami, and by the Chinese Taoist "Ta Lo Chin lision" (Golden Immortals) be perhaps the early phase of a long collective transformation of all humanity? (Da Lieu, 1979, p. 135)

In an effort to try to resolve these issues, this author visited Pondicherry and Vadalur as this book was nearing completion. lie recalled a quotation seen many years ago wherein the Mother and/ or Aurobindo said in effect that "what they were trying to attain had already been attained by Ramalinga Swami nearby barely 100 years ago. " In earlier visits to the Aurobindo Ashram in September 1972 and March 1973, the author had attempted to meet with the Mother to present to her a book on the 18 Siddhas and to seek answers to questions on the relationship between Aurobindo's 'supramental transformation" and that of the 18 Siddhas. The Mother was in seclusion during these visits, and so the questions were loft hanging.

Unknown to the author, similar questions were being posed by T.R. Thulasiram, an inmate of the Aurobindo Ashram since 1969, and its longtime public auditor and accountant. On July 4 and 5, 1990, the author met with T.R. Thulasiram in Pondicherry and learned that he had published a two volume work, Arat Perum Jothi and Deathless Body, in 1980, which documents his exchanges with the Mother on the subject of Ramalinga as well as what all Aurobindo had written about Ramalinga.

In his exhaustive study, Thulasiram observed: "Sri Aurobindo came to believe in the later part of his life that a few Yogis had achieved supramental transformation as a personal Siddhi maintained by Yoga-Siddhi and not as dharma of nature". (Thulasiram, 1980, P. XI)

On July 11, 1970 the Mother read the letter of Thulasiram sent through Satprem, the Mother's secretary. Attached to Thulasiram's letter was an extract from Ramalinga's writings in which he described the transformation of his physical body into a body of light. According to Satprem, "She had no doubt as to the authenticity of his experiences. She liked especially the way the Swami calls this light 'The Grace-Light' and said that this corresponds to Her own experience. To be more precise, the Mother said that the Grace-Light is not the Supramental Light but one aspect of it, or rather one activity of the Supramental. She said that it is quite likely that a number of individuals, known or unknown, have had similar experiences throughout the ages and even now. The only difference is that now instead of an individual possibility it is a collective possibility - this is precisely Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's work, to establish as a terrestrial fact and possibility for all, the supramental consciousness." (28-7-70; as published in "Arut", a Tamil Journal of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in its August 1970 issue, Thulasiram, 1980, p. 900). Thulasiram was unable to obtain any further clarification from the Mother to the numerous questions raised in his letter. He also has written that "Satprem mistook his (Ramalinga's) dematerialization for death and wrongly reported of this as death to the Mother." (Thulasiram, 1989). The Mother too left or withdrew from her body in November 1973 before these questions could be answered. However, Thulasiram's fascinating study, too voluminous to reproduce here, provides much convincing evidence that the transformative experiences of Thirumoolar, Ramalinga, Aurobindo and the Mother were all of the same nature. The "golden hue" which Aurobindo manifested in passing was akin to the "golden body" of immortality referred to by Ramalinga and the 18 Siddhas.

The Passing

Towards the end of November, 1950, Sri Aurobindo began to show symptoms of uraemia, (a blood disease) which had reoccurred from time to time for a number of years. In contrast to earlier occasions, however, he indicated that he would not use, his yogic force to cure it. When asked why, he replied: "Can't explain, you won't understand" (lyengar, 1972, p. 1328). On December 4, the symptoms vanished magically. But late that night it was clear that he was withdrawing himself purposefully. At 1:26 A.M. on December 5, 1950, in the presence of the Mother and a few disciples he attained "mahasamadhi" (the conscious exit from the body).

Although it was first announced that he was to be buried in the afternoon of December 5, it was decided to postpone this until the body showed signs of decomposition. There was speculation that he might return, so life like did he remain. The body had taken on a new lustre, "a luminous mantle of bluish golden hue around him" as described by the Mother. Many others also left accounts of having seen the golden lustre about him. (lyengar, 1972, p. 1333-34). For more than four days the body remained intact, with the gold tint persisting. On December 8th, the Mother asked Sri Aurobindo in their occult meeting place to resuscitate, to return to life, but he answered according to her testimony: "I have left this body purposefully. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first Supramental body built in the Supramental Way."... "The lack of receptivity of the earth and men" said the Mother on December 8, "is mostly responsible forthe decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding his body". On December 9, in the morning, after more than 100 hours, the body began to show its first signs of decomposition, and it was interred in the evening in the Ashram courtyard. (lyengar, 1972,p.1337)

Sri Aurobindo's writings continue to provide us with a vision for our collective evolution and important indicators for every individual as to how to bring about a Divine transformation of life as we know it. Sri Aurobindo's orientation towards "the world" and the commonality of his experience with that of the Siddhas, can provide us with some valuable and practical guidelines, as we will see in the final chapter.