The Winds of Wonder

Her powers and personalities

The reference is to the following comment: “Sri Aurobindo in his book The Mother writes about the Purushottama seated in the heart of all creatures from the Gita and also about the sacrifice of the Supreme Shakti. about it. He is talking about the Mother (Para-prakriti, Transcendntal Shakti) in/as the Ignorance (Avidya, lower prakriti) but also about the (repeated) avatarhood of the Mother.”

Here is the entire paragraph in The Mother: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.”

From this passage one does not get the sense of “repeated” avatarhood of the Mother, nor from anywhere from the chapter describing the Mother’s Powers and Personalities. Here is the paraphrase of the relevant text.

…many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe.

• Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. — Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. — Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between human personality and the divine Nature.

• The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by the Supreme. Each of the worlds is one play of the Mahashakti. At the summit of this manifestation there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands unveiled eternal Power. Nearer to us are the worlds of the supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. But here are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from her source, of which the earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too is upheld by the Universal Mother, guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.

• The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation. She stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds. These Emanations are the various divine forms and personalities through which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhuthis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhuthis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence.

• The Mother descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of Ignorance, are herself in veiled power. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and greater love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.

• There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, — most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible.

There is a difference between avatars and embodiments or permanent incarnations.