If there has to be the divine manifestation, the supramental Mahashakti must descend and work in the cosmic-terrestrial process. The four powers described by Sri Aurobindo in The Mother belong to this Overmental creation, with the Purusha aspects present only in the background. Unless they work in fullness and harmony the higher cannot come and operate here. These four in us are: understanding, life-dynamism, the sense of love and joy and beauty, and the skill in work, our capacity to attend to minutiae and essentials, they all attaining perfection by which the will in the physical develops, each of the four characterising a certain trait in us, defining our swabhāva. That is how the soul in us grows. In fact it is the soul, the divine element residing in us, who becomes an alchemic agent to bring about the transformation of the complex of this nature. These are the qualities or energies, guņas, śaktis, by which the individual as well as collective evolution advances.

Here is a paraphrase of the relevant text of The Mother:

·          Transcendental,—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 Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis 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 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.

·          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 become possible.

·          The powers and personalities of the Divine Mother are for the work of manifestation. The four who stand out prominently are: Maheshwari as the aspect of Wisdom, Mahakali of Strength and Force, Mahalakshmi that of Harmony and Beauty, and Mahasaraswati who is the tireless worker for Perfection and Order. These four powers are the fourfold soul-forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things. The imperative is the appropriate and congruous working of these four powers in us, in a happy togetherness. Only when they have founded their harmony and freedom can the higher powers of the Mother operate in their dynamism. The aspect of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings is greatly dependent upon it.

The equivalence of these four powers described by Sri Aurobindo with the four qualities, swabhāvas, we have in the ancient revelations, such as the Purusha Sukta or the Gita, is unmistakable. The fourfold order, or chaturvarņa as it is called, based on them is a spiritual order and it is that which works in the occult domain of Nature, Prakriti. If we go by the account of the Purusha Sukta then, it seems, these powers were brought down more or less easily in splendid efficacy of the Sarvahuta Yajna, the Sacrifice of the All; the descent of other powers, indispensable for the supramental manifestation, falls outside its scope. We may somewhat look into this aspect by going through the story recited by the Mother. It is as follows. She is cautious also to say that it should be taken rather as a succinct story:

When the Supreme decided to exteriorise Himself in order to be able to see Himself, the first thing in Himself which He exteriorised was the Knowledge of the world and the Power to create it. This Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work; and in the supreme Will there was a plan, and the first principle of this plan was the expression of both the essential Joy and the essential Freedom, which seemed to be the most interesting feature of this creation. So intermediaries were needed to express this Joy and Freedom in forms. And at first four Beings were emanated to start this universal development which was to be the progressive objectivisation of all that is potentially contained in the Supreme. These Beings were, in the principle of their existence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth. You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great power, great strength, of something tremendous, for they were essentially the very principle of these things. Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for this creation was to be Freedom itself.... As soon as they set to work—they had their own conception of how it had to be done—being totally free, they chose to do it independently. Instead of taking the attitude of servant and instrument… they naturally took the attitude of the master, and this mistake—as I may call it—was the first cause, the essential cause of all the disorder in the universe. As soon as there was separation—for that is the essential cause, separation—as soon as there was separation between the Supreme and what had been emanated, Consciousness changed into inconscience, Light into darkness, Love into hatred, Bliss into suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood. And they proceeded with their creations independently, in separation and disorder. The result is the world as we see it. It was made progressively, stage by stage, and it would truly take a little too long to tell you all that, but finally, the consummation is Matter—obscure, inconscient, miserable.... The creative Force which had emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of the world, witnessed what was happening, and turning to the Supreme she prayed for the remedy and the cure of the evil that had been done. Then she was given the command to precipitate her Consciousness into this inconscience, her Love into this suffering, and her Truth into this falsehood. And a greater consciousness, a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had been emanated at first, plunged, so to say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it consciousness, love and truth, and to begin the movement of Redemption which was to bring the material universe back to its supreme origin. So, there have been what might be called ‘successive involutions’ in Matter, and a history of these involutions. The present result of these involutions is the appearance of the Supermind emerging from the inconscience; but there is nothing to indicate that after this appearance there will be no others... for the Supreme is inexhaustible and will always create new worlds. That is my story.

We could discern the following sequence in this narrative by the Mother: the Supreme’s wish to objectivise himself; emanation of four beings to start the universal development; their separation from the Origin in the joy and freedom they had; the result is the world as presently is; the creative Force, which had emanated these four Beings, is stunned on seeing what had happened; appalled, she turns to the Supreme and prays for the remedy; a command is given to her to precipitate her Consciousness into this Inconscience, her Love into this suffering, her Truth into this falsehood, and she does it. That is the great sacrifice she has made, the Holocaust of the Divine Mother, of the creative Force.

Now she must precipitate again that the Opposites which have appeared turn into powers of the Divine for the purposes of the manifestation or else disappear into the Divine. This precipitation is the birth of Savitri in the mortal creation.