Mirror of Tomorrow—The Human Aspiration
The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and... his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation... is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity [with its] victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.

Sri Aurobindo

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Our Vision
It will be the endeavour to seek and express all that ennobles the human spirit in its quest towards perfection, towards truth and beauty and joy and sweetness and love, towards fulfilment of the sense of immortality present in its deeper soul, its ceaseless aspiration for the higher manifestation even in the material creation. The Mirror shall reflect and reflect upon things of tomorrow, bring closer the human destinies by approaching the future as much as by beckoning the future to enter into its thousand possibilities.

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“…In the aloofness
Of everlasting calm there ought to be
A reality reckoning us all,
Worthwhileness of pain too, suffering, death,
This daily passing world. Naught here around
Was planned unwisely, and there’s no mountain
That speaks not to the valley.” But Phuntsok
Struck a note, even as he mused non-god
Becoming these many gods. “O Tenzin,
This is the birthplace of conscious nihil
Out of which shall ensue first a power
In whose passion shall grow the urge to be.”

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The cells of the body have made such tremendous progress that they are constantly offering a prayer to the supreme Lord of the Universe, they imploring for the strength and the beauty, the harmonious perfection needed to be the Divine’s instruments upon earth. The body is fully awake, the cells live consciously, aspire consciously, by themselves, without the interference from the vital and the mental: the consciousness is working directly in them. The mind of the physical has been converted, has become silent; in that silence it receives the inspiration of the Consciousness. This mind of the physical, the physical’s mind, is illumined, is conscious, organised, and it expresses itself in prayers. While all is one single substance, the material cells have to obtain the capacity to receive and to manifest consciousness. This is what is being done. There is certitude that a new form will take birth, which will be what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental form. “It is the body that ends by saying the mantra! Spontaneously, so spontaneously that even if you by chance think of other things, your body will be saying the mantra. And it is the body that aspires, the body that says the mantra, the body that wants the light, the body that wants the consciousness.” The significant aspect is, once it is done, once one body has done it, it has the capacity to pass it on to others. The progress is there, and there are happy conversations among the cells: “Imbecile that you are! Why do you have fear? Don’t you see it is the Lord himself who is doing this to transform you?” Yet the other: “Ah! ...” The difficulty is, of these “Ah-wallahs”. But there is the advance, and it looks so wonderful. Now, there is a kind of suppleness, there is plasticity. “And then, the splendour of the Presence.” Wow!

This physical’s mind is, pointed out Sri Aurobindo, an impossibility, but impossibility not in the sense of hopelessness or infeasibility but in terms of impracticality at a point of advance; in fact Sri Aurobindo worked to remove that impossibility—and this is what the Mother means while referring it to him. She said on another occasion, 18 December 1971, “Sri Aurobindo has said that if the physical mind is transformed, the transformation of the body would follow quite naturally.” The physical’s mind receiving the supramental Light he called as the Mind of Light which was already established in him and which he passed on to the Mother the moment he withdrew on 5 December 1950. Sri Aurobindo himself has said: “It is only when the Supramental manifests in the body-mind that its presence can be permanent.”

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In Part IV-B I examine what Sri Aurobindo referred to as the humankind’s double nature consisting of its animal nature of instincts impulses desires and automatisms and its higher, self-reflective, mental, aesthetic, ethical and spiritual nature. I particulary study humankind in terms of modern western individuals, with their damned-up repressed instincts. I then study the Evil Persona as defined by Sri Aurobindo, suggesting that it be understood in light of the persona as presented by CG Jung. Sri Aurobindo defined it as a being that is attached to the sadhaks who creates wrong conditions. The persona is the ideal image and mask that one wears to present oneself to the world, either professionally or otherwise. Although the persona serves the purpose of greasing the wheels of life, one is enjoined not to identify with its false wrappings. The Evil Persona, in fact, seems to be a product of both the workings of the persona, and also the shadow. The brighter and more virtuous the persona, then the darker is the shadow, the repressed other side of the coin. If the falseness of the Evil Persona can be relegated to the field of the Asura of Falsehood, then the darkness of the shadow is the realm of the Asura of Ignorance. I then examine the nature of first the personal shadow and then the archetypal shadow, or the shadow side of the God-image. The personal shadow is not evil per se, but awkward and ill-adapted aspects of the psyche that need to be integrated into consciousness, often to the advantage of gaining a greater range of life and instinctual connectedness. At the archetypal level, the goal is for to suffer the opposites of good and evil, to allow them to come together in the Self as a vessel filled with divine conflict. I end the essay by studying the shadow as positive value and source of vitality, and then indicate how the spiritualization and assimilation of the animal shadow at an individual level enhances the transformation of community. An important goal of the opus is realization of the fourfold quaternity of the mental, vital and physical planes of being organized around the psychic being. This requires coming to terms with the persona and the shadow.

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The Nyaya system is also known as Nyaya Vidya or Tarka Shastra—the Science of Logic and Reasoning. Because Nyaya analyses the nature and source of knowledge, its validity and invalidity, it is also known as Anvikshiki, the Science of Critical Study. Nyaya asserts that obtaining valid knowledge of the external world and its relationship with the mind and self is the only way to attain liberation. If one masters the logical techniques of reasoning and dutifully applies these to daily life, he will rid himself of all suffering. The ultimate aim of Nyaya philosophy like other systems of Indian philosophy is liberation—the complete cessation of pain and suffering. Although concerned with the study of logic and epistemology, Nyaya is a philosophy of life.

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Bearing on the theme developed by David Johnston in several instalments under the title Jung’s Psychology of the Living God and Transformation of Individual and Community, I am posting here a chapter which appears in my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra. The book essentially deals with the opening passage of 83 lines of the Book of Fate of Savitri. The background briefly stated is as follows. Savitri the radiant daughter of Aswapati, the king of Madra land, has grown into full maidenhood and is advised to find for herself her life’s partner. In a distant forest she meets Satyavan, the son of exiled king Dyumatsena, and they decide to be together. Even as she returns to the palace, Savitri sees her parents in the company of the heavenly sage Narad who had hastened to be there in time just before her arrival. The intention behind his visit was to deliver the Word of Fate, that exactly one year after the marriage of Savitri with Satyavan he will die. Narad foresees this supernaturally charged possibility in the greater design and leaves his home in Paradise to be at Madra. While he is on his way to the place, he sings the Song of Creation, and the Name of Vishnu, and the Glory and Marvel still to be born. He sings of the delight when every barrier falls, and the transfiguration and the ecstasy. In its spell the demons, foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task, weep with joy that soon they shall be released from their self-chosen doom. The evolution marches on. Out of the Inconscience and the obscurity of matter came first life and then mind; what is now expected is the glory and marvel of the divine birth, the establishment of the name of Vishnu here. This song has the entirety of sweetness to bring joy to the hostiles who have stood too long in the way of this growth of consciousness. They are happy that they will soon be vanquished in the greatness of the Spirit and that in its victory their horrendous task will get terminated; the product of the dark Inconscience shall be dissolved for good. In response to every descent that had occurred until now, it always threw answer antagonistically to distort it, if not to destroy it. Therefore triumphing over it means establishing a greater delight in mode of the very existence-consciousness itself. The demons now return into the supreme Origin from which they had come, the bright Womb of the Creation. The relationship of the primordial Creative Shadow and the weeping of the Demons to return to their Origin has deeper occult connotations which no other shadow can throw light on. Thus Evil Persona turns out to be simply an operative mechanism in the greater scheme of things and its unexaggerated importance just lies in it. The present article discusses some of these details in the limit of a chapter of a book.

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The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are."

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Five thousand Dabbawalas deliver two hundred-thousand tiffin boxes a day that too in time. And they return the tiffin boxes home, meaning there are four hundred-thousand transactions a day. Not one mistake, though. Such is their precision and dedication to work that they did not have time for even Prince Charles, says Raghunath D Medge, another Dabbawala. Our success has taken us to various management institutions within and outside the country and has also brought many more to us.

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In Parts IV-A and -B, I move into the realm of praxis, which is so essential to understanding Jung’s contribution to psychology and spirituality. Part IV-A primarily concerns an experiential phenomenon that I call the white-shadow persona. The white-shadow persona is a product of the persona that is identified with high ideals driven by a power-complex. The persona is the mask that feigns individuality, but which is a collective phenomena with which one should not identify. The power-complex is a split-off power-drive, which, when assimilated to consciousness, becomes a formative factor that can be used creatively, and the spirit of life. As a subsidiary theme and as an example I comment on the book and movie, The Da Vinci Code, focusing on the albino monk, who is a striking image for the white-shadow persona, as a puffed-up murderous monk who believes he is an instrument of God. In fact, he is trying to prevent the resurrection of Mary Magdalene from obscurity and projected sinfulness, and her being located in her in her rightful place as the bride of Jesus and spouse of Christ, which is important evidence for the tradition of the Holy Grail. As an archetypal image, Mary Magdalene unites both the superior and inferior aspects of the psyche and would, therefore, promote wholeness and the ability of aligning the human will with the Divine will.

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Nothing
Stirred and, like a pessimist who would find
Never a fish in the pond, desolate
Ages slipped by. Sapteshwara was greatly
Stunned but in half a moment decided
To do austerities, and to Priyā
Told so. A sudden flock of augur birds
Flew over his head lost in thought; tranquil wings
Beat through blueness of the wind. In a calm
Hillside temple he, gathering himself
For long years, stayed and looked into the germ
Of death. Nothing came from the Twelve, Diśā
Had no clue, nor the elements, nor hell,
And the soul of the earth suffered. Anguished,
Into the self of zero he entered
To explore its puzzling contents, the cause.

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We are impatient about the physical transformation. But our impatience really means nothing. There is a process, and there are imponderables of time and of what is beyond it, and there has always to be the sanction of the Supreme. The Mother constantly spoke of trying it in her own body, trying it in the divine pragmatism. That was the only positive attitude possible for her, and leaving everything to the higher Will and Wisdom. She never thought that transformation could come quickly, in a jiffy. One must first appreciate that there is such a big difference between Matter as it is and the Divine Existence as Matter, that which is not at every second tied to the obscurity of a half inconscient stuff. The question as to how long it will take, could be viewed in another way. Now that the consciousness is there, a fairly well-developed mental consciousness, things can possibly go much quicker. The bulk of the work is done, says the Mother. Yet the danger of haste cannot be underestimated. Truth born too soon might shatter this imperfect earth, writes Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. “If the divine Consciousness, the divine Power, the divine Love, the Truth manifested itself too rapidly upon the earth, the earth would be dissolved! She would not be able to bear it... brrf!” Yet the Mother had prepared herself, prepared her physical self that it could do wonderful things. The divine Presence, the divine Consciousness, the divine Truth could manifest as in a flash, could change it. She perceived that it is a Force, a Will that moves forward step by step. The truth is, there is none who is not ruled by the law of inconscience. There is prevalent disorganisation that prevents the cohesion necessary for the cells to constitute an individual body. But there is the aspiration of the cells, and there is something like a central consciousness of the body which aspires intensely, with a surrender as complete as it can make. There is peace and light, and there is the Harmony. There is at once this feeling in the cells that they live the eternity, for the eternity. “This happens many times in a day. At times it is like a mass. Sometimes it is only a thing that touches; then in the consciousness of the body it translates itself in this way, as a kind of thanksgiving: a progress in fact over the inconscience. There was, as it were, a total vision of this effort of the earth towards its divinisation. It belongs to a domain which is not yet ready to be explained, to be manifested in words. What is spoken is almost incomprehensible.”

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In Part III I interpret Jung’s later visions and dreams and his most complete description of the Self in light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings on Integral Yoga, with special reference to Overmind and Supermind consciousness. I compare and contrast Jung’s experiences and writings with the goal of becoming one with the Transcendent non-dual Reality accompanied by ego dissolution. Jung’s psychology of individuation requires a creative engagement with the world and not seeking or attaining the Transcendent non-dual Reality per se. The goal of individuation, rather, demands full consciousness of spiritual experiences and not dissolution of the ego. I argue that Jung’s later visions and dreams are most likely experiences of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother referred to as Overmind consciousness, although their high numinosity and comprehensiveness opens up the possibility of him having touched the Supermind, at least intuitively, His latest and most complete description of the Self, fourfold in structure and differentiated at four levels of being supports the Supermind hypothesis. Jung’s last dream-vision is an indication that Jung had won through to individualized global consciousness and attained completed individuation. An important caveat to this essay is that it is written as no more than a contribution to a hypothesis on the nature of Jung’s experiences and the level of consciousness he attained, and nothing more.

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The Sanskrit word for philosophy is darśana, which means direct vision. The words symbolize the difference between modern Western philosophy, which mainly relies on intellectual pursuit and Indian philosophy that relies on direct vision of truths and pure Buddhi (reasoning). Darśana is divided into two categories namely, Astika (believer in the Vedas) and Nastika (non-believer in the Vedas). Astika are Nyaya, Vaisheshik, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta. Nastika are Charvaka, Jainism and Buddhism. Others are a mixture of the ideas of these systems. Although each school of philosophy is unique, all of them have certain common characteristics. These are direct experience, acceptance of authority, harmony amongst schools, parallel growth and coexistence of a number of schools, open mindedness, support of logic and reasoning, belief of eternity, law of karma, moral and ethical teachings, acknowledgement of suffering, thoroughness and practicality. Here is a brief introduction to some of these ancient Schools of Indian Thought.

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When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

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By chant of the Integral Mantra of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Gangadharan felt Light and Omkara Sound surrounding him, and his psychophysical system blossomed in all the centres. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother appeared for a while in their luminous golden Forms of Grace. Then his deep soul-consciousness joined with the Self and ascended to the Truth-World, and he felt the Divine Presence everywhere. Even during the ascent, the Golden Light was seen flowing down from above and spreading everywhere. On the summit of the Truth-World he experienced vast and pure white Light of Grace. When he was identified with it, he heard an immortal sound which made him wake up with open eyes. The vibrations of the experience continued for a long time, and were tangibly felt in the body.

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Part II is about Jung’s Gnostic creation myth, which he wrote in 1916 as an important part of his encounter with the unconscious. He called it the Seven Sermons to the Dead, and attributed its writing to Philemon, a winged being he encountered in dreams and fantasies, who assumed the role of a guru with superior insight. I refer to a Vedic creation myth commented on by Sri Aurobindo and a creation story of the Mother as well as relevant passages from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri for the sake of comparison. In all four cases there is a primordial creative Shadow and the number of principal beings (deities) is four, suggesting that the qualitative number four (4) is significant as a fundamental truth of existence and individual wholeness. Jung’s myth puts more emphasis on the created world, while Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s accounts tell a story as to how the original luminous fourfold being turned into its opposite. Jung writes that his early fantasies, including the one mentioned above, foreshadowed his entire life and scientific work as a psychologist. I go through each of the seven sermons and indicate their psychological meaning, while alluding to his developed psychological system. I also briefly analyze two seminal initiation dreams Jung had, one between the age of three and four and one at the age of thirty-seven. The first dream is his initiation into the mystery of the earth, and the second his initiation into the wisdom of alchemical transformation by the Divine Mother as Sophia. I end this essay by discussing how the path of individuation involves both the heart-Self centered (psychic) transformation and spiritual ascension or spiritual transfiguration as indicated in Jung’s early fantasies.

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In my ancestral farm there's a statue
Of Shiva radiating calm. As if
Out of some unbuilt centuries had come
The spirit of time, tall, invincible,
Yogic in granite strength yet intimate...
… Sometimes, as the night gathers storm,
Infirm faith gets shaken; the thin furrows
Tremble, and the trees bend in fear of ire
Let loose by the elements of nature.

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It is in the subtle physical where the material life gets reorganized, that which cares for perfect form, where there is no more room for fault. This subtle physical is vast and it is a very curious place. There is a remarkable resemblance between what is seen there and things and objects that are here around us in the gross physical. In fact one would think if it is not the memory of these physical forms that is carried over there. But it is a coherent world, and not a disorderly imagination. If one is to extend this kind of thinking, it might even appear that the Overmind gods are also perceived in the same manner, that our physical habits give rise to those forms. Are all these objects and beings like that, seen in the way one is in that state, or is it that they are made out in that way because of our association with what is here? Is it anthropomorphism of a kind? The explanation becomes very simple, very easy when one enters into the consciousness where material reality itself becomes an illusion; it is illusory, it is not exact: the inner reality is truer than what we conceive it to be. It is perhaps only our mind that is astonished. This can even lead one to maintain that real ill-will, real hostility and real falsehood are very rare, that is to say, “real” in its absolute sense, in themselves, and conscious, deliberate—deliberate, absolute, conscious—that is rare. Sri Aurobindo used to say that all the rest is a kind of illusion of consciousness—of consciousnesses that intermingle with each other. That gives rise to a real problem, a problem in the context of the transformation to be achieved, a problem of immense magnitude. When one is there, in the subtle physical, things get done as if there is no sense of time, certainly not the sense of our time; it is the content of the action that matters. But what is done there, that disappears when one suddenly returns to this world. Even as the Presence becomes more intimate, more and more concrete, so concrete that it seems to be absolute, then another state of consciousness comes up and all has to be begun again. The great words, the great attitudes, the great experiences, but here nothing spectacular, everything is very modest. And this is the condition for progress, the condition for transformation.

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In Part I I discuss the significance of the number four (4) in both the Mother’s story of creation and Sri Aurobindo’s account of a Vedic creation myth. I relate this to the fact that Philemon, to whom Jung attributed superior insight, is clutching four (4) keys in Jung’s dream, drawing the conclusion that Philemon’s message involves the essential fourfold nature of the Self. Throughout the essay I amplify the nature of Philemon by referring to Metatron, the chief angel of the Judeo-Christian hierarchy of Angels, Merlin and the Fisher king of the Grail legend, and Indra of the Vedic pantheon of gods. I also observe that Jung notes that he eventually integrated Philemon along with a spirit of nature, who insists on concrete reality. I discuss the difficulty of psychologically moving from three (3) to four (4), that is from insight to wholeness involving incarnation of the Self in life. This requires coming to terms with the shadow as sol niger or dark sun of alchemy, which finds a parallel in the Vedic Martanda. I briefly discuss Jung’s later formulation of the Self as a static fourfold quaternity, where the heights meet the depths of being in a dynamic circulatory process. Jung’s model is highly complex involving the interplay of light and shadow with the final result being a unity of the highest, the Anthropos or Original man, and the lowest, the prima materia and chaos of the—circular or round—Rotundum, to produce the uroborous, the serpent biting its tail, a symbol for completeness of being.

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There is a description of the Sons of Darkness in chapter twentyone of The Secret of the Veda by Sri Aurobindo. The following is a paraphrased version to focus attention directly on them, they who are the haters of the sacred word, those who give not to the gods the gift or the holy wine, who keep the wealth of cows and horses and other treasure for themselves and do not give them to the seers; they are those who do not do the sacrifice. In the Rig Veda it is the spiritual conflict and victory, not the physical battle and plunder of which the Rishis are speaking. These sons are the broods that have sprung up from the Inconscience when Life and Mind-in-Life entered into the evolving consciousness. Their birthplace is the Cave of Darkness. Unless they are overpowered, progress on the higher spiritual path cannot proceed. These are the beings who are different from the Four Powers of the supreme Light who separated themselves away from their divine Origin and became their opposites, the Antagoists who, after a long travail and after doing the dreadful task yearn to return to it. This return of theirs can happen only when the Supermind enters into the evolutionary process for which the Supreme himself comes as an Avatar and does the needed yoga-tapasya in the earth-consciousness, yoga-tapasya invoking the divine Power to incarnate herself and do the work of manifestation after removing the obstacle sanding across the path of the divine Event, the full account of which we have in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, the Veda of the New Age. In contrast to these four mighty and fruitful Anatgonists the Sons of Darkness do not express any intention of changing themselves into beings of light, they who are the byproducts of the process as against the initiators of the process.

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