We read in Savitri:
The cosmic evil is too deep to unroot,
The cosmic suffering is too vast to heal.
Terrifying and pitiless are the agents of Falsehood and Evil holding us back, and a high price must be paid to get rid of them. But only the incarnate Divine, the Divine himself born as Man, accepting the fatal law of this world, can deal with them, can destroy or transform them. By his “martyred body” is the dark account of the mortal’s ignorance settled. That is the debt God pays to Man. The Son of God born as the Son of Man must drink the bitter cup, must carry on his back the heavy cross of the afflicted creature. The bitter cup and the heavy cross could not but have been there because of the beginnings in the Unconscious, could not but as if by right have been there, inevitably there, because of things springing from the mirky and mysterious Origin.
It is in that context that the world-redeemer, the world-saviour himself must do the qualifying and the demanding yoga-tapasya. But it is only the divine Incarnate who can do it. It is the problem of creation arising out of the Inconscience and, naturally, Man born out of this gloomy stark foundational stuff will find himself ill-equipped, even his best effort proving no more than an insufficient and temporary measure, severely limited as the human potential is. It is this which makes the coming of the divine Incarnate inevitable in the vast universal working; he comes as an Avatar to promote the Law of the Truth by striking at the past and at the same time ushering in the future. It is the occult-spiritual work he comes here to do age after age, yugé-yugé; nay, he comes here to do the divine work itself, divyam karma as the Gita declares.
The Mother says the following:
All earth is under the governing shadow of the vital beings. Even the Highest Divinity, when coming upon earth cannot escape the consequence of this shadow governing all the events of the earth. For life upon earth to become entirely divine, harmonious, happy, painless, these forces and beings of the vital world must be conquered or destroyed, transformed; they must disappear—that is, return to the Nirvana of the Origin.
That is the divine work not of Man but of the divine Incarnate. He bears wounds that are difficult to heal. To write about these matters is to write a spiritual biography of the Avatar which only a siddha or a perfectly accomplished Yogi can do. These are the aspects of utmost concern, and not the university or academic or the so-called researched presentations howsoever appealing these be to the modern mind. We should be appreciative of the things that constitute the essence of the divine work, divyam karma, in order to grow more and more in it, make spiritual progress. In fact that is the only satisfactory criterion which should govern our intuition and perception. If this is absent then it amounts to falsification of the life of the doer of the divine work, divyam karma.
I’ve made, en passant, a number of comments about the highly controversial biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Links to some of them are listed in the following. These contextual observations however must be seen in the totality of the respective articles, the context particularly pertaining to the divine work, divyam karma.
An Entry from Record of Yoga
http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/29/3999434.html
The Path: by Sri Aurobindo http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/27/3997815.html Passing through the Portals of the Birth that is a Death: Part B http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/1/4002901.html
Physical Transformation—the Early Beginnings http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/3/4005379.html
The Avataric Work: Towards the Intermediate Race http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/2/4004239.html
Ascent to Supermind http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/26/3996217.html http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/30/4000477.html We go to a spiritually accomplished Preceptor or Master to seek his spiritual help, crucial help to make spiritual progress. We gratefully accept it and endeavour to follow it if we are centrally alert to its assuring methodology and its demands, truthful to our own earnest and sincerest yearning. But rather the strange thing is, the author of the recent biography of Sri Aurobindo and his eloquent friends simply disregard the central principle of the Aurobindonian Yoga, the triple formula of Aspiration-Rejection-Surrender. They harp upon reason and intellect alone,—and exists for them no Guruvad, the Word of the Teacher that has the power to mould one’s life. Not only that. Those who go by it are easily dubbed by them as religious and credulous, as the followers of faith, they lacking the faculty of academic rationality. While this should not really matter, this name calling, one should go by one’s own intrinsic nature, character, by one’s swabhāva, each according to his own, with the central urge to make spiritual progress. Indeed, an act of true faith, for instance, is a kind of inner perception and certitude, and it should not be disrespected, howsoever one might like to reason about it; it is a sort of surer knowledge of things to come and it should be perceptively accepted. If this knowledge comes from the innermost being, and better yet from the psychic being, then there cannot be anything more wonderful than that; it will take care of the hazards springing from the unregenerate vital nature. On the other hand, absence of the psychic and spiritual awareness will put even the best of our thinking and reasoning in a permanent mental trap, a secure trap from which escape may not be easy, may not be simple and straightforward, may not even be possible. But when the precious moment arrives, when there is a call for the higher life, then we should seize it and be true to it; it should be the Biblical pearl for which one should be willing to give up one’s all possessions, everything required to own it, to possess it, the reassuring and precious guide and protector of the soul and the spirit. We should follow the higher precepts in their bright truthfulness. It is this superior and elevating expectation we have from the biography of a spiritual giant, and that too the biography of a Yogi par excellence. When this is not available then one feels disappointed whatever be its other claims and merits, its good points, its academic or research presentations.
RY Deshpande If the doors of perception are cleansed, reality will appear to man as it truly is, infinite.
A Key Statement about the Integral Yoga
While here these few stray comments have been summarised only briefly, a more thorough and detailed examination is necessary, in fact not only necessary but is obligatory also. Yet it is felt that this material, forming sort of chapters of a larger work, will provide the essential background for the purposes of appreciating the many dimensions that are present in the issue. This need be seen from several yogic-spiritual perspectives. We look into Sri Aurobindo’s life, if at all that is possible, not as an aspect of mere academic or university or historical study, but essentially for living more and more in it, to enlighten and ennoble our souls, that which will bring fulfilment closer to us. These are the kind of intuitions we would wish to gather from it. If a biography fails to give us this, then that itself is its failure.
~ William Blake