Sri Aurobindo says: the first word of his Yoga is surrender; the last word is also surrender. In between these two happy surrenders it is its power that grows when is kindled the yajna to make our will transcendentally genuine. While we still live under the sway of the lower Nature, as long as we are in it, personal effort is indispensable. In that condition spiritual pursuit is our concern and nobody else is going to do it for us. But as we become conscious in our surrender, in our tyaga, in samarpana to the divine Shakti, it is she who herself leads us to freedom and perfection of the higher Nature. In the degree it becomes wholesome and integral, our progress also gains to that extent an assuring speed of the power who then governs all our activities. In the deepening truth of this divine samarpana we find ourselves actually engaged in Integral Tapasya in the ways of the Divine Shakti. In it the whole being lives only to know and serve the Divine. Lastly, it becomes “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.” Not what we think and see for ourselves, but what is thought and seen for us is all that matters. When there is no difference between our will and the Will of the Divine Shakti, then it is she who takes full charge of our life. Then indeed we acquire our genuine free will. That certainly is the object of the Integral Yoga of the Future. In it our masculine tapas-will joined with the feminine tyaga-shakti approaches the Spirit’s Tapas-will served in oneness by his inalienable Tyaga-shakti. In it can then be the truest expression of Krishna-Kali in us. When this is unfalteringly achieved, then the Being of Delight, the Anandamaya Purusha with his Consciousness-Force or Shakti working for his joy comes down wearing a crown of peacock plumes to play on his flute the Song of New Creation.

This song of new creation is born in the death of Death, in his transformation into the Being of Truth, he becoming the unveiled Sat-Purusha. Then begins the real re-creation of the Lord and his Shakti, the play and work of Krishna and Kali. When we participate in that manifestive activity of theirs, we recognize them as our Ishwara and Ishwari, she at his service, as his Dasi, governing a thousand wills of ours in the possibilities of the dynamic Divine. That is the truth of manifestation. “When the Unity has been well founded,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1916, “the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power,—Krishna and Kali.” Sri Aurobindo was at that time waiting for the final arrival of the Mother to join him to accomplish the active half of the work.

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Eighty-year-old Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat defies her age.

She seems more agile and active than her grandchildren.

"I don't want to stop working," she says with youthful determination.

Mrs Popat is the only survivor of a group of semi-literate Gujarati housewives who founded Lijjat Papad 50 years ago.

She will be celebrating the Lijjat golden jubilee on 15 March with 45,000 other women who are part of the women-only co-operative.

Mrs Popat cannot believe that what started as a desperate move to "supplement the family income" 50 years ago has come so far.

She says after taking a deep breath: "I feel I am living in a dream world. When we started our business it was not meant to become so big."

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While reading the Mother’s Agenda, at several places we find the reference of Rijuta, an American disciple of the Mother. It is a normal trend to ignore the reference of the disciples or followers as the reader is much more interested to know about the Mother only so often Rijuta has been sidelined. But what we cannot ignore are the realizations that the Mother had had in her presence as Rijuta was one of the few persons whose psychic being seems to have been fully developed. This was indeed a rare and great achievement in yoga. So, let’s know and learn more about Rijuta and her life.

Rijuta was born as Patricia Noonan. She hailed from the United States of America where she was quite well-known. She came to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1956 with her husband Michael and when she met the Mother, she caught ‘something’ and she declared to her husband that she would not return. Eventually she became the Mother’s secretary and also received the name of ‘Rijuta’ (meaning ‘straightforward’) from her on 21 May 1960. Rijuta acted as a liaison between the Mother and her American followers and disciples. They used to write letters to the Mother through Rijuta who would reply to them after getting the answers orally from the Mother. She was quite good at writing. The Ashramites remember her as a “very fine”, “wonderful”, “friendly”, “cultured”, “soft-spoken”, “kind and delightful” and “very sweet person”. She was quite pretty, slim and was of short height but whoever met her could never forget the solid tranquility that radiated from her personality and her lovely smile with which she used to greet others. She was quite close to Udar and Mona Pinto, Vishwanath Lahiri, Vasudha and Sujata Nahar. Apart from being the Mother’s secretary, Rijuta also did her manicure. In fact, it was the Mother who had chosen her for the said job.

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This is a prophecy coming directly from the Horse’s Mouth, the Supreme himself granting the boon to Savitri, prophecy of the coming of the new race, the Supramental Race, a manifestation which is inevitable in the very nature of evolutionary creation. It is a new race which cannot be assembled by the new dna discoveries or the power and capacity of the nano-technology howsoever appealing it might be to the science-based rationality. The science-based rationality should also keep in mind the aspect of “falsifiability of the scientific theory as maintained by one of its strong thinkers. The more a theory is falsifiable the more it is scientific,—as though falsehood is in-built in these empirical sciences. Such can never be the dictum or principle of a yogi’s approach. His discoveries are not contingent to science’s mode or logic of methodology; he is concerned with his own tools of cognition and knowledge which have their foundation on another order of reality, a firmer and assured reality. And then it is a gross mistake to link up these materialist approaches to things that are deeply occult and unknown even to the highest spiritual or yogic pursuits. The Mother was constantly busy with the awakening of the body’s cells, that they respond to the higher light and force. She was invoking the presence of the Divine himself in the cells and, ultimately, leaving things to his best Wisdom, that his Will be done. She was repeatedly saying that that knowledge is not given, the process by which it could be accomplished. The knowledge that was given was of the inevitability of the appearance of the new body, but it had to get translated on the material plane, translated in the pragmatics of things, Nature occupying herself in working out the details. The occult work that is going on is concerned with it. This might sound an act of faith to the agnostic or to the rationalistic-only of the Integral Yogist. It can’t be helped and, luckily, his is not the final verdict in the matter; besides, his arrogant insistences are themselves based on another set of arguments constituting another act of faith, a faith of another kind, that reason and rationality will not hoodwink him anywhere. Is there an assurance of any sort that it is so? None whatsoever. So let us look at the divine promise founded on a Yogi’s solid and verifiable experiences and realizations. The divine promise is based on its an incontrovertible logic, and in it is the full emergence of Supermind, and a rapid assumption of its powers, and disclosing of its forms and the creation of a supramental race and supramental life. Sri Aurobindo was writing this in 1950, and the Mother was engaged with the operative details, intensely more so during the last decade of her presence in the physical here. The Yogi saw the obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles, atoms endowed with a will, an inconscient will, and knew that it is that which has to be made luminous, this body-mind opening to the higher, the supramental light and force. That opening is what he called the arrival of the Mind of Light. With that arrival can be the beginning of the Supramental or Gnostic Race. The problem is the physical, and it is in the physical that the needed yoga-tapasya be done. There has to be the golden body, hiraņya tanu, the body of the Divine Agni, and it is that body which has to be first formed in the Transcendent, it, from there, supporting the body in the evolutionary process. Perhaps this is what the Mother meant when she said that it is the psychic being which will materialize. Psychic being supports, in fact carries forward the evolution and, it as the spark of the Divine, the supramental Agni, who will do it all here. In it is the assured immortality of the evolutionary race, it stepping into the higher domains, of light and truth and power and beauty and joy. For the appearance of the full resplendent golden body, hiraņya tanu, newer centres or chakras of activity have to be created and it is in their functioning that there will be the completer manifestation, the beginning of a new creation. When the Poet of Savitri is describing these aspects, detailing them, he is not creating just a happy sonorous piece of literature, though literature it is of the most splendid kind; he is yogically doing something vaster, something absolutely marvellous, transformative. It must be recognised that poetic speech of the mystic-spiritual kind has the power to make real what it expresses. Expression and Word are inseparable in that speech, and it is that which constitutes the supreme Mantra, the highest mode of utterance. It has the power also to put us directly in contact with the source from where it originates, the omniscient Hush, the Womb in which take birth things that come into manifestation. He has set down in it all his yogic achievements and perfections, siddhis, that caused into motion the rhythms of the truth and the right and the vast. Being a composition made toward the culmination of his avataric work, Sri Aurobindo has given us here in far-reaching perfection the gifts of god in god’s brightness and plenty. Savitri had asked the supreme Boon-giver that which shall make the earthly life the life divine. It is that which has been granted to her in the fullness of that Siddhi of the supreme Yogi: This earthly life shall become the life divine. Since the beginning of the world this is what was decreed in the deep essence of created things, and it is that which has been occult-yogically worked out and affirmed in this mortal creation. Sri Aurobindo spoke of the supramental body made in a supramental way, and it is that work which is now proceeding. This is something which is advancing apace, and our task is only to lend ourselves to be a part of that unstoppable progress. The human potential must develop in its richness, must awake to supermanhood, or else grow into God-light and God-force to reveal the secret deity seated deep in its heart. Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme. That is the work we have to do—because, the essential has already been done for us.

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The élite humanity preparing itself for the next stage is the march of human progress. Not that much has been done in this regard and it may look if there had been any progress at all, that it is not an illusion. If there had been Plato-Kant-Einstein, the dark side has perhaps become darker, moving from robbery-piracy-terrorism to genocide or holocaust or wars of a devastating nature. Yet the silent occult work goes on. The problem of the collective is a daunting problem and no easy-fix solutions are possible for it. However, human aspiration is something positive also and there shall be some to become the receivers of the transcendental glory. There are forerunners and there are leaders and heads proving themselves as the deliverers of limited mind. They will be the first-born of a new supernal race. They will not be exactly the beings of the Gnostic possibility, but they will pave the way towards it, usher in the divine successors. Sri Aurobindo saw the necessity of this Intermediate Race and yogically worked out the methodology for its appearance in the evolutionary process. This is a race of beings who will be governed by what he called the Mind of Light, the physical’s Mind receiving the Supramental. This will happen when the Supermind shall enter into the earthly Time. Then shall the superman wake in mortal man.

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Savitri has vanquished Death who, transformed, has offered four times exceptional boons to her, boons for herself and for her lover Satyavan. But she has her own great preferences to make and excercise, specific choices for men and for the soul of the earth, it waiting this long for the moment. Savitri is quite clear about her stipulations. She wants our beings to be made in God’s image, she yearns for this earthly life to become the life divine. In a humble but determined way, she sets aside what she was offered in the freedom of the individual in oneness with the transcendental, in the will of his countless possibilities of a life over there. But she declines. The point is well seen and she is acclaimed by the Supreme as his Force at work to uplift earth’s fate, that she is the revealing voice of his immortal Word. Therefore to do that work, she shall be born in man’s dubious hours in forms that hide the soul’s divinity. In the sequel of time there shall glow, like a horned moon, the spirit’s crescent splendour on mind. Not only that. One day God’s Beyond shall reveal its hidden face. But now mind is all and there has to be the growth beyond it, it being not the summit of things. It is actually the Divine’s soul of adventure who is climbing from utter Inconscience to the vasts of Supernature. That is the human potential which must develop for the higher powers to enter into it. That is the meaning of evolution. The first state of this superior evolution, the preparatory step, is the arrival of the human élite with perceptions that go beyond the formulations of a rigid rationality, with a mind swift and supple enough to receive striking intuitions from the greater brighter worlds. When this shall be done, there will appear the Intermediate Race linking the human to the superman.

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Death is unyielding and adamant—he is not going to give back the soul of Satyavan to Savitri. One by one he is dismissing the arguments of Savitri, that the eternal Law is all-abiding and it cannot be violated by anyone howsoever powerful he or she might be. According to him Truth is all right, but here it is only a high starry name, a splendid name and nothing more; indeed, he ridicules and maintains that no magic Truth can bring the dead to life. Therefore what Savitri is asking, or thinking, is all contrary to the nature of things operating in the world, in this mortal world, mŗtyuloka; she is cherishing a futile, an infructuous hope. She better therefore leave the dead and resign herself to live without him. But this assertion of Death, though perfectly valid at the moment, is striking at the foundation of this creation itself. But Savitri is not going to buy his argument, of the ineffectuality of her attempt, of things remaining unchanged. She was cognizing that Death was misjudging an important aspect, of a higher Power giving a new course to the whole process. He wanted Savitri to tell him, to reveal to him, if eternal Truth could at all dwell in her mortal heart; if she could draw the outline of her face, he would worship her. He wanted her to show him the body of the living Truth. He thought that it was impossible for her to do it, and therefore was safe in his position. But little did he realize who she was. No sooner than he made that proposal, Savitri stood in front of him, visible, in her almighty Goddess self. She explains to him in detail the logic of this creation, how the Truth supreme, vast and impersonal, is faultlessly shapes things here. The purpose and the process of the entire working is indicated by her, the Infinite’s intention behind the whole undertaking, its raison d’être. But it is not that Death and Savitri are engaged in a dry winding metaphysical debate; nor is it mere logomachy, word-quarrel for the sake of its own pleasure. Actually, each time they utter something, a corresponding force is released into the cosmic functioning, and it is a clash of force against a force. Savitri’s last act, the winning act, is the release of the all-conquering force that knocks off the occult base of the dark Inconscience that embodied itself in the form of fearsome Death. In it the world’s sorrowing darkness consented to Heaven-light. That is the victory Savitri has won, making Death yield to her demand of clearing the way for the march of the evolutionary soul of the earth.

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Narad had made the prophecy of Satyavan’s death after one year after the marriage with Savitri. The year is now coming to a quick close and Savitri, after considering all the prospects, has kind of resigned herself to the impending doom. Her “grief’s self” has become calm and she is ready to accept whatever be the verdict of the fiery struggle and the issue that is connected with it. But a Voice commands to her to find her soul and get up to conquer the adversary Death. She is reminded about the purpose of her birth and, to accomplish it, she must first establish the divine Force in it. Savitri accepts the command and her Yoga of the Conquest of Death begins. At first she witnesses the cosmic Past, all the karmic load that is weighing on the soul of man. This must be dissolved. She sees how in the indeterminate formlessness of Self creation took its first mysterious steps, how Matter learned to think. A consciousness looked out at the inconscient Vast, and pleasure and pain stirred the insensible Void. Out of the subconscient life arose surface consciousness. Soon came Mind with a thousand queries and got busy with the commerce of the world. But there is a whole mysterious world which remains locked within. Also Man’s lower nature hides awful guests, and these must be dislodged. Not only that. Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth, and the terrible Angel smites at every door. Ghastlier than all this is the almighty Evil, and he has straddled the straight path of Nature. But Savitri also gets an assurance that there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save. Behind this calamitous present is the look and concern of the divine Calm. Savitri knows that all this is only Matter's first self-view, a scale and series in the Ignorance, that this is not all we are or our entire world. There are domains beyond it and there are prospects also for this world of ours to grow and expand. The cosmic Past, passing through the Present has to give way to the cosmic Future, the evolutionary future in terms of the higher manifestation with its own ascending grades of possibilities. That is also the evolution of the incarnate Savitri, the divine Power in the earth-consciousness. But in the present state of hers, what will exactly be the nature of the outcome, that she does not know, cannot know. It could be this humanity moulding into God’s own shape, or it could be the discovery of a new felicitous world, or else it could be the creation of a world of beatitude. In any case, earth must transform herself and equal heaven or else heaven descend into earth’s mortal state and work out things in it. This vast spiritual change is aleady built into the scheme of things and it is the process of Time that must see it done. What is it that we can do to participate in it, participate in a meaningful way? We must first discover our soul and make it an agent for this transformative action. But let us read the passage from Savitri.

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Savitri met Satyavan in the Shalwa forests and they have decided to be together. Even while she is now on her way back to the palace of her father, Narad the heavenly sage is already there on a significant visit to him. He leaves his home in Paradise and rushes earthward to make known, well in time, an important factor related to the marriage of the two young eager souls. He is carrying the Word of Fate which he must deliver to Savitri, convey in order to steel her will to be the life-partner of Satyavan, whatever might be the contingencies. He is to announce in the palace that, one year after their marriage, Satyavan has to die, he is bound, is destined to die. There is a profound content in its inevitability, it carrying the seeds of a new manifestation that is about to begin. In Satyavan’s death is Savitri’s grand opportunity to do her heaven-missioned task, of the Conquest of Death. Death has been standing all along across the path of the divine Event, of the new manifestation, the supramental manifestation, and he must be removed from it, he must be transformed, so that he becomes the giver of all auspicious boons to the soul of man. Narad is aware of it, the mission, and so hastens to make the resolve of human Savitri firm, in the process initiating her on the Path of Yoga. It is in that awareness he sings the Song of Evolution while he is travelling from Paradise to Earth. Not only will there be a new creation, the transfiguration and the ecstasy; there will also be a wonderful sequel to it. The Four Asuras who had separated themselves from the divine Origin will be now returning to that divine Origin, returning in the gladness of having completed the task for which they had cut themselves off from It. The entire description of the process in Savitri is just exceptional, poetry coming on blue-bright and mystic-lyrical wings of inspiration, a high watermark of what the Word of the Spirit can give to us, to mortality the gifts of truth and joy and awareness in the immensity of its will and thought and feeling and love and beauty and strength; Narad-like, it rushes in the swiftness of the coming age, rushes in the growing adorability of the divine Name itself.

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Aswapati in his exploration of the cosmic development sees the transcendental Spirit concealed in the Inconscience; but then that involved mighty Spirit is also making a tentative move to discover itself, to slowly emerge out of the depth of that Darkness, manifest itself by the process of Evolution. But how at all did the whole process begin? how was it set into motion? The Mother narrates it in the form of a story, the Story of Creation. She says essentially that there were first four emanations of the Supreme, and these emanations in their movement, in the freedom they had, went far away from the Source from which they had come; eventually they cut off the connection from their Origin. As a result of this separation they entered into Darkness. So Consciousness became Inconscience, Bliss became Suffering, Truth became Falsehood, and Life turned into Death. The moment the Supreme saw this Horror due to Separation, he plunged into it as Love. Love is therefore the first Avatar of the Supreme, the eternal Avatar. It is then by the great avataric work that this inconscient creation can be linked up with the Origin. That linking up is Evolution. Connecting this creation with the Origin is indeed the new manifestation for which the whole travail was borne.

The four Asuric Beings are now standing as Guards at the Gate of the utter Void, the Abyss of Inconscience. In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo explains these occult-metaphysical aspects as follows: “The complete separation can take place only when the stage of Inconscience has been reached and our world of manifold Ignorance arises out of that tenebrous matrix. ... Existence plunging into an apparent Non-Existence, Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of existence into a vast cosmic insensibility are the first result of the fall and, in the return from it by a struggling fragmentary experience, the rendering of Consciousness into the dual terms of truth and falsehood, knowledge and error, of Existence into the dual terms of life and death, of Delight of existence into the dual terms of pain and pleasure are the necessary process of the labour of self-discovery. A pure experience of Truth, Knowledge, Delight, imperishable existence would here be itself a contradiction of the truth of things. ... Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge.” The present passage from Savitri describes the whole sequence in luminous details adding much to the nuances of the cosmic-transcendental working.

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Here is a description of entry of Life in material objects, of the Upanishadic prāņamaya puruşa, or prāņaśariranetā. Evolution is a double process, first of things progressing from below upward, for example, Matter preparing itself to receive Life to start with, and then Life-in-Matter moving forward and awaiting the arrival of Mind in it; in that appropriate readiness are the descents of the higher powers, they lifting up the evolution to the superior grades. In the crude beginnings of Matter there was no manifestation of Life, and of course no manifestation of Mind, or yet higher powers. In that dumbness the souls locked in Matter yearned for Life to release them from its hold. They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould and in brute form awake divinity. Life obliged. She the great-winged Angel poured her splendour and her sweetness and her bliss—hoping to fill the world with joy. In Matter’s womb she cast the Immortal’s fire. But alas! While she was on her way, and before her gifts could reach the imprisoned souls, a dark ambiguous Presence questioned all. Life faced Death. She was forced to obey the Inconscient’s Law. Her power was not sufficiently strong to meet such a situation, an unexpected challenge. Life’s immortality got so much veiled that she seemed to be simply an episode, a small occurrence in the land of eternal death, a myth that must for ever cease. To a large extent the same was repeated when arrived Mind, the lower creation appropriating it for itself. It is only the descent of Supermind that can victoriously handle the thousand contingencies that can arise from below, the working of the Inconscience at the base of this evolutionary movement. What is necessary is to appreciate that evolution is not a single-stranded process running from one end to the other, is not mono-logical, but is a complex web made of the dark and the luminous occult running into each other, something which a materialist scientist cannot grasp.

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Here is set into motion the process of creation through the agency of the Absolute’s Force, the primordial transcendental Shakti, she being commanded by that Absolute himself, the Non-Manifest, the Avyakta, the Positive Nothing. To begin with, he can thus be called the Alone, the Single, he being without any manifestation, not even the Sachchidanandaic manifestation being there, he holding within himself all the seed potentialities, the luminous and vigorous possibilities. If these have to emerge, have to become manifest, come into world-wide play, then his own creative dynamism, his determined and untiring Force, must swing into operation. So the next step for the non-manifest Absolute is to enter into space through her. With his will-to-be, to be many, with his deep samkalpa of becoming multifold, bahusyām prajāyeyeti, he starts living in these million all. It is now entirely the working of the divine Consciousness-Force herself, it is now her sport, Chid-vilas, he yet remaining perfect and immune from all that has arisen, untouched by it. But with what intention or rationale is this whole undertaking being effected? It is with a solitary purpose of becoming many, to be in his divine measure everywhere, in every bit and moment. He thus kind of forsakes his own divinity, his lone majesty and grandeur, forsakes to claim it back multiply, in countless ways. In it there is a definite plan to lift the finite to the infinite, as much as make possible that infinite to dwell in the acceptable finite. That’s the debt which mutually binds man and the Supreme, engages them with each other for a fruitful gain. Yes, we are the sons of God and must be even as he is; we must grow divine in divine qualities, in their richness and in their multiple abundance. Grow divine—but how? This may rather look paradoxical, but then our life is a wonderful paradox with God himself for the golden key.

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Aswapati’s was a dauntless spirit that came here to this ephemeral world of ours from the larger spheres, the sempiternal spheres of light and joy and truth, he ungrudgingly accepting the lot of the dark and difficult mortality. But soon he has unique spiritual experiences and realisations that would first make his soul free from these thousand lower bondages. Static Oneness and dynamic Power descend in him and his yogic journey begins. Even as he grows into his greater larger self, humanity frames his movements less and less. In fact the Supreme’s gaze looks out through his human eyes and he sees all things and creatures as itself. He knows that this huge material universe is but a small result of a stupendous force. Going farther beyond it, he glimpses the superconscient realms of motionless peace, the uniqueness of the utter and the alone. What he sees are only the Silence and the Absolute. He is now aware that his spirit had its source over there. But the contrast between that state and things as they are here on the earth is sharp, and it is necessary that the cause of it be discovered. Aswapati sets himself to find it, unearth it. In the face of the cosmic past weighing heavily on the soul of man, the remarkable story of evolution has to unfold in the Yogi-Tapasvin’s untiring pursuit. Savitri’s passages reveal some of these aspects.

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… While this is the grand finale of the evolutionary scheme on its way to supermanhood, the actual modus operandi to effect it as a reality on earth, to look into details in the context of the existential parameters, is the pressing imperative. Here we must go to the last set of Sri Aurobindo’s prose writings, published during February 1949 and November 1950. In them he has asserted the fundamental role of the Mind of Light and the possibility of the Intermediate Race on the verge of realisation. As an evolving principle, he says, the Mind of Light marks a stage in the human ascent; it evolves a new type of human being. In this birth of the Mind of Light there are two stages: in the first, it gathers itself out of the Ignorance, assembles its constituent elements, builds up its shapes and types; in the second stage it develops itself in greater light taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind. Thus is built up the possibility of human ascent towards a divine living; then will there be an illumined divine life. During the entire process of evolution there has been the covert operation of supermind, out of Matter the emergence of Life and out of Life that of Mind; now Mind of Light as the last word of the lower hemisphere of being and the first word of the higher hemisphere provides the operating connection to supermind.

The arrival of the earth-evolution at the Mind of Light, at the threshold of supermanhood itself thus means the birth of a new aeon, of a new being of transcendental Time. In the rush and dynamism of the golden Kali it is the naissance of the golden Spirit, of the evolutionary Kala in a body of delight. Indeed, a new aeon is formed in it, created in it, established in it. Narad’s jubilant recital of the song of the transfiguration and the ecstasy is a cursor indicating the prospects that lie in the working of this new aeon, the Aeon of Krishna-Kali. In it all the barriers of the inconscient time crumble and fall, dissolve; in it the demons weep with joy and, having completed their dreadful task, prepare themselves to return to the One from whom they had come. Narad sees these prospects being realised in the work of Savitri and therefore, in that sweetness and harmony, in that felicity, he sings glory of the manifesting name. The work itself is done by Kali and is offered by her as a yajna to Krishna, but it is the divine Aeon who actually sees the sacrifice done; he is the yajamāna whose presence is necessary to every movement of the sacrifice. He is the Purusha of the Intermediate Race.

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A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific theory is concerned only with the outward and visible machinery and process, with the detail of Nature’s execution, with the physical development of things in Matter and the law of development of Life and Mind in Matter; its account of the process may have to be considerably changed or may be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery, but that will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an evolution of Consciousness, a progression of the soul’s manifestation in material existence. In its outward aspects this is what the theory of evolution comes to,—there is in the scale of terrestrial existence a development of forms, of bodies, a progressively complex and competent organisation of Matter, of Life in Matter, of Consciousness in living Matter; in this scale, the better organised the form, the more it is capable of housing a better organised, a more complex and capable, a more developed or evolved Life and Consciousness. …

If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.

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If material creation is a manifestation of the Divine, then there is a possibility of it being Divine in every mode of activity. Presently it is not, but it can. That is the compelling or true sense of evolution. From darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, from death to immortality is one lap of this evolutionary process, the upward climb; but it can become complete when the reversal also starts happening, that whatever has to happen here shall happen in light and truth and deathlessness, in the delight of authentic becoming and being. This is possible because what the spirit sees creates a truth, as Narad maintains in Savitri; the prevalent falsehood and ignorance and error and pain might give an impression of the world being unreal, mithyā, an illusion, māyā, but it is not. There is a functional veil drawn over the spirit and it has to be removed, a protective golden cloud behind which shines the Sun of Truth, protective lest the solar intensity consume in its flames the entire existence itself. By spiritually preparing oneself, the cloud or the golden lid must be removed—as the Upanishad says. To receive the light of the Sun of Truth and to live in it is the happy fulfilment, the glad aim of the evolutionary endeavour. The agency that can accomplish this with a “masterful finality” is the divine Supermind alone and it is that power which must enter into the terrestrial operation. Our present existence shall not only be a proper spiritual ādhāra or support for its working; but shall be a field of dynamic play of the luminous Force or Shakti in her joy of endless creation. “The supramental change,” declares Sri Aurobindo in his last message of 24 November 1950, “is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness.” The key for execution of the divine Decree is provided by yogic sadhana of the Yogi of the New Age himself. It alone can “rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal’s Ananda.” The urge towards the reign of Satyam and Ritam is the genuine sense of evolutionary transformation.

In this far-reaching conception embodied in Sri Aurobindo’s yogic-spiritual philosophy what is envisaged is the working of transcendental powers in the earth-consciousness, the earth-existence, the earth-life, in the sky and the air and the fire and the water and in the earth-stuff itself, not only in its countless material forms but also in its precious soul and in its open and progressive and spacious spirit. Earth is the “significant centre” of the universe from the point of view a divine manifestation, as if created to focus all effort on one point. So, not by abandoning it, which is harshly suicidal, but by living in its creative essence and psyche can the true meaning of life, of the becoming itself be realised. We must fully recognise that there is something wonderful here, very meaningful also. …

But there is a genuine difficulty vis-à-vis man as the mental being. About his present occupation in the world and the urge that drives him in it and what is expected of it to come out, Sri Aurobindo writes: “He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality… he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is. … To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him. … Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.” Notwithstanding man’s limitations, the appearance of the divine humanity, the divine multitude, divyam janam as the Veda says, is the entire thrust present in the evolutionary movement. Behind it is the Will of the Unmanifest to manifest himself in the fine multiplicity of existence, bahusyām prajāyeyeti. There has to be the “universal incarnation”. By whatever means it be, Superman has to arrive in this creation.

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Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859; its advance publicity had assured the sale of all the thousand copies on the same day. It continues to make deep impact on our ideas of biological evolution through the process of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. It is an elegant scientific theory based on detailed scientific observations. The subject was perhaps just ripe at this point of time for such investigations and the air was full of it. Indeed, there were many competing claims for the discovery; but the Newtonian foundation provided by Darwin made it really acceptable to the scientific mind. There have been remarkable advances since then, and the leaps of thought present in it have now been covered through systematic palaeontological studies. The extensive findings at Lake Turkana in Kenya by Leaky and his team, for example, have been valuable in this respect. Yet those naturalists a hundred and fifty years ago could have never imagined the researches on stem cells being carried out currently. The interest is multilateral.

The long history of life is a fascinating document. Fossils records continue to unfold the biological diversity that had come around some four hundred million years in the past. Large teams of palaeobiologists are busy in collecting and analysing more than a hundred thousand fossil specimens. But the data have many dimensions and there is confidence as well as wariness in the study. At the other extreme, massive investments are being made in tailoring life to specific demands. There is the commercial impetus in promoting genetically fashioned products. The “evil technology foisted by greedy corporations” on the consumer society is a foreboding sign full of apprehensions. The 800-kg pumpkin is one example of it. The worldwide popularity of French fries well illustrates the money-motivated organisations that spring up in our midst; it has urged the food giants to introduce engineered potatoes on a large scale. The saying goes that “human desire shapes the plants that then shape human desire.” There is truth in it. The overall picture is that of life in the service of man; rather than man trying to know and understand life, it is gratification that rules his conduct. The sense of direction that gives meaning to things is not available in these pursuits; there is also a good deal of non-science in the entire business. The tragedy of our time is, science as a source of power is more domineering than science as a branch of knowledge. This has led to unpleasant consequences.

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The Mother narrates, in the manner of a story, the process of creation. She takes care to say that it is simply a way of seeing things and cannot be taken in the literal sense. It helps, by re-living in it, to understand the how and the why of all that is: “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 at first 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... 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. … 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.”

But then there were many successive involutions, rather descents, in Matter. The Gods come much later on the scene. The Mother speaks of the descent of the Divine Love into Matter because of which the evolutionary unfoldment in Matter has become a possibility: “...Consciousness became inconscience... so total that no contact seemed possible between the Origin and what was created. And this total inconscience made a direct descent necessary, without passing through the intermediate regions, a direct descent of the divine Consciousness in its form of Love. And it is this descent of Divine Love into matter, penetrating it and adding a new element to its composition, which has made possible the ascent, slow for us, but an uninterrupted ascent, from inconscience to consciousness and from darkness to light.”

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... The third stage is Knowledge by intimate direct contact and this comes about when the action of an inner being has been purified by the action of the psychic within us. The involvement of the psychic being brings a sense of identity with the stranger since all are part of the Divine. Since the sense of identity is now greater than the sense of differentiation, it is aptly called Knowledge by intimate direct contact.

The last or fourth stage is Knowledge by Identity and this occurs when the subliminal opens itself to the action of the superconscient above, for the superconscient sees all and knows all beings as parts of itself. One gains the triple knowledge as formulated in the Upanishad.

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Keen as a blinded man, at dawn awake,
Smells in the dark the cold odour of earth;
Eastward he turns his eyes, and over him
A dreadful freshness exquisitely breathes;
The room is brightening, even his own face!
So the excluded ghosts in Hades felt
A waft of early sweet, and heard the rain
Of Spring beginning over them; they all
Stood still, and in each other's faces looked.
And restless grew their queen Persephone;
Who, like a child, dreading to be observed
By awful Dis, threw little glances down
Toward them, and understood them with her eyes.

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