Narad’s Arrival at Madra by RY Deshpande is a book
based on the opening passage of 81 lines of the Book of Fate of Savitri. It
has, inter alia, aspects of this evolutionary creation of ours advancing
towards what Sri Aurobindo envisaged as the supramental manifestation in
plenitudes of the transcendental reality. Chapters XII-XVI of the book see the
related issues from various angles. These are as follows:
·
The Story of
Creation
·
Evolution—Scientific
and Occult-Yogic Aspects
·
Evolution—A
Metaphysical Discussion
·
Evolution—The
Spiritual-Gnostic Possibilities
·
Towards the
Intermediate Race
The expectation is that these themes will be of
considerable interest to the readers of the Mirror of Tomorrow and therefore it
is thought quite pertinent to post them on it. The book was published in April
2006 under the auspices of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education,
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and it is heartening to see that it has been received
enthusiastically in the Aurobindonian circles. It is now hoped that it will,
through the Internet, become accessible to a much wider readership which can
see the process and objective of the terrestrial evolution in terms of
spiritual verities. Such an interest in it could be particularly rewarding
because of the deep and fundamental positions that are available to the
discernible and the perceptive; these will make them aware of the thousandfold
possibilities of the spirit entering into this creation, the growing
possibilities that can, in fact which must come into the operative dynamics of
the earthly scheme. Going beyond the immediate intellectual-intuitive grasp of
the issues involved in it are the profounder things of the occult-yogic kind and
to be aware of them and to participate in them as far as possible to us is to
prepare ourselves in the greatness of what they hold for us. It is with this
view in mind that I am posting these five chapters as a set of articles one
after another.
In the Book of Fate of Savitri the heavenly sage Narad sets himself out from
Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun
And mind subliminal in mindless life,
And the consciousness that wakes in beasts
and men…
Of Godhead throwing off at last its veil,
Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,
Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,
Heart sensing heart, thought looking
straight at thought,
And the delight when every barrier falls,
And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.
The long
course of evolution might have been full of travail and uncertainties; but then
it is evolution with a definite purpose also, felicitous purpose, of divine
birth in the material creation. In its essentiality it is the evolution of
consciousness in the ascending grades of the spirit itself and it has to move
on. It has presently advanced to the mental level, but there are higher and
vaster ranges of consciousness stretching beyond it and these must enter into
the evolutionary scheme. Conscious participation of man in it is now possible,
and indeed man does make an effort also to exceed himself. But his soul is
burdened by the weight of the inconscient past and a thousand forces are there
to thwart his faltering attempts. In the presence of such difficulties he might
easily succumb and fail to carry the evolution forward. There is even
opposition built into the character of man: he is not only suspect of spiritual
possibilities; there is in him a deep-seated irreverence for it, even a fierce
antagonism. Oftentimes cross is the payment for the crown offered to him.
Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
The world itself becomes his adversary,
His enemies are the beings he came to save.
Those he would save are his antagonists. [1]
This is
what Narad tells to Savitri’s mother who questions God for the kind of world he
has created. In 1616 Galileo maintained that Faith and Reason, Fides et Ratio, can never contradict each other; for holding such a view he
had to suffer and pay a heavy price. Marx loudly proclaimed that “religion is
the sigh of the oppressed class”, and a whole section of the society fell prey
to its logic. True, creedal religion is a monstrosity and “excessive legalism
of the Roman Catholic Church” is anti-spiritual; same is the story with other
forms of orthodoxy and fundamentalism, classical or modern, even with
scientific and materialistic philosophies with all their stubbornness and
arrogance, their irrational denials. With the least hesitation all such
retrograde impositions must be removed, dismissed at once. Jean-Paul Sartre’s
is a godless universe and he tells us that in such a universe the only meaning
or purpose of life is to set the goals for oneself and achieve them. But then
these existential notions or ideas make the universe a stopped-up system,
closing on itself, without the occurrence of further openings or prospects. But
there are also noble and elevating thoughts and feelings and deeds in various
branches of human activity, with its conquests and triumphs which must be duly
acknowledged. There is the religio-mystical experience of seeing God in the
world and the world in God. There is the fine perception that “Logos is the
blueprint and exemplar of the created universe.” Indeed, Jalalu’d-din Rumi, the
thirteenth century Persian Sufi poet, has the intuition of a unique dawn
breaking in our skies, of the happy naissance to new-shape our life:
… to-night this
world is heavy and in travail,
Striving to give
birth to an eternal world.
In the possibility of such a birth here is
the wonderful perception of a genuine mystic. Yet the question is: will that
eternal world’s birth occur at all? And how will it happen? Or is it just a
small vulnerable imagination, feeble, flickering, a longing and an anticipation
of a dreamy poet to escape sorrow and suffering that to-night characterise
heaviness and anguish of this transient world? And then will this to-night’s
struggling world by itself, by its own effort, its own propulsion, bring about
a world of undecaying and deathless happiness? Even granting for a moment that
in its deepest secrecy there is something remarkable, something truly
magnificent, yet a misgiving remains whether this to-night’s world with its own
endeavour, by its own labour and struggle can give rise to the eternal world.
Is it in a position to assert itself against all opposition? Can man play any
pivotal role in this respect and, if he can, will he? Is he capable to do this
at all?
“If
a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if
it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in
Nature,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “then man as he is cannot be the last term of
that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself a
too limited form and instrumentation; Mind is only a middle term of
consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man
is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind and
superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is
capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself
should not arrive at Supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality,
life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in
Nature.” [2] Behind this luminous metaphysics is knowledge of the yogi-seer
founded on his realisations. We have here the revelation of what is held for
the evolution.
Sri Aurobindo in his independence-day
message, of 15 August 1947, speaks of “a step in evolution which would raise
man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solution of the problems
which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and to dream
of individual perfection and a perfect society.” [3] Undoubtedly, there are
difficulties on the way but difficulties are made to be overcome and if the
supreme will is there, tells Sri Aurobindo, they will be overcome.
One way out of the difficulties could be
Nirvana; but its immutable peace is at the cost of making nonsense of life,
this samsāra; no doubt this life is despicable, yet in its intrinsic
contents it has a meaning and a purpose also. In Nirvana there is neither the
growing individual perfection nor a society making more progress; they have to
be here in the world-dynamism based on its truth. According to the Jewish myth
Adam was created immortal but death entered the world through sin. The saviour
came and bore the cross of pain, yet fundamentally no transformative change
took place. But there is something positive also in man. The flame in him may
be flickering. But why does a flame flicker, leap? The core of the flame, the
hottest part in it, becomes lighter due to the gaseous combustion and the
lighter gases at the core of the flame move upward and the denser air from
beneath the flame fills the void at the core. The lamp continues to burn in
leaps. Hence we have leaping tongues. There is something in the heart of man
which keeps on burning and its leaping is a sign of its growth, progress. Rumi
has a vision of exceeding what man presently is, exceeding even the greatness
of the angels of heaven. Here is his song of evolution:
I died from
minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetablensss I died and
became animal.
I
died from animality and became man.
Then why fear
disappearance through death?
Next time I
shall die
Bringing forth
the wings and feathers like angels;
After that,
soaring higher than angels—
What you cannot
imagine,
I shall be that.
In spite of his diffidence and refusal and
opposition, in spite of his dumbness, man’s hope and longing and aspiration
lead him on to nobler heights, to bluer and brighter skies, to the gold-hued
empyrean. The psychic flame within him continues to burn, and leap. His spirit
climbs the ascending slopes of heaven. He crosses the Upanishadic gates of the
sun to live in immortality of the Self. He certainly has an inkling that this
creation’s bliss is in truth, as much as its truth is in bliss. There is even
the revelation that God’s glory shines throughout the universe. “Dante informs
us that he has been to paradise, and has seen things so extraordinary that he
cannot possibly hope to tell about them. Nevertheless, he determines to make
this final song his crowning achievement as a poet, and he calls on the Muses
for inspiration as he focuses on his journey heavenward. At noon on the spring
equinox, Dante, still in the Earthly Paradise, sees Beatrice gazing into the
sun, and he imitates her gaze. In so doing, he becomes aware of an
extraordinary brightness, as though God had placed in the heavens a second sun,
and feels himself being ‘transhumanised’ in preparation for his experience of
Yet, if at all, only awhile can stay such a
state—because our restless nether members get tired of it. On the “heart’s
altar the sacred fire is dim, and an old pull of subconscious cords renews, and
the unwilling spirit is drawn back from the heights.” Here is in fact a
fundamental issue staring at the soul of man, and it has to meet the challenge.
The Mother explains: “This is the great difficulty in the physical life. It is
the strength of the old habit that pulls down the body to its old way. Then
comes the struggle, and if the faith is sufficient, if the ardour for progress
is there, then out of this fall we can rise to a higher receptivity and a
better achievement. In fact, there is nothing in this experimental life that is
not meant to push the whole creation towards the luminous, marvellous Divine
End that is promised to our effort and to our faith… . If we can enlarge our consciousness
sufficiently, we see that even the apparent defeats are marvellous steps
towards the final Victory.” [4] The pull-and-push is real in this world, the
ancient tussle between the forces of light and darkness, between evil and good,
between ignorance and knowledge, between life and death, between Matter and
Spirit.
But the solution lies in our enlarging the
consciousness sufficiently. Man should be in a position to keep aside his mind
and open to the superior states waiting to descend in him. That is the true
evolutionary answer to the thousand problems that afflict him. The knowledge of
intuition and the knowledge of rationality are quite different things and it
may not be even possible for them to come together. From the infra-rational
stage to the rational was a great leap; a greater leap from the rational to the
supra-rational will make man’s manhood progressive, complete. He must
understand it—because he is equipped to understand it; the evolutionary
foundation has already got it established in its design. In the course of time
his faculties must become sharper, keener, subtler, more intense; it is only
then will he exceed the typal limits under which he presently works.
It
is true that with progress in awareness the consciousness of time, for instance,
marks a definite step forward, that it can differentiate time from changes and
events “taking place” in it. Yet the fact that time itself is a dynamic power
effecting changes and events is difficult for rational mind to recognise. We
speak of zeitgeist but do not acknowledge it as an entity per se. The being of
time is an occult reality and we are oblivious of it. Only when our psychic
faculties open out, when the flame within us burns in a steady manner,
“motionless like the light of a lamp in a windless place” as the Gita says, [5] when the Godward will is unfaltering and intense,
can we then get a glimpse of it. Will man keep aside his mentality and live in
his soul? We are presently living in the hour of God and we are not aware of
it. When the hour comes “even a little effort produces great results and
changes destiny.” [6] In it can be achieved all that the soul aspires for; in
it can be the true fulfilment also of the human race. In it is the glad
celebration of the work of time. An “aeon”, meaning not only “eternity” but
also universe, is itself a power emanating from the supreme Being, playing
various roles in the operation. It is personification of an age and new aeons
are equinoxes of God. The two aeons of Christianity are Jesus and Sophia. When
Sophia emanates without her partner aeon, the result is the Demiurge. In many
gnostic systems the various emanations of God are called aeons. They constitute
the pleroma, the “region of light”. The lowest regions of the pleroma are
closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world. Here is time in its
several manifestations.
In this physical world appearance of a
being greater than man is the “divine promise” to be realised in the majesty of
the steps of this dynamic and participative time. Time-Spirit as the Devourer
was abroad on the battlefield of the epochal Kurukshetra; in our own fierce and
forceful times it thundered through nations and trampled over them during the
Second World War. Kāla-Bhairava dances wild to destroy all that stands across
the path of the divine Event. He opens out a new era in evolutionary march of
the soul of the earth. “Man is a transitional being” and in time there has to
arrive the superman.
Speaking of the vaster light and profounder
bliss Sri Aurobindo writes as follows: “Mind indeed can never be a perfect
instrument of the Spirit; a supreme self-expression is not possible in its
movements because to separate, divide, limit is its very character. Even if mind
could be free from all positive falsehood and error, even if it could be all
intuitive and infallibly intuitive, it could still present and organise only
half-truths or separate truths and these too not in their own body but in
luminous representative figures put together to make an accumulated total or a
massed structure. Therefore the self-perfecting mental being here must either
depart into pure spirit by the shedding of its lower existence or return upon
the physical life to develop in it a capacity not yet found in our mental and
psychic nature… . The mental being exceeding his sphere does not… bring down
its greater spiritual nature into this lower triplicity; for here the mental
being is the highest expression of the Self. Here the triple mental, vital and
physical body provides almost the whole range of our capacity and cannot
suffice for that greater consciousness; the vessel has not been built to
contain a greater godhead or to house the splendours of this supramental force
and knowledge.” [7]
The problem is therefore to build a vessel
to hold the greater godhead in life here. The Vedic Rishis called the human
body an unbaked vessel, atapta tanu, in which practically no tapas has
been done, no spiritual consciousness has been established to receive Light,
Knowledge, Power, Immortality, transcendental Ananda. But there is a
possibility of human mind standing perfected in the Light and a new humanity
taking its place as part of the new order. There could be a liberated mind
escaping from ignorance into light, aware of its affiliation to supermind. In
that eventuality there would be a new mental being, an intermediate race able
to climb consciously towards and into living vastness of superconscience. [8]
If this could happen then the physical body too would prepare itself for the
divine transformation. “The full emergence of supermind may be accomplished by
a sovereign manifestation, a descent into earth-consciousness and a rapid
assumption of its powers and disclosing of its forms and the creation of a supramental
race and a supramental life.” [9] But ever the question remains: how is this
going to be achieved? It might be a possibility, a possibility already built
into the scheme, but its realisation is a process to be worked out.
But who is going to work out this
possibility? To shape humanity as the harbinger of this new supramental life is
a yogic task to be done by a Yogi only. The power or principle or agent who
could organise this new humanity, the intermediate race, Sri Aurobindo called
the Mind of Light, the mind of the very physical that has opened itself to the
supramental. Mind of Light is the presiding deity or adhişţātā of the
new race. In the dynamism of this operation the presence of the Mind of Light,
the physical receiving the supramental light, is the decisive stage in the
final arrival of the superman proper. From this nature of the Mind of Light as
the leader and governor of the intermediate race, the race of the true Overman,[*]
we might get an idea why Sri Aurobindo took the practical step of establishing
it first as an imperative towards further evolutionary growth: he saw the
necessity of the intermediate race governed by this Mind. It is the precursor,
even a prerequisite, for the appearance of the supramental race, collective
supermanhood. Yogically, Sri Aurobindo first created it in the transcendental
and then established it in himself; his body’s cells became receptive to the
supramental light and force. He gave the Mind of Light to the Mother as a yogic
gift when he withdrew on 5 December 1950, thus making it dynamic here; not too
long after this, in fact in less than six years, occurred the great event of
the supramental descent and manifestation in the earth’s subtle physical.
Apropos of the role of the Mind of Light in
the evolution of the future race of superior gnostic beings, KD Sethna (Amal
Kiran) writes: “The Mind of Light in its plenary form, leading to the fullness
of what we may call the Life-force of Light and the Body of Light, would
constitute the Intermediate Race between the Human and the Supramental Races.
The Supramental Race would be a directly manifested line of Divine Beings who
have never gone through the process of earthly evolution: they would be the
Supermind humanised, as differentiated from Humanity supramentalised. Humanity
would be supramentalised by a natural means of spiritualisation; the Supermind
would be humanised by an occult means of materialisation developed by Humanity
when it has supramentalised itself. The two achievements would be complimentary
aspects of the complete manifestation of the Divine upon earth—the crowning
vision of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and the all-consummating goal of his
Yoga.” [10] It would perhaps be necessary to pause and consider whether a
“natural” means of spiritualisation can really supramentalise humanity. It was
indeed the yogic endeavour of the Master-Yogi that had opened out the prospects.
Sethna explains the nature of this
achievement through the spiritual realisations or siddhis of Aswapati, as we
have in Savitri: “... there took
place in his very physical substance an extraordinary growth of consciousness,
a supernormal intensification of perception and puissance, due to the
unfoldment of the real being in him, the essential animating self of him, and
resulting in a wide-awake sustained ascent to a visionary and intuitive
plane... Aswapati caught ... a sense akin to or instinct with the drive of the
Primal Truths of the Transcendent that have to become the Final Realities of
the Individual in the life-terms of the physical universe.” [11] Even in the
early stages of Aswapati’s Yoga there is the aspect of the body seeking its
meaning and its fulfilment in the aggregate scheme of this vast and purposeful
creation. Body’s cells acquire an extra-dense luminosity to promote prospects
of undimming substantiality in the Spirit’s ever-growing immensities. The
archetypal Harmony becomes definite and concrete, not only in terms of ideas
alone but also in terms of established possibilities, in terms of
multiply-realised relationships even in the material expression. The Cosmic and
the Transcendental join the rich Individual, now ready to support and to
articulate them variedly. When this begins to happen, then is ushered in a new
age. This can be so only because someone has made himself available for the
complex play of the countless universal forces. Soul’s release from the
ignorant Nature is a first step without which this radical change cannot occur.
With this soul’s release Aswapati, tells Sethna, “faces the objective and
subjective Nature that constitutes our common habitual experience, our life of
Ignorance, the physical and psychological fields of our works.” [12]
Such may be taken as a statement of the
Yoga of Evolution, Yoga as a creative-operative process in the dimensions of
the vast Reality that initiates it and supports it. Such is the work which an
Avatar alone can do. Indeed, his coming here is the sine quo non for the
spiritual advance to take place; it is he who carries the evolution forward.
Sri Aurobindo had gathered the supramental Light and Force and fixed the
Supermind in his physical body. In yogic-spiritual terms, he attempted all and
achieved all. Whatever was to be done was done, not for himself, nor for the
sake of humanity; all that he did, he did for the sake of the Divine. One
definite result of this was that the Mind of Light got fixed in the Mother.
This happened in that midnight’s “tremendous hour” [13], at the time of his
passing away. A decisive step towards supermanhood was taken.
The Yogi Purusha did his job, of creating
the body of the Vijnanmaya Purusha. Now the Bhagavati Shakti must attend to her
task right away. The foundational Nature has to receive this new Light and this
new Power. That is her difficult task. That was the assignment given to the
Mother by Sri Aurobindo. And she did carry it out. What was promised got
fulfilled: “A new Light breaks upon the earth, a new world is born,”—she
declared on 24 April 1956. The event had taken place much earlier, on 29
February 1956, when during collective meditation in the evening the golden
Supermind leaped down on the golden Wednesday. Since then things remained no more
the same. Supramental manifestation took place in the earth’s subtle-physical.
What had exactly happened on 29 February 1956? The Mother says: “This evening
the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I
had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge
and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine. As I looked
at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that the
time has come, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I
struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to
pieces. Then the Supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon
earth in an uninterrupted flow.” [14] She also declared: “A new world is born,
born, born.” It was not the old world transformed, but it was a new world that
had taken birth. Her missioned work was completed in 1956. But then in the wake
of supramental descent and manifestation she got preoccupied with readying
humanity’s soul to receive this exceptional Light and Power. Once the Mother
asked Sri Aurobindo: “After the descent of the Supermind, how long do you think
the process of transformation will take?” He looked up and told her: “Perhaps
300 years.” Later the Mother added: “He said 300 years, but you know there is
something like Grace—anything can take place.”
Some of
the ancient traditions speak of the glorious body, but the divine body, divya
deha, housing the gnostic being as revealed by Sri Aurobindo is something
radically different from all that. He writes in August 1949: “This destiny of
the body has rarely in the past been envisaged or else not for the body here
upon earth; such forms would rather be imagined or visioned as the privilege of
celestial beings and not possible as the physical residence of a soul still
bound to terrestrial nature. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a spiritualised
conscious body, cinmaya deha; there has been the conception of a radiant
or luminous body, which might be the Vedic jyotirmaya deha. A
light has been seen by some radiating from the bodies of highly developed
spiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura and
there has been recorded an initial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so
great a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been
either conceptual only or rare and occasional and for the most part the body
has not been regarded as possessed of spiritual possibility or capable of
transformation. It has been spoken of as the means of effectuation of the
dharma and dharma here includes all high purposes, achievements and ideals of
life not excluding the spiritual change: but it is an instrument that must be
dropped when its work is done and though there may be and must be spiritual realisation
while yet in the body, it can only come to its full fruition after the
abandonment of the physical frame. More ordinarily in the spiritual
tradition the body has been regarded as an obstacle, incapable of
spiritualisation or transmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to
earthly nature and preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the
Supreme or to the dissolution of its individual being in the Supreme. But
this… is insufficient for a… divine life upon earth… . The body is an
offspring and creation of the Inconscient, itself inconscient or only
half-conscious… but the fact that it has developed a soul and is capable of
serving it as a means may indicate that it is capable of further development
and may become a shrine and expression of the spirit, reveal a secret
spirituality of Matter, become entirely and not only half-conscious, reach a
certain oneness with the spirit.” [15]
If there is going to be a divine Destiny
for earth, it must be so because of a free choice of the soul of the earth
itself. Not pressure or impulsion from above, nor just solicitude, but a glad
spontaneous urge from within has to be there to get ready to receive that
Destiny. The fundamental issue is of manifestation in the physical. The Mother
was busy with it. Her occult work got focused to make the mind of the earth’s
physical ready for that. The divine will has to be awakened even in the
cellular physical; the divine flame has to be kindled in that house for the
divine to dwell in a divine way. It looks rather paradoxical that, as if only
during the last few years of her presence here upon earth, she should have said
that “the more we advance on the way, the more the need of the Divine Presence
becomes imperative and indispensable.” It is not that on 21 February 1973 she
realised this imperative; it is the very physical that realised it on this day.
It means, the physical was making a direct response for the Divine Presence in
it. How marvellous!
“The
supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the
earth-consciousness,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1928. The supramental change was
decreed by him and he and the Mother had set themselves to work out its
inevitability. But to realise it in us there is needed the call and we have to be
ready to receive what they are constantly showering on us. Tapahprabhava and
Devaprasada together can, as the ancient Upanishadic scripture says, bring
fulfilment to our longings, to our soul’s aspiration. To be engaged in that
spiritual growth, to live and work and enjoy divinely in the Divine is the
aspiring soul’s glad path of the future.
Apropos of the gnostic being a pertinent
question that could be raised here is: will he be any different than the Avatar
or Incarnation of the Divine himself? are the Superman and the Avatar the same?
But the function of the Avatar is to establish a new principle of consciousness
and enable evolution to move closer towards the secret divinity that is
pressing to manifest itself with an increasing play of higher possibilities.
Establishment of the Dharma, dharmasamsthāpanam,
of the Law of the manifesting Truth, has been proclaimed to be the function of
Avatarhood. In the case of the supramental Avatar it will be the supramental
Dharma that will be founded; he will open out the way towards supermanhood. Can
such an Avatar be called a superman? No, he cannot be; he belongs to a totally
different category. While the Avatar accepts the conditions of world-ignorance
to work out the divine Purpose and divine Will in it, superman belonging to the
race of the gnostic beings does not accept any basis of ignorance for its
existence; it cannot, by its very quality, by its very quality integrity. Which
means a supramental race, though evolutionary, will always live and grow in the
widening Truth-Consciousness. That should also imply that there will not be need
of any further Avatar, any further Incarnation of the Supreme.
Long ago the Mother had obtained the
consent for collaboration from the material Nature. That was a great advance in
the evolutionary process. Nature saw the distinct possibility and gained
confidence in the work, as if she knew that this time she will not be duped.
She discarded her earlier frustrating reservations. The Mother experienced the
Divine alone acting in the body. In fact the Divine had become the body, with
the power of omniscience and omnipotence operating in it. She was busy with the
formation of the new body. A golden light, transparent and benevolent, very
strong, very powerful filled the body’s cells. It is said in the Veda that the
body of Agni is made of gold, it is hiraņya tanu. The Mother did it as a
part of the evolutionary process. She was trying to fuse this material body
with that supramental body. She would then simply walk into that body—without
dying. This happened on 17 November 1973. She walked into the New Body.
If
we have to mark a few important stages in the process of physical
transformation, these could be quickly enumerated as follows: Sri Aurobindo’s
descent into death, 1950; supramental manifestation in the earth’s subtle
physical, 1956; realisation of the surhomme consciousness, 1958; consent for
collaboration from the material Nature, 1958; the descent of the surhomme
consciousness in 1969; the psychic being itself getting materialised, 1970;
supramental body, 1972. It is the psychic being which will materialise itself
and become the supramental being, the Mother told on 1 July 1970. It is
precisely the psychic being which survives death. So, if it itself
materialises, it means the abolition of the death of, and in, the physical.
That is the central importance of the psychic being. Whatever is not in
accordance with the Truth thus just disappears. Materialisation of the psychic
being gives continuity to evolution. In the material world immortality means
the materialisation of the psychic being. The New Body makes it possible.
Perhaps that is the process. Now it is the New Body which will do whatever is
to be done. It is not an inert lump of matter, but is charged with the luminous
dynamism of the Divine. It is going to exert pressure upon the material in the
evolutionary process. The supramental Presence is a sufficient, a wonderful necessary
and sufficient basis for that to happen. Such is surely the greater gain than
perhaps the transformation itself.
On 14 March 1970 the
Mother spoke of the work Sri Aurobindo had given to her. He himself had, after
1950, willed and worked so much for the physical life to be governed by the
higher consciousness that it became now possible for it to change into an
authentic life. But it had to be translated into the process of time. The Aeon
has to open out to receive it. The Mother was here to accomplish it. The
emphasis was on the higher Power working in the physical, of manifesting in it.
In 1967 she had the early certitude of it being done. There was even a conscious
prayer from the cells of the body to the Supreme: “O Supreme Lord of the
universe, we implore Thee, give us the strength and the beauty, the harmonious
perfection needed to be Thy divine instruments upon earth.” [16] Now the
age-old illusion that the physical is incapable of opening to the higher
Consciousness was altogether removed. The body started responding to it,
joyously, submitting to it with an attitude of “It is as Thou Willest, Lord, as
Thou Willest.” The body was no more as it was, said the Mother. The progress
was such that it started breathing divinity, started living in divinity.
When the Mother’s yoga-tapasya entered the stage of
awakening consciousness of the body’s cells, she found that they started
chanting constantly the name of the Lord. They were all the while imploring the
Lord for the strength and the beauty, for the harmonious perfection needed to
be the divine instruments upon earth. Om Namo Bhagavate, Om Namo Bhagavate
became the specific Word of Realisation. The Mother even spoke of the path that
was never trod by anyone. Sri Aurobindo had done it in principle, she said on
26 November 1960; but she also added that the details had to be worked out. To
make the body’s cells awake to the divine reality was an unprecedented task and
the Mother had to discover the means for accomplishing it. It is here that she
found the power of the Mantra coming to a definite aid in fixing the higher
subtle-luminous in the dark and crude gross. Only Japa or repetition of the
Mantra has direct action on the body. While she was engaged in this intense
Japa-Yoga, she was actually invoking the “Lord of Tomorrow”.
Indeed, a very mysterious process accepting
the circumstances of life, life as is, nourishes our urge towards immortality;
this urge in turn is nourished by an equally enigmatic as well as stiff
ordaining agent of creation: life only would be a blind attempt to grow but
life and death together are presently the promoters of evolution. But if the
transcendental immortality has to be housed here in Man the Mortal, here upon mŗtyuloka,
then he has to exceed himself. He has to become Superman. Vijnanamaya Purusha
or the Being of Knowledge has to arrive here. The well fashioned and
beautifully made Upanishadic Man cannot be the ultimate crown of this great
endeavour. The problem is the physical and it is in the physical that the new
tapas-yoga has got to be done. We have to acquire the golden body, hiraņya
tanu, of the Divine Agni. This needs another kind of Yoga, the Yoga of the
Future. If by Tapas Brahma creates the world, then by Yoga the world in its
totality has to see and breathe and live Brahmanhood in every respect.
This well
fashioned Man is presently endowed in his subtle physical only with seven
Chakras or centres of occult energy. What is below him and what is above him
have not yet entered into its swift functioning. The rush of the Kundalini
Force, of the occult Pranic or Vital Energy in these seven Chakras is a great
beginning but in the veritable Yoga of Transformation what is necessary is that
the two Chakras below the body and the three above have to materialise and
become operative. This is what the Mother was told long ago by her occultist
teacher Théon, and it was her experience also. For these Chakras to come into
operation it is necessary to do another type of occult-spiritual yoga-tapasya.
It is only then that the physical can respond to the working of the higher
consciousness-force. A new body is necessary for this, a body that must emerge
out of the Yajna of the Shakti. In it must be kindled the golden flame invoking
the rush of the divine existence-substance as the basis of life in
truth-conscient delight of the manifesting Spirit. But how exactly the new body
will be made, that cannot be said or disclosed in the beginning. This however
became the main thrust of the Mother’s yoga-tapasya during the last fifteen
years or so of her work. The Mantra-japa she discovered was one possible method
to achieve this. That was an unexplored technique.
The Mother was concerned with the almighty
powers that are shut in the body’s cells. She awoke them. Not only that. The
cells started joyously vibrating and opening out more and more in the
aspiration for the Divine. This was something new. She said: “I have been sent
upon earth to do the work of supramental transformation and the bringing about
of the new creation, and I have been trying to do this. ...” Sri Aurobindo had
indicated that the new golden body is to be first formed out of the inner
mental, inner vital and inner physical renewed and reshaped. The difficulty
that notably comes in the modus operandi is that of the inner physical with its
stubborn mind. While this mind, mind within matter, was gainfully formed under
compulsion of the difficulties present in the unevolved obscure stuff, it also
inherited those very stiff and harsh difficulties. If this mind—the Mind of
Night standing across the path of the divine Event as we might see in Savitri—is
transformed, then the transformation of the body can follow “quite naturally”.
The Mother found Mantra-japa to be a definite way towards this. She was
repeating everyday 1400 times the Mantra Om Namo Bhagavate. While the
Mother was doing the Japayoga of the cells with the Mantra, with absolute faith
she entrusted the entire work and the result to the Will of the Lord.
In October 1959 the Mother spoke something
significant about the new world: “… it is not as if this new world of Truth had
to be created from nothing: it is fully ready, it is there.” It is fully
ready. Yes, it was made ready in the House of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo had
brought it into existence there fully. When in one of their occult-spiritual
meetings she asked Sri Aurobindo as to when this other world, the real one that
is there, so near, would come to take the place of this world of falsehood, he
replied: “Not ready.” The Mother was given the charge of this “not
ready”-earth; she took its burden upon herself.
At this most crucial stage her method was
to leave everything to the Will of the Lord; yet in that Will she had also something
to will. Four great times she was given the choice,—and she made the choice in
it. She had the freedom to exercise her own will. It means that the whole being
lived “only to know and serve the Divine”. To know the Divine, to will and to
serve the Divine that his Will be done—this is what is to be practised.
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 we
acquire our genuine freewill. In it can then be the truest expression of
Krishna-Kali in us. When this is achieved then the Being of Delight, 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 fierce “death” of Death, in
his transformation into the being of the Truth, he becoming the unveiled
Sat-Purusha. Then begins the real re-creation of the Lord and his Shakti, of
During the period 1912-20 we see the
Krishna-Kali aspect occurring repeatedly as the most decisive and fundamental
experience of Sri Aurobindo in the context of the Spirit’s dynamism in life. In
his noting dated 1 January 1915 he writes: “Kali is now everywhere revealed in
the bhāva of the madhur dāsī dominated by
Pursuing her in her fall implacably sweet
A face was over her which seemed a youth’s
Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous
hue
Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing
smile
Insatiably attracted to delight.
Often it changed, though rapturously the
same,
And seemed a woman’s dark and beautiful,
Turbulent in will and terrible in love,
A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
Like a mooned night with drifting
star-gemmed clouds.
This Tapas-siddhi of bringing down
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. [17]
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
References
[1] Savitri, p. 448.
[2] The Life Divine, pp. 846-47.
[3] On Himself, p. 406.
[4] About Savitri III.
[5] The Gita, VI:19.
[6] The Hour of God, p. 1.
[7] The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 453.
[8] The Supramental Manifestation,
p. 59.
[9] Ibid., p. 65.
[*]This is the appropriate rendering of the
Mother’s surhomme conveying the sense of “the intermediary between the
human and the supramental being”. For a detailed discussion, reference may be
made to Georges van Vrekhem’s book, entitled Overman published by Rupa
& Co., 2001.
[10] Aspects of Sri
Aurobindo, p. 143.
[11] Ibid., p. 123.
[12] Ibid., p. 122.
[13] Savitri, p. 346.
[14] Words of the Mother, CWM, Vol. 13, p. 52.
[15] The Supramental Manifestation, pp.
23-25.
[16] On Education, CWM, Vol. 12, p. 284.
[17] The Supramental
Manifestation, pp. 69-74.
[18] Yoga and its Objects.