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 Supramental Change is a Thing Decreed

 

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.

As an extension of the discussion we had in Narad’s Arrival at Madra, we shall now look into the passages dealing with the theme of Evolution in Savitri. These appear in the epic at different places in different contexts, which to a reader in hurry may give the impression that the author is constantly repeating himself. But this is true in the least. On the other hand, each time Sri Aurobindo is writing about this theme, he is actually bringing out the varied, the newer shades and nuances that are present in it, they indicating the richness of the subject matter that is of good concern to us in diverse respects. This kind of presentation by the author has the advantage of wide globality which cannot be otherwise embraced or conveyed by the standard inflexible professional or constrained metaphysico-philosophical mode of discussion. It also illustrates the expositive art of Sri Aurobindo, he as a master-essayist in poetry and yet supremely truthful to the intuitive-revelatory sublimity of knowledge that is behind it in both occult and spiritual details and dimensions. It must be well appreciated that Sri Aurobindo is not writing a PhD thesis on Evolution but is describing a Mystery’s Process being worked out in the mode and logic of the Consciousness-Force operating infallibly in her own way. The infallibility of the process not from a mental but spiritual point of view has built into it the divine manifestation in an evolutionary scheme and purpose. A stage has now arrived when the transition between the mental being and the superman is a distinct prospect, a realizable eventuality. But this is a prospect, a vision of the not-too-distant a future that has emerged principally because of the unceasing yoga-tapasya done by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, long and arduous yoga-tapasya done by them in the unyielding depth of the earth-consciousness. Savitri gives hints of that secret work that has gone in its realization.

[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 following passage from Savitri describes the whole sequence in luminous details adding much to the nuances of the cosmic-transcendental working.]

 

This Nature lives tied to her origin,

A clutch of nether force is on her still;

Out of unconscious depths her instincts leap;

A neighbour is her life to insentient Nought.

 

Under this law an ignorant world was made.

 

In the enigma of the darkened Vasts,

In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite

When all was plunged in the negating Void,

Non-Being's night could never have been saved

If Being had not plunged into the dark

Carrying with it its triple mystic cross.

 

Invoking in world-time the timeless truth,

Bliss changed to sorrow, knowledge made ignorant,

God's force turned into a child's helplessness

Can bring down heaven by their sacrifice.

 

A contradiction founds the base of life:

The eternal, the divine Reality

Has faced itself with its own contraries;

Being became the Void and Conscious-Force

Nescience and walk of a blind Energy

And Ecstasy took the figure of world-pain.

 

In a mysterious dispensation's law

A Wisdom that prepares its far-off ends

Planned so to start her slow aeonic game.

 

A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp

Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul,

A game of hide and seek in twilit rooms,

A play of love and hate and fear and hope

Continues in the nursery of mind

Its hard and heavy romp of self-born twins.

 

At last the struggling Energy can emerge

And meet the voiceless Being in wider fields;

Then can they see and speak and, breast to breast,

In a larger consciousness, a clearer light,

The Two embrace and strive and each know each

Regarding closer now the playmate's face.

 

Even in these formless coilings he could feel

Matter's response to an infant stir of soul.

 

In Nature he saw the mighty Spirit concealed,

Watched the weak birth of a tremendous Force,

Pursued the riddle of Godhead's tentative pace,

Heard the faint rhythms of a great unborn Muse.

 

Then came a fierier breath of waking life…

 

 

[4] Savitri, pp. 140-41