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.

[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.]

The superman shall wake in mortal man

And manifest the hidden demi-god

Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force

Revealing the secret deity in the cave.

 

Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme,

His bright unveiled Transcendence shall illumine

The mind and heart, and force the life and act

To interpret his inexpressible mystery

In a heavenly alphabet of Divinity's signs.

 

His living cosmic spirit shall enring,

Annulling the decree of death and pain,

Erasing the formulas of the Ignorance,

With the deep meaning of beauty and life's hid sense,

The being ready for immortality,

His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves

Bring back to Nature her early joy to live,

The metred heart-beats of a lost delight,

The cry of a forgotten ecstasy,

The dance of the first world-creating Bliss.

 

The Immanent shall be the witness God

Watching on his many-petalled lotus-throne,

His actionless being and his silent might

Ruling earth-nature by Eternity's law,

A thinker waking the Inconscient's world,

An immobile centre of many infinitudes

In his thousand-pillared temple by Time's sea.

 

Then shall the embodied being live as one

Who is a thought, a will of the Divine,

A mask or robe of his divinity,

An instrument and partner of his Force,

A point or line drawn in the infinite,

A manifest of the Imperishable.

 

The supermind shall be his nature's fount,

The Eternal's truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,

The Eternal's truth shall be his light and guide.

 

All then shall change, a magic order come

Overtopping this mechanical universe.

 

A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal's world.

 

On Nature's luminous tops, on the Spirit's ground,

The superman shall reign as king of life,

Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven

And lead towards God and truth man's ignorant earth

And lift towards godhead his mortality.

 

 

(Savitri, pp. 705-07)