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.

[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. ]

A power released from circumscribing bounds,

Its height pushed up beyond death's hungry reach,

Life's tops shall flame with the Immortal's thoughts,

Light shall invade the darkness of its base.

 

Then in the process of evolving Time

All shall be drawn into a single plan,

A divine harmony shall be earth's law,

Beauty and Joy remould her way to live:

Even the body shall remember God,

Nature shall draw back from mortality

And Spirit's fires shall guide the earth's blind force;

Knowledge shall bring into the aspirant Thought

A high proximity to Truth and God.

 

The supermind shall claim the world for Light

And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart

And place Light's crown on Nature's lifted head

And found Light's reign on her unshaking base.

 

A greater truth than earth's shall roof-in earth

And shed its sunlight on the roads of mind;

A power infallible shall lead the thought,

A seeing Puissance govern life and act,

In earthly hearts kindle the Immortal's fire.

 

A soul shall wake in the Inconscient's house;

The mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle,

The body intuition's instrument,

And life a channel for God's visible power.

 

All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home,

Hidden no more by the body and the life,

Hidden no more by the mind's ignorance;

An unerring Hand shall shape event and act.

 

The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes,

The Spirit's force shall occupy Nature's force.

 

This world shall be God's visible garden-house,

The earth shall be a field and camp of God,

Man shall forget consent to mortality

And his embodied frail impermanence.

 

This universe shall unseal its occult sense,

Creation's process change its antique front,

An ignorant evolution's hierarchy

Release the Wisdom chained below its base.

 

The Spirit shall be the master of his world

Lurking no more in form's obscurity

And Nature shall reverse her action's rule,

The outward world disclose the Truth it veils;

All things shall manifest the covert God,

All shall reveal the Spirit's light and might

And move to its destiny of felicity.

 

Even should a hostile force cling to its reign

And claim its right's perpetual sovereignty

And man refuse his high spiritual fate,

Yet shall the secret Truth in things prevail.

For in the march of all-fulfilling Time

The hour must come of the Transcendent's will:

All turns and winds towards his predestined ends

In Nature's fixed inevitable course

Decreed since the beginning of the worlds

In the deep essence of created things:

Even there shall come as a high crown of all

The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.

 

But first high Truth must set her feet on earth

And man aspire to the Eternal's light

And all his members feel the Spirit's touch

And all his life obey an inner Force.

 

This too shall be; for a new life shall come,

A body of the Superconscient's truth,

A native field of Supernature's mights:

It shall make earth's nescient ground Truth's colony,

Make even the Ignorance a transparent robe

Through which shall shine the brilliant limbs of Truth

And Truth shall be a sun on Nature's head

And Truth shall be the guide of Nature's steps

And Truth shall gaze out of her nether deeps.

 

When superman is born as Nature's king

His presence shall transfigure Matter's world:

He shall light up Truth's fire in Nature's night,

He shall lay upon the earth Truth's greater law;

Man too shall turn towards the Spirit's call.

 

Awake to his hidden possibility,

Awake to all that slept within his heart

And all that Nature meant when earth was formed

And the Spirit made this ignorant world his home,

He shall aspire to Truth and God and Bliss.

 

Interpreter of a diviner law

And instrument of a supreme design

The higher kind shall lean to lift up man.

 

Man shall desire to climb to his own heights.

 

The truth above shall wake a nether truth;

Even the dumb earth become a sentient force.

 

The Spirit's tops and Nature's base shall draw

Near to the secret of their separate truth

And know each other as one deity.

 

The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.

 

Then man and superman shall be at one

And all the earth become a single life.

 

Even the multitude shall hear the Voice

And turn to commune with the Spirit within

And strive to obey the high spiritual law:

This earth shall stir with impulses sublime,

Humanity awake to deepest self,

Nature the hidden godhead recognise.

 

Even the many shall some answer make

And bear the splendour of the Divine's rush

And his impetuous knock at unseen doors.

 

A heavenlier passion shall upheave men's lives,

Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam,

Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire,

Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;

Mortality's bond-slaves shall unloose their bonds,

Mere men into spiritual beings grow

And see awake the dumb divinity.

 

Intuitive beams shall touch the nature's peaks,

A revelation stir the nature's depths:

The Truth shall be the leader of their lives,

Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and act,

They shall feel themselves lifted nearer to the sky,

As if a little lower than the gods.

 

For knowledge shall pour down its radiant streams

And even darkened mind quiver with new life

And kindle and burn with the Ideal's fire

And turn to escape from mortal ignorance.

 

The frontiers of the Ignorance shall recede,

More and more souls shall enter into light,

Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear

And lives blaze with a sudden inner flame

And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight

And human wills tune to the divine will,

These separate selves the Spirit's oneness feel,

These senses of heavenly sense grow capable,

The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy

And mortal bodies of immortality.

 

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of breath and speech and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill.

 

Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come

Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;

A sudden bliss shall run through every limb

And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.

 

Thus shall the earth open to divinity

And common natures feel the wide uplift,

Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray

And meet the deity in common things.

 

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.

 

 

 (Savitri, pp. 707-11)