Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

A NOTE ON SRI AUROBINDO'S "SIDDHI"

It is bound to be surprising to our ears that a little before December 17, 1918 when Mrinalini Devi died, Sri Aurobindo had written to her that he had attained his "Siddhi" ("Goal-Attainment") and that she should come over to Pondicherry and join him in his world-work.

Surprising, for two years later, on April 7, 1920 he wrote to his brother Barindra that he was only rising then into the lowest of the three levels of Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities and that his Siddhi would be complete in the future. Even as late as November 1926, when the Overmind Consciousness descended into his body, he declared that he would be going into retirement for a dynamic meditation to bring about the Supermind's Descent. November 24 of that year is generally called the Siddhi Day or the Day of Victory, and this is understandable since the Overmind's descent forms the firm base and promise of the final step. The Overmind, the World of the Great Gods, may rightly be considered the Supermind's delegate, constituting the door to the Supreme Dynamic Divine. The ultimate Siddhi, of course, was still in the future and it was so as late as 1950 in which on December 5 Sri Aurobindo left his body. Early that year he had told the Mother in anticipation of his own departure: "You have to fulfil our Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation." How, then, shall we come to terms with the letter to Mrinalini Devi at the end of 1918?

The mystery gets further deepened when we come across a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote in late August 1912 to Motilal Roy of Chandernagore: "My subjective sadhana may be said to have received its final seal and something like its consummation by a prolonged realisation and dwelling in Para-brahman for many hours... My future sadhana is for life, practical knowledge and shakti — not the essential knowledge or shakti in itself which I have got already — but knowledge and shakti established in the... physical self and

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directed to my work in life..." And the crowning shade of the puzzling situation comes in a letter, again to Mrinalini Devi, not from Pondicherry but from Calcutta itself. The English translation reads:

"I have not written to you for a long time. I feel that a great change will soon take place in our life. If it does, all our wants will come to an end. I am waiting for the Mother's Will. A final change is also going on in me. Frequent avesh ('afflatus') of the Mother is happening in me. Once this change is finished and the avesh becomes permanent, there will be no farther separation between us, because that day of Yoga-siddhi is near. After that will begin a full flow of action. By tomorrow or the day after it some signs will appear. Then I shall meet you."

It seems certain that at different times Sri Aurobindo had different goals in view and, once they were achieved, there was a sense of Siddhi during the interval before he saw a further path ahead.

What, however, renders the letter of 1918 the most astonishing is the fact that the other two announcing the Siddhi were penned before the Arya was started in August 1914, the year in which earlier (March) the Mother had come to Pondicherry from France. We can understand that when Sri Aurobindo wrote those letters the full ideal whose realisation consisted in the Supermind's taking possession of the physical being itself had not been formulated. But by 1918 the Arya, expressing this ideal, had already run for over four years, the Mother had begun co-operating with Sri Aurobindo and, though she left in 1915 with her husband owing to the outbreak of World War I, she was expected to return, as she did in 1920. Some definite spiritual milestone of great moment must have been reached at the end of 1918 and required some immediate assistance in work. Such a milestone alone could have prompted that letter. But we have no clue to its nature.

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