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Your beautiful New-Year card enshrining your soul's hope and aspiration has been lying in front of me for quite a while. Whenever I looked at it my heart warmed up and wished to reply. The picture it carried - the tall tree stretching its branches towards the monastery - expressed my own mind. The branches lower down seemed to lift the building right from its foundation and pass it on to the upper boughs to bear it higher than its present height. All the fine things of the past need not only a new vision at the top but also a new impulse at the bottom. There is a greater sky than seen so far and a greater earth than felt up to now. The sense of a sky hidden within the very dust and the intuition of an earth waiting among the clouds - it is this double future that is calling us today.
The amazing events all over middle and eastern Europe are to be understood as pointing to such a future. What has burst out there should not be taken merely as a failure of totalitarian Communism and a justification of democratic Capitalism. Freedom, of course, is the general cry and all that the Berlin Wall symbolised has crumbled down by that cry's exhilarating resonance, but it is really a portent of a breaking equally beyond the old constraints and the old licences. A certain discipline within the one system and a certain elan within the other have to join together and push past both the systems to realise something more fundamental than the supposed equality of the Eastern bloc, something more expansive than the so-called liberty of the Western. And this something is, as Sri Aurobindo said long ago, the third term of the triple slogan raised in the French Revolution which marked with a blood-stained glory the difficult birth of the modem world.
Not "Liberty", not "Equality" but "Fraternity" is the true summons of the future - the instinct in us of the one Father Heaven, the one Mother Earth, linking all of us at the source
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- the feeling within of the single Self that has gone forth and become the multitudinous universe. Thus alone, by the upsurge of the ideal of an inherent union of souls, an intrinsic spiritual brotherhood, can a genuine liberty which knows its own limits be established, an authentic equality which keeps its eyes open to distinctions and differences be practised - a state exceeding the old opposing 'isms. To make a pun, the isms of yesterday should be seen as wasms today and a novel drive felt to render actual the dream of fraternity which got lost in the nightmares of liberty and equality in the forms attempted by men in whom the inner being could not have its full say in the outer.
My notion that the crumbling of the Berlin Wall should direct us beyond the values of the 'isms cherished by the modern world finds a supporting sign in the strange phenomenon that the central power in the new prospect disclosed today is an apparently atheistic product of a culture oriented towards materialist well-being: Mikhail Gorbachev of Soviet Russia. He has always struck me as a Vibhuti in disguise, an instrument of the Divine who does not know what force is impelling him. Though an atheist, he does not shun religious movements, but this non-shunning does not mean any sympathy for them: by not belonging to any of them yet letting them exist it is as if his atheism were a move away only from the religions of the past. Though a Marxist, believing in a materialistic view of history and with a stress on economic welfare, he has thrown his country's doors wide open to the winds of the non-Communist world, yet without subscribing to that world's Capitalist principles. Unknowingly he is a message from the time to come and his denying of the Divine is itself guided by the Divine. Through him, I think, we have what I may dub an indirect and undefined fore-glimpse of the Aurobindonian Age's adventure to awake the earth to its own secret heavenliness through a spirituality which overpasses all religions while fulfilling their inmost essence by a pull beyond the versions that have failed this essence.
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For what indeed is this essence? An attainment of utter Godhead as Teacher, Leader, Sustainer, Lover when there will be realised a mind that can compass all knowledge instead of groping for it step by step, a life-force that can meet every challenge and provide the key of success to all enterprises, a body that is immune to disease, decay and death, a soul that is in bliss independently of all objects and circumstances and is in spontaneous harmony with everyone and everything - in short, a completely Godlike existence in time and space. The extant religions have dreamt, each in its own manner, of a Kingdom of God here and now, but never known how to achieve it and have therefore fixed their eyes finally on a supraterrestrial paradise or a transcendental Nirvana. The Supreme Power that can consummate the dream it had itself planted in the evolving consciousness on the earth has at last been clearly visioned and experienced on its Himalayan altitude and set working in the human sphere by Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual partner the Mother. A promising present and an assured future they have given us by means of their Integral Yoga with the helpful prodigality of their own vivid examples.
(21.1.1990)
I have carefully re-read those lines on page 445 of Savitri (Centenary Edition) strikingly reminding us of Christ with their references to Gethsemane and Calvary, bleeding brow, crucifixion, two thieves and the last words "It is finished." We both saw that if the verse immediately following these lines -
Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls -
had not been there we would have had a consistent picture reminiscent of the final act in the life of Jesus.
May I now point out that there is an explanation ' line which looks quite incongruous. Up to the ey
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He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour's way -
Sri Aurobindo is considering the Saviour under the aspect of the story of Christ going to his death on the Cross. But the very mention of "the Saviour's way" shows that he is using this story as a powerful illustration of a spiritual phenomenon wider than it. And after the full stop at the end of the line I have just quoted he passes from the particular aspect to the general case. For the next line is:
He who has found his identity with God...
This "He" is any Saviour and what follows the line has the aspect of a generality though not necessarily forgetting the particular aspect. Thus the reference to the Saviour being "hewn, quartered on the scaffold" is not unnatural or irrelevant: such a death is also part of the Saviour-history. The line in which this phrase occurs leads on to another immediately after it in which, as I have said, the Christ-aspect is not forgotten:
His crucified voice proclaims, "I", I am God."
But "crucified" here is metaphorical while still keeping a link with the Christ-reminiscence.
Looked at thus, the entire passage starting with the Christ-aspect and ending with this reminiscence and bringing in the middle the cruelty of the scaffold impresses me as a triumph of poetic art in which everything essential is vividly woven together with an eye at once to a famous particularity and to a comprehensive generality. Perhaps the comprehensiveness would have been complete if one more line like the one I have proposed had been inserted and the close had run:
Bound to the stake and set aflame or else
Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls
His crucified voice proclaims, "I, I am God."
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If Sri Aurobindo had shown me the passage in private I with the freedom he generously permitted and even expected might have suggested to him to compose an extra line about the Saviour being burned at the stake.
As regards your highly original idea of what must have been really the last words of Jesus on the Cross, nameiy, "I, I am God" - as caught by Sri Aurobindo's vast vision - the aspect of generality which I have presented would not nullify it but lead to it indirectly. For, what Sri Aurobindo says about all Saviours must apply to Christ. There is even a special touch here, however generalised, in regard to him in the adjective "crucified" qualifying "voice". So, according to me, your contention can stand. All the more since Sri Aurobindo has used the last words from John's Gospel - "It is finished" - which show Jesus in full control and conscious of the Divine Plan rather than in a state of dereliction as suggested by Mark's report and, after him, Matthew's: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" - "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" - an echo of the beginning of Psalm 22.
The words, "I, I am God", are, as you yourself said, typical of the Sufis whose doctrine and realisation are a blend of Islam and Vedanta and the Bhakti cult. Their crowning word is identity with God. In Christ's manifold declarations the Sufi element (which in the language current in the New-Testament period would be called "Gnostic") is most prominent in the words put into his mouth by John's Gospel: "I and my Father are one." Richard Burton, the famous nine- teenth-century translator of the unexpurgated Arabian Nights which he entitled A Thousand Nights and a Night, a version Sri Aurobindo intensely admired, wrote a long poem called The Kasidah with an Arabian atmosphere. Among the lines I remember from it are these two:
"I am the truth, I am the truth," we hear the God-drunk
gnostic cry:
"The microcosm abides in me, eternal Allah's naught
but I."
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Now for the other lines you quoted to me from page 343 of Savitri, a passage which is part of Aswapati's long speech to the Divine Mother:
A power arose out of my slumber's cell.
Abandoning the tardy limp of the hours
And the inconstant blink of mortal sight,
There where the Thinker sleeps in too much light
And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye
Hearing the word of Fate from Silence' heart
In the endless moment of Eternity,
It saw from timelessness the works of Time.
Overpassed were the leaden formulas of the Mind,
Overpowered the obstacle of mortal Space:
The unfolding Image showed the things to come.
To my understanding, we have here a new consciousness emerging from the profoundly in-drawn state ("slumber's cell") reached by Aswapati. It goes beyond the usual process of time and, from its thought-transcending poise in Eternity's all-knowing Silence, foresees the future unrolling and fore-hears the divine decrees of Fate. What the Eye and the Ear of Superconsciousness catch is, as the subsequent passage shows, the portent of a world-upheaval and then the arrival of a new race of world-transformers.) The lines which I have cited bear some resemblance to a stanza in Sri Aurobindo's jivartmukta:
He who from Time's dull motion escapes and thrills
Rapt thoughtless, wordless into the Eternal's breast,
Unrolls the form and sign of being,
Seated above in the omniscient Silence.1
(14.1.1990)
1. Part of the interesting reply to my letter may be reproduced with advantage:
"Thank you for the long and studied note with regard to the subjects we discussed together....
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I have received with great pleasure your letter, whose beginning - "It is very early in the morning, brahmo muhurta" - reminds me of the beginning of Savitri:
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
for there too the time when the temple-bells ring in order to mark the brahmo muhurta, the symbolic moment for the Powers of Light to resume their workings, is suggested and rendered more specific by the lines:
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity...
In the situation to which you refer, one of the Gods was already up and doing, somewhat forestalling the brahmo muhurta. Please don't think my allusion to you sub specie deitatis - "under the deific aspect" - is just a joke. Whoever has had his Psychic Being awake enough to set his eyes in the direction of Sri Aurobindo and of the Mother has remembered his divine origin and is on the way to realising it and to standing, if not on a par with the great Cosmic deities, still at least in the company of glorious Godlings.
Quite consonant with your waking up early this morning is your question prompted by the Mother's words to you at your first interview with her. After your childlike patter to
"As to the 'crucifixion' lines, what you have explained now is what I had, myself, felt all along. But only recently the apparent incongruity of that one line came before me and 1 came to you about it. Yes, the addition of some such line as you suggest would have made it quite clear. However, it is now well understood.
"Regarding the other lines, your explanation seems rather involved, because I suppose it is a mental one. On my part, I find an intrinsic simplicity in Savitribut not of a mental kind. There is an inner understanding but not one I can put into words. Anyway, thank you for this also. It does help.
"Your quotation from the "The Kasidah' and from Sri Aurobindo's 'Jivan-mukta' are very revealing."
Udar
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her about your life up to that moment, she said: "It shows that your Psychic is awake." Your question to me - "What exactly does it mean?" - is also childlike. For it can only suggest that, though you know the Psychic Being by actual experience, you have not formulated its wakefulness in mental terms. Or if I go by your second question - "Can a Psychic which is once awake ever draw back?" - I may suppose that whatever mental formulation you may have does not take into account the full state of affairs in the course of the spiritual life. Let me touch upon both your perplexities,
I would say briefly that the Psychic Being in us is that which passes from life to life through the long series of rebirths. It is the Immortal in the mortal, gradually evolving representative of the Supreme Spirit in the terms of mind, life-force and body. In general it moves spontaneously towards what our idealistic literature calls "the True, the Good, the Beautiful." This trio forms the goal of our philosophical, ethical and aesthetic life. Religion sees it in the light of a divine Presence and there the Psychic Being tends to go directly rather than indirectly towards the object of its aspiration. But even there its intrinsic movement does not find its full play, for our life gets only an aura of this inmost soul: the full substance and form of it is still behind a veil. Only when we take to a radically Godward living, start sadhana in a one-pointed way does the Psychic Being have a chance to come forth into open action. Then whatever of it was awake as in your case gets a full chance to get out of bed, as it were, and walk about in the sphere of mind, life-force and body.
Now this does not mean that it will keep walking about all the while. Not quite at home in the outer sphere and unfamiliar with the various forces there of a mixed sort it can draw back time and again to its bed. You mustn't think it has gone to sleep once more. But as long as it is reclining it can feel drowsy and fail to catch wholly the Spiritual Sunlight into which it formerly emerged. However, in spite of the
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misting over of the eyes, there is no question of real withdrawal. And let me assure you that it is not only my dear friend who can be afflicted with drowsiness. All the children of our Mother experience it now and then. Even Nolini, on occasion, must have been heard yawning and seen drooping his eyelids. At present - November 1987 - I can't quite say "Yawned" in our hearing with regard to another of our notable sadhaks, Champaklal, for that might break his 12-year old mauna, voluntary muteness! Yet some sign of semi-somnolence of soul must have been there at times for him too. In any case, though we may seem to recede from the Mother, she never recedes from us. Once she has seen our Psychic Being peep out, she is always with us, sweetly smiling at its fluttering eyes and helping them to keep wide open for good. So never let a cloud of depression add to whatever little shadow may flit because of common human frailty across the God-gleam in your gaze.
Especially since the Mother, at the close of your first interview with her, has put her hand on your head, blessed you, picked up a flower kept in a plate by her side and pronounced, "This is Successful Future", you should banish all doubt over things to come. Go happily forward and if you like to have my company, it is always there for the asking. Even without asking, you will have it, for a barrierless warmth flows incessantly between Amal and his cherished friend.
(14.11.1987)
There is a phrase in Savitri which, I am told, puzzled you considerably when you were in India. It occurs in the context of "ideal Mind" on "peaks" beyond our imagination. The nature of this Mind and of its workings are described:
In an air which doubt and error cannot mark
With the stigmata of their deformity....
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Dreaming its luminous creations gaze
On the Ideas that people eternity.
In a sun-blaze of joy and absolute power
Above the Masters of the Ideal throne
In sessions of secure felicity.2
I understand that in the last three lines you failed to find a grammatical structure: what is the subject and where is the verb? I believe the cause of your perplexity was chiefly the word "throne", while the word "Above" added to the bafflement. Though one did not know what was done "In a sun-blaze", the sun-blaze seemed to be above the Masters of a throne which was qualified by an adjective somehow capitalised: "Ideal."
Nothing could be farther from the actual sense. In a few places in Savitri Sri Aurobindo uses "throne" as an intransitive verb - a practice rare but allowed in English - equivalent in meaning to "sit on a throne" or, in general, "sit in state, as on a throne". And "Above" here, is not a preposition governing "the Masters": it is an adverb denoting that "the Masters" are high up in "a sun-blaze". Nor is "Ideal" an adjective: it is a noun. Sri Aurobindo is speaking of "the Masters of the Ideal".
I recollect at least two other instances of the intransitive "throne" in Sri Aurobindo's epic. One is very much as in the instance which puzzled you; but with a more self-explaining context:
A divine intervention thrones above.3
The other has clearly the past tense of the same verb in a line standing by itself:
Life throned with mind, a double majesty.4
2.Centenary Ed.,Vol. 28, p. 261: lines 16-17, 22-26.
3.Ibid., p. 58: 34.
4.ibid., p. 126: 4.
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