The Sun and The Rainbow

Aids to an Inquiring Seeker

Q: Sri Aurobindo left British India and came to Pondicherry in French India and the Mother came from France to join Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Will you explain the significance of their meeting?

The meeting of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother appears as if predestined. Events and circumstances have been so moulded as to bring them together. Sri Aurobindo, who had been practising Yoga during his 6-years' leadership of the nationalist fight for freedom in British India, received an inner command to leave the political field and go to French India, first to Chan-dernagore and then Pondicherry, in order to devote himself to a spiritual work that would usher in a new age of the whole world with India as its luminous centre. The Mother, who had been practising spirituality first in France and then in Algeria, got also into touch with Pondicherry — initially through one who came there in connection with French politics. A little before Paul Richard arrived in the capital of French India, Sri Aurobindo had already made his home there. Richard spoke to him of Mirra, as the Mother's name then was. Sri Aurobindo is reported to have said that when the time would be ripe he would get in touch with him and her.

Four years later the Mother came to Pondicherry. This was in 1914. Before coming she repeatedly had the vision of a certain figure whom she accepted as her guide and instinctively called Krishna though she knew very little of Indian mythology or history. Being a gifted painter, she made a coloured sketch of that figure. At the very first meeting with Sri Aurobindo she recognised in him the master of her occult life. We

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may observe here that Sri Aurobindo, during his political life in British India, had raised the cry of "The Divine Mother", the World -Creatrix whose frontal aspect was to him the Soul of India, the presiding Goddess of this country's career through time, this country whose most characteristic trait has been its seeking for the infinite and eternal Spirit all through her long history. On meeting the Mother, Sri Aurobindo recognised an incarnation of the Divine Mother he had worshipped.

The meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been pursuing the inner life on essentially identical lines which would unite Spirit and Matter. So their joining of forces was the most natural thing. And it was not only a doubling of strengths but also a linking of complementaries. Sri Aurobindo's main movement of consciousness may be said to have been an immense Knowledge-Power from above the mind though whatever was necessary for an integral spirituality was also there in one form or another. The Mother's chief movement may be said to have been an intense Love-Power from behind the heart, even if all else needed for an all-round Yoga was present as a ready accessory. When she and Sri Aurobindo met, they completed each other, brought fully into play the spiritual energies in both and started the work of total earth-transformation from high above and deep within.

Another significance of their meeting may be read on the cultural plane. Sri Aurobindo, hailing from India, was educated in England from his seventh to his twenty-first year — at the start privately in Manchester, later at St. Paul's School in London and finally at King's College, Cambridge. He became not only a master of English but also an extraordinary scholar of Greek and Latin. He grew perfectly familiar with French and knew Italian and German sufficiently to read The Divine Comedy and Faust in the original. European history was a special study of his and he steeped himself in Western culture ancient, medieval and modern. It was only after his return to

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India that he plunged into a study of India's history and cultural institutions and awoke in himself the multi-dimensional spiritual consciousness of India. He embodied a fusion of the West and the East and expressed himself and his experiences in poetry and literary criticism, philosophy and socio-political thought. Nor has he been merely a literary and spiritual figure of giant proportions. Practical politics was his daily concern for several years. He gave India's nationalist aspirations a new dynamism, evoked in a fallen people the vision of its freedom and of its psychological revival, and stood as its leader through a crowded and dangerous period of revolutionary activity. Also all through his life in India he kept in living contact with the West and he has particularly recorded that he was drawn by an intense affinity to France although he was educated in England and never set his foot in the former country.

On the other side, the Mother has declared that as soon as she came to India she felt India to be the true country of her soul. But, of course, she brought too the finest that French culture represented and she bore in herself the whole artistic spirit of Europe. She was in her younger days a student of painting familar with the great artists and studios of Paris. She practised painting for many years and her inspired output is both abundant and varied. Music too was a part of her being and it has found creative expression time and again. Further, she embodied a practical genius of a rare order, with powers of wide yet precise organisation.

Thus she and Sri Aurobindo complete by their combination the entire circle of the higher human activities and are supremely fitted to bring the East and the West together and, blending them, lead to a common all-consummating goal.

Q: Is it true that every 12 years there has been a change in Sri Aurobindo's life in connection with his Yoga of what he has called Supermind?

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At least four important "changes" we can see at intervals of 12 years.

In 1914 the Mother came into Sri Aurobindo's life and their direct collaboration for the Yoga of the Supermind started. Also in that year Sri Aurobindo, with the Mother's assistance, launched the monthly philosophical review, Arya, in which most of his works first appeared serially.

In 1926 — that is, 12 years later — there was the descent, into Sri Aurobindo's body as well as into the Mother's, of what Sri Aurobindo has termed Overmind. Overmind is the World of the Great Gods, diverse aspects of the one Divinity. It is the Plane of Krishna-Consciousness, the highest unified power of the Divine known in the past. With its descent the preparation was made and the foundation laid for the descent of the hitherto unmanifested power which is the unique goal of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, the Supermind. Supermind is the supreme dynamic and creative Consciousness, also designated by Sri Aurobindo Truth-Consciousness, Gnosis, vijnana, whose direct entrance into the world can alone transform and divinise not only the mind and the vital being but also the body.

After another 12 years — in 1938 — there was, as certain words of the Mother seem to indicate, a momentous move onward. Before 1938 the Supermind had already been within Sri Aurobindo's body because it had descended into his mental and vital being and had been functioning in it. But now the Mother could see the Supermind descending into the most physical part of Sri Aurobindo and directly mingling with his outermost centre of consciousness rather than indirectly through his mental and vital being. But the problem was to fix it there, a permanent light in what we may pinpoint as the physical mind, so that an immediate and settled action of the Supramental Consciousness instead of a come-and-go of it might develop in the material being.

Only in 1950 — when 12 years again had elapsed — this kind of action became a part of earth-life — but as a result of

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Sri Aurobindo's sacrifice of his own body. The whole resistance of what he had named the Inconscient, the root and support of all incapacity of the physical nature, including death, was, as it were, swallowed up into Sri-Aurobindo's body and nullified and exhausted there. Hence this body, semi-divinised and marked for total transformation, had to be given up and in return the Supramental Consciousness poured forth unresisted. Because of that pouring forth, Sri Aurobindo's body, as it lay in view of a devoted public, was seen not only by the Mother but also by a number of disciples as filled with light. The light remained for 5 days, during which there was no touch of decomposition, not even of discolouration. The Mother has said in private that as soon as Sri Aurobindo left his body what he had called the Mind of Light was realised in her — and she has defined the Mind of Light as the physical mind receiving the Supramental Light. Thus we may say that the "change" which occurred in Sri Aurobindo's life in 1950 established permanently the Supermind, as a starting-point, in the most external being of his companion in Yoga, the Mother.

Q: Sri Aurobindo has called his Yoga the Supramental Yoga. What exactly is it and why precisely is it needed?

All Yogas aim at the union of the human consciousness with the Infinite, the Eternal, the Divine and at the expression of this union in world-activity. But all Yogas have held that this expression cannot be complete because the very stuff of world-existence has an in-built imperfection. Entire spiritual fulfilment can never take place on earth: it can take place only in the Beyond after the body has been given up.

This attitude and position are due, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the fact that the highest spiritual Consciousness directly attained and set working in our nature so far is not the ultimate creative Power. The ultimate creative Power must hold the secret divine truth of all that is in our world, a truth that is meant to unfold itself in the course of earthly evolution

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and fulfil here and now all the terms in which this evolution has occurred: the mental, the vital, the physical beings. Otherwise the universe in which we live fails to discover its final justification. Coming as an expression of the Divine it should in the end be able to express the Divine and not serve merely as a grandiose stage on which a soul arrives to develop and pass out, abandoning as ultimately useless the instruments through which it has worked. Some sense of this fulfilling destiny of the universe and its forms was there in very early ages of Indian spirituality; but it faded afterwards. Sri Aurobindo seizes that sense, clarifies it, dynamises it as a result of his Yoga which moves beyond all the splendid achievements of the past and reaches a power of the Infinite and the Eternal, so far unmanifested, which he names Supermind. Hence his Yoga is the Supramental Yoga: it brings into play the divine truth of the mind, the vital being, the body and asks the soul in us, whose instruments these are, to surrender itself wholly to the Supramental. Truth-Consciousness, God in His highest form, so that our whole self may ascend there and the whole Supermind may descend into us.

All through human history, our imperfect nature has longed for perfection. The mind has aspired after plenary knowledge, the life-force after total capacity, the body after health and beauty and perpetuation. Only the Supramental Yoga can answer these basic demands. For they arise from its own hidden presence in Nature. That is one aspect of the need for his Yoga.

Secondly, unless the very body receives the Divine in its cells and tissues and bones, unless the entire outer self and its activity is filled with the Divine, the spiritual light will never make its permanent home on earth. Sages and prophets and Avatars will come and bring their glory, but the glory will thin away after a time and humanity will continue to be ignorant and weak and mortal. To establish God amongst us for good, the Supramental Yoga is needed.

Thirdly, the Supermind will make all life its province: no

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function of the human consciousness will be left out: every field will be covered and changed. This means the solution of all our problems — cultural, social, political, economic.

Fourthly, the Supermind brings to completion the evolutionary process which is concerned not only with individuals but also with collectivities. The Supramental Yoga takes all mankind as its material. It is not for just a few extraordinary individuals: its call is to the whole of humanity, declaring to all the divine destiny awaiting them. It is a collective and not a merely individual Yoga and it promises a perfect society, a new world of complex harmony moving from adventure to blissful adventure of Truth-discovery and Truth-dynamism. All modern thought which has a global vision and stresses the ideal of "One World" is in profound need of the Supramental Yoga.

Q: What, according to Sri Aurobindo, would the Supramental Body be like and how long will Yoga take to fulfil his vision ?

A very precise description of the Supramental Body cannot be given but some general points may be put forward. This Body will have four main attributes: lightness, adaptability, plasticity and luminosity. It will feel absolutely light — weightless as if walking on air — because all inertia and unconsciousness will be gone. It will also have the power to adapt itself to any condition. Whatever the demands on it, it will prove equal to them — because its full consciousness will drive out all incapacity, all resistance to change. To put the matter a little frivolously: sitting on the North Pole it can say, "How warm and cosy!" and squatting on the Equator it can start an inward air-conditioner. Further its plasticity will make it immune to injury. If a bullet, for instance, is fired at it, it will not dully receive it but pliantly open up and let the bullet pass through and then close up once more. Of course, most probably the bullet will fail to reach it and somehow get deviated; but in case it comes in the right direction it will

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find no vulnerable surface. Finally, every cell will be radiant with the supramental glory. All the physical substance will be turned into stuff of living light. And this luminosity will be visible to everyone. Sceptics may at first say that phosphorus has been cunningly applied. But they will soon realise that the glow is permanent — a lasting proof of the supramental transformation.

It should be evident that a body with these four main attributes cannot be composed of gross parts like bones and arteries and organs like heart and stomach, or live on food and water and have a process of blood-circulation and waste-elimination. Quite a different kind of structure no less than a different kind of substance must go to the making of it. Instead of solid fixed organs there will be subtle centres of energy and instead of a definite process of chemical changes there will be a radiation of forces, energy-exchanges — and all the movements as well as all the centres will be materialisations of an illumined consciousness.

As to the general form, it will have a human aspect, but there will be no differentiation of sex and the typical sexual traits, primary or secondary, will be absent. The sexual function itself will be out of place and unnecessary just as the intake and throw-out of food will be. Whatever creative action is needed will be achieved by subtle means, by a pure play of conscious energy.

This is as it should be, for the sexual function comes into existence because the individual body is mortal and the race has to be continued through one's offspring. The Supramental Body, being what it is, cannot degenerate and die or be subject to fatal accident. The necessity of death is due also to an incapacity of the ordinary body to change and keep pace with inner development; it has to break up and set free the evolving soul to get for itself new bodies. The Supramental Body by its infinite adaptability will never lag behind the inner movement and thus require no substitution. Not that it will be bound to immortality: such bondage is again a glorified

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shortcoming. The Supramental Body, like the Divine Consciousness which has shaped itself into it, will be free in all respects. It can dissolve at will and re-form at will.

Who can say for sure how long evolution will take to arrive at a wholly divine physical life? Sri Aurobindo once remarked that perhaps 300 years would be wanted. The change has certainly to be gradual if it is not to be a temporary miraculous imposition of Supernature upon Nature but a lasting wonderful growth of Nature into Supernature — a true evolution, however much the final result may look like a revolution. Yet definite signs of the change can come much before 300 years.

In closing we may distinguish between the Supramental Body which will be the transformed human physical life and the Supramental Body which will be the direct material manifestation of beings belonging to the Supermind itself. The latter will not ever have known a past of earthly development and so will possess what we may term a perfect perfection whereas the former will be the best and most perfect job made out of materials that were once human and imperfect.

Q: Will you tell me something about Sri Aurobindo's poetic masterpiece, Savitri?

Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol is a poem over which Sri Aurobindo worked for almost half his life-time. The first version dates back to his early forties; the last was on the anvil in even his seventy-eighth year when he passed away. There were almost twelve recasts, not exactly to add to the purely poetic merit but essentially to lift the work to the highest and most comprehensive expression possible of spiritual realities within the scheme set up by him of character, incident and plot. The expression sought was from the top range of what he designated "Overhead" planes — ranges of consciousness lying hidden above the human mind and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the Infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as expressible at present in poetry (or prose): Higher Mind,

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Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. Savitri was intended to be on the whole the poetry of Overmind, akin on a massive scale to what the ancient Rishis had called the Mantra — the supreme revelatory expression. The Mantra can open up in the hearer luminous tracts of the inner being and put him in touch with the very heights from which it has descended through the hushed intense receptivity of the poet's deepmost self. Brief instances of the Mantra in Savitri are lines like

The abysm of the unbodied Infinite...

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient...

The superconscient realms of motionless Peace

Where judgment ceases and the word is mute

And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone...

All can be done if the god-touch is there...

Earth's winged chimaeras are Truth's steeds in

Heaven,

The impossible God's sign of things to be...

Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great

deeps...

Both in quality and bulk, this epic must be counted as remarkable among even the world's remarkable achievements. With its 23,806 lines, covered by Twelve Books, each mostly of several Cantos, it is the longest poem in the English language, beating The Ring and the Book of Browning with its 21,116 lines to the place of runner-up. Among the world's epics which can in general be compared with it in sustained poetic quality, only the Shah-Nameh of Firdausi, the Ramayana of Valmiki and the Mahabharata of Vyasa exceed it in length — three works which, like it, are products of the East. And indeed

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Savitri stands with the masterpieces of Valmiki and Vyasa in more than one respect. It has been conceived with an affinity to the ancient Indian temperament which not only rejoiced in massive structures but took all human life and human thought into the spacious scope of its poetic creations and blended the hidden worlds of Gods and Titans and Demons with the activities of earth. A cosmic sweep is Savitri's and Sri Aurobindo wanted his poem to be a many-sided multicoloured carving out, in word-music, of the gigantic secrets of his "Supramental Yoga".

With the Mahabharata it has a direct link too. For, it is based on a story, in that epic, of a victorious fight by love against death. But the Savitri of the Mahabharata, fighting Yama the God of Death who took away her consort Satyavan, becomes here an Avatar of the eternal Beauty and Love plunging into the trials of terrestrial life and seeking to overcome them not only in herself but also in the world she has embraced as her own: she is sworn to put an end to earth's ignorant estrangement from God — estrangement whose most physical symbol is Death, the bodily opposite of the luminous inherent immortality of the Divine. Her story grows a poetic structure in which Sri Aurobindo houses his special search and discovery, his uttermost exploration of occult worlds, his ascent into the highest plane of the Spirit, the as-yet unmanifested Supermind, his bringing down of its power to divinise man's total nature. And the figure of Savitri suggests in general his own companion in the field of Yoga, the Mother, who carried on after the Master's departure the great task set by him.

The technique of Savitri is attuned to the scriptural conception at work. The iambic five-foot line of blank verse is adopted as the most apt and plastic for harmonies like those of the Vedas and the Upanishads. The blank verse, however, is given certain special characteristics affining it still further to them. It moves in a series of blocks formed by a changing distribution of correctly proportioned sentence-lengths. Scarcely any block breaks off in the middle of a line and each

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thus forms, in spite of linkage with the others, a kind of self-sufficient structure like a stanza, but in general no two such "stanzas" are equally long. The units also of each block tell markedly in their own individual mass and force of Word and rhythm, though a concordant continuity is maintained in the sense. Enjambment (overflow from line to line) which was used to impetuous effect in Sri Aurobindo's early narratives — Urvasie, Love and Death and Baji Prabhou — is not altogether avoided, yet end-stopping is the rule as serving better the graver, more contained movement demanded by the scriptural mood.

A notable feature, in Savitri, of this mood and of its expression is that there is no strict confinement of them to ostensibly spiritual subjects. A Legend as well as a Symbol, the poem paints many scenes and levels of human development at the same time that it is instinct with a mystical light. It includes and absorbs every life-theme of any import in man's evolution towards deity. Again, ancient motifs and motifs of our own day are equally caught up. Even modern totalitarianism is seized in its essence, even the new physics that replaces the classical concepts in which "all was precise, rigid, indubitable" enters the poetry, and there blows through the epic the breath of what can only be termed a Democracy of the Divine, whose aim is to liberate the whole of humanity into Light, as in those words Sri Aurobindo puts into the mouth of his heroine.

A lonely freedom cannot satisfy

A heart that has grown one with every heart:

I am a deputy of the aspiring world,

My spirit's liberty I ask for all.

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