Beyond Man

Prologue

History very seldom records the things that were decisive but took place behind the veil; it records the show in front of the curtain.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Surat Congress (1907)

It looked as if the advance of the German armies was unstoppable in those days of August 1914, and the fate of Paris and the whole of France seemed sealed. The Germans had followed the von Schlieffen Plan to the letter and with spectacular success. Their right flank, fast advancing parallel to the Channel coast, still had to march in a southerly direction for a couple of days and then turn left to encircle what remained of the apparently defeated French and British troops. They would then march triumphantly into Paris, the capital and symbol of Western civilization. The French government had fled to Bordeaux under cover of darkness. The weak Paris garrison, commanded by General Joseph Galliéni, expected that it would be exterminated along with the city.

It was then that Madame Richard, née Mirra Alfassa, thirty-six years of age, was sitting in meditation near the window of a house in Dupleix Street in Pondicherry, a small French port with some surrounding territory on the Coromandel coast in South India. The Parisian Madame Richard, was an accomplished occultist and advanced in spirituality. She had accompanied her second husband, Paul Richard, to Pondicherry in order to meet Aurobindo Ghose, the revolutionary extremist politician from Bengal, who had sought refuge in that sleepy French town to escape the grip of the British and work out his still more revolutionary yoga. Their meetings had been up to Mirra’s highest expectations and she now sat near that window with a view of the house where Aurobindo Ghose resided.

All at once, immersed in deep concentration but with her eyes open, she saw Kali, the naked, black goddess of battle and destruction, wearing a garland of skulls around her neck, entering the room through the door. ‘She executed her dance, a really wild dance. And she said to me: “Paris is taken! Paris will be destroyed!” We had no news at all [about the war situation] … I was in meditation. I turned towards her and said: “No, Paris will not be taken, Paris will be saved,” quietly, without raising my voice, but with a certain emphasis.’² That was how Mirra Alfassa told the incident to the children of the Ashram many years later, when everybody called her the Mother.

The extreme German right wing was under the command of General von Kluck, the very model of the Prussian military man. So thoroughly convinced was he of a debacle in the enemy ranks, that he deemed it unnecessary to follow von Schlieffen’s strategic plan any longer. Instead of marching on towards the south and then moving left, straight towards Paris, he intended to execute the left turn at once in order to cut off the withdrawing, exhausted enemy, and to deal with Paris afterwards. German headquarters, informed too late about von Kluck’s intentions, approved of the plan — a blunder which would cost the Germans victory and eventually the war, as vividly narrated in Barbara Tuchman’s book, The Guns of August. What nobody had thought possible happened: the physical and moral resources of the French were still sufficient to reorganize their battered armies; for once the British cooperated with them readily; and the garrison of Paris, reinforced in the meantime, attacked the Germans in their virtually unprotected right flank. The situation developed into the Battle of the Marne, and the war of the quick marches became a war of the trenches. Paris was not taken, Paris was saved.

Another crucial historical event. In May 1940, the Germans, this time led by their Führer, Adolf Hitler, again looked unstoppable. Their tanks rumbled through the low countries and through the Ardennes towards the French Channel ports. By this manoeuvre they would, again, try to cut off the withdrawing French forces and the British Expeditionary Force. The Blitzkrieg would then be over in less than no time, and Hitler would reign as the supreme lord and master of the greatest part of Europe and maybe of the world.

However, ‘That evening [of 24 May] four Panzer divisions were stopped at the Aa Canal. The tank crews were astounded. No fire was coming from the opposite shore! Beyond, they could make out the peaceful spires of Dunkirk. Had Operations gone crazy? The division commanders were even more amazed. They knew they could take Dunkirk with little trouble since the British were still heavily engaged near Lille. Why weren’t they allowed to seize the last escape route to England?’³ Thus writes John Toland in his standard biography of Adolf Hitler. The hesitation would eventually cost the Germans dearly: it would cost them the war. Goering had requested from Hitler the honour and the pleasure of being allowed to smash with his Luftwaffe the enemy troops, densely and helplessly packed on the beaches of Dunkirk; for reasons as yet incomprehensible, Hitler had given his consent. ‘But fog came to the rescue of the British. Not only was Dunkirk itself enshrouded but all the Luftwaffe fields were blanketed by low clouds which grounded their three thousand bombers.’⁴ In the meantime an unbelievable ragtag fleet of about 900 ships and boats of all shapes and sizes carried 338,226 British and Allied troops across the Channel between 24 May and 4 June. ‘Oddly, the continuing evacuation did not seem to perturb Hitler,’ remarks Toland, and his prey had escaped before he realized what was going on.

In Pondicherry, Aurobindo Ghose, now called Sri Aurobindo, sat in the company of a few disciples for their daily conversation in his apartment, which he had not left since 1926. He had already pointed to the fact that the surrender of Belgium meant that the harbours of Dunkirk and Calais would fall to the Germans. ‘There is no hope for them [the Allies] unless Dunkirk can hold on or if they can rush through a gap in the French line.’⁵ Remarkable strategic insight from a yogi who lived in apparent retirement but followed the war step by step with utmost attention. Nirodbaran noted down in his Talks With Sri Aurobindo what Sri Aurobindo had said on the evening of 31 May: ‘So, they are getting away from Dunkirk!’ A disciple had answered: ‘Yes. It seems the fog helped the evacuation.’ To which Sri Aurobindo had added: ‘Yes. Fog is rather unusual at this time.’ And Nirodbaran comments: ‘By saying this, it seemed Sri Aurobindo wanted to hint that the Mother and he had made this fog to help the Allies.’⁶ The war events are discussed in the conversations throughout the book, and Sri Aurobindo twice confirms explicitly that Great Britain and her allies were saved ‘by divine intervention’. Afterwards he wrote in a letter (about himself although in the third person): ‘In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action … Inwardly, he put his spiritual force behind the Allies from the moment of Dunkirk when everybody was expecting the immediate fall of England and the definite triumph of Hitler, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the rush of German victory almost immediately arrested and the tide of war begin to turn in the opposite direction.’⁷

These are but two of the many times Sri Aurobindo and the Mother intervened in the history of the twentieth century, as related by themselves and as documented in the literature which they have left behind. Never did they flaunt these actions; they mentioned their interventions most of the time casually in confidential conversations that were made public long afterwards. Putting all the facts together, one gets the impression that the historical unfolding of the twentieth century happened, as it were, in interaction with their spiritual endeavour. While this may sound nonsensical or grossly exaggerated, there can be no doubt about the consistency and the sincerity of their sayings.

There is a vast and rich literature in connection with this subject. The collected works of Sri Aurobindo comprise more than thirty volumes, many of them quite substantial; up to now, eighteen volumes of the collected works of the Mother have been published, consisting for the most part of tape-recorded conversations afterwards written out and approved by her; the Agenda containing her conversations with Satprem is published in thirteen volumes; there is also their correspondence, countless conversations noted down by Nirodbaran Talukdar, A.B. Purani and others; and also reminiscences, collections of anecdotes, newly discovered and deciphered texts published by the Archives of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, material in the commentaries of diverse authors, and so on. It is probably the most extensive literature available in connection with any spiritual personality.

The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical magnum opus, was praised by Aldous Huxley and his epic poems Savitri and Ilion by Herbert Read. The latter wrote: ‘Sri Aurobindo’s Ilion is a remarkable achievement by any standard and I am full of amazement that someone not of English origin should have such a wonderful command not only of our English language as such, but of its skillful elaboration in poetic diction of such high quality.’⁸ Golconde, a guest house for visitors of the Ashram, planned by the Mother in the Thirties and built under her direct supervision, was lauded by the great architect Charles Correa as ‘the finest example of modern functional architecture built in India in the pre-Independence period.’⁹ The Swedish academy was examining Sri Aurobindo’s candidature for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, the year he expired; his nomination had been seconded by Gabriela Mistral²⁰ and Pearl S. Buck. In December 1972 Newsweek magazine published in its international edition an article on the Mother under the heading, The Next Great Religion?

Yet, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are but little known and, if known, usually misunderstood. Upon what did they base their claims of their occult influence on the historical processes which have carried the world to the threshold of a new millennium? What was the deeper meaning of the collaboration between a freedom fighter and yogi from Bengal and a Parisian painter and occultist, who had been living in the city of her birth for ten years among the impressionist and post-impressionist crowd of writers, painters and sculptors? If so much of their literary, philosophical and practical accomplishments have been appreciated by knowledgeable persons, could it be that what they considered their real Work was nothing but a delusion?

I have based this book on all available documents; these documents have, for various reasons, not yet been treated as a whole by previous authors. The truthfulness of the authentic writings, conversations and sayings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is not in question. The result of the convergence of these documents is important to all of us and may provide some insight into the things that were decisive but took place behind the veil. It is an insight that will enable us to comprehend the present planetary crisis and to cast a glance into the next century, into the new millennium.

Avatar

Is there a possible foundation for the presumption that the history of our planet, during one of its most dramatic crises or whenever, has taken place ‘in interaction’ with one or two individuals? The rashly judging rationalist will at once dismiss the question as utter nonsense, but the age-old wisdom of Hinduism, that huge body of knowledge, answers it in the affirmative. In its vision of the world the figure of the Avatar plays a central role known to all Hindus and accepted by them as a matter of course. Day after day, somewhere in India, there will be some graceful, thoroughly trained Bharatnatyam dancer performing the tale of the ‘Ten Avatars’, a tale familiar to the people in her audience since their childhood.

The ten Avatars are: the Fish, the Tortoise, the Boar, the Man-Lion, the Dwarf, Parasurama alias Rama-with-the-axe, Rama (with the bow), Krishna, the Buddha and finally Kalki, who according to tradition is still to come. The succession, even at first sight, shows a continuity. ‘The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution,’ writes Sri Aurobindo, ‘the progression is striking and unmistakable.’¹⁰

The fish was the first vertebrate in the womb of the ocean. Then comes the tortoise, an amphibian, then the boar, a mammal. The man-lion represents the transitional beings between animal and man. Then follows homo faber as Rama-with-the-axe, followed by Rama-with-the-bow, i.e., homo sapiens, the species we all belong to and which is now present in great numbers on this planet. In mentally conscious humanity an opening is possible toward the supramental realms thanks to Krishna, and the nirvanic state can be consciously attained by following the path of the Buddha. Kalki, finally, will bring about the great revolution which will result in the superhuman and the Kingdom of God no longer in an ethereal, hypothetical hereafter, but on a transformed Earth. Thus will come about the realization of the dream cherished since its origin by the toiling, suffering, unsatisfied human species.

The evolutionary line represented by the Avatars is no doubt remarkable considering that the Hindu tradition is thousands of years old, while The Origin of Species was not published until 1859. The Avatar is clearly connected with evolution and even seems to play a central role in it.

The word ‘avatar’ means ‘descent’ in Sanskrit. ‘It is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.’¹¹ In other words, the Avatar is an embodiment of the Divine in a materialized living form, a direct divine incarnation on earth.

It becomes clear at once that the avatar concept is actually well-known in the West, for Jesus Christ was an avatar according to this definition. This is why the theological disputation concerning his avatarhood or the preponderance of either his divine or his human nature has its parallels in the literature of the Hindus. And this is why Sri Aurobindo, in his Essays on the Gita, mentions time and again the names of Christ, Krishna and the Buddha in the chapters about avatarhood.

However, while the East recognizes the full evolutionary line of the ten (and in certain enumerations more) Avatars, the Christianized West recognizes only one. The importance of the Christ-avatar is generally accepted, but the evolutionary and historical development of the Earth and of mankind is put into a warped perspective by affirming him as the one and only avatar, a belief which makes the mission of Christ appear arbitrary and unreal. The cause of this attitude was probably the religious and cultural ‘monadism’ of the West — the unconscious or sometimes very conscious egocentric attitude, the imperialistic hedgehog position, the psychological igloo.

The following story is culled from old Indian texts.

There is the One that IS. That is everything and that still would be wholly itself without all that exists. And next to that One there is nothing, because it is everything.

That One has names in all languages, but no name can define it. It is That. It is That that IS. Without bounds, without flaws, without suffering, without needs. Therefore the wise say that the One is not only Being and Consciousness but also Joy, absolute Bliss.

And it beholds itself, it sees itself. And what it sees in itself, exists. For its Consciousness is absolute and instantly effective power — Omnipotence.

This means that the endless joy of its self-seeing, of its self-scanning, is at the same time an endless creation, a formation of what was, is, and will be, potentially present in the One in all eternity.

Out of the creative joy of its self-seeing grew the spectrum of the worlds, each one different from the others, the work of an artist with an inexhaustible power of self-discovery and intense creativity.

One of this multitude of worlds is ours, an evolutionary world. In our world the One of Light has created Night; the absolute Consciousness has donned the cloak of the darkest Ignorance to hide from itself and so to create the possibility of experiencing the joy of self-rediscovery.

It is a long and arduous journey, this rediscovery, this quest of the Self for itself in us. But the darker the Night, the more ecstatic will be the Dawn when the Light breaks through again. The journey back home takes place step by patient, time-consuming step: out of the Inconscient evolved Matter, out of Matter evolved Life and out of Life evolved Mental Consciousness — everything in accordance with the design which the One had self-seen and by seeing established for our evolutionary world.

But Man, the being which is the embodiment of mental consciousness, is still far from the rediscovery by the One of itself in him — just as, looking back, he is already far off from the darkness of total Inconscience. The transitional being, which is Man, finds himself somewhere in between these two extremes, stretched out like on a cross.

Man carries all that has grown in the past in himself. He consists of matter, and of life, and of mental consciousness by which he looks back to yesterday and ahead to tomorrow, and by which he sees himself in the act of doing things. And he contains in himself a particle of the One, a spark of the light which is his inmost self, his soul.

The grand design as seen by the One forbids that beings of a certain order in the evolving hierarchy should reach out beyond their boundaries. A fish cannot wander about on dry land of its own volition, a primate cannot ponder the writing of a letter. For a change of that magnitude the One has to accord its fiat by intervening itself in its creation (which is a self-manifestation) and, lest there be chaos, by building the necessary steps for every new range of evolution. Such is the law it has preordained for this, our universe.

That is why at the moment of each great transition, the One, time and again, has to descend and do its work, a task exceeding the possibilities of evolutionary beings. Time and again, at the crucial moments of evolution, the One has to incarnate itself on Earth as an Avatar.

Divine omnipotence has no limitations. That is the very reason why it can limit itself, which is a miracle of omnipotence. The worlds manifested by it have some built-in processes to support their structures. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in this connection: ‘All is possible, but all is not licit — except by a recognizable process … ¹² Certain conditions have been established for the game’,¹³ for the Cosmic play, the Lila of the Divine manifestation.

In the ‘game’ or process by which our universe is functioning the Avatar plays the leading role. He appears on the cosmic stage to intervene in periods of transition, at times of crisis when a new, higher rung is being inserted into the ladder of evolution. Every such crisis is part of the Great Design; it indicates that at these moments cosmic evolution is ripe for a new phase of its unfolding. The manifestation, its crises included, expresses only what exists within the One, within the Divine, in all eternity.

‘The Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness’¹⁴ (Sri Aurobindo) — in the evolutionary stage of the Earth in which humankind has been present, that is, for previously Avatars have also helped in creating higher forms of animal life, as may be concluded from the procession of the Avatars. In order to work out a new evolutionary phase the Avatar has to take into himself and assimilate everything that has been worked out before; it is by this act of concrete and factual representation that he acquires his true evolutionary meaning and function. ‘He who would save the world must be one with the world.’¹⁵

According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the human being is not the highest being on Earth, the lord of creation, ‘the masterpiece of masterpieces’. Not so very long ago, an assertion of this kind might have led to the pyre, but in this century of science fiction, mutants and extra terrestrials it sounds almost like commonsense. Moreover, isn’t man much too imperfect to be considered God’s masterpiece? As the Dutch poet Gerbrand A. Bredero said, we only have ‘to take a look inside ourselves’. Shouldn’t God be capable of something better?

But then, who or what might succeed man on this planet? Who or what might reap the fruits of his labour, of his suffering and misery throughout the centuries? A Nietzschean superman? A robot free from fault or failure? Sri Aurobindo and the Mother propose a different answer, surprising and apparently impossible. But they had come to make that impossibility possible, as Avatars. Who would expect an Avatar now, at this point in time? Hasn’t everything of spiritual or essential importance happened, once and for all, in times past? But then times past also once were times present.

‘I have said, “Follow my path, the way I have discovered for you through my own efforts and example. Transform your nature from the animal to the spiritual, grow into a higher divine consciousness. All this you can do by your own aspiration aided by the force of the Divine Shakti.” That, if you please, is not the utterance of a madman or an imbecile. I have said, “I have opened the way; now you with the Divine help can follow it.”’¹⁶ These are the words of Sri Aurobindo, addressed to a disciple who is still alive at the time this book is being written. And in the same correspondence Sri Aurobindo speaks about ‘the Path I have opened, as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Chaitanya, etc., opened theirs.’¹⁷

The task of the Avatar cannot be executed by ordinary earthly beings; that is why the Divine has to come to do the job Himself. Such a mission would be meaningless if the Avatar, to show the way or the Path did not take upon himself the burden of man, helplessly stretched between the two extremes of his possibilities. ‘Anyone who wants to change earth-nature must first accept it in order to change it,’¹⁸ unconditionally and fully, making the evolution meaningful by his acceptance. But man does not know that, for he does not perceive it. It is too lofty for him and his brain cannot reach there. The animal still stirs in him and slashes the helping, uplifting hand. Gethsemane and Golgotha are the rewards of the Avatar.

God must be born on earth and be as man

That man being human may grow even as God.¹⁹

— Savitri

If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were Avatars, what were their Gethsemane and Golgotha?