Hitler and his God

“Where is Hitler Now … ?”

By this time the daily conversations Sri Aurobindo held with the small circle of disciples had gradually fizzled out. When three years back the author asked Nirodbaran for the reason, his answer was that he did not know. In his Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo we find that “the original stream of abundance began to get thinner and thinner till in the last years there was practically a silent attendance on a silent Presence. Either we had exhausted all topics and a satiation had followed and dried up all our inspiration, or Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn his inner gesture of approval.” 1174

The real reason may have been mentioned by Sri Aurobindo himself in a letter of 1942: “In these times of world-crisis I have to be on guard and concentrated all the time.” In a conversation many years later, the Mother said that the war had brought their yoga to a complete halt. “For if we had continued the work personally, we would not have been assured of the time necessary to finish it before the other one [i.e. the Lord of the Nations] had made a mess of the earth – which would have put back the whole undertaking for centuries. That had to be stopped first: that action of the Lord of the Nations.” 1175

The one thousand pages of the talks with Sri Aurobindo noted down in the first months of the war – Nirodbaran candidly confesses that “almost one third of the talks were not recorded for want of time or sheer laziness” 1176 – provide us with some insight in the concerns of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with the war. There can be no doubt that this concern continued during the rest of the worldwide tragedy, and many allusions in their writings or conversations confirm this. On 15 August 1945, Sri Aurobindo’s birthday again, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, for the first time in history addressing the nation directly, broadcast a message declaring the unconditional capitulation of his country, thus bringing the Second World War to an end. India will become independent in 1947, on the stroke of midnight of 15 August.

When the war was finished Sri Aurobindo wrote: “This is no time for patting the Germans on the back or embracing and consoling them. If they are allowed to get on their legs again without trouble or without making an atonement for the horror of darkness and suffering they have inflicted on the world, they will rise only to repeat their performance – unless something else forestalls them. The only help we can give to Germany now is silence.” 1177

The end of the war did not mean the end of danger for the world. The great Twentieth Century War did not terminate on 15 August 1945. Only one month later Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter, commenting on a point made by his correspondent: “About the present human civilization. It is not this which has to be saved; it is the world that has to be saved and that will surely be done, though it may not be so easily or so soon as some wish or imagine, or in the way that they imagine. The present must surely change, but whether by destruction or a new creation on the basis of a greater Truth, is the issue. The Mother has left the question hanging and I can only do the same.”

2 June 1946: “The better things that are to come are preparing or growing under a veil and the worse are prominent everywhere.” 1178 19 October 1946: “I have never had a strong and persistent will for anything to happen in the world – I am not speaking of personal things – which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf mankind, but they too will end as that nightmare has ended.”

9 April 1947: “I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming.” 18 July 1948, when the conflict between the two big blocs dividing humanity, Communism and Liberalism, was taking on drastic proportions: “Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible – and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world … All this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time.” 1179

4 April 1950: “For myself, the dark conditions do not discourage me or convince me of the vanity of my will to ‘help the world’; for I knew they had to come; they were there in the world-nature and had to rise up so that they might be exhausted or expelled and a better world freed from them might be there. After all, something has been done in the outer field and that may help or prepare for getting something done in the inner field also … So I am not disposed even now, in these dark conditions, to consider my will to help the world as condemned to failure.” 1180

1950 was the year war erupted in Korea – the cold war was turning into a hot one. The editor of the Ashram magazine Mother India asked Sri Aurobindo for his assessment, since he intended to write an article on the subject. “The whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff”, answered Sri Aurobindo. “It is the first move of the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent – in passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India. If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America … For the moment the situation is as grave as it can be.” 1181 An ever more potentially destructive nuclear war seemed to become imminent, until the MAD point was reached, the point of “mutual assured destruction”.

We know now, more than half a century after the last quotation from Sri Aurobindo was written, that a third world conflagration, potentially the most destructive, did not happen. In this preservation of humanity there may also have been causes active “behind the veil”, for the events on the surface always have prolongations in realms which constitute the total reality, and the human actors in front of the curtain are for the most part unconscious instruments of the Powers which really determine the course of history.

Hitler was very much aware of the occult gradations of existence and of the importance of the times in which he lived as one of the great changes in the destiny of humanity. It was his pride to be the chosen delegate of a being which considered itself the Lord of the Nations, Master of the Earth. He found his strength and guidance in accepting to realize the evil that would take humanity back to a former, lower phase of its evolution. Only this Power behind him explains how a man from nowhere could become the Führer and Messiah of the German people, as only this cosmic Power can be a norm for the enormity of the negative forces – falsehood, ignorance, suffering and death – which Hitler was instrumental in unleashing.

All ancient traditions tell us about the battle of good and evil which is the real key of the history of humanity. The evil is always very perceptible and easy to open oneself to; to adhere to the good requires discernment and effort, and humans soon become confused and tired. If there were not a Good Power, whatever its name, upholding the existence and evolution of humanity, our species might have disappeared on more than one occasion, just like so many other species on the globe.

The Second World War was one phase of the Great Twentieth Century War, itself the result of the changes in humanity preparing to take it a leap forward in its evolution. As such, this war can be seen as a crisis in the consciousness which dominated the world and which was still almost exclusively Western. But the Second World War was also a direct intervention of the Powers of Darkness, necessitating a reaction of the Powers of Light in order to assure the destiny of the planet and of humanity on it. Only this perspective and these dimensions are large enough to explain the scope of the terrible events.

The Powers of Darkness were not definitively conquered in 1945, we all know that. The ravages and horrors which were the results of their doings in the following decades are part of our life experience. The world is now subject to an enormous confusion. The cause of this general confusion, however, is the fact that humanity is becoming one for the first time in its existence, for this involves the friction of countless egoisms, most considered sacred, and the effort at overcoming them.

In 1947 Sri Aurobindo formulated what he called his “five dreams”, which were the five force lines required to take humanity up to the threshold of a new era. These five “dreams” were essentially what he had expounded in his writings during the First World War, at a time when their fulfilment looked impracticable. They were: the freedom of India, which has an important role to play in humanity’s future; the awakening of Asia; the formation of supranational conglomerates, like the European Union, which would lead to the unification of mankind; world unity; and the spreading of the Indian spirituality and its techniques of self-realization, necessary for the change in the human being without which a better future is not possible. None of the five points is fully accomplished (the real India is still divided), but all five have arrived at a substantial degree of realization, and this in a relatively short time.

The dead will not have suffered and died in vain if the living can see the light at the horizon and walk towards it.