Preparing for the Miraculous

3: Preparing for the Miraculous

Evolution, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, is a long and difficult climb of Nature, in the organisms it creates, to regain its original divinity. Therefore humanity, given its imperfection, cannot be the ultimate step or crown of the evolution. Beyond the human gradation are the higher worlds and beings humans have always intuited or dreamed of, and still further beyond are the infinitudes of the Divine. “The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out Man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god.” ¹ (Sri Aurobindo)

The next step in the evolution, announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, is the “superman” or supramental being. The human is the mental being; therefore, what is more than human must be called supra-mental. As the mental consciousness has been incorporated into life on Earth from its pre-existent involutionary level in the cosmic manifestation, so the supramental consciousness will incorporate from the supramental level or Supermind, which is the creative divine Consciousness.

As Sri Aurobindo and the Mother said, the difference between the human and the superhuman is much greater than between the animal and the human. Considering the intricacies it has taken for Homo sapiens to form on a physical basis prepared by his evolutionary predecessors, if the appearance of the supramental being on Earth is a still greater wonder, its realization will be vastly more complex. For what the incorporation of a supramental, i.e. divine consciousness in a material body demands, is that matter be divinized. Only then will the future species beyond the human become a possibility.

What such a transformed supramental body on our material planet will be, we cannot even try to imagine, for our mind is too limited. That matter, or the material living cell, can be refined is shown by the human body in its development from the body of the primate. Materialistic science, accepting to examine only the surface processes of things, is not a competent guide in this, and creates constantly more problems than it solves.

How did the human come to walk upright? Why is his body naked? How did he manage to reason and talk? Many questions with many more constantly changing “scientific” answers, some of them requiring minor miracles which science promises to explain later. How will the body and the mind of still half animal Homo sapiens be changed into the features of the gods? The only way seems to be a series of major miracles. But are the realizations of the soul and of the spirit, preconditions of the transformation, not already in themselves miracles?

When examining in The Human Cycle the communal life of the future supramental beings, “a spiritualized society … the kingdom of God upon earth,” Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Certainly, this will not come about easily, or, as men have always vainly hoped … by a sudden and at once entirely satisfying change and magical transformation. The advance, however it comes about, will be indeed of the nature of a miracle, as are all such profound changes and immense developments, for they have the appearance of a kind of realized impossibility. But God works all his miracles by an evolution of secret possibilities which have been long prepared … at least in their elements, and in the end by a rapid bringing of all to a head, a throwing together of the elements so that in their fusion they produce a new form and name of things and reveal a new spirit. Often the decisive turn is preceded by an apparent emphasizing and raising to their extreme of things which seem the very denial, the most uncompromising opposite of the new principle and the new creation.” ²

The biological sciences are actively propagating their positivist teaching that evolution is nothing but the work of chance in an accidental universe, and that it is not progressive. Consequently the appearance of the human being is purely a matter of luck. Stephen Jay Gould, for instance, “was adamantly opposed to progress, speaking of it as ‘a noxious, culturally embedded, untestable, nonoperational, untractable idea‘ that must be replaced if we wish to understand the patterns of history.” “It is a delusion engendered by our refusal to accept our insignificance when faced with the immensity of time.” (Michael Ruse) The religious and spiritual view, on the contrary, has held of old that the human being is the masterpiece of the creation, and even that it was made in the image of God.

For Sri Aurobindo, in whose cosmic scheme evolution is the backbone, Homo sapiens, possessing a psychic being, is provisionally the highest step of evolution, although on the whole ladder back to the Divine he stands only somewhere halfway. Sri Aurobindo has explained that, if a new, supramental species is to be worked out, the process will resemble the emergence of the previous evolutionary stages. There will be the ascendant urge in the highest existing species (which in humanity translates as ‘aspiration’); an answer will come from the corresponding next higher level in the pre-existing general manifestation (which Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘involution’); and this response will create in the aspiring species a number of intermediary subspecies, leading up to the formation of the new main species.

As the gap between the human and the superhuman or divine is enormous, the variety of intermediary beings may be wide-ranging. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had come to lay the foundations of this transformation. From 1956 onwards the Mother confirmed repeatedly that the appearance of the supramental being on Earth was certain.

The moment of humanity’s transformation, she said, was now – by which she meant a “now” on an evolutionary timescale. In fact, the unification of humanity which causes the present unprecedented upheavals on our globe, resulting in an almost total disorientation among humans, was predicted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as one of the inevitable phenomena of the Great Transition.

The path which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother called the Integral Yoga is therefore not a fixed system with a defined goal to be realized within the lifetime of the practitioner (as are other paths of yoga). What they have initiated is continuing now in ways humans cannot foresee, but to the general trend of which they can collaborate if they feel called to. The great evolutionary adventure of the past will be continued in unimaginable ways. Already a century ago, after the self-assuredness of the bourgeois era and before the explosions of the twentieth-century wars, Sri Aurobindo announced “the time of the unexpected.”

The present insecurity, posited by the post-modern intellectuals as an innate modality of the human mind, is general, except in the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother which clearly and in detail defines the rationale behind ours and the coming times. If all is That – the fundamental premise of the Upanishads – then the present vortices in humanity are also That, and the most secure foothold must be the inner Presence, the Divine in us. On this basis one can be prepared for the unexpected – for the miraculous, which is the assured future definitively to come.

Of Laws and Miracles

Science tells us that the universe functions according to laws which the human mind can find out and formulate. “The scientific culture that arose in Western Europe, of which we are the inheritors, was dominated by adherence to the absolute invariance of laws of Nature, which thereby underwrote the meaningfulness of the scientific enterprise and assured its success.” (John Barrow)

In recent times, however, the laws of physics, “once regarded as cast in tablets of stone,” began to look less definitive. What was once the domain of a few “eccentric” scientists like David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake or Ilya Prigogine, is now more and more accepted by scientific orthodoxy and may soon be integrated into the standard paradigm. “As soon as the laws are confined to some abstract realm of ideal mathematical forms, there is no problem,” writes Paul Davies, “but if the laws are considered to inhabit, not a transcendent Platonic realm, but the real universe, then it’s a very different story.” And a French scientist states squarely: “The fundamental laws [of physics] are now about possibilities and no longer about certitudes.”

Sri Aurobindo did not only rely on his yogic insight, he followed the evolution of science, including physics, from nearby, and in his writings one finds numerous references to Einstein’s relativity theories and the puzzling conclusions of quantum mechanics. It was part of the fundamental attitude of this “mystic” never to lose contact with reality and the world. This should be kept in mind when reading the following passages by him. Quite aware of the confirmations of science, he explains here that the reality of what science tries to grasp, describe and understand is much more complex than science even accepts. The simple but crucial reason is that physical science has in Galileo, Descartes and Newton reduced reality to the realm of matter, declaring the other principles of what constitutes reality – life, mind, spirit – to be reducible to matter, or otherwise to be outside the sphere of interest of serious science.

“If we look carefully at these workings of Nature,” Sri Aurobindo writes in The Life Divine, “once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic.” ³ And in a letter he writes: “Science, like most mental and external knowledge, gives you only truth of process. I would add that it cannot give you the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables, but miss the all-important imponderables … After all the triumphs and marvels of Science the explaining principle, the rationale, the significance of the whole is left as dark, as mysterious and even more mysterious than ever.” ⁴

“There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilizable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician [the Divine as Creator] you are trying to analyze, but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila. I say ‘begin’ because the Divine Reality is not so simple that at the first touch you can know all of it or put it into a single formula; it is the infinite and opens before you an infinite knowledge to which all Science put together is a bagatelle.” ⁵

If reality consists of the hierarchical gradations which from old have been called the Chain of Being, modern science, with physics as its norm, has voluntarily blocked its own access to reality, for it has chosen as its fundamental premise that all existence is material and nothing else. In a future world of Truth, however, the whole of reality must be taken into account. As Sri Aurobindo writes: “If science is to turn her face towards the Divine, it must be a new science not yet developed which deals directly with the forces of the life-world and of Mind [cf. the Chain of Being] and so arrives at what is beyond Mind; but present-day science cannot do that.” ⁶

The self-assuredness, at times arrogance, of academic science and most of its practitioners has become part of the modern mentality. The foregoing reflections are therefore relevant to support an open attitude towards the present conditions in a rapidly changing world and the dramatic happenings all over the globe which are brought to our knowledge day by day. The events of history have never been predictable to the human mind. Still less is it capable of discerning the trends of our contemporary history and their possible consequences, now that we are constantly informed about the goings-on in the four corners of the world. If in the present crisis atmosphere we want to find some solid ground, we must not turn to science but inwards and find there what is the core of our existence, while on the outside we must have confidence in “the magic of the Magician,” inevitably working for a new and better world. From this standpoint all history, like all existence and manifestation, is one continuous miracle. This knowledge can help us to prepare for the future miracles capable of solving our global problems, miracles which, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, will reveal the meaning of it all and are certain to happen.

The Preparatory Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

What do we, Aurobindians, stand for? Is the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother just another of those well-intentioned New Age fancies, or does it have a basis in fact which can be spelled out?

In the first place there are their abundant writings and transcribed sayings covering a period of nearly a century; this literature is considered by knowledgeable persons the richest in the history of modern spirituality. (Sri Aurobindo was nominated for the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1950, the year of his demise.) Then there is also the inner coherence of the facts of their spiritual adventure into the unknown, supported by a mass of direct and indirect evidence. It must be remembered that spiritual matters are not subject to scientific proof; they can only be confirmed through faith and direct experience. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are, what they have done, and what continues to happen as the continuation of the Work done during their lifetime, must ultimately be a matter of personal acceptance based on an open attitude in the mind, the gift of faith in the heart, and an inner empathy resulting from the long history of one’s soul.

Until recently, that is until about 1970, little was known about the facts of their lives. Most of their letters and notes, conversations, Sri Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga and Mother’s Agenda were published after that date, which was also the time when serious research in archives and other documentary sources began to be made. This means, among other things, that the writings of most of the first commentators or exegetes remained limited mainly to Sri Aurobindo’s works in the Arya, the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations, and personal correspondence.

No doubt, this literature contained the foundations on which Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s avataric mission could be understood. Books like The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Essays on the Gita contained all essentials of the Aurobindian Revolution. But the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was an adventure into the unknown⁷ which went through countless yogic crises, struggles and reversals many years after the Arya and the Prayers and Meditations had been written. For instance, Sri Aurobindo’s battle in the 1930s to bring the Supermind down on Earth remained known only to a small circle of disciples around Dilip Kumar Roy and Nirodbaran Talukdar, to whom Sri Aurobindo gave some glimpses of his gigantic yogic effort in his correspondence with them. The important series of articles written for the Bulletin and later named The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth remains largely unappreciated even today. And one reads seldom about the intimations by the Mother about her work of physical transformation, which was, after all, her avataric Yoga in the last years of her life, the crucial step which would make the appearance of the overman and the supramental being possible.

It is a matter of importance that the creation of the supramental being, the next step in the terrestrial evolution, is not to happen according to a once-and-for-all fixed ideological scheme, but that it is an open, unknown process of transformation that has been started by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother during their lifetime, that is continuing now, and that will continue for a long time to come. It is a “pilgrim’s progress” into the miraculous.

Overman

Sri Aurobindo, continuously occupied with completing Savitri and with the urgency of his avataric task, did not write essayistic prose any more in the last years of his life. The reason may have been that for this kind of literary work his consciousness had to descend again to the human level. Besides, his eyesight had deteriorated and he had to dictate everything to an amanuensis, poetry as well as prose. All the same, he could not refuse a request from the Mother for a contribution to the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education which she had newly founded. Therefore he dictated eight articles between 30 December 1948 and the time he left his body, on 5 December 1950.

What started as an encouragement of the students’ ideals, and therefore a reminder to them of his and the Mother’s Work, suddenly took another turn: for the first time Sri Aurobindo spoke about the necessity of intermediary beings between the existing species of Homo sapiens and the coming species of supermen, Homo supramentalis. This transitional being he gave no name, but called it “a new humanity.” “It would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character, and this would impose its own inevitable limitations on the higher parts of the embodied being.”

All the same, “its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings, who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind, and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle [i.e. Supermind].” ⁸

In April 1958 the Mother said: “It can be confirmed with certainty that there will be an intermediate specimen between the mental and the supramental being, a kind of overman who will still have the qualities and in part the nature of man, that is, who will still belong in his most external form to the human species with its animal origin, but who will transform his consciousness sufficiently to belong in his realization and activity to a new race, a race of overmen [surhommes]. This species may be considered a transitional species, for one can foresee that it will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal method … So we could call overmen [surhommes] those who, in their origin, still belong to the old method of generation, but in their achievement are in conscious and active contact with the new world of supramental realization.” ⁹

Two remarks are in order here.

Firstly, the above quotations of Sri Aurobindo clearly show the need of a series of “miraculous” transformations between our species of “animal man,” as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother called it, and the supramental being. In the course of the evolution of life on Earth the formation of a species with a higher consciousness, succeeding Homo sapiens, is inevitable. Between the primates and Homo sapiens in its various appearances the gap was enormous; between Homo sapiens and the supramental being the gap is unimaginable.

Secondly, where in the aforementioned quotation from the Mother there is written “overmen,” the English translators have used each and every time the term “supermen,” unaware of significance of the Mother’s words and of the contents of The Supramental Manifestation. The Mother gave her Entretiens in French, for those talks were actually French classes for the students of the Ashram School. What Sri Aurobindo had called “a new humanity,” the Mother called surhomme which literally means “overman,” not “superman,” and which is the being corresponding to the surmental, the “overmind.” This error is unfortunately the source of an enormous confusion, for other translators follow by example and commit systematically the same error, e.g. throughout the English translation of the Agenda.

One result is that lots of texts are written on the future glories of the Supermind and supermanhood, but hardly anything about the transitional processes required to fashion the supramental being, that is: about our own participation in the Work. The effort of the practitioner of the Integral Yoga at present is to become, through his aspiration and surrender, one of the transitional beings which will make the appearance of the supramental being possible. As the Mother said: “This was certainly what Sri Aurobindo expected of us: what he conceived of as the overman, who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way – in other words, in no way part of the animal life any longer and freed from all animal needs … It is quite obvious that intermediary beings are necessary, and that it is these intermediary beings who must find the means to create beings of the Supermind. And there is no doubt that, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this, he was convinced that this is what we have to do.” ¹⁰

The Manifestation of the Supermind

The avataric task of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother consisted in bringing down a new, higher consciousness into the Earth atmosphere: the consciousness of the Supermind. Life on Earth is still predominantly the fiefdom of the “hostile powers,” which are the direct descendants of the Inconscient from which the evolution started. As these are powers of the Ego, it is in their nature to counter anything that would weaken the egoistic self-affirmation of Life, in other words they resist unconditionally any spiritual endeavour.

As Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have stated explicitly, the rather weak personality of Adolf Hitler got its strength and inspiration from an asuric power, the Lord of Falsehood who calls himself Lord of the Nations. It was at the inspiration of this occult personality that the Second World War took place, to counteract the avataric Work that would lead to the appearance of a divinized species on Earth. Even those who were aware of the interventions of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the war thought that, once the war was over, the crucial problem it posed for the ascendance of humanity was solved. On the contrary, the asuric powers still intensified their action, so much so that Sri Aurobindo wrote to a correspondent: “Other blacknesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf mankind…” and that he had to take the drastic decision to descend into death in order to change things in the occult depths at the roots of existence.¹¹

What this yogic, or rather avataric, master-act actually meant, we cannot even guess. But its result was that only six years later the Supramental Manifestation took place, and the evolutionary progress was guaranteed forever. After a lifetime of unprecedented spiritual effort for humanity, Sri Aurobindo had seen that the result of his and the Mother’s Work was not assured. Not intending “to give his sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco,” he had to do what none had done before: remove whatever blocked the development of the evolution and kept the Earth bound to its origin in the Ignorance. The success of his act was confirmed on 29 February 1956.

On that day the Mother noted down: “This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine. As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that “the time has come,” and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.” ¹²

Before this universal event all was possibility; after it all had become certainty.

This event should not be seen only in the context of the lives of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, or of the twentieth century. Its significance was much, much more encompassing. To be possible the past of humanity, and in humanity of the Earth, had to be sufficiently prepared; the potential of all the cycles of the evolution and of human history in its various known or lost civilizations had to be worked out. In this event the Work of all Avatars, and of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in their previous lives, was finally justified. (Once, when asked what he had done in his previous lives, Sri Aurobindo answered simply: “Carrying on the evolution.”) Events in the material and the occult worlds always take place against a background where time and space are quite different from the dimensions we move in. The supramental manifestation, or the beginning of the new age, in 1956, should be seen in this kind of perspective. One could interpret the preceding centuries as leading up to it, and in the succeeding decennia things have undoubtedly accelerated under its influence. But 29 February 1956, at that point in our space and time, was “the moment.”

The Ship from the New World

On 3 February 1958, the Mother had an experience which she deemed sufficiently important to dictate it immediately afterwards. “The supramental world exists permanently and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had proof of it this very day, when my earth-consciousness went there and remained there consciously between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. Now I know that what was lacking for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relation is an intermediate zone between the physical world as it is and the supramental world as it is. This zone is to be built both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built …

“I was on a huge ship which was a symbolic representation of the place where this work is going on. This ship, as large as a city, is fully organized, and it had already been functioning for some time, for its organization was perfect. It is the place where the people are being trained who are destined for the supramental life. These people, or at least part of their being, had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the ship itself and everything on board was neither material, subtle-physical, vital or mental: everything consisted of a supramental substance …

“The light was a mixture of gold and red, forming a uniform substance of a luminous orange. Everything was like that. The light was like that, the people were like that – everything had that colour, although in various shades, which made it possible to distinguish things from each other. The general impression was of a world without shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order. Everything went in an orderly way and in silence …

“This immense ship had just reached the shore of the supramental world and a first group of people, who were destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world, were to go ashore. Everything had been arranged for this first disembarkation. … I was in charge of the whole enterprise from the beginning and throughout the proceedings. I had prepared all the groups myself. I stood on the ship at the head of the gangway, calling the groups one by one and sending them ashore. … Things continued in this way until suddenly the clock here [in her room at the Ashram] struck three, and this brought me back violently. There was a sensation of suddenly falling into my body. I came back with a shock but with the full memory…

“When I was called back [into her material body] … I had a brief glimpse of myself – of my form in the supramental world, that is. … My upper part, particularly the head, was not much more than a silhouette of which the contents were white with an orange fringe. The more down towards the feet the more the colour looked like that of the people on the ship, that is to say orange; the more upwards the more it was translucent and white, with less red [red is the colour of Matter]. The head was only a contour with a brilliant sun in it. Rays of light radiated from it, which were actions of the will.

“As for the people I saw on board the ship, I recognized them all. Some were from here, from the Ashram, others were from elsewhere, but I know them too. … Most of the people who went ashore were middle-aged, except a few …

“When I came back I knew, simultaneously with the recollection of the experience, that the supramental world is permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link was needed for enabling the connection in the consciousness and in the substance, and it is this link which is now being established. There I had the impression of an extreme relativity – no, more exactly the impression that the relation of this world with the other one completely changed the standpoint from which things must be evaluated or appraised. The standpoint was not at all mental, and it gave the strange inner feeling that lots of things we consider good or bad are not really so … What was obvious is that our opinion of what is divine or not divine is not right … In the people too I saw that what helps them become supramental, or prevents them from it, is very different from what we, with our habitual moral notions, imagine. I felt how ridiculous we are.” ¹³

The Big Pulsations

At the end of 1958 the time of withdrawal into her room had come for the Mother too. She was now 80, and would say later on that the outward signs of her Yoga of transformation were by most people understood as symptoms of her advanced age. Of the heroic, superhuman battle with the old world to create the new, and with the old body to create the new, we have the conversations published under the misleading title Mother’s Agenda. For under the lemma “agenda” the Concise Oxford Dictionary has “a list of items of business to be discussed at a meeting … a list of matters to be addressed.” Even the Nouveau Petit Robert has under the same lemma “carnet sur lequel on inscrit jour par jour ce qu’on doit faire, ses rendez-vous, ses dépenses, etc. – which means “small notebook in which one enters day by day what one has to do, one’s appointments, one’s expenses, etc.” What Mother’s Agenda actually does report is what had been done by her, her experiences, struggles, battles, encounters, and much more. It was actually the diary of her conversations with Satprem, a French disciple.

One of the most important events in the Mother’s Yoga of those years took place on 3 April 1962, “after several weeks of grave illness.” Again she dictated a report of the event immediately afterwards, and it was published in Words of the Mother III, pp. 408 ff. In this report, seldom if ever commented upon, the Mother tells about “a group of people who want to create a religion based on the revelation of Sri Aurobindo. But they have taken only the side of power and force, a certain kind of knowledge and all that could be utilized by asuric forces.” ¹⁴ In this group there was “a big asuric being that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo. … This appearance of Sri Aurobindo has declared to me that the work I am doing is not his [i.e. Sri Aurobindo’s]. It has declared that I have been a traitor to him and to his work, and has refused to have anything to do with me.”

And the report goes on: “I woke up at 2 o’clock [in the night] and noticed that the heart had been affected by the attack of this group that wants to take the life away from this body … They would have liked me dead years ago. It is they who are responsible for these attacks on my life. Up till now I am alive because the Lord wanted me to be alive, otherwise I would have gone long ago.

“I am no more in my body. I have left it to the Lord to take care of it, to decide if it is to have the Supramental or not. I know and I have said also that now is the last fight. … This is the Lord’s decision. I am not even asking what he has decided. If the body is incapable of bearing the fight, if it has to be dissolved, then humanity will pass through a critical time. What the asuric Force that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo will create is a new religion or thought, perhaps cruel and merciless, in the name of the supramental Realization. But everybody must know that it is not true, it is not Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, not the truth of his teaching. …

“The fight is within the body. …”

This dramatic fight must have gone on for several days till the Mother, on 13 April, dictated the following victory bulletin in French, probably to Pavitra, another French disciple: “Suddenly in the night I woke with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the World. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. They were the formidable pulsations of the eternal stupendous Love, only Love. Each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in the manifestation.

“And there was the certitude that what had to be done is done, and that the Supramental Manifestation is realized. …

“This was going on and on and on.

“The certitude that what had to be done is done. …”

Then the Mother switched to her native French: “And we set out again on the way, sure of the Victory.

“The skies are full of hymns of Victory.

“The Truth alone exists, it alone shall be manifested. Forward! Forward!

“Gloire à Toi, Seigneur, Triomphateur suprême ! …” Glory to Thee, o Lord, supreme Triumpher! (This was one of the Mother’s mantric formulas which we find already in her Prayers and Meditations.)

The evocation of this episode, of the extended Yogic battle on the verge of life and death of which so much depended for humanity, including ourselves, may lead to reflections of the following kind. Firstly, the surroundings of the Mother, visible and invisible, were rather different from what most people who were present at the time knew or prefer to remember. She, who took everything into herself, had apparently to swallow more poison than nectar. Each time her life was in danger, she would point out an attack of black magic as the cause. The Asura, using human persons, was at his tricks maybe more than ever, as the avataric Yoga approached the stage where the first supramental body was in the process of formation. Secondly, this phase of the Yoga, being the attempt at transformation for which Sri Aurobindo had ordered the Mother to remain in her body, is hardly ever remembered or commented upon, as if it were of little or no importance. Thirdly, all great spiritual innovations have been diminished, disfigured, reduced to a lower level and torn to sectarian shreds by human lack of understanding and blind or ambitious ego. Fourthly, the end of the Mother’s transformational Yoga, if at that time her heart had failed, would not have meant the failure of the supramental transformation, assured since 1956; it would however have meant a cancellation of possibilities which could only be worked out by the Mother, and consequently a postponement of the transformative process for an indeterminate time. Lastly, rare are the souls able to discern the Asuric forces at work, for they are more subtle than the ignorant humans, have powers which humans deem to be divine, and do deeds the consequences of which humans cannot estimate.

The Overman Consciousness

In the first hours of the very first day of 1969, the Mother had another special experience. “In the night it came slowly, and on waking up this morning there was as it were a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was very light. The body felt: “Well, this is truly, truly new.” A golden light, imponderous and benevolent. ‘Benevolent’ in the sense of a certainty, a harmonious certainty. It was new. Voilà. And when I say ‘Bonne année’, to the people, it is this that I pass on to them …

“On the 1st something truly strange happened, and I wasn’t the only one to feel it, some others felt it too. It was just after midnight … What is surprising is that it didn’t correspond at all to anything I was expecting – I was expecting nothing – [or] to other things I had felt. It was something very material, by which I mean that it was very external – very external – and it was luminous, with a golden light. It was very strong, very powerful. But even so its character was a smiling benevolence, a peaceful joy and a kind of unfolding into joy and light. And it was like a ‘bonne année’, like a wish. … I don’t know what it is, but it’s a kind of benevolence, therefore it was something very close to the human. And it was so concrete, so concrete! … It has not gone away. One does not feel it to be something that has come to go away again …

“My own impression was that of an immense personality – immense! That is to say that for [that personality] the Earth was small, small like this [gesture as if holding a small ball in the hollow of her hand], like a ball. … It gave the impression of a personal divinity who comes to help. And so strong, so strong, and at the same time so gentle, so all-embracing … I have the impression that it is the formation which is going to enter, which is going to express itself … which is going to enter and express itself in the bodies which will be the bodies of the Supramental. Or perhaps – perhaps – the overman [le surhomme], I don’t know, the intermediary between the two [between the human and the supramental being]. Perhaps the overman. It was very human, but human in divine proportions, you see, human without weaknesses and without shadows. … Yes, perhaps the overman.” ¹⁵

The Mother has always warned that, if one has a spiritual experience, one should let it work itself out, without limiting and thereby fixing it through a mental formulation or interpretation. This is one of many examples how she proceeded herself, evoking the experience without defining it, by carefully letting it continue to have its effect till it might become comprehensible by the mind.

The confirmation came eight days after the fact: “Yes, that’s what it is: it is the descent of the consciousness of the overman. I had the assurance later on.” On the 1st of January “it lasted, absolutely concrete, there, for two or three hours, and afterwards it spread out and went in search of people who could receive it. And I knew that it was the consciousness of the overman, that’s to say, the intermediary between man and the supramental being.” And ten days later she said: “Yes, it’s very consciously active. It’s as it were a projection of power. And it has now become something habitual … In one of the old entretiens, I said when I was speaking there at the Playground: ‘There is no doubt that the overman will in the first place be a being of power, so that he may be able to defend himself.’ It’s that. It’s that experience. It came back as an experience. And it’s because it came back as an experience that I remembered having said it.”

This statement about the spreading activity of the Overman Consciousness could not be clearer and more complete – and important in the development of the Integral Yoga. Nonetheless one has yet to read reflections or comments on it in the Aurobindian literature, where the existence of the Overman Consciousness and the existence of the overman him- and herself is barely acknowledged.

We should be aware that behind our existence and our tiniest effort there are: 1. the presence of Sri Aurobindo, for the Avatar never deserts his Work; 2. the presence of the Mother, who exists in the archetype of an immortal, omnipresent supramental body; 3. the Supermind, active in the Earth-atmosphere since 1956; 4. since 1 January 1969 the presence of the Overman Consciousness “in search of people who can receive it.” The people called to participate in the realization of the new world should be aware of these extraordinary Forces. The miraculous is present now as it was during the lifetime of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but to perceive it one has to be prepared for it.

Five Confirmations

Is there any confirmation that Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s vision is not another “mystic” chimera? This is a common and valid question from the few, among the mass of humanity, who have heard of them. In answer one could point to Auroville, “the utopia of all utopias” continuing to exist and growing against all odds, and to the Matrimandir, that place “out of this world” at the centre of Auroville. But bizarre or impressive buildings have been built in many places on the globe, by groups or movements counted as no more than eccentric sects.

In 1947, on the occasion of India’s independence, Sri Aurobindo was invited to address the nation in a radio broadcast, which he read from his room. On that occasion he talked about his “five dreams,” these dreams being five prominent tasks he had set himself to be accomplished through his avataric work. The five dreams were: the freedom of India; the awakening of Asia; the formation of conglomerates of nations leading up to a worldwide community; world unity; and India’s spiritual treasure to be shared by all humanity, the precondition to enable the appearance of a supramental species.

Now, in 2010, the status of the realization of those five avataric tasks may be evaluated as follows.

It was on the occasion of India’s freedom that Sri Aurobindo made his broadcast. (It might here be recalled that he was the very first to publicly demand unconditional independence for his motherland.) However, his categorical condition of India’s full and effective participation in the one world of tomorrow – the complete unity of her physical body – has not yet been fulfilled, for Bharat Mata remains divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

What seemed just after the Second World War an idealist’s fancy, has now become a daily item on the world’s news bulletins: Asia has awoken with such rapidity that experts think it should slow down. India and China, in 1947 part of the third world, are now rivals of the rich nations in the international market and have to be taken into account politically.

Conglomerates of nations are now in place, mostly constituted along geographical lines. The European Union, where at the time of writing 27 nations are learning to live together and cooperate, stands out as an example. Other conglomerates have been formed in South Asia, in Africa and in the Americas. The necessity of consultation and cooperation is now acute in a world where everything depends on everything else, and the well-being of all seems to hang by a thread.

Humanity has to re-awake to the essential values which are spiritual, and which of old have been treasured in the East, more specifically in India, “the heart of Asia.” As Sri Aurobindo has stressed time and again, a better world cannot come about without a change in the beings who constitute that world. This is not a question of philosophy or morals; it is a question of the way the human being exists, not by chance or as a material organism, but as an incarnated soul. The new way in which the humans have to learn to see themselves, and which is the knowledge or “gnosis” India has to offer, is not a new dogmatic or ritualistic religion; it is the way of self-exploration leading to self-knowledge leading in its turn to knowledge and realization of the All. For this is how the macrocosm and the microcosm (the human being) exist: as a reality much larger and complex than strict rationalism and materialism can grasp.

The world is growing receptive of these verities. Their synthesis is the integral vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the “perennial philosophy” worded for the present times. The knowledge of this revelation should not result in another systematization or be calcified in the dogmas of a new religion; it should provide the guidance for the adventure of consciousness into which humanity is engaging – the adventure into the miraculous.

Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.

When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.

A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.

In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth …

A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.¹⁶