Moments Eternal

Ascent from Inconscience

I

Janaka is seated high above, down below sits Janika.

One day after Her walk, standing under the neem tree, the

Mother remarked:

“I have begun work in the Inconscient.”

I was taken aback. Who else could penetrate this bottomless dense Darkness besides the Mother? Who else could dare?

Sri Aurobindo has written in The Mother:

…she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.

(SABCL,Vol. 25, pp. 24-25)

I had just read an Upanishadic parable by Nolini-da.

The Supreme Purusha felt very lonely and said: “How can one be happy alone?” And so the Supreme Purusha or Brahman divided himself. The Indivisible One Supreme Being by dividing himself became a Dual Being: Brahman and Brahmashakti, Ishwara and Ishwari, Purusha and Prakriti, the two standing on two poles of the earth’s axis, as it were. Having separated and moved far apart in time, the Mother, the Eternal Shakti entered the depths of Inconscience. She became the most gross inconscient Matter. And Brahman on the other side became the contrary of his Shakti, Nothingness. The Two became opposites.

Here I am now, standing next to that Divine Mother, that

Supreme Shakti. And She is herself telling us:

“I have come down to Inconscient Matter. My work in the

Inconscient has begun.”

A shiver of strange fear coursed through my whole being like lightning. And yet I told the Mother like one who knows:

“And so? After finishing Your work on the other planes You have now taken up the Inconscient. This is Your most important work.”

And I started listing out all the different planes. With eager enthusiasm I declared:

“Mother, You need to work now only on the Inconscient!”

The Mother listened quietly to my display of knowledge and ignorance, then laughed:

“No, no. Don’t think it to be that simple. The realm of the Inconscient is so dense in obscurity, so full of dangers, that no one has so far dared to touch it, let alone transform it! You cannot know what might come up at the slightest tremor. All the filth, mire, chaos, disorder, wickedness, hypocrisy, falsehood and deceit will come up and overwhelm the whole world, including the Ashram. You haven’t the vaguest notion of these things. It is difficult to imagine now the dreadful things that will happen in the Ashram. People will become aware of such wrong movements within them that they will be flabbergasted. Chaos and confusion will cover up everything, each and every human being. The sway of Falsehood will increase.”

A horrible dread came over me as I heard the Mother say all this. The Mother’s way of saying it, Her powerful, deep voice sounded like the first taste of the all-sweeping fury of pre-monsoon storms. As if the whole earth was being weighed down by the gathering black clouds of Falsehood. As if we were slowly sinking into some bottomless pit of Darkness.

I am reminded here of a strange experience from my childhood.

I was about ten or eleven then and loved playing in the pond. I would wake up very early in the morning, finish all my revision for school, and then head for the pond with a group of friends. We swam and played in the pond happily till the time when some elderly person of the family came and called us to come out. And when the rains came, our joy knew no bounds. In that solitary environment as a tenor eleven-yearold girl, I would go straight into the pond and lose myself delightfully in Nature. Nobody in the house knew about it. One day all by myself I cut my long hair short in European style! I would dry my hair, feel all refreshed and return home. So one day when one of my friends told me, “Right at the bottom of the pond is the fishes’ home,” I at once became curious and naturally wanted to discover it. How was it that I had not sought this out all these days? And so one afternoon I came out of the house through a window and ran to the pond to dive in and find the home of the fishes. I just could not get to the bottom of the pond. I found myself out of breath. Ah! it was so frightening! With that tremendous pressure of the water I felt I would never be able to come up again. I felt I was going to die under water.

I felt exactly the same upon hearing the Mother’s words, as if I was drowning in some bottomless blackness. There is no limit to the terrible pressures the lower nature creates, the kind of obstacles and hindrances it raises on the path of life, of sadhana. However, the Mother Herself is present in our midst. Her touch pushes all that is wrong in the lower nature to come out in the open at unstoppable speed. Like a dormant volcano that wakes up once again. Fire and smoke start belching out. Like Sita, the whole earth is going through a dreadfully frightening test of fire. All the filth that remained blocked up in the Inconscience stares at the whole earth and at humanity.

The “churning of the ocean” has begun. The ocean is this universal creation, and the churning is this deep turmoil in creation which is assuming rampantly worldwide proportions. Here is the original story of the “churning of the ocean”:

When Arani is rubbed, Agni (fire) is born. Arani means that which contains Agni within it, Agni that is Chit-Shakti (consciousness-force) and tapas-shakti (force of tapas). And Arani is our body, this material envelope. Arani is also called Agniyoni. Rishi Vishwamitra says in the Veda: Manthata Narah. O man, churn. Churn your being so that you can awaken Chit-Shakti.

Now let me tell you the story of the churning of the ocean as recounted in the Bhagavat.

There was tremendous darkness in the whole of creation. The Asuras were running wild. The gods (signifying divine aspiration) went to Vishnu who told them: “You won’t be able to battle with the Asuras. The Asuras are very powerful. You have to become strong. Drink amrita (the nectar of immortality). Churn amrita out. This churning can happen only when you join all the oceans. Take the Asuras along.”

Mother, give to our heart and mind a titan’s strength, a titan’s energy…

The ocean is the world-creation. The Mandar mountain is the churning stick. This Mandar mountain is our physical being. This churning goes on in this body too.

Vasuki is the rope. Vasuki is the Life-Force. And so using our Life-Force as the rope, the body as our churner or Mandar mountain, we have to churn the ocean of life.

The first thing that will come up as a result of this churning or this sadhana, is halahal or poison. On the path of sadhana, the first thing that rises in the sadhak is all the poison from inside. And it is this halahal that is graciously drunk by our ever-ready redeemer, Shiva.

The Divine, by agreeing to drink this accumulated poison that rises from the human sadhak, is in fact protecting him.1

I stood there speechlessly for some time. Then I whispered to the Mother:

“How long shall we remain in this state, Mother? Won’t the lower nature get transformed? We only want to be as you wish us to become.”

The Mother answered reassuringly with great tenderness: “It will happen, it will happen. A day will come when, if

I ask you, ‘Priti, give me a needle,’ you will ask me, ‘Where is the needle?’ Then I will tell you, ‘Go and open that cupboard. You’ll see there is a box on the left. Open this box and you’ll find another smaller box. Open that box. There will be many needles in this box. Take the one that is right at the bottom and bring it to me.’ Everything will be perfectly organised and orderly. There will be no place for the slightest looseness anywhere.”

Hearing these words from the Mother I told myself that the Mother’s work will be accomplished in this very manner, within us, in the Ashram, in the world, in the whole creation.

1. I am grateful to Amalesh Bhattacharya for the inner significance of this story. The Mother will pull us out of the deep pit of Inconscience with Her hand.

I breathed a breath of happy relief.

II

You will remember that I told you about that incident from my childhood when I had to struggle with all my force against the immense pressure of water to come back to the surface of the pond. What a happy relief to be able to breathe normally again. I sat next to the pond all by myself. A hushed silence was all around. Not a living creature anywhere in sight. I experienced an indescribable joy that day after escaping from the clutches of death. I felt the same after hearing these reassuring words from the Mother.

This world-encompassing churning will be followed by the appearance of the white horse, Ucchaishrava, that is the Divine Shakti. After the Mother’s work in the Inconscient is over, after the halahal is removed, the spiritual Shakti will awaken. From the Inconscient the Mother will re-emerge carrying the pot of amrita (the nectar of immortality). This pot of amrita is immortality. The asuras cannot gain immortality. Only the gods can get amrita or immortality. Man will get his part too. That was why the Mother plunged into the Inconscience. Now it is no more in the subtle world. It is down into this material world that Brahman and Brahmashakti have descended. The difficult work that the Supreme Purusha and Brahmashakti, the Mother, the Eternal Shakti began from the beginning of this creation in the subtle world is coming to a close. That is what the Mother’s reassuring words seemed to indicate. Our lower nature will be transformed when Brahmashakti herself has taken a human form in this world of Falsehood, and Brahman himself is present in the form of Sri Aurobindo.

When Sri Aurobindo was preparing to leave his physical body one of his attendant-sadhaks courageously asked:

“Are you not using your Force to cure yourself?”

“No,” he answered.

Everyone was thunderstruck. The sadhaks imagined that they had probably not heard clearly. And so the same question was put to Him once more. And once again, the same answer.

“Why not? How is the disease going to be cured otherwise?”

“Can’t explain; you won’t understand.”

The Divine, by agreeing to hold the poison churned up from the world within Him, has been protecting us. That halahal has remained within him for all this time. In answer to one of the questions by the sadhaks He simply answered:

“The time is extremely critical.”

At the moment of renouncing His body to the material Consciousness, to Inconscience, He brought down the Supramental Light.

The Mother said after Sri Aurobindo left his body: “Whenever I entered His room, I saw that He was con-

tinually bringing down the Supramental Light.”

Many of Sri Aurobindo’s attendants could also see that

His body was aglow with a golden Light.

When Sri Aurobindo had completely withdrawn from this body, the Mother addressed this prayer to Sri Aurobindo on our behalf:

To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.

9 December 1950

Now let me tell you about the Mother. A girl (a dentist) used to go to the Mother every day. She was the only one who could properly clean Her teeth. She worked with a lot of gentleness and care. One day while she was cleaning Her teeth suddenly a lot of black phlegm came out of the Mother’s throat. Seeing that black phlegm, the Mother observed:

“There is so much Falsehood, so much corruption in man and in the creation! And in trying to protect man and the world from the grip of these negative forces, I have had to swallow all this poison. In this way I am protecting the world and man.”

We know that Shiva had swallowed halahal and it was lodged in his throat. But that was in the subtle world. And now Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were doing the same with all the poison and falsehood and deceit that were being churned out from within us and thus They were protecting the world and humanity.

Every time the Mother has come down into this physical world, Brahman too has been present near Her in a physical body. Where there is Parvati, there is always Mahadev, Shiva. Where there is Ishwari, there is also Ishwara. Even though two they are in fact One. One cannot exist without the Other. The Mother has clearly revealed:

Without him, I exist not; without me, he is unmanifest.

We have seen in the Vedic parable that the Supreme Purusha divided himself. And the One Unique Supreme Being thus became Dual: Ishwara-Ishwari, Brahman-Brahmashakti, Supreme Purusha and Eternal Shakti became opposites. But this is not their end. But did the Vedic Rishis know that the Supreme Purusha and the Eternal Shakti even after separating would come down into this world below, into this Inconscience itself? And that Ishwara and Ishwari would start their work in the Inconscience together? That They would take birth in a human body and take the plunge into Matter? Was this unimaginable, astounding event waiting to take place only for us?

They have brought down the Supramental Light into this

Inconscience. It is immaterial whether we understand or not but it is because Brahman and Brahmashakti have been uninterruptedly labouring from the beginning of time that, as a consequence, the Supramental Light has reached today this material Consciousness, this pit of dense Inconscience. Just a little more needs to be done. We shall wait for Them in eager expectancy to grant us Their vision in divine bodies on this earth.