In the Mother's Light

Manifestation

Contemplation and Action

THE combination of Mary and Martha, of contemplation and devoted action, has been held to be the most progressive and catholic ideal of spiritual life. Contemplation by the exclusion of action is a creed narrow in its outlook, and, more often than not, results in a disastrous neglect of the very basis and meaning of life, because it generally leads to an illusionist interpretation of existence. On the other hand, action to the exclusion of contemplation is a senseless splashing and paddling in the shallows of life, such as modern humanity displays. It is a race without a goal, a frantic scramble for power or fame or position or the mere fleshpots which life furnishes for a brief moment. Sensible spirituality, therefore, steers clear of the two extremes, and endeavors to effect a reconciliation between contemplation and action. It resorts to contemplation for inspiration, a serene vision and a patient, tranquil strength, and it engages in action for purification and self-expression. It takes care to preserve and, if possible, to fortify the base of life, for, it knows that without this base all its achievements will be like castles in the air, lacking in the concreteness of the brute facts of the material world. They may have a reality and a value—perhaps a great value—in some other world or on some other plane of consciousness, but little here, in this world, unless they stamp themselves upon the expressive material medium. Those schools of spiritual discipline that accepted life and action have stood the test of time and endured through the ages, but those that took their stand upon an uncompromising rejection and negation of the works of life have either had to compromise with the world or died out, leaving an effete name and a fading memory of having built without a base.

So long as man is upon earth and in a human body, he has to satisfy the inherent claims of life and keep it in health and vigour; for, life is the sole vehicle of the Light of his quest, and

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if the vehicle is weak or weary, the Light will find either no expression at all, or only a mutilated and warped one. Many brilliant spiritual adventures have been shipwrecked on the shoals of material life and paid the penalty of its disdainful neglect. Let us take a concrete example to illustrate the point : There was a lady of admirable spiritual perception and capacity. She was steadily advancing in Yoga when, all of a sudden, she had an attack of brain-fag, as a result of which she partially lost her reason. Her spiritual life suffered a tragic set-back, and none of her previous spiritual gains could stay the decay that had set in. Life, gone out of gear, became a purveyor not of light, but of darkness.

The fact quoted above demonstrates the importance of the material mould, the indispensability of action, a proper care of the body, a regulated exercise of the life-energies, and a vigilant and sacrificial harnessing of the whole vital-physical nature to the Light that contemplation bestows upon us. Any want of balance between contemplation and action, between the inspiring and directing Light and the expressive and actualising Life will result in a lop-sided growth and be detrimental to the harmonious development of the being.

The Ultimate Rationale of Action

The acceptance of life entails an acceptance and a flexible gospel of action. A partial and provisional acceptance may and does hedge itself in by a rigid cult or sacrament, and concentrate exclusively on the purification and liberation of the individual soul. Action has then only a personal and preparatory utility. On the other hand, a full and ungrudging acceptance eventually culminates in a perennial outflow from the depths, God's "expiring" us without "for the practice of love and good works", as Ruysbroeck picturesquely puts it. Action has then a general and expressional utility. In the first case, action is more or less an education in selflessness and detachment, and conduces to contemplation. It dissolves some of the hard knots of the ego and helps a widening of consciousness. In proportion

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as contemplation begins to be tranquil and profound, action diminishes in volume and is often reduced to the bare minimum. This is the path usually followed by those who strive for personal salvation and are impatient of anything that threatens to deter or delay their nostalgic retreat. But modern culture with its pronounced bias towards universality tends, however, to discredit this selfish eagerness for personal liberation. Its insistence on life and its manifold unity undermines the very foundation of this life-shunning tendency and neutralises its unmanning influence on society.

In the second case, action is done, first, as a means of self- purification and, next, as a means of expressing the universal love and peace and purity which grow in the inner being as a result of spiritual progress. This is the ideal most widely accepted in all progressive forms of spiritual culture—God within and His service without, or the freedom of the soul within and its healing and delivering touch without.

This ideal of spiritual service (as it is called,) of the cult of consecrated and compassionate action has such an undeniable sanctity and sublimity about it that we feel loth to analyse it in order to arrive at its rationale and an estimate of the range of its possibilities. Even the most advanced spiritual seekers and acute thinkers seem to find in it—Buddhism appears to them as an exemplary embodiment of it—a promise of the highest spiritual perfection possible to man on earth. Our deepest reverence and gratitude go to the man who communes with the Spirit in silence and moves among his brother men as an angel of love and tenderness, bringing hope and solace to mortal suffering. But if we go far, very far, indeed, behind the bright surface of this spiritual beneficence, we shall find that such a man is usually spiritual within and ethical without; his actions proceed not from the authentic will of his soul or from the Will of the Divine within his soul, but from the purified parts of his nature. There is always, in however small a degree, an un- detected, because unanalysed, mixture of the various elements of the human personality, an intercrossing of light and shade, and hardly ever a fully satisfying finality and a free and sovereign

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functioning of the spiritual energies in his acts of disinterested beneficence. There is often a slight wobble of hesitancy or an evanescent ripple of regret, as if the ethical mind, though basking in the sun of the Spirit, had yet some grey, woolly clouds flitting over it and obscuring its sight. The inner movement may be perfect, but its transmission to the outer nature is partially blocked and diminished, even distorted, by the meagreness and mental accretions of the passage. Not to him does the Upanishadic saying apply that a knower of the Brahman neither regrets an omission nor repents a commission of action, he does what has to be done, led by the light within. Not for him the clear vision, the set drive of the Force, the unerring choice of the means and the right hitting of the target, whatever it may be, which characterise a divine worker. He discovers, if he is very scrupulous and searching, that even the most self-denying actions of philanthropy leave the sense of a want, a defect, an inadequacy somewhere—a falling short, and to that extent, a failure. Why so ? Cannot the most soul-satisfying action, action that is a spontaneous out-welling of energy and intrinsically free from any uneasy reaction, spring from an unimpeachable benevolence ? Is not ethical perfection a guarantee of the purity and potency of an action ? Is not philanthropy the highest form of human action ? To resolve these doubts let us go to the root of action and its ultimate rationale.

In essence an action is a movement of the universal Force individualised in a human being and directed towards a particular object. Now, the ultimate truth of Existence being the Supreme Being, the all-containing and all-constituting One, the direct and authentic movement of His Force is the real action, and the fulfilment of His Will the real rationale and objective of action; and man being essentially one with the Supreme Being; it is only the movement of the Supreme's Force and the fulfilment of His Cosmic Will in him that can satisfy his whole being and appear as the only rationale of all action. It is for this reason that even his best ethical actions fail to give him full satisfaction, but trail a dull discontent. But this discontent is his deliverance. It points to something infinitely

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higher than humanitarianism, altruism, even religious service, to the ultimate rationale of all universal and individual action—the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme.

What is that Will ? What is the object of creation, the final aim of this long evolutionary labour? It is the revelation of the One in the Many in the conditions of material life, or, as it is put in philosophical terms, the manifestation of the Divine in Matter. Each individual, being an essential and eternal part of the Divine, is driving, without being aware of it, towards the same consummation—the manifestation.

What is Manifestation

As we have said above, manifestation is the self-revelation of the One in the Many in the conditions of material life. Matter, though in essence a mode of the Spirit, is yet its negation and denial in evolutionary earth life, which arises out of the Inconscience—a level of Existence created by the descent of the Spirit into its own nether abysses. The Spirit is indivisibly one, luminous, all-knowing, all-achieving and free; and Matter is infinitely self-dividing, dark, inert, and bound to the blind drive of the force of Inconscience. In this contrary substance of Matter the Spirit gets involved, self-lost, having willed the temporal adventure of rapturous self-recovery and self-expression in a myriad individual forms. Therefore all creation can be called manifestation, but we use the word in the special sense of the perfect deployment of the divine qualities of Light and Peace and Purity and Freedom in terrestrial life, which is now engulfed in gloom and suffering. Manifestation is the meaning and purpose of creation. It gives a direction, a definite significance and a final consummation to all the diverse strivings of man. Without this ideal and underlying evolutionary impulsion, life would be a futile buffet against the tide of Time and the blockade of material circumstances. A hedonistic life, made up of desires and sensations, may satisfy the animal in man, but not the God who longs to recover and reveal His radiant infinity and immortality. It is the ideal and truth

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of manifestation alone that can polarise man's whole consciousness and engage all his energies, purifying, illumining, and transfiguring them, and fulfilling them in the unveiled plenitude of the Spirit.

Having prepared the background, let us now turn to the Prayers and Meditations of the Mother for the light it sheds on the ideal and truth of manifestation. In the Prayer of June 13, 1914, the Mother gives the whole philosophy, principle, and a synopsis of the process of manifestation :

"We must first conquer knowledge, that is to say, learn how to know Thee, to be united with Thee; and all means are good and can be employed to attain this end. But it would be a great mistake to think that all is done when this end is attained. All is done in principle, the victory is won theoretically, and those who have for their motive only the egoistic aspiration for their own salvation can be satisfied and can then live only in and for this communion, without any care for Thy manifestation.

"But those whom Thou hast chosen as Thy representatives upon the earth cannot be satisfied with the result so obtained. To know Thee, first and before everything else, yes; but once the knowledge of Thee is acquired, there remains all the work of Thy manifestation; and then intervene the quality, force, complexity and perfection of that manifestation. Very often those who have known Thee, dazzled and transported with ecstasy by their knowledge^ are content to see Thee for themselves and to express Thee as best or as worst they can in their outermost being. He who would be perfect in Thy manifestation cannot be satisfied with that; he must manifest Thee on all the planes, in all the states of the being and thus draw from the knowledge he has acquired the greatest possible profit for the whole world.

"Before the immensity of the programme, the whole being exults and sings to Thee a hymn of gladness.

"All nature in full conscious activity, vibrating all over with Thy sovereign forces, responds to their inspiration and wills to be illumined and transfigured by them.

"Thou art the Master of the world, the sole Reality.”

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Let us pick out the key-ideas of this Prayer and concentrate on them in order to understand what the Mother means by manifestation.

(1) "We must first learn how to know Thee, to be united with Thee. ” This is the very first objective of any human life worth the name, and it is the one common aim of all theistic religions. But is that the end ? Why did the soul come down into birth, assume the perishable human form, consent to pass through death, mount the calvary of suffering, and endure the yoke of the world's labour ? Why did it leave the eternal bliss of the divine embrace and descend into mortality ? Was it only to discover its blunder and return to the Ineffable ? The Mother says that the great object of its descent into the inertia and inconscience of Matter is the reproduction of the bliss of the eternal union here, in the infinite divisions and discords of the phenomenal flux, and the preparation of the terrestrial nature in order to make it a fit tabernacle of Sachchidananda.

(2) "Those who have for their motive only the egoistic aspiration for their own salvation can be satisfied and can then live only in and for this communion, without any care for Thy manifestation.” The exclusive striving for personal salvation and the secret communion in the remote depths of the being is egoistic, it is a denial of the universality of the soul, its essential oneness with the whole existence.

(3) "Once the knowledge of Thee is acquired, there remains all the work of Thy manifestation; and then intervene the quality, force, complexity and perfection of that manifestation.” First knowledge and union, and then manifestation. But even after inner union and communion, the work of manifestation is found to be extremely difficult and has to be carried on, stage by stage, in the teeth of the lower nature's basic inertia and dominant animality. The nature that has sprung and developed out of the dark inconscience of Matter lends itself with an ill grace to the work of transmutation. It perpetuates its dull obsession with all that is grossly material and its dread and doubt of all that is subtle and wide and radiant. The history of spirituality is the history of the progressive purification and preparation of

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this nature from its centre to its dense peripheries. But though much has been achieved, an immense more has still to be achieved. The ideal of the Yogi being, in his outer nature, like an inert stone or a mad man or a demon or a child, is an out- worn creed reflecting the failure of the Spirit to conquer and convert the medium of its self-expression. Much of the doubt in the mind of the modern man about the truth and power of spirituality derives from this failure on the part of the spiritual seekers to express in the concrete terms of life what is realised in the depths of the being. This disability has to be overcome. Life can have no sense, no justification for continuing, if it can- not be a manifesting channel of Light. But the purification, preparation, and perfection of nature is a long and laborious process, ranging from the physical being to its subtler and subtest parts and planes; and it is only when this process is complete, that is to say, when one can "manifest Thee on all the planes, in all the states of the being," that the human nature can be said to be transformed and ripe for the fulfilment of the Will and the manifestation of the Divine. And this manifestation, as the Mother indicates, is not the triumph of the individual in the Divine, but rather the triumph of the Divine in the egoless individual, and "the greatest possible profit for the whole world."

If man is dehumanised today, if he manifests, not the Deity within, but the demon and the brute reigning in the lower parts of his being, it is because he has no sublimating ideal before him; no centre of gravity above him. Because he cannot rise, he sinks: for, life abhors stagnation. All that his developed intellect acquires and accumulates is used, not for the perfection of his soul and the elevation and enlightenment of his life, but as fuel for the hell-fire of his nether personality. The greater the accumulation of the fuel, the greater the intensity and range of the burning, and, involved in this raging conflagration, he does not see that it is spreading also to his higher parts to enfold and consume them.

Is there, then, no hope for man ? Will the hell-fire consume his whole being till it is reduced to ashes ? The Mother holds

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out high hopes of his regeneration and eventual divinisation. She takes her stand upon the assurance of the Divine :

"Of that ,O Lord, Thou hast given us assurance, an assurance which has been accompanied by the most powerful promise which Nature, the universal Consciousness, can ever make...We have, therefore, the certitude that what has to be done will be done, and that our present individual being is really called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, in this new manifestation”.¹

But are not the forces of darkness rampant in the world ? Do we not see greed and violence, hate and ill-will, lust and cruelty, falsehood and hypocrisy swaying human nature ? The Mother does not deny it, but her inspiring message comes as a breath of the mountain breeze : "On the surface is the storm, the sea is in turmoil, waves clash and leap one on another and break with a mighty uproar, but all the time, under this water in fury, are vast smiling expanses, peaceful and motionless. They look upon the surface agitation as an indispensable act; for. Matter has to be vigorously churned if it is to become capable of manifesting entirely the divine Light.”² The thickening of the gloom is a proof, not of a return of the night, but of the advent of the dawn —beyond the tunnel gleams, indeed, the invading light.

"By the sum of the resistance one can measure the scope Thou wouldst give to the action of so much of Thy pure forces as are coming to be manifested upon the earth. What opposes is precisely that on which it is the mission of those forces to act; it is the darkest hatred which must be touched and transformed into luminous peace.”³ The forces of resistance are, therefore, the very forces which, by divine Providence, have been designed to assist the manifestation. The darkest hour in the annals of the human race is pregnant with the brightest possibilities of its redemption.The highest Force, "unknown to the earth up till now," is at

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, November 15, 1914.

² ibid., May 26, 1914.

³ ibid., November 15, 1914,

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work upon the rebellious stuff of Matter, and under the highest Light the divine centre is being organised—the centre that will be the pioneer creation of the New Manifestation.

"Like a sun Thy splendour descends upon the earth and Thy rays will illumine the world. All the elements which are pure enough, plastic enough, receptive enough to manifest the very splendour of the central fire group themselves....Thy splendour would radiate, that which is capable of manifesting it, manifests it; and these elements gather to reconstitute, as perfectly as possible in this world of division, the divine Centre which is to manifest.”¹

Emanating from her spiritual vision and experience, the Mother's message blends with the divine assurance in two revealing Prayers which breathe infinite hope for mankind.

"How present Thou art amongst us, O beloved Mother ! It seems as if Thou wouldst assure us of Thy complete support and show us that the Will which would manifest itself through us has found instruments capable of realising its Law by putting it into a complete accord with Thy present possibilities. And the things which appeared most difficult, most improbable, and perhaps even most impossible, become wholly realisable, since Thy Presence assures us that the material world itself is prepared to manifest the new form of the Will and the Law ”? ²

"What a plenitude in the perception!...Thy Force is there;

ready for manifestation, waiting, it is building the propitious how, the favourable opportunity: it is there, the incomparable splendour of thy victorious sovereignty.

"The Force is there. Rejoice, you who wait and hope: The new manifestation is sure, the new manifestation is near. ”³

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, June 16, 1914.

² ibid., September 24, 1914.

³ ibid., July 6, 1914.

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