The Divine Collaborators

CHAPTER V

THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION AND THE DIVINE LIFE

Before we proceed to note the identity existing between Sri Aurobindo's views on the Divine Manifestation and the Divine Life and those of the Mother before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo, we had better be clear about what Sri Aurobindo understands by Manifestation and the Divine Life.

There are two important elements which give a distinctive character to the above terms and mark them out as the most creative concepts in spiritual philosophy. The first is the evolutionary and the second the collective element. Manifestation is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the very purpose and goal of evolution. All creation is, in a sense, the manifestation of that which lay latent and unmanifest in the Absolute. It is an expression, a self-expression, of the creative delight of existence; a self-revelation in name and form of the nameless and formless Infinite. But what Sri Aurobindo means by manifestation is not a flawed and imperfect self-revelation under the conditions of mental ignorance and material limitations, as we have today in the mental man, but a perfect self-expression of the Divine Sachchidananda in the triple term of mind, life and body, as the crown of Nature's

evolutionary endeavour. He says that emerging from inconscience, the soul of man is mounting, through whatever stumbles and zigzags, towards its own infinite consciousness and bliss in the Divine; and the more it climbs the more it can reveal here, if it will, the light and power and harmony of the higher reaches of its being. The culmination of this evolutionary ascent will be the supreme creative Truth-Consciousness, the transcendent Supermind or Vijnana, in which man will live, even as the Divine lives, in the unfading glory of infinite knowledge and power and creative delight of an immortal existence.

The ascent to the Supermind will be followed by a descent of the supramental Consciousness-Force into the nature of man and the latter's transformation into the divine nature or Para Prakriti. When the transformation is complete,—it is only the supramental Force that can radically transform human nature—the whole being of man will be ready for a "perfect manifestation of the Divine in life, which is the ultimate end of evolution. This evolutionary aspect of Manifestation has to be taken fully into account in any correct appreciation of Sri Aurobindo's gospel of the Divine Life, for it argues the inevitability of such a consummation.

The second element is, that Manifestation, according to Sri Aurobindo, will not be a spiritual victory of an individual or a few exceptional individuals, but a signal triumph of the collective man over the forces of ignorance. For, the crux of the problem of Manifestation is the transfiguration of the physical being of man which is

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half embedded in the Subconscient and the Inconscient —a thing of obscure appetites and mechanical habits, Stubborn in its refusal to admit light and order and any higher conscious force into itself; and no individual, however great he may be, is capable of completely transforming his physical being without there being a considerable change and modification in the general physical being of humanity itself. Matter, like Mind and Life, is an indivisible substance, and if the manifestation of the spirit in it is the final destiny of terrestrial evolution, it has to undergo the supramental transfiguration, just as any other part of the human being; and whatever transformation takes place in it, will be the heritage of humanity at large, and not the enclosed monopoly of only a few gifted individuals. It is true, of course, that a few individuals will be the pioneers in this spiritual work of transformation and manifestation, but what they will achieve will be the pledge and prophecy of what humanity in general is called upon to accomplish. This collective aspect of the message of Manifestation foreshadows the splendour of a more or less universal perfection in humanity.

This Manifestation of Spirit in Matter, of God in man, will be an unhampered expression of man's integral living in the Divine. His body, life, soul and mind, in possession of the Divine and possessed by Him, will reveal nothing but Him in thought and feeling and action, and fulfil Him and His Will in the world. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Divine Life. Defining

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the process and the condition of the Divine Life Sri Aurobindo says, "The Divine descends from pure existence through the play of consciousness-Force and Bliss and the creative medium of Supermind into cosmic being; we ascend from Matter through a developing life, soul and mind and the illuminating medium of Super-mind towards the divine Being. The knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemisphere, is where mind and Supermind meet with a veil between them. The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity, for by that rending, by the illumining descent of the higher into the nature of the lower being and the forceful ascent of the lower being into the nature of the higher, mind can recover its divine light in the all-comprehending Supermind, the soul realise its divine self in the all-possessing all-blissful Ananda, life possess its divine power in the play of omnipotent Conscious-Force and Matter open to its divine liberty as a form of the divine Existence. And if there be any goal to the evolution which finds here its present crown and head in the human being, other than an aimless circling and an individual escape from the circling, if the infinite potentiality of this creature, who alone here stands between Spirit and Matter with the power to mediate between them, has any meaning other than an ultimate awakening from the delusion of life by despair and disgust of the cosmic effort and its complete rejection, then even such a luminous and puissant transfiguration and emergence of the Divine in the creature must be that

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high-uplifted goal and that supreme significance."

That the ideal of such a Manifestation with its implicits of divine perfection and fulfillment in general humanity, as an inevitable evolutionary consummation, is a new one cannot be gainsaid. There is no evidence of its existence either in the traditions of Indian spirituality or in Western religious and philosophic Idealism. The Christian ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is at best an ethical ideal of righteousness and piety, carrying no implications of a collective ascent of mankind to a higher than the present mental level of consciousness and a corresponding descent of any higher Truth-Consciousness into humanity. The idea of Satyam Yuga, as it prevails in India, is also a rather vague anticipation of a cyclic reign of Truth and Justice ending the sway of ignorance and falsehood. The idealistic thought of mankind has, indeed, dreamed of a millennium upon earth, but the dream, except being a remote inspiration to the higher endeavours of a very small section of humanity, has never been able to base itself on any definite truth of spiritual experience or any comprehensive vision of the purpose and possibilities of evolution. Sri Aurobindo's ideal of the divine Manifestation and the Divine Life on earth claims originality, in as much as it is "a thing to be achieved that has not yet been achieved, not yet clearly visualised, even though it is one natural but still secret outcome of all the past spiritual endeavour." What Sri Aurobindo envisages as the aim of his Integral Yoga,—for he holds up not only the sublime;

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ideal, but gives a definite guidance on the way to its realisation,—is "not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active."

The divine Manifestation in the Divine Life has been the constant preoccupation of the Mother also all through her life, the single aim of all her spiritual strivings. As we read her "Prayers and Meditations", we find it to be the recurring refrain of all her heart's songs mounting towards the Divine. Not content with the bliss of an absorbed union with the Supreme in the immobile depths of her being, she has laboured for long years and through unimaginable difficulties to extend the orbit of the union and its creative bliss down to her most outer physical being, so that from her soul to her body and its activities, all may be an uninterrupted expression of the Divine Presence and an integrated means of the fulfillment of His Will.¹ This colossal work of revealing the divine glory and dispensing the divine Grace in a life of ceaseless activity, she has undertaken, as the "Prayers and Meditations" proclaims from page to page, in response to the

¹ For fuller details refer to my book, "In the Mother's Light" in 2

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express Will of the Divine, so that the fruits of her labours may be reproduced in humanity and there may be a perfect Manifestation of Spirit in transformed Matter.

In her Prayer of the nth December, 1912, the Mother says to the Divine, "Thou alone art the doer and I am the instrument; and when the instrument is ready for a completer manifestation, the manifestation will quite naturally take place." Even so far back as 1912, she knew that the Manifestation of the Divine on earth was inevitable and that she was the pioneer instrument chosen for that purpose. The knowledge of her supreme role was clear and definite, and she expresses it with a selfless candour and joy in her Prayer of the 10th February, 1913: "My being goes up to Thee in thanksgiving, not because Thou usest this weak and imperfect body to manifest Thyself, but because Thou dost manifest Thyself, and that is the Splendour of splendours, the Joy of joys, the Marvel of marvels." Again, in her Prayer of the 13th March, 1913, she speaks of the ceaseless prayer of her integral being which desires "to unite with Thee (the Divine) so as to manifest Thee." Union has for her at once a static and a dynamic aspect, for, without a dynamic union in the full flood of life's activities, there cannot be any Manifestation in Matter. The path of discipline which leads to the dynamic union, she has chalked out in her Prayer of the 28th November, 1912, and in many a subsequent Prayer; which proves, if any proof were at all needed, that she knew what she meant by Manifestation; and what she meant was exactly what Sri Aurobindo has always held up

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before humanity as the ideal of his Integral Yoga and the goal of the evolutionary march of Nature. In her Prayer of August 8, 1913, she calls upon the essential divine harmony which is immanent in all things to manifest itself "in the most outward forms of life, in every feeling, in every thought, in every act." Her insistence has always been on the perfection of the most outer, the most physical part of human nature. And we have the same ideal stressed time and again in the writings of Sri Aurobindo:"...Its (of his Yoga) aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter."¹

With regard to the "Advent" of the Divine, that is to •say, His unveiled manifestation in collective humanity, the Mother has been as positive as Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo says,

"If I believe in the probability and not only possibility, if I feel practically certain of the Supramental Descent (I do not fix a date), it is because I have my grounds for the belief, not a faith in the air. I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable—I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age....I have been testing day and night for

¹ Lights on Yoga by Sri Aurobindo

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years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field of earth and Matter." "I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable."¹

Let us now listen to what the Mother says in her Prayers to the Divine so far back as 1913-1914. In her Prayer of the 17th August, 1913, she speaks of flying up into "Thy divine atmosphere with the power to return as messengers to the earth and announce the glorious tidings of Thy Advent which is near." Again, on November 29, 1913, she says to the Divine;

"But the hour of Thy manifestation has come. And canticles of joy will soon break out from every side."

Knowing, as she does, her pioneer part in the Manifestation, she prays to God, on February 8, 1914:

"I implore that more and more perfectly identified with Thee, I may become nothing else than Thou manifested in word and act..."

Another Prayer (dated Feb 23, 1914) breathes the self-same aspiration:

¹ Letters of Sri Aurobindo Vol. II

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"Grant that I may be a useful and clairvoyant collaboratrix and that all in me may promote the plenitude of Thy manifestation."

And what is the best way of promoting the plenitude of the divine manifestation?

"To live in Love, by Love, for Love, indissolubly united to Thy highest manifestation..."¹

"But the supreme science, O Lord, is to be united with Thee, to confide in Thee, to live in Thee, to be Thou; and then there is nothing that is impossible to the man manifesting Thy omnipotence."²

"There is only one resource, it is to unite ourselves as perfectly as we can with the highest and purest light we can conceive of, to identify our consciousness as completely as possible with the absolute Consciousness, to strive to receive all inspiration from it alone, in order to facilitate as best we can its manifestation upon the earth, and, confident of its power, consider the events with serenity."³

In the first and third quotations, the Mother speaks of "the highest manifestation" and "the highest and purest

¹ Prayers and Meditations—March I,

²Prayers and Meditations March—17, 1914

³Prayers and Meditations March—23, 1914

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light," which evidently means what Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental manifestation or the supramental light, which is the goal of earthly evolution. She knows that the manifestation she is heralding, initiating and incarnating will be something surpassing all that has taken place up to now. It will be a New Creation, as Sri Aurobindo terms it, or a new race of humanity. The unprecedented perfection of such an eventuality can be glimpsed through one of her old writings of 1912 where, outlining the path of "the manifestation by all of the inner Divinity which is One," and indicating "the most useful work to be done," she says:

"To individualise the states of being that were never till now conscious in man and, by that, to put the earth in connection with one more of the fountains of universal force that are still sealed to it."¹

This unsealing of the sealed fountains of Force and linking the earth to them—is it not the central secret of Sri Aurobindo's work of the supramental manifestation?

In fact, the more we reflect upon the ideal the Mother had been endeavouring to realise in her life before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo, the more we are struck by the identity of their life's mission and the unwavering certitude of victory with which they have engaged in a grim combat with the forces of terrestrial ignorance. This

¹ Words of the Mother

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certitude of victory the Mother had from her early years, not as an outcome of faith, but of a series of profound experiences, and her knowledge about herself and her life's work was luminously confirmed much later by Sri Aurobindo when he wrote,

"Her (the Mother's) embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible."¹

"The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes full manifestation here possible."²

Born to collaborate with Sri Aurobindo in the work of the supramental manifestation and the establishment of the Divine Life on earth, the Mother had the most decisive physical confirmation of her inner certitude when she first met Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry on the 29th March, 1914. The whole teeming mass of her past experiences melted and lit up into one thrilled revelation. The earth shuddered with joy and the heavens showered their benediction when the Mother's soul went up in prayer to the Supreme:

"It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is

¹ Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother

² Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother

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on earth: His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth."¹

And thus commenced the marvel of a fateful collaboration for the achievement of the divine Manifestation and the Divine Life upon earth.

¹ Prayers and Meditations—March 30, 1914

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