Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

5

Pralaya

"I was taught the history of occult traditions by Theon," said Mother.

In the Cosmic Tradition, as developed by him, "there were many things —Madame Theon was the clairvoyant and it was she who got the visions, she was excellent—but many things, which I myself had seen and known before meeting them, were then corroborated."

One such confirmation pertained to the original Tradition which had separated into two branches, the Vedic and the Cabalistic. "I have memories-these are always lived things for me — very clear memories, very precise, of a time which was assuredly MUCH prior to the Vedic times and to the Cabalistic or the Chaldean traditions."

Mother's eyes seemed to be turning inwards seeing those antediluvian days.

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"So personally, I am convinced that there was, in fact, a Tradition prior to these two traditions, and which contained a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. For a fact, there is a similitude in the experiences. When I came here and expressed to Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from an occult standpoint, he always told me that they were in conformity with the Vedic tradition. As for certain occult practices, he told me that they were fully Tantric. At that time I knew nothing, absolutely nothing of the Veda or the Tantra."¹

All the different traditions treat the common theme of the creation and its destruction. "The traditions tell you that a universe is created, then it is withdrawn into pralaya, then a new one comes."

'Pralaya' is an Indian term meaning universal dissolution —the apocalypse. The Indian Scriptures say that the universe is an unfoldment (Creation) from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous (Distortion) and back to the homogeneous again (Pralaya or Dissolution).

1. The Tantras are the manuals not only of Hindu worship and rituals, but of its occultism.

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Interestingly, ages ago, there in Central America, the Mayan civilization had arrived at a similar idea. Like the Indians the Mayans too believed in the cycles of creation and destruction; according to them four earths have already been destroyed and the present one will suffer the same fate one day. Another conception they had was that there are nine layers below the earth and thirteen above it. I take it to mean that 'man' has emerged but recently upon earth —an idea which rejoins Théon's, "Man has just begun to get out of its swaddling-clothes and away from the society of the bullock and the ass."

Traditionally, however, a Creation consists of four cycles, each again comprising four 'yugas' or ages. Between two yugas there is a twilight period. A cycle starts with Truth in its fullness, the Satya Yuga or the Age of Gold. The Treta comes next, when the degradation has begun and the age has lost one third of the Truth. It is followed by Dwapara, when Truth and Falsehood hold equal sway to begin with, but Truth continues to lose ground. The Kali, the Iron Age, throttles the remaining Truth, and the cycle is closed. The increasing twilight is finally a total

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darkness. Darkness strangles earth's breast. It is stark night. Man's mind has become the handmaiden of his lowest instincts. Man is demented. It is the time of 'little bodies unclean,' as says the Vishnu Purana.¹ The creation is rotted to its core. Time for the deliverance. Time for pralaya. Out of the apocalypse, phoenix-like, a new creation emerges.

The Puranas state that the duration of each yuga is in direct proportion to the diminishing Truth.² As a result, man's life-span diminishes also. In addition, they say that with the declining Truth man's stature too declines. Man's height, which is fourteen cubits in Treta, is reduced to seven cubits in Dwapara, and goes down to four and a half cubits in Kali. Sri Aurobindo

1.The Vishnu Purana, which was recorded in about the third century A.D., says many other interesting things about the Kali Yuga: "In the Kali Yuga, the kings will not take care of their subjects, and yet they will steal riches from their subjects on the pretext of collecting taxes. People will be haunted by famine, taxes and sickness. . . . The clouds will bring forth very little water and seeds will grow poorly . . . and every caste will become almost like the Shudra [labourers]. . . . But notwithstanding all these defects, the great virtue of the Kali Yuga is that the spiritual progress man accomplishes with great, ascetic efforts in the Satya Yuga he can accomplish with very little effort in the Kali Yuga."

2.Some Puranas put the durations respectively as 4800, 3600, 2400, 3600, 2400 and 1200 years of the gods. One god-year = 360 human years.

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portrays this beautifully and the narrative sparkles with his underlying humour.

"There is a story about Revati," Sri Aurobindo said one evening to his disciples. "Her father, King Revat, wanted to get her married and wished to consult Brahma, the Creator, about it." King Revat was the king of Kushasthali on the Arabian Sea; it is over its ruins that in another age Krishna built his Dwaraka. Revat lived in Treta Yuga when men mingled freely with gods. Princess Revati accompanied her father. "So he went to the Brahmaloka and he was entertained with a song by an Apsara. After the song was over Brahma asked about the object of his visit. Revat asked about his daughter's marriage and suggested certain names. Brahma said all those people had already died! While he was listening to the song some ten thousand human years had passed and all was changed! The father asked Brahma what was to be done. He said, 'Well, Krishna and Balaram and others have gone down to humanity, you may go and give your daughter to Balaram.'

"So, Revati was married to Balaram. When she came to Balaram after marriage, he looked up to her

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as she was very much taller than himself. He said to himself, 'How am I to manage this?'

"He then did one thing; he took his plough and applied it to her shoulder and then pressed down with great force till she was brought down to his size." Sri Aurobindo concluded his story, "And then they lived happily ever after!"

The Indian lore gives a detailed description of the universal dissolution. Briefly, the signs announcing a pralaya are as follows. At first, a prolonged period of acute drought sets in; all the trees and shrubs, all vegetation is destroyed. The Sun becomes sevenfold and rides seven chariots. The seven suns spread out in their rays drinking up the waters of the oceans, burning away the entire earth, together with its mountains and seas and continents. The separately burning fires come closer and closer until they become one single fire. Its flames consume the universe, consume the four worlds,¹ consume all creation. The earth looks like an iron fireball. That is when, issuing from the solar ring, nets of clouds cover the skies. Awesome

1. Earth, heaven, nether and mid-air.

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are these varicoloured clouds. At each instant their breasts are torn asunder by blinding flashes of lightning and split by deafening crashes of thunder. But there are no ears to hear, no eyes to see. The old creation is dissolved. To begin anew? Under new skies? Under what stars? Then like elephant trunks, the clouds spout torrents of water for ages of ages. The apocalyptic fire is finally extinguished. The earth looks like 'the world of waters wild.'

"You see," Mother explained to Satprem, "according to Theon, the world was created and destroyed — creation and pralaya—six times. And each time a particular attribute was manifested. But as this attribute could not fulfil itself, the world was 'swallowed up' again. Well then, we are the seventh time, and the attribute is Equilibrium."

Actually speaking, "he had enumerated all the successively manifested aspects. And what a logical sequence it was!" Mother said with unstinted appreciation. "Extraordinary. I have kept it somewhere, don't remember where."

Theon had gone on to develop the idea after naming them. "Turn by turn, the seven attributes of

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"I am Destruction"

the manifestation organized the world. The organization of this seventh period is noted down in the first chapter of the Genesis, whose masterly succinctness contains an ocean of knowledge. The seven days of the so-called creation stretch over immense epochs," he said. "Creation is meaningless, and the word 'created' — brought out of nothing —was never written in these monuments of thought. It is a matter of forming, of bringing order out of the primeval chaos, and this work belongs to Elohim, the divine Formator, a work man must help, pursue, accomplish."

Théon seems to be echoing an ancient Indian idea. For, "The Indian Scripture affirms in its doctrine that there is no such thing as an absolutely first creation, the present universe being but one of a series of worlds which are past and are yet to be."¹

However, an interesting point emerges which is perhaps applicable to all early Scriptures. To our modern way of thinking, they appear obscure and unintelligible. But, "The incoherencies of the Vedic texts," wrote Sri Aurobindo, "exist in appearance only,

1. The Serpent Power, by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe).

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because the real thread of the sense is to be found in an inner meaning." That thread found, "the expression of the hymns becomes just and precise and sins rather by economy of phrase than by excess, by over-pregnancy rather than by poverty of sense."¹ The Mystics shrouded their thought in the veil of concrete myth and poetic figures, because they knew that the True Knowledge was unfit, perhaps even dangerous to the ordinary human mind, or in any case liable to perversion and misuse, if revealed to the vulgar and unpurified spirit.

At- all events, we have six creations and six creations behind us. "We are in the seventh, the last," said Mother. "The world will find a new equilibrium — a superior equilibrium —not static, but progressive. In other words, there will be an unlimited progress in equilibrium and harmony."

It was several years later, when describing to Satprem an experience she had just had, that Mother remarked, "And I have understood why Theon said that we are in the days of 'Equilibrium.' It means that

1. The Secret of the Veda.

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when there is equilibrium between all these innumerable points of consciousness and their opposites, the central Consciousness is found."

Mother, whose consciousness was one with the central Consciousness, and indwelled equally the innumerable points of consciousness and their opposites — "My centre is everywhere. Be very careful," she once cautioned Satprem— could easily recall the memories of previous pralayas. "In the subconscient, there is the memory of previous pralayas. Well, it's this memory that always gives you the impression that everything is going to be dissolved, everything is going to crumble." She considered the problem, "But looking at it in the true light, it can only be a lovelier manifestation! Theon told me this was the seventh and the last. I told Sri Aurobindo what Theon said. Sri Aurobindo concurred, for he said, 'This one will see the transformation towards the Supermind.'"

Sri Aurobindo always gives us hope. "The Iron Age prepares the Age of Gold," he said. His portrayal of the present and the future is both luminous and crystalline.

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"It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,

What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed, Vision and vain imagination deemed,

The City of delight, the Age of Gold.

The Iron Age is ended. Only now

The last fierce spasm of the dying past

Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed

Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow."¹

1. In the Moonlight.

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