The Last Stand

Prologue

An Avatar, while achieving the missioned work on Earth, always leaves behind a grand tale for posterity. Sri Ram had Ramayan and Shree Krishna, a Mahabharata. These, after serving their moral, cultural and historical purposes, remain above all an eternal testimony of the struggle of an Incarnate with the respective laws of an Age and inertia of the earth along with the ignorance of its inhabitants as He tramples the past and blazes the path of the Future. 

The work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother seems so intricate, so hidden, so imperceptible and with such a solemn, dignified silence screening it from the world that one could almost lament the lack of an epic drama for us to cherish. Certainly, there is the divine Lila of Sri Aurobindo leading the fight for the freedom of His country, and the fascinating tale of the Divine Mother galloping across continents and worlds with a mischievous laughter, but where is that grim, tragic tale which the Earth thrives on with a peculiar kind of delight- the strife and the conflict, some betrayal and intrigue, some morbid drama which is the spice of the fallen way of being a Man. 

The tale that Earth demands exploded on 17 November 1973 with The Mother’s departure. 

This was not the first time that the Master or The Mother or the Guru of an Ashram had left Their bodies; India is not a novice in such matters. The standard response of dealing with Divine departures has been ingrained in the memory of mankind for millions of years -that grief, that shock, that heart wrenching cry of loss, that heart touching devotion, that golden hope and faith of still feeling the Divine love and presence around us and above all, a resigned, dignified acceptance is how humanity has always faced this eternally recurring event that has neither any novelty nor does it fit the definition of a tragedy.

But 17 November, 1973 did not play out in the expected manner because of the presence of one man- SATPREM and a resounding NO he uttered on that day and lived till his last day. This crazy denial was first attributed to his grief, then, to a relapse of some trauma of the Nazi camps, then to a possession by some unknown Asura. This dangerous rebel, this unrepentant heretic who committed the crime of actually believing in the victory of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother with an implicit certitude that Death was a conquerable unreality, the next species a living possibility and a freedom from Laws an achievable eventuality. 

When has the earth ever forgiven such audacity? 

So a dose of reality was soon to descend upon him, us and the entire future generations to come- to show us all where we actually stand- the reality of the mighty iron laws, the reality of the cruel Fate that still holds our reigns and the reality of the human resistance to change. 

We begin our exploration of this epic saga, - ‘The Eternal’s dreadful strategy’ playing out between the Divine, one man, and the entire earth, with a glimpse of Satprem and his distinct worldview which forms the backdrop of this Divine Drama. 

In his own words:

From age to age, the “avatar” comes to “change the law.”

We do not realize what this “law” means because we are in it and it seems to us that it can be nothing but an improvement of our habit of being or, on the contrary, the age-old destruction of one civilization after another, only to start again a little better or take up the same old worst, with a few modifications of borders or vocabulary; and what we think “differently” is still a difference within the same animal and human law with perhaps a greater “intelligence” — but it is still the intelligence of a certain law we are confined in or limited to, as were the ichtoids under the waters. And it seems now that with the demoniac means at our disposal, the “difference” will doubtless be catastrophic and pulverizing or asphyxiating — and one starts all over again, perhaps on another planet, with means that will be those of the old law. The crab’s pincers will have acquired intelligent thumbs and forefingers to pinch the same old world.

But someone came to “change the law,” and this is prodigious and incomprehensible, for we only understand our old walls and pincers or additional ones as the case may be. This “someone” was called Sri Aurobindo-Mother.

Who understood them among the very ones who called themselves their disciples? Perhaps they were able to understand abstractly and in their minds, but what about the Means or the Power to go there? What about the path to go there, the terrestrial and material footsteps?

Then came that tragic 1973. Mother left, as did Sri Aurobindo before her; the last link of the Mystery shut itself in a tomb, after so many thousands of earlier tombs. On that first evening, a child of man, standing in front of this tomb yet to be cemented and sealed, cried out in his heart:

“WE ARE GOING TO PULL HER OUT OF THERE.”

It sounded like a cry breaking through the walls — our Walls — and touching something that is very high or very deep at the bottom of all tombs, like an all-there and all-beating Future, an Impossible exploding and piercing all the old possibles.

It WILL BE. We have to DO IT.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse - 1973-1978