Chapter Three   A BACKDOOR TO SPIRITUALITY         The India in which he arrived from Great Britain must have looked like a cultural desert to Aurobindo Ghose. The literature of the regional languages was still in its infancy (except in Bengal) and the literary production in English was of poor quality. Far away now were the lush cultural pastures of Cambridge and London, where Aurobindo's eldest brother, the poet Manmohan, had befriended Laurence Binyon, Stephen Philips and Oscar Wilde, the last calling him 'an Indian panther in evening brown.' Small wonder that Aurobindo spent a substantial part of his salary on crates of English books ordered from Bombay and which,

Chapter Seven   SRI AUROBINDO'S VISION         It is an enormous spiritual revolution       rehabilitating matter and the creation1                                                            — The Mother         Aurobindo Ghose and Mirra Alfassa, whom henceforth we will only call Sri Aurobindo* and the Mother, had from very different backgrounds arrived at the same experiences and the same vision. 'There is no difference between the Mother's path and mine; we have and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realization; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same,'2 wrote S

Part Two   Sri Aurobindo and the Mother   Chapter Twelve   KRISHNA AND THE WORLD OF THE GODS         In 1926, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had, as we have seen, the supramental realization in the parts of their personality which we might call, using Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the mental and the vital. This means nothing less than that in these parts of their evolution embodied adhara they were the manifested Divine, not theoretically but factually and practically. That they chose not to proclaim this fact does not diminish the grandeur of it, but as a consequence of its unimaginability, few disciples have been aware of the high degree and th

Chapter Ten   THE TWO-IN-ONE     ... the deathless Two-in-One,           a single being in two bodies clasped                                                     — Savitri         'I had met Sri Aurobindo before, but it only began clearly in 1920.' It, the Great Work they had to undertake together, 'an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence,'2 (Sri Aurobindo). It was to be a transmutation that would produce, the body of a higher species, but this time not within the scope of the lower hemisphere of Existence and not with a gradual change which perhaps might have led to a Nietzschean superman. This new species would possess a s

Chapter Twenty-six   IN THE CRUCIBLE         The Soul is the Key         The liberation of the individual soul is the keynote of the definite divine action;1                                                                                  —Sri Aurobindo         The previous chapters have given us some idea of the supramental process of transformation the body of the Mother was undergoing. This process is new and unusual for anyone who learns about it for the first time. So it was for her who experienced it in her body. But what had happened to the soul? What about the soul in all of this? We are hearing a lot about body, matter, cells, consciousness of the cell

Epilogue   THE SUN FOR EVER         At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny.1                                                                                                                                             — Sri Aurobindo         BEGINNING WITH the Renaissance, a period of new awakening started which has accelerated history and is unifying the Earth. From that time onwards, the New Era was growing unper-ceived, like a child in the womb; the twentieth century has been the century of the birth, of the fruition of the seed that, so many centuries earlier, had been implanted by the representatives of the 'New

Part Three   The Mother Alone   Chapter Nineteen   TWELVE QUIET DAYS         I do not believe in the limit that canno       t be exceeded.1                                                   — The Mother   Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of the Consciousness, I was there.1                                                                                     — The Mother        Sri Aurobindo's sudden corporeal absence meant an enormous blow to the Mother, 'a sledgehammer blow,' as she said afterwards, 'an annihilation'. 'The very idea that Sri Au

Chapter Twenty-eight   THE CATERPILLAR AND THE BUTTERFLY   'Dying to death,' in other words no longer being able to die because death has become unreal.1                                                                                          —The Mother         And death shall have no dominion.                                                                                      — Dylan Thomas         The Mother laid down her material body on 17 November 1973.         A European sadhak remembers: 'On 18 November, at about seven o'clock in the morning, my downstairs neighbour, a Tamil who had served in the French army and who had become like a brot

Chapter Five   TWELVE PEARLS     The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house Sporting with God as a Mother with her child ... 1                                                                     — Savitri          The Mother has said more than once that she had chosen her parents. 'I have chosen my parents to have a solid physical base, for I knew the work I had to do was very, very difficult and needed a solid base.'2 She also said that for her start in life no better training was imaginable than the no-nonsense attitude of the materialistic Mathilde with her constant hammering on the necessity of perfection. Not an easy environment for a ch

Chapter Seventeen   THE FIVE 'DREAMS' OF SRI AUROBINDO   It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense ... If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care ... It is a question between the Divine and myself — whether it is the Divine Will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. all men jeer at me if they will or all Hcl fall upon me if it will for my presumption, — I go on ti