The Divine Collaborators Contents Pre-Content Preface The Rainbow Bridge The Divine Union Physical Transformation Conquest of the Subconscient and the Inconscient The Divine Manifestation and Divine" Life The Mother's Work

CHAPTER IV CONQUEST OF THE SUBCONSCIENT AND THE INCONSCIENT Nowhere is the identity between the Mother's views (as held by her before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo) and those of Sri Aurobindo so strikingly significant as on the subject of the Subconscient and the Inconscient. Even if all other subjects were passed over, this alone would be enough to prove that the identity was not accidental, but rooted in the uniqueness of a mission which is fraught with the highest possibilities for human culture, and which could not be fulfilled except by their collaboration. The identity of their views was an outer expression of the identity

-008_The Mother's Work.htm CHAPTER VI THE MOTHER'S WORK* WHEN Sri Aurobindo left his body more than four years ago, most of his disciples and devotees, living in the world outside, made anxious enquiries as to what would now be the fate of the Ashram and the great work of the supramental transformation which he had laboured for during the forty long years of his strenuous seclusion at Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo had asserted time and again that the descent of the Supermind and its establishment in the earth-consciousness as a principle and power of the infinite Knowledge-Will, superseding and completing the mind of man, was inevitable, and that a divine life on earth was the crown

CHAPTER II THE DIVINE UNION We have proposed to ourselves, first, a consideration of the essential identity between the Mother's conception of the divine Union as enunciated by her before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo and that of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo's conception, evolved out of the all-embracing integrality of his realisation, is a global synthesis of all the concepts of the past crowned with his distinctive gospel of the constant, dynamic union and communion with the Divine in the physical being of man. This original contribution of his to the ideal of the divine Union opens up an infinite vista of spiritual perfection and explains and justifies

CHAPTER I THE RAINBOW BRIDGE Even those who have only a smattering of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and philosophy know that they aim at these three signal achievements: (I) ascent of the consciousness of man from mind to Supermind, which is the Truth-consciousness, the Rita-chit of the Veda; (2) descent of the Supermind into Matter and the conversion and transformation of the integral nature of man—physical, vital and mental—by the Light-Force of the Supermind, and (3) the perfect manifestation of Sachchidananda on earth through the transformed and divinised human nature. Sri Aurobindo does not subscribe to the world-shunning asceticism of the old schools of

PREFACE In these six short chapters, the first five of which were published in the Advent and the last in Mother India, I have tried to trace the remarkable identity that existed between the thoughts, aspirations and ideals of the Mother and those of Sri Aurobindo before they had know I or even heard of each other. Their first meeting took place at Pondicherry on the 29th March, 1914, but the Prayers, discourses and essays written by the Mother before that date breathe the same intense aspiration for and are instinct with the same flaming will to integral transformation, integral union and integral manifestation of God in the material life of man, as we find in the writings of S

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

THE DIVINE COLLABORATORS RISHABHCHAND SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY PUBLISHERS: SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY All Rights Reserved First published in June, 1955 SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS PONDICHERRY PRINTED IN INDIA THE DIVINE COLLABORATORS By the same author: IN THE MOTHER'S LIGHT—PART I, RS 2-8 IN THE MOTHER'S LIGHT—PART II, RS 3-8 THE INTEGRAL YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO —PART I, RS 3 THE INTEGRAL YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO—PART II, 4

CHAPTER III PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION Sri Aurobindo insists so much on physical transformation, because without it the spiritual achievements of the human soul cannot be manifested in earthly life, individual and collective. It has been possible to purify the mind and the heart to a certain extent and even to discipline and regulate (more by suppression or repression than otherwise) the life-parts of man, but the physical nature has been left almost unreclaimed. Its customary habits and tendencies, its crude appetites and impulses, its mechanical reactions and responses to outward impacts have always been the disgust and despair of even the greatest of s