CONCLUSION

The End

Which Ever Begins Again*

The realization of the Vedic rishis has become a collective one. The Supermind has entered the earth-consciousness, descending right into the physical subconscient, at the last frontiers of Matter. There remains only one final bridge to cross for the connection to be established. A new world is born, said the Mother. At present, we are in the midst of a transitional period in which the two are intermingled: the old world hangs on, still very powerful, still controlling the ordinary consciousness, but the new one is slipping in, so modest and unobtrusive that, externally, it doesn't change too much, for the moment. . . . But it is working, growing, and one day it will be strong enough to assert itself visibly. Indeed, not all difficulties come from the subconscient.

One difficulty in particular is of a very "conscious" nature, hindering the new world like a massive bronze door. It is not our materialism, as we so often imagine--for scientists, if they are sincere, may be the first to emerge in the Truth--but the enormous spiritual carapace under which we have buried the Spirit. The real mischief of the devil is not to sow falsehood and hatred in the world, such as Attila or the Nazis have done--he is far too clever for that--but to lay hands on a grain of truth and then to twist it ever so slightly. Nothing is more intractable than a perverted truth, because the falsehood is made that much stronger by the power of truth it contains. We have been told repeatedly that "salvation is in heaven," and it is true. There is no salvation for man so long as his nose remains completely buried in matter; his salvation is in the superconscious heaven. It was probably necessary to preach heaven to us in order to pull us out of our initial evolutionary sclerosis, but this was just a first stage of evolution, which we then turned into an ultimate and rigid end. Now, however, this same end has turned against us. We have denied the Divinity in Matter, to confine it instead in our holy places, but now Matter is taking its revenge. We called Matter crude, and crude it is. As long as we tolerate this Imbalance, there is no hope for the earth. We will only continue to swing from one extreme to another, both equally false--from material enjoyment to spiritual austerity--without ever finding any true fulfillment. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline.1* We need both the vigor of Matter and the fresh waters of the Spirit, while our materialisms are stupefying us and our beliefs are merely the reverse of our disbeliefs. The Atheist is God playing at hide-and-seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.2

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* From Savitri.

If we wish to remedy this Imbalance--for everything that lacks balance in our bodies, our societies, or our cosmic cycles eventually perishes--we must become lucid. We have lost the Password; such is the bottom line of our era. We have replaced true power with devices, and true wisdom with dogmas. This is the reign of the gnomes, on every plane. And it will become more and more a reign of gnomes, unless we relinquish these mortifying half-truths, from above or below, and immerse ourselves in the true Source, within, to recover the practical secret of the Spirit in Matter. "That which is immortal in mortals . . . is a god and established inwardly as an energy working out in our divine powers." (Rig Veda IV.2.1) Because they knew this Secret, neither the rishis nor the sages of the ancient Mysteries ever created the monumental schism that presently undermines our lives: "our Father in heaven, our Mother the earth"; and they did not ever attempt to settle the problem by relegating an earthly human fulfillment to a celestial hereafter: "Let us conquer even here, let us run this battle-race of a hundred leadings." Having reached the summits of consciousness, they did not vanish in a pale ecstasy: "I am a son of Earth, the soil is my mother. . . ." (Atharva Veda XII.1) Having traveled to the frontiers of the Infinite, they did not find that the small things here were small: "O Godhead, guard for us the Infinite and lavish the finite." (Rig Veda IV.2.11) "May we speak the beauty of thee, O Earth, that is in thy villages and forests and assemblies and wars and battles." (Atharva Veda XII.44.56) They battled, and they were invincible, for they knew that God is within us: "O Son of the body . . . full of happiness and light, victorious, to whom no hurt can come." (III.4.2,9.1) A conquering truth of upright men, for whom death is both a falsehood and a defeat. A truth of a divine joy upon the earth. Certainly their truth was premature for the hordes of Europe, who still needed to hear about heaven before earth, but now the time may have come at last to unveil the Mysteries--whether they be Vedic, Orphic, Alchemical, or Catharist--and to recover the whole truth of the two poles within a third position, which is neither that of the materialists nor that of the spiritualists. The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long, obscure and painful course.3

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* This was written in 1914. Perhaps things have improved since then, but this is far from being evident.

Sri Aurobindo brings us a message of hope. Ultimately, our present reign of gnomes is the sign of a new emergence. Our darkness and declines always signal the advent of a greater light, which had to descend to break the prevailing limits. There are only two ways of breaking the limits: through an excess of light or an excess of darkness, but while one draws our darkness up into the light and dissolves it, the other precipitates the light into our darkness and transmutes it. One way liberates a few individuals, while the other liberates the whole earth. Ten thousand years ago, a few giants among men had wrestled out the Secret of the world, but this was the privilege of a few initiates, while now we must all become initiates. Ten thousand years ago reigned the Golden Age, while today everything seems to have been swallowed up in darkness. In truth, though, night has not descended upon the world, as the preachers of doom would have us believe; it is only that the light has been buried in the world. The Secret had to be forgotten, humanity had to descend the dark curve of the age of reason and religions, so that all could recover the Secret and the Light everywhere, beneath all the darkness, all the misery, and the pettiness, instead of in a high brazier in some Vedic or Persian sanctuary. We are at the beginning of Time. Evolution does not follow an increasingly sublime and vanishing trajectory, but a spiral: It is not a tortuous path leading you back, relatively battered, to the starting-point; on the contrary, it seeks to bring to the whole creation the joy of being, the beauty of being, the greatness of being, and the perpetual development, perpetually progressive, of this joy, this beauty, and this greatness. Then everything makes sense. An eternal spiral that does not end in an ultimate point--for the Ultimate is everywhere in the world, in every being, every body, every atom--but a gradual ascent reaching higher and higher in order to descend lower and lower, to embrace ever more, and to reveal ever more. We are at the beginning of the "Vast," which will become ever vaster. The pioneers of evolution have already recognized other levels within the Supermind, opening up new trajectories in an eternal Becoming. Each conquered height brings about a new change, a complete reversal of consciousness, a new heaven, a new earth--for the physical world itself will soon mutate before our incredulous eyes. This is surely not the first change in history; how many were there before us? How many more with us, if only we consent to become conscious? Successive reversals of consciousness, which will bring an always renewed richness of creation, will take place from one stage to the next. Each time, the Magus in us turns his kaleidoscope, and everything becomes astonishing--vaster, truer, and more beautiful. We just have to open our eyes, for the joy of the world is at our door, if only we wish it.

Earth's pains were the ransom of its prisoned delight. . . .

For joy and not for sorrow earth was made.4

Such is the Secret. It is here, everywhere, within the very heart of the world. The "well of honey beneath the rock," the "childlike laughter of the Infinite" that we are, the luminous Future that pushes back our past. Evolution is far from being over. It is not an absurd merry-go-round, not a fall, nor a vanity fair. It is

. . . the adventure of consciousness and joy.5

Pondicherry

April 14, 1963