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CHAPTER FIVE
TOWARDS A LARGER LIBERATION
THE spiritual visions and experiences Sri Aurobindo had in jail were indication enough that he was from then a passive instrument of the Divine-having no movement, no thought, no action of his which was not willed by God. In fact, this had begun even before, as he had himself said in :his letters to his wife , and of which all his external activities gave ample evidence. One so guided cannot indeed err, at least in the deeper sense of the Spirit's direct governance of the souls open to its influence. It was, as he himself said, a command of God that brought Sri Aurobindo to Pondicherry from Chandernagore where in response to the same command he had come . from Calcutta. Thirty years before his arrival at Pondicherry in 1910, 'it was predicted by a famous Tamil Yogi that .a Yogi from the North would after that period come to south India and practise there an integral Yoga (Poorna Yoga) and that this would be one sign of the approaching liberty of India. He gave three utterances as the mark by which this Yogi could be recognised and all these were found in one of the letters Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife'.1
But why particularly to Chandernagore and Pondicherry that divine guidance led him? On the face of it, for the simple reason that they were French territories whose sovereignty entitles them to give asylum to political refugees from other States. Of late, Pondicherry has been in the news because of its being a foreign pocket in a country just freed from subjection to an alien rule. Little do the public of India know that by this very fact Pondicherry had its share, however small, in India's struggle for liberation. But things would have been the
1 Sri Aurobindo on Himself, p. 338.
other way about, had the French army won in the battle of Wandiwash which decided the future ruler of India.
Before Sri Aurobindo's arrival there, Pondicherry had already given protection to a number of well-known revolutionaries and political refugees from India, some of whom had on their own initiative come there in order to be able to carry on their work for their country's freedom without much interference from the ever-alert watch-dogs of the British Government in India. The famous Tamil poet-patriot Subramaniya Bharati chose Pondicherry as the centre of his activities. So also did Srinivasachari, Nagaswamy Aiyar, V. Ramaswamy Iyengar (Va. Ra.) the celebrated Tamil litterateur, and V. V. S. Aiyar, a scholar and revolutionary, who for his refusal as a barrister in England to take the oath of allegiance to the King, was being shadowed by the Scotland Yard when he managed to cross over to France and from there reached Pondicherry in 1910 by boat in the guise of a devout Muslim. Sri Aurobindo had contact here with many of these and other such refugees, not of course for revolutionary purposes. A few of them were already known to him through the revolutionary paper India to whose representative, as already mentioned, he prophesised the freedom of India, on the eve of his departure from Calcutta. He was, however, more intimate with Subramaniya Bharati and Srinivasachari to whom he had intimated his coming to Pondicherry. This trusted friend Srinivasachari received Sri Aurobindo with such care and caution that till his arrival he did not give out where Sri Aurobindo would be put up even to Sureshchandra whom Sri Aurobindo had sent to Pondicherry in advance to make arrangements for his stay in consultation with Srinivasachari.
Sri Aurobindo began his residence in Pondicherry under circumstances not at all happy or easy. The close police surveillance apart, there were financial difficulties consequent on which he and his four young companions had to go through days of extreme hardship. To add to all this, the British Government were hatching plans anyhow to take Sri Aurobindo out of Pondicherry and then deport him.
Sometime in 1912 an influential local merchant, prominent for his part in French India politics, was believed to have undertaken the job of carrying Sri Aurobindo out of the limits of French India. It is said that he arranged this to be done with the help of goondas and his success would mean the arrest and deportation of Sri Aurobindo. When his young companions—Nalinikanto Gupta, Sureshchandra Chakravarty, Bejoykumar Nag and Saurindramohan Basu—heard it, they determined to fight to the last in case an attempt was made to touch the person of Sri Aurobindo. Nothing however happened, so far as Sri Aurobindo was concerned. On the contrary, finding himself involved in grave criminal charges brought against him by his political opponents and with a view to evading the warrant of arrest issued against him, the merchant in question, fled to Madras. This was how the plan fell through.
But this failure did not dissuade the suspicious Government; their watchful eye continued to focus itself on Sri Aurobindo whom they always looked upon as ' a dangerous revolutionary'. It was only in 1937 when the Congress accepted office that the watch-dogs surrounding Sri Aurobindo's Ashram, shadowing the movements of its inmates and visitors, were removed. Every police report would invariably dub the ashramites ' a dangerous gang of bomb-makers'.
The next move was made in 1915 when Lord Carmichael was the Governor of Bengal. The first feeler came through Krishnakumar Mitra, the well-known Moderate leader and a relative of Sri Aurobindo on his mother's side. It was in the form of an enquiry if Sri Aurobindo would like to come to Bengal; in which case the ban on him would be removed. Sri Aurobindo refused. Then a more direct move. Government deputed a high-ranking official to Pondicherry, who from his saloon, shunted in the local railway station, sent a messenger to Sri Aurobindo requesting him to come and see the officer in his saloon on an important matter which the messenger did not disclose. This also Sri Aurobindo refused to do, with the result that the messenger called again with the offer from Government that if Sri Aurobindo left Pondicherry, Government would make proper arrangements for his stay in Darjeeling where he would be provided with a large house and every facility for his study and spiritual pursuits. The motive behind was that he would be kept in detention under constant vigilance of the police within the jurisdiction of British India; to which Sri Aurobindo could never consent. This attempt too failing, the British Government at home moved the Foreign Office of the French Government at Paris to expel Sri Aurobindo from the French territory in India. A high French official who knew Sri Aurobindo and who was in charge of the Colonial Office to which the matter was referred, had the boldness to frustrate this move too.2
The Intelligence Branch of the British Police began from now to be more and more strict in its surveillance over Sri Aurobindo and over the movements of his young companions and concocted fantastic stories about them, one of which was that they were still engaged in dangerous activities, such as, making bombs in an underground cell. Once the British Government managed to get the French India authorities to search the house in which Sri Aurobindo was living. This also proved a failure as nothing incriminating was found. Why did British diplomacy single him out for such special attention? How to explain this extraordinary tenacity? To the credit of British shrewdness it must be said that they had spotted him as the one constant source of menace to their continued hold on India—a source of potential danger arising from a singularly quiet mind whose ways of thought and action were humanly unpredictable.
2 We have it from Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo's attendant, to whom Sri Aurobindo himself said this, and who put it on record.
While Government looked upon Sri Aurobindo as their enemy, India's millions knew him to be their greatest friend, the inspired champion of their freedom. The great Tilak was the first to remember his co-worker when he felt that the Congress was in need of a fresh and dynamic leadership. He sent a messenger to Sri Aurobindo conveying this feeling of his which he requested the founder-leader of the Nationalist Party to fulfil by agreeing to' come out of his seclusion and be at the helm of the Congress for which he had made necessary arrangements. This was sometime between 1916 and 1918 when Tilak was leading the Home Rule movement in Maharashtra which did good work in reaffirming in other terms the fundamental aim of the Nationalist Party. For reasons to be stated later, Sri Aurobindo did not accept the offer and also the other that followed both of which were calls for his leadership.
Besides Congress and Government, there were others of different schools of thought who contacted him either personally or through letters. It is not possible to say what actually passed between him and them. One of the earliest of them was Benegal Sanjeeva Rao, a Kannada Theosophist and educationalist, who called in 1918. In an article in the Service (Independence Number, 1952) he refers to his interview with Sri Aurobindo and says: 'The talk drifted to politics. Sri Aurobindo told me of his experiences in Alipore Jail, of his seeing, years before they happened, the events of the First World War.' Then he made this remarkable statement: 'I see two alternative plans for the world. The first is the plan of an Indo-British Commonwealth in which India will be a free and equal partner with Britain and other Dominions.' Mention may be made here that Sri Aurobindo gave clear hints of this future of the British Empire in a sequence (since published in book form) called The Ideal of Human Unity, which was then appearing in his monthly philosophical review Arya. The 1931 Statute of Westminster and the subsequent measures taken by the British Parliament culminating in the greatest of them, the freedom of India, and the country's decision to remain in the Commonwealth not as a subservient but as an equal partner, justify Sri Aurobindo's prophecy.
In 1920 came Sarala Devi who along with P. Mitter had started in Calcutta the organisation for giving physical and cultural training to young men, to which the revolutionary turn was given by Sri Aurobindo. In 1921 the well-known Nationalist co-worker of Sri Aurobindo Dr. Moonje called. And also the famous revolutionary Abinash Bhattacharya. In answer to his questions on Bengal Sri Aurobindo gave out some of his views about her future, the gist of which, as given by Bhattacharya himself in his article in Yugantar of April 4, 1953, is: 'Bengal will surpass all and win world-renown. Her genius as a race, Hindus and Muslims combined, will shed lustre on every side. She will be the world's wonder and admiration.' Sri Aurobindo repeated to Bhattacharya his prediction that India would soon have her freedom and that she had a glorious future. In 1921 another important visitor was Col. Joshua Wedgewood, a member of the British Parliament.
These visits apart, Sri Aurobindo had been receiving letters from various friends and admirers seeking his guidance in personal and national affairs. One such3 was from Joseph Baptista, a co-worker of Tilak in the Home Rule movement, who wanted Sri Aurobindo to come out and take up the editorship of a paper which would be the organ of the Social Democratic Party which Baptista was then organising in Bombay. It is likely that Tilak was behind this move, too. The letter is dated January 5, 1920, in the course of which, expressing his inability to accept the offer, Sri Aurobindo said that the Governments of Bengal and Madras, were opposed to his return to British India and added: ' now I have too much work on my hands to waste my time
3 Published in the Marathi weekly Mauj of January 10, 1951.
in the leisured ease of an involuntary Government guest. But even if I were assured of an entirely free action and movement, I should yet not go just now. I came to Pondicherry in order to have freedom and tranquillity for a fixed object having nothing to do with the present politics—in which I have taken no direct part since my coming here, though what I could do for the country in my own way I have constantly done—and until it is accomplished, it is not possible for me to resume any kind of public activity. But if I were in British India, I should be obliged to plunge at once into action of different kinds. Pondicherry is my place of retreat, my cave of Tapasya,—not of the ascetic kind, but of a brand of my Own invention. I must finish that, I must be internally armed and equipped for my work before I leave it.
' Next in the matter of work itself, I do not at all look down on politics or political action or consider I have got above them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and intention of political activity would differ considerably from anything now current in the field. I entered into political action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. That is now done and the Amritsar Congress is the seal upon it. The will is not as practical and compact nor by any means as organised and sustained in action as it should be, but there is the will and plenty of strong and able leaders to guide it. I consider that in spite of the inadequacy of the Reforms, the will to self-determination, if the country keeps its present temper, as I have no doubt it will, is bound to prevail before long. What preoccupies me now is the question what it is going to do with its self-determination, how it will use its freedom, on what lines it is going to determine its future.
' You may ask, why not come out and help, myself, so far as I can, in giving a lead? But my mind has a habit of running inconveniently ahead of the times,— some might say, out of tune altogether into the world of the ideal. Your party, you say, is going to be a social democratic party. Now I believe in something which might be called social democracy, but not in any of the forms now current, and I am not altogether in love with the European kind, however great an improvement it may be on the past. I hold that India having a spirit of her own and a governing temperament proper to her own civilisation, should in politics as in everything else strike out her own original path and not stumble in the wake of Europe. But this is precisely what she will be obliged to do, if she has to start on the road in her present chaotic and unprepared condition of mind. No doubt people talk of India developing on her own lines, but nobody seems to have very clear or sufficient ideas as to what those lines are to be. In this matter I have formed ideals and certain definite ideas of my own, in-which at present very few are likely to follow me, since they are governed by an uncompromising spiritual idealism of an unconventional kind and would be unintelligible to many and an offence and stumbling block to a great number.'
There is no denying the force of these views even now.
In April of the same year, Sri Aurobindo wrote am important letter4 in Bengali to his younger brother Barindrakumar who had then returned from the Andamans, in the course of which he said: ' Let me tell you in short what I have been observing for long. I have an impression that the chief cause of India's
4 Sri Aurobinder Patra (in Bengali).
weakness is not subjection, not poverty, not lack of spiritual or religious sense, but a diminution of the thinking power, a diffusion of ignorance over the native Home of Knowledge. . . . Thanks to our forefathers, we have a spiritual sense; and he who has that sense has, ready to his fingers' ends, such knowledge, such power at one breath of which the huge power-structure of Europe may burst into pieces like little bits of straw in the air. But to have that power one has to worship Shakti. . . . What I want is that awakened by contact with me or with others, let people manifest the divinity sleeping within them and attain to the divine life. It is people like these that will raise the country. . . . Let not this " lecture" lead you to think that I despair of Bengal's future. I too hope, with them, that this time the Supreme Light will manifest in Bengal.'
In one of his old writings ' On Original Thinking published in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual for 1953, Sri Aurobindo puts forward a fervent plea for the sovereign need of India's youths developing the power of wide and deep thinking: ' Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think,—to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgements, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima. Let our brains no longer, like European infants, be swathed with swaddling clothes; let them recover the free and unbound motion of the gods; let it have not only the minuteness but the. wide mastery and sovereignty natural to the intellect of Bharata and easily recoverable by it if it once accustoms itself to feel its own power and be convinced of its own worth.' Indeed, India's freedom and the recovery of her true greatness had ever been a naming passion of Sri Aurobindo's heart.
But before going further, let us cast our eyes six years back upon an event of supreme importance to Sri Aurobindo's life and to India and the world at large—-the meeting of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in April 1914. It was the destined meeting of two souls who together were to bring about a spiritual revolution on earth, unprecedented in its scope and content. In answer to a question, who the Mother was, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided tat to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence.'5
' What place it may be asked has the Mother in Sri Aurobindo's work for India's uplift? A simple answer is that by divine direction the Mother was led to India and then almost immediately drawn to the work for India and the world, already initiated and carried on by Sri Aurobindo on his particular plane of activity. She was drawn by the identity of her own aims, ideals and methods with those of Sri Aurobindo. In fact, they had been pursuing their work on the same lines before they actually met each other.
' The Mother came to Pondicherry in 1914 and at once recognised in Sri Aurobindo the one of whom she had repeated visions while in France. She also realised at the same time that her work was by his side and that India was her spiritual home, her true motherland, the centre of her wider activities for the whole world. On the 15th of August 1954 the Mother in declaring herself as an Indian citizen said, ' From the first time I came to India I felt that India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit.'
' Identified with the soul of India, one with Bharata-Shakti, the Mother has been working with Sri Aurobindo in her infallible spiritual way for an all-round uplift of this ancient nation as a step towards the fulfilment of its high mission in the world.
5 The Mother, pp. 35-36.
' She is the Mother whose love bears and nourishes, creates and promotes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands all, she supports all, excuses and pardons all, plans and prepares all: and all these, for she is the compassionate Mother of man, his supreme Liberator.
' The Mother stands as the fount and focal point of the divine forces that are always at work giving shape to the New World of Tomorrow. She is the bringer of the Light whose manifestation on earth will change the imperfect nature of man into the perfect Nature of the Divine. And it is she who prepares man for that high destiny and leads him to its attainment as the ultimate end of his terrestrial existence. This is the meaning of the Mother's advent today when man has to be helped up to the next higher stage in his evolution.'6
Says Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother comes to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.7 ' Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible."8 This is the work for which she has come to the earth and has chosen India as the centre of that work.
The coming of the Mother is associated with another event of vast significance—the publication of the monthly philosophical review Arya, the first issue of which appeared on August 15, 1914.. It was edited by Sri Aurobindo in collaboration with the Mother and Paul Richard. Arya placed before itself a twofold object:
1. A systematic study of the highest problems of existence;
6 These five paragraphs except the portion on the Mother's 1954 declaration are from the Foreword of the writer's book Sri Aurobindo and Indian Freedom, published in 1948 with Sri Aurobindo's approval. 7 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on the Mother, p. 6. 8 Ibid.
2. The formation of a vast synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the diverse religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as oriental. Its method will be that of a realism, at once rational and transcendental, a realism consisting in the unification of intellectual and scientific disciplines with those of intuitive experience.
It promised to its subscribers studies in speculative philosophy, translations of ancient texts and commentaries on them, essays on comparative religion, and practical suggestions regarding ' inner culture and self-development '. More particularly, it explained its ' ideal' in the following words:
'. . . unity of the human race by an inner oneness and not only by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the merely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into the glories of the spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the physical mould and mental instrument, so that man may develop his manhood into the true Supermanhood which shall exceed our present state as much as this exceeds the animal state from which Science tells us that we have issued. These three are one; for man's unity and man's self-transcendence can come only by living in the spirit.'9
The principal contributor to this unique magazine was Sri Aurobindo himself whose massive and revelatory sequences on the deepest problems of life—some of these have since come out in book form—filled almost the whole of each issue, continually for seven years. Arya was indeed a ' one-man show' proclaiming to the world Sri Aurobindo's vision of man's future and the path to the attainment of his divine destiny. A writer10 calls Arya ' the Scripture of Indian Nationalism' through which the voice of India's soul utters her last Creative Word for the redemption of humanity,—' this
9 Arya, Vol. II, p. 9. 10 Prof. Jyotischandra Ghose in his book Life-Work of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 87-88
is Indian Nationalism of the universal type.' Taking his stand on the eternal truths of the Veda, the Gita and the Tantra, Sri Aurobindo reveals their hitherto-unknown inmost significance for the future of mankind in which India's Nationalism together with the creative truth in every other country's nationalism will find their truest fulfilment. Sri Aurobindo worked for India's freedom and initiated the dynamic movement for its attainment that India might be ready for this great work of hers. And his retirement from external activities meant his concentration on the inner preparations. As he said in a Press interview in 1917: ' India possesses in its past, a little rusty and out of use, the key to the progress of humanity. It is to this side that I am now turning my energies, rather than towards mediocre politics. Hence the reason for my withdrawal. I believe the necessity for tapasya (a life of meditation and concentration) in silence for inner illumination and self-knowledge and for the unloosing of spiritual energies. Our ancestors used these means under different forms; for they are the best for becoming an efficient worker in the great hours of the world.' 11 Romain Rolland, the eminent French savant who quoted this in his book, called Arya ' a review of the greatest importance' through which ' one of the greatest thinkers of modern India' revealed what ' was realised by him, the most complete synthesis achieved up to the present between the genius of the West and of the East, ... The last of the great Rishis holds in his outstretched hands the bow of Creative Impulse. It is an uninterrupted tide flowing from the most distant yesterdays to the most distant tomorrows '.12 Indeed, ' Usha the ancient Dawn is the first in the eternal succession of the Dawns that are coming.'13
When asked why Arya was discontinued in 1921 in spite of the fact that it was self-supporting, Sri Aurobindo
11 Romain Rolland: Prophets of New India, p. 502. 12 Ibid., pp. 503, 505. 13 Kutsa Angirasa—Rigveda, I, 113.8.10.
said that people were finding it difficult to follow the trend of its thought in all its deeper implications.14 On another occasion, in answering the question, how he could manage to write on seven different subjects— referred to in Chapter One—in the Arya at the same time, he said that if he went on writing seven issues of Arya every month for full seventy years, he could hardly exhaust all the knowledge that came to him from above. In course of conversation with disciples in 1925 Sri Aurobindo said that from 1910, more particularly from 1914 to 1921, a vast power came pressing down upon him and into his being there was a ceaseless rush of universal consciousness, tremendous force and light from the supramental planes. At this time it seemed that his body might get crushed or consumed. His life seemed moving- along a tenuous wire. A little lack of caution, a slight unbalance would leave his body broken to pieces or its mechanism put out of gear. . . ,15 Only a little out of this flow of light from higher worlds took form in the pages of the Arya. How was he making his way along the difficult path of this sadhana? ' There is the constant Presence of the Divine, there is the constant Guidance,' came the answer.16
Sri Aurobindo had to stop the Arya as it had already gone a little far too ahead of its time. Quite natural for all thought of this type. Even today it cannot be said that Sri Aurobindo's thought is fully understood by the intellectuals everywhere. But signs of a hopeful beginning are already visible. The higher mind of the race has begun to open to the truth and light of his
14 One of those who could appreciate Sri Aurobindo at that time was an erudite scholar and eminent thinker, Dwijendranath Tagore, the eldest brother of Poet Rabindranath, who was a regular reader of Arya and who used often to remark to his personal secretary. Anilkumar Mitram that what Aurobindo Ghose said in his articles had never before been said anywhere by anybody. (We had this from Anilkumar Mitra). 15 Srischandra Goswami in the Bengali monthly, Sabyasachi, Baisakh, 1361, B.E. 16 Ibid.
teachings. The trend and turn of world events and the unseen current of thought-forces are moving man towards the great quest.
The Arya had a French version which stopped with its seventh issue as the Mother and Paul Richard had to leave India following the outbreak of the First World War. It was through this French edition of the Arya and later through the Frerich translations of Sri Aurobindo's works that his thought moved to France and moved her soul—the first country in the civilised world to receive and be inspired by India's new message. Romain Rolland's feelings, already quoted, are echoed by another, Maurice Magre, a well-known French poet, thinker and novelist. He set out on a search for Wisdom, came in contact with spiritual figures in many lands, then arrived at Pondicherry in 1935 and got into Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. In his book A la Poursuite de la Sagesse (In Search of Wisdom), he records his reminiscences of those spiritual personalities and their great influences on him. While saying that he can meet them no more, he subdues his regret by the self-conviction: ' Mais il suffit qu'il y en ait un dans tout l'espace qui s'étend entre le pôle nord et le pôle sud . . . il ne connaît pas sa royauté. Son visage est si pur qu'on voit son âme au travers. . . .' (But suffice it for us that there should be one who occupies all space extending from the North pole to the South. . . . He does not declare his royalty. His face is so pure that one can see his soul through it), and follows up by a fervent prayer: ' O Maitre, Tu es assis dans la solitude parfaite, la sérénité divine, l'extase réalisée. Mon admiration s'élève vers toi dans le silence de la nuit, vers toi qui as franchi la porte de la perfection. . . . Dis-moi comment doit s'élever la spirale de la méditation, donne-moi une formule de prière, même une syllabe à laquelle je m'accrochrai comme un nageur qui a trouvé une bouée.' (O Master, Thou art seated in perfect solitude, divine serenity, realised ecstasy. My admiration rises towards thee in the silence of the night, towards thee who has crossed the portals of perfection. . . , Tell me how to ascend the spiral of meditation, give me a formula of prayer, even a syllable to which I may cling like a swimmer who has found a buoy.) It may be added that there are men and women in different parts of France who are in constant communion with the Mother as followers of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. There is also a centre in Paris for the study of Sri Aurobindo's thought.
It is significant that two famous French thinkers should be the first in Europe to recognise in Sri Aurobindo the greatest spiritual force in modern times, that a front-ranking French diplomat should be instrumental in foiling the attempt of the British Government in having him expelled from French India, that a prominent French political leader, M. Maurice Schumann, should be deputed in September 1947, by the French Government at Paris as the leader of a cultural mission to see Sri Aurobindo and pay him the homage of the French Government and to propose to set up at Pondicherry an institute for research and study of Indian and European cultures with Sri Aurobindo as its head. It is even more significant that one born in the same country—a divine soul—should be his collaborator in his work for the uplift of India and the world, and should continue that work towards its completion after the passing of the Master. Has this no bearing on what Sri Aurobindo once said (quoted in Chapter Two)—that while in England if to any country outside his own he felt emotionally drawn, it was to France?
. In 1920 the Mother returned to Pondicherry. Not long after her arrival, one day she told Sri Aurobindo what she saw, that India was free and that her freedom would come without any struggle or bloodshed and under circumstances that would make possible a quiet withdrawal of the British from India.17 Of course the
17 This is known to those who were in the Ashram at the time.
truth came to her from her occult knowledge of the world of basic forces where events take their birth long before they actualise in the external world which being imperfect often resists and delays such actualisations. This explains how the Mother is connected with India's freedom for which she with Sri Aurobindo worked in their spiritual way preparing the inner conditions for that freedom to come about. The Mother's vision of India's soul is given in the Invocation 18 she made on the 15th August 1947:
' O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other Masters and denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on their face in this dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness and of thy true life in the community of nations. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all peoples.'
Could mind ever envisage the vastness and immensity of the work the Mother sees thrown upon India by her political liberation or could language give it a nobler and more moving expression? Once the Mother said that India in her soul is fully conscious of her mission in the world. And what is that soul but, as the Mother says, India's aspirations, aptitudes and capacities placed at the service of the Divine? In the invocation, quoted above, the Mother shows her children the path by which alone they could achieve greatness and glory and become what they are destined to be. It is an invocation of the collective soul of the nation to its Over-Soul with which the Mother is one in that world of Light which is her own and from where she leads her children to their destiny. That she is today in this holy land of
18 Broadcast on the same day by the Trichinopoly Radio.
India is full of meaning for the future of this country and of the whole world.
On the morning of India's liberation the Mother hoisted over the terrace of Sri Aurobindo's room the spiritual flag of India—the flag of the Ashram—bearing a golden lotus in a square field of silvery blue. After the hoisting the Mother greeted the assemblage with Jai Hind.
' The flag,' says the Mother, ' expresses the spiritual mission of India. It is, therefore, to us the symbolic flag of a resurgent, united and victorious India raising itself out of the torpor of centuries and having cast off the shackles of enslavement and passed through all the pangs-of a new birth, to emerge once more as a great and united nation leading the world and its humanity to the highest ideals of the Spirit.'19
To turn back to Sri Aurobindo. Among the notable visitors in 1920-21 was that high-souled Englishman, W. W. Pearson, a co-worker of Poet Tagore in his Santiniketan. He had come once before 1920. In 1921 was his second visit when he stayed for more than a month having closer contact with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, in whose teachings he found the fulfilment of his spiritual quest. With direct guidance from the Mother whom he had met for the first time in Japan with Poet Tagore, he began practising the Yoga with great devotion. Pearson is not so widely known in India. An ardent lover of this country, he aspired for its freedom and greatness with all the intensity of his soul. In one of his essays in his book The Dawn of a New Age, which he wrote after his return from Pondicherry, he quotes extensively from Sri Aurobindo's writings, and says: ' From the East must come the Dawn,' and this time, from ' India who will. take her rightful place of leadership in the new age, the age of mankind's spiritual civilisation.'
In November 1922, Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter to
19 Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 34, published by Sri Aurobindo.
Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das in which he refers to his spiritual life and work at the time. Here is an extract : ' I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I 'have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has now become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual,~ that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man .can never get out of the futile circle the race ' is treading until he has raised himself on the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic 'power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret.... I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the 'sure and complete possession of this new power of action-not to build except on a perfect foundation.' . Around 1920 an attempt was being secretly made by some Indian, Chinese and Japanese thinkers and nationalists to gather together all forward-thinking men of Asia and organise a movement for creating a Federation of Asian peoples with the aim, first, of liberating Asia from white domination, and then, of bringing about a revival of her ancient cultures for her own unity and well-being, and also for the unity and well-being of the whole world. Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das and Count Okakura Kakuzo, the eminent Japanese savant who was associated with the 1902 revolutionary movement, and Rashbehari Basu (in Japan), were among the sponsors of this idea' hints of which Deshabandhu gave in his Congress Presidential addresses at Gaya and Ahmedabad.
In June 1923 Deshabandhu himself came to Sri Aurobindo. Not everything is known of what passed between them when they met. That the purpose of his visit was both spiritual and political is evident from what was gathered later that Chittaranjan wanted spiritual help from Sri Aurobindo which he was ready to give on one condition that he would sever his connection with politics, because at that particular stage of his life he was not equal to do both at the same time. But for this change Deshabandhu was not then ready. He however broached his .plan of Asian Federation on which Sri Aurobindo's suggestion was that instead of anything political, an attempt might be made to organise a Parliament of Religions in which all Asian peoples might be particularly invited to participate..
Among the other subjects they discussed was the Hindu-Muslim problem which was not acute in the earlier phase of the Swadeshi movement. Even the Partition, instead of alienating the two communities from each other, knit them closer together. Later, when the Nationalists were insisting on the acceptance by the Congress of their boycott and Swadeshi programme, an attempt was made by interested parties to divide them. Writing in the Karmayogin of November 6, 1909, Sri Aurobindo said: ' We will not for a moment accept separate electorates or separate representation, not because we are opposed to a large Mahomedan influence in popular assemblies when they come, but because we will be no party to a distinction which recognises Hindu and Mahomedan as permanently separate political units and thus precludes the growth of a single and indivisible Indian nation.' Here is what he wrote in the 19th June issue of the same paper on how communal concord could grow in India: ' Of one thing we may be certain, that Hindu-Mahomedan unity cannot be effected by-political adjustments or Congress flatteries. It must be sought deeper down, in the heart and mind, for where the causes of disunion are, there the remedies must be sought. We shall do well in trying to solve the problem to remember that misunderstanding is the most fruitful cause of our differences, that love compels love and that strength conciliates the strong. We must strive to remove the causes of misunderstanding by a better mutual knowledge and sympathy; we must extend the unfaltering love of the patriot to our Musulman brother, remembering always that in him too Narayana dwells and to him too our Mother has given a permanent place in her bosom; but we must cease to approach him falsely or flatter out of a selfish weakness and cowardice. We believe this to be the only practical way of dealing with the difficulty. As a political question the Hindu-Mahomedan problem does not interest us at all; as a national problem, it is of supreme importance.'
When in 1946 Calcutta witnessed perhaps the worst of communal riots, Sri Aurobindo wrote: ' What is happening did not come to me as a surprise. I foresaw it when I was in Bengal and warned the people that it was probable and almost inevitable and that they should be prepared for it. At that time no one attached any value to what I said although some afterwards remembered and admitted, when the trouble first began, that I have been right; only C. R. Das had grave apprehensions and he even told me when he came to Pondicherry that he would not like the British to go out until this dangerous problem has been settled.'20 In yet another letter21 written in 1934, Sri Aurobindo expressed the following views on the Congress policy towards the Muslims: 'As for the Hindu-Muslim affair, I saw no reason why the greatness of India's past or her spirituality should be thrown into the waste paper basket in order to conciliate the Moslems who would not at all be
20 A letter to a disciple, dated October 19, 1946, published in the Amrita Bazar Patrika, 21 Written to Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
conciliated by such policy. What has created the Hindu-Moslem split was not Swadeshi, but the acceptance of the communal principle by the Congress (here Tilak made his great blunder), and the further attempt by the Khilafat movement to conciliate them and bring them in on wrong lines. The recognition of that communal principle at Lucknow made them permanently a separate political entity in India which ought never to have happened; the Khilafat affair made that separate political entity an organised separate political power.'
Sri Aurobindo always stood for India's integrity, her oneness and indivisibility ' built on the common home, the common interest and the common love', the three principal factors in an Indian's love and adoration of his country as the Mother. When an objection was raised against Bande Mataram being adopted as India's national anthem, because it is based on image worship in which certain religious communities do not believe, Sri Aurobindo's one answer was that it was India which was meant by Durga in the song, and that if she was at all an image it was India she represented, with all her aspects as symbols of India's spiritual and material wealth.
This oneness of India was so vivid to Sri Aurobindo that he could not think of his Motherland in any other terms. To him freedom was the only end of the national movement, and if Congress represented that movement it must so act that every Indian should become its supporter, irrespective of his racial or religious denomination. This was, according to Sri Aurobindo, the best solution of the communal problem, not pacts or appeasement-policies. That is why he could not agree with Deshabandhu when he allotted to the Muslims a percentage of offices in the Calcutta Corporation. Sri 'Aurobindo however gave his full support to Deshabandhu's Swaraj Party policy in which he found an echo of his principle of accepting whatever offer of real power would come from Government and yet fight for more both in the legislative assemblies and outside till the goal was reached. Sri Aurobindo knew that Deshabandhu had in him the power to lead his country to that goal. When in 1925 the great leader passed away Sri Aurobindo said: ' Chittaranjan's death is a supreme loss. Consummately endowed with political intelligence, constructive imagination, magnetism, a driving force combining a strong will and uncommon plasticity of mind for vision and tact of the hour, he was the one man after Tilak who could have led India to Swaraj.'
After Deshabandhu's passing, another attempt was made to persuade Sri Aurobindo to come out and fill the vacant place of political leadership in Bengal and all-India.
An important visitor after Deshabandhu was Lala Lajpat Rai who accompanied by Shri Purushottamdas Tandon came to Pondicherry in 1925 and met Sri Aurobindo. He came with definite proposals and sought Sri Aurobindo's advice on the pressing problems of the time.
In the same year to a question by a disciple Sri Aurobindo's reply was: ' India's freedom Mother India herself will bring. With her awakening will come her independence. No power on earth can prevent it. The hour of her awakening is approaching.'22
Now came 1926. A year of victory, which also saw the beginning of that organisation, ' the wonderful Ashram in which life and joy of life are mingled in happy union with spirituality and spiritual progress .'23 This year, on November 24, Sri Aurobindo had a decisive realisation,24 a direct descent of a higher
22 Srischandra Goswami in Sabyasachi, Baisakh, 1361, B.E. 23 Dr. C. R. Reddy's words quoted in Prof. K. R. Iyengar's book Sri Aurobindo, p. 364. 24 About this Sri Aurobindo wrote: ' November 24, 1926, was the descent of Krishna into the physical. Krishna is not the Supramental Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the Overmind
consciousness that could be made an enduring basis for erecting a supramental structure in the earth-nature. He called it a victory, and the day has since been known and celebrated as a Victory Day. This might be the consummation of his Sadhana to which Sri Aurobindo refers in his letter to Deshabandhu. In order to Concentrate on the work of preparing the earth-consciousness for its supramentalisation Sri Aurobindo on that day retired into complete seclusion, leaving the entire charge of the Ashram to the Mother under whose fostering care and divine guidance it has grown today into a unique institution where men, women and children from all over India and abroad are being trained for a higher life in the Spirit, as envisaged in the Master's vision of man's future.
The Sri Aurobindo International University Centre, already on the way and in the process of organisation, points to the immense possibilities of the cultural and spiritual unity of mankind. This unity will be the basis of the new World of Tomorrow in which those possibilities will find their larger fulfilment through the emergence of a spiritual civilisation solving for ever the problems with which man's collective life is faced today. In this international centre of culture an integral education is being imparted to hundreds of young souls under the Mother's personal guidance, the essential aim being the growth of the whole man into his highest perfection.
This is only the beginning of a very important aspect of the Mother's work for India and for the world through which she is giving a concrete shape to the Ideal of Sri Aurobindo, to the highest ideal of ancient Indian culture and education, in consonance with the inner and, therefore, the true need of the age,—a dynamic spirituality embracing the whole life. Once addressing the children the Mother said: ' Here, in the Ashram, you are in the most favourable conditions with
leading it towards the Ananda.' P. 208, Sri Aurobindo on Himself.
regard to the environment, the influence, the teaching and the example, to awaken in you the supramental consciousness and to grow according to its law. ... If your will is to become men of the new race realising Sri Aurobindo's supramental ideal, living a new and higher life upon a new earth, you will find here all the necessary help to achieve your purpose.' ' Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us, so to say, the proof that the thing can be done and the time is now to do it.'25 A call and an assurance that come to man only at a great hour of the world. At another place she has declared:
' A new light shall break upon the earth, A new world shall be born, And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.'26 Could the aspiring earth expect a more inspiring assurance?
Mention may be made here of an incident bearing on the Mother's work for the education of children. In 1919 Poet Rabindranath met the Mother in Japan. In fact, they put up in the same hotel for some time. The Poet's perception of an aspect of the Mother's personality led him one day to request her to come to Santiniketan and take over charge and build it up on the right lines. The Mother could not accept this offer as she knew that though the field of her work was India, its centre was somewhere else. There is in the Rabindra Sadan collection at Santiniketan a group photograph including the Mother and the Poet, taken in Kyoto, Japan, in 1919. The Poet made a present to the Mother of the typewriter that he was using. The typewriter is
25 The Mother's Message—Article in p. 73, Vol. V, No. 4, of the Bulletin of Physical Education, published by the Ashram. 26 Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, p. 194.
still in the Ashram kept as a souvenir.
A notable event after 1926 is Poet Tagore's visit to Sri Aurobindo in May 1928. The Master-Singer had already sung his tribute of love and adoration to ' the voice incarnate of India's soul 'in an exquisite poem— quoted in the previous chapter—when in 1907 Sri Aurobindo was arrested for publishing certain articles in the Bande Mataram. Now he came to see the Yogi. What he wrote on his return was the word of his soul on one whose light had moved the Poet into uttering it: 'At the very first sight I could realise that he (Sri Aurobindo) had been seeking for the soul and had gained it, and through his long process of realisation had accumulated within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant with an inner light and his serene presence made it evident to me that his soul was not crippled and cramped to the measure of some tyrannical doctrine which takes delight in inflicting wounds upon life.
' I felt that the utterance of the ancient Hindu Rishi spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the human soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him, " You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice, Hearken unto me." '27
In a similar vein spoke Sri K. M. Munshi, then an Indian Union Minister, after an interview he had with Sri Aurobindo in April 1950. He said: 'A deep light of knowledge and wisdom shone in his eyes. The wide calm of the Spirit appeared to have converted the whole personality into the radiant Presence of one who shone with the light of Consciousness. . . . He was the absolute integration of personality, the Central Idea in Aryan Culture materialised in human shape, one of the greatest architects of creative life.'28
The radiance that Sri Munshi saw emanating from the Master's body in 1950 was the Light that Poet
27 The Modern Review, July, 1928. 28 K. M. Munshi: Our Greatest Need, pp. 45-46.
Rabindranath saw and hailed in 1928. At Darshan, people saw it in different phases: rose-red, blue, golden, or blue and golden shading into each other.
Of all his features, his eyes were perhaps the most expressive. A worker in the revolutionary field told the writer that whenever he came to Sri Aurobindo in 1907 or so for directions, often he had not to say his thoughts or hear his voice in answer. A look of his eyes—that was all. Others remark that they were at times in-drawn or penetrating, sparkling with affectionate humour or with smile of recognition, or most often brimming over with compassion.
Indeed compassion was the mainspring of his life. We shall see later how it expressed itself in practical service of the world and why it still ties him down to Earth.
When after more than thirty long years the same revolutionary worker of those days saw Sri Aurobindo he was struck with wonder at the complete change in the complexion of his body. His slightly dark complexion had become golden. He was no disciple of Sri Aurobindo. He told the writer that what Yoga could do was beyond him but that it could change one's bodily complexion was a fact of which he was convinced by the Darshan.
The Yoga that Sri Aurobindo started in Baroda and pursued in Calcutta, he came to perfect at Pondicherry. This perfection meant for him possession and mastery of the spiritual powers of Yoga through which to help forward the evolution of man to a higher status above the mind. To this he devoted himself exclusively. His spiritual power was always active upon world affairs, and when necessary, he publicly intervened and took a direct part. And did he not say that he had never had any will which had not been fulfilled?
In one of his early letters—written in 1905 and quoted in Chapter Two—Sri Aurobindo said that he had possessed and would use his spiritual force which he called Brahma lej to bring about the political liberation of his country, mentioning at the same time that this force is superior to the force of arms (Kshatra tej). The words of admission of King Visvamitra after a total rout of his tremendous military forces at the hands of Rishi Vashistha ring in the ears of a student of India's history:. ' Dhigbalam kshatriyabalam brahma tejo balam balam.' (Fie upon the force of arms, the spiritual force is the force of forces.) With Sri Aurobindo, his belief in it was no mere intellectual belief. With him it was a tested truth. ' It was this force which, as soon as he had attained it, he used, at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon world forces. He had no reason to be dissatisfied with the results or to feel the necessity of any other kind of action.'
Now came one of those early-foreseen upheavals in which he was to take part. It was the Second World War. The Truth-vision of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother discerned in it an upsurge of the Asuric or anti-divine forces with Hitler and his satellites as the spearhead of their attack upon the Allied Powers that stood for the higher values of life. The joint declaration they made ran as follows:
' We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self-defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and a better and more secure' world-order.'
Hard was it for such a declaration, so sharply contradictory to prevailing ideas, to go down with an unbelieving world. They had therefore to emphasize and re-emphasize this truth in several other statements clearing up its implications and people's doubts'. In one of these Sri Aurobindo said: ' You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are- trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance. It is no use concentrating on the defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have ranged themselves in the struggle. It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the light in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be done will be subjected to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the free future of humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and conditions will have been created in which there will be a chance for the Ideal to grow, for the Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura.'
The next occasion that called for his personal intervention was when Britain in seeking India's co-operation in the war effort made an offer to her-—one of those which Sri Aurobindo had foreseen and to which he attached great value. The offer was made in March 1942 through Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the British Cabinet, and an eminent statesman of sincere convictions, whose stand for India's independence free India afterwards fully appreciated.
As in the case of the War, this also was looked upon with the same dubious mind. While the people and leaders of India, save a few, read into it sinister designs of the British to exploit her man-power and other resources during the war and then back out of their promises after the victory, Sri Aurobindo found in it a welcome opportunity for India's advancement, her ultimate political liberation and a step on the way to her self-fulfilment. He had pre-visioned such a deal. It was, in his view, a ' real' negotiation between the British Government and the Indian leaders. The occasion impelled his personal intervention. He promptly sent a message to Sir Stafford Cripps in the course of which he said: "I welcome it as an opportunity given to India to determine for herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and unity, and take an effective place among the world's free nations. I hope that it will be accepted, and right use made of it, putting aside all discords and divisions. I hope too that friendly relations between Britain and India replacing the past struggles, will be a step towards a greater world union in which, as a free nation, her spiritual force will contribute to build for mankind a better and happier life.'
He followed it up by sending personal messages to Sri C. Rajagopalachari, one of the leading brains of the Congress High Command, and to Dr. Moonje, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, and sent Sri S. Doraiswamy Iyer, an eminent advocate of the Madras High Court, and a disciple, as his personal envoy to the Congress Working Committee at Delhi.
The viewpoints which Sri Aurobindo instructed his envoy to place before the Congress leaders, as Doraiswamy himself has stated them to the writer, were: (1) Japan's imperialism being young and based on industrial and military power and moving westward, was a greater menace to India than the British imperialism which was old, which the country had learnt to deal with and which was on the way to elimination. (2) It would be better to get into the saddle and not be particular about the legal basis of the power. Once the power came into our hands and we occupied seats of power, we could establish our positions and assert ourselves. (3) The proposed Cabinet would provide opportunities for the Congress and the Muslims to understand each other and pull together for the country's good, especially at that time of the crisis. (4) The Hindu Mahasabha also being represented, the Hindus, as such, would have a chance of proving their capacity to govern India not only for the benefit of the Hindus but for the whole country. (5) The main problem was to organise the strength of India in order to repel the threatened aggression.
Sri Aurobindo held that by accepting the Cripps' offer India would be able to take part in the administration of the country as also in the war effort as a co-partner with Britain and the solution of Cripps could be turned into a means of India's independence. The Congress took it as an invitation to co-operate but not as an equal partner.
As always, so in the present instance, Sri Aurobindo was for dynamic action in the political field. His idea was that the acceptance of the proposals, though short of the mark, would lead at once to India's industrial and economic improvement and to an efficiently up-to-date military training for her youth—the objectives for which the Congress had been fighting for years. Another important consideration was that it was to the Congress, the largest representative body of the land, that the offer was made. Therefore there could arise no two-nation theory, no division of the country with its deadly and disastrous consequences. Some of the Congress leaders, however, admitted afterwards that the decision of the Congress should have been otherwise.
But the Congress chose to go by their own reasons rather than pay heed to the Seer, one who for the first time after his retirement in 1926 made a public pronouncement on a subject he regarded as ,of vital consequence to the destiny of his country. The second instance of the tragic failure of the human mind to rise to the truth beyond itself. Truly has the Poet said:
' For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done.'29
Sri Aurobindo was aware that his advice would not be accepted. Why did he then make the effort? he was asked.—' I have done a bit of " nishkama karma" (disinterested work)', was his smiling reply.30
Yet it is a fact that, despite the contrary policy of the Congress, the country gave to the British Government in India large co-operation through which they could raise the strength of the Indian army to a force of two million, the biggest figure in its history, recruit large numbers as technicians, expand and modernise ordnance factories and other industries, and carried on the war with the help of these people and improved resources to a finish. One wonders how free India could stand, how, for instance, she could save Kashmir or Hyderabad, or take a responsible part in international assignments, as in Korea or Indo-China, if she had not a number of capable military leaders, mechanised troops and other sections, seasoned in the last war, to face the situation after the British personnel, at any rate, the major part of it, had left. The Divine works out his purpose despite man's reluctance.
Failing in his outward effort and purpose, Sri Aurobindo, besides giving support and encouragement to those who sought his advice about joining the army, concentrated and relied on his Yogic powers, and it is common knowledge how they worked. England, left helpless after the Dunkirk disaster, exposed to ceaseless strafing from the air, her civil life and property shattered, now threatened with a full-scale invasion and occupation by the mighty enemy hordes, stood to a man, broken but not bent, with an unparallelled determination,
29 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book I, p. 57. 30 Nirodbaran: Sri Aurobindo, I am Here, I am Here, p. 17.
to meet the assault. What force worked in them? The leader of the people, the chosen instrument of the Divine, in one of his famous speeches on that occasion, had to admit: ' I feel an unseen hand guiding me.' The British King also expressed a similar experience in a thanksgiving speech. The result? The tide of Hitler's uninterrupted victories, taken at its full flood, was now turned back on himself and his forces to the complete ruin of Nazism and to the decisive victory of the Allied Powers. So sure was Hitler of his victory over England that he had actually fixed August 15 as the day when he would celebrate it with a dinner at the Buckingham Palace. Little did the mad denizen of the underworld know that August 15 is God's Day, the day -of celebration of God's Truth, over which no shadow of a dark Force could ever fall.
As regards Japan, when her intention to conquer India became clear, Sri Aurobindo directed his spiritual force against her and she shared a similar fate.
Sri Aurobindo knew well enough that the freedom of India would also come in its time in spite of the rejection of the Cripps offer by the Congress. In September 1935, just four years before the Second World War and eight years before India's independence became a live political issue, when Nirodbaran, one of his disciples, asked Sri Aurobindo if he definitely saw a. free India and begged him to bring her freedom by his spiritual power, the Master's confident answer was, ' Have I not told you that the independence is all arranged for and will evolve itself all right? Then what's the use of my bothering about that any longer? It's what she will do with her independence that is not arranged for—and so it is that about which I have to bother.'31 True to his prevision, the independence came, but a broken one, perhaps because the conditions, internal and external, could not respond fully to the action of the spiritual Force. But this Force would not
31 Nirodbaran: Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, pp. 25-26. for the matter of that cease to. act. It is, as the Master said, always at work and more so now, in order to overcome all opposition and bring things to order that India might go ahead towards a larger fulfilment of her destiny. One can see its working in the way things are moving now. And we know, as he himself said, that no will of his has ever remained unfulfilled.
In his Declaration of August 15, 1947, on India's Independence Sri Aurobindo said that her independence, hamstrung by territorial divisions, was exposed to serious dangers from within and without. His Force is still at work completing the process of reintegration till his belief ' in a great and united future as the destiny of this nation and its peoples ' is realised, till ' a free and united India is there and the Mother gathers around her her sons and welds them into a single national strength in the life of a great and united people ',32 .
Out of these great world events stands, clear and bold, the full meaning of the mysterious premonition— referred to in Chapter Two—Sri Aurobindo had as a boy of eleven.
But the greatest upheaval has yet to come—the upheaval of the whole earth to the impact of a New Light of Heaven which he actually brought down into himself as a preliminary to its diffusion into others in ever-expanding circles. Happily for the earth's future, the first streaks of this Light have already begun to touch the horizon.
A revolutionary par excellence, a quiet, determined, self-concentrated, uncompromising revolutionary from a boy in every field of life, guided by nothing but his own unerring divine light, ' the Warrior of the Ages fighting anti-divine Powers, leading the Evolution from the start', he has known no rest, needed no sadhana for himself. His long retirement at Pondicherry was devoted solely to the forging of a lever by which to lift up not only India, just a part of the world, but
32 Messages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, p. 11.
the whole human world to a lofty point in the scale of evolution. Bodied and disembodied, he has been engaged in this colossal task in complete combination with Divine Shakti to bring the process to its assured consummation.
The reality and magnitude of the work, humanly impossible to gauge, can only be felt by souls open to higher influences. The utterances of the Master, quoted below, are sufficient indications:
' My Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing and do not need salvation or anything else, but precisely for the earth-consciousness, to open a way for the earth-consciousness to change.'33
What have the Mother and Sri Aurobindo done or are doing to this end? Let the Master's own words say:
' You say that this way is too difficult for you or the likes of you and it is only " Avatars " like myself or the Mother that can do it. That is a strange misconception; for it is, on the contrary, the easiest and simplest and most direct way and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital quiet . . . even those who have a tenth of your capacity can do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard endeavour that is difficult and needs a great force of tapasya. As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer—work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down or represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the
33 Nirodbaran-: Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo.
obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled, hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the path. But it is not necessary, nor tolerable that all that should be repeated over again to the full in the experience of others. It is because we have the complete experience that we can show a straighter and easier road to others—if they will only consent to take it. It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, " Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly and secretly upbearing you—if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time,—do not insist on the hard, hampered, round-about and difficult journey." (Written in 1932.)
In another letter, written in 1935, Sri Aurobindo says: ' 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. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth-consciousness; I see it above and know what it is—I feel it ever gleaming down on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth-vision. If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care. There is no question of X or Y or anybody else in that. 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.'
Does not all this show an inconceivable dash and daring of the Mighty Revolutionary in Sri Aurobindo? And behind his revolutionary self, his other self of Divine Compassion? Compassion that moved him to a holocaust of himself in the stupendous effort of saving man?
What part is India to play in the new order of things so attempted? Sri Aurobindo has many a time said that India's portion will be to serve as the leader of the human evolution. But this she cannot be unless she becomes herself again.
In answer to a question by the Mother Sri Aurobindo said that 1957 would be a very important year for India, when she would recover her integrity. This the Mother revealed in an interview published in Indian papers, a fuller report of which appeared in Mother India, March 1954. In course of this interview the Mother said: ' The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. She incarnates the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise this significance of India and plan their actions accordingly. . . . Divine power alone can help India. . . . According to a very old tradition, if twelve honest persons unite to incarnate the divine Will, they can compel the Divine to manifest. . . . There must be a group forming a strong body of cohesive will with the spiritual knowledge to save India and the world. It is India that can bring truth in the world. By manifestation of the divine Will and Power alone India can preach her message to the world and not by imitating the materialism of the West. By following the divine Will India shall shine at the top of the spiritual mountain and show the way of .truth and organise world unity.' To a question as to how to bring about the much-needed cohesion and faith in the country, the Mother's reply was: ' By following Sri Aurobindo's teachings. His Independence Day Declaration issued on August 15, 1947, needs to be read and re-read and its significance explained to millions of his compatriots. India needs the conviction and faith of Sri Aurobindo.' Here is Sri Aurobindo's Independence Day Declaration:
'August 15th, 1947, is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.
August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.
' The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. At one moment it almost seemed that if in the very act of liberation she would fall back into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest. But fortunately it now seems probable that this danger will be averted and a large and powerful, though not yet a complete union will be established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly has made it probable that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without schism or fissure. But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For, if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign, conquest. India's internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form—the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India's future.
' Another dream was for the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia and her return to her great role in the progress of human civilisation. Asia has arisen; large parts are now quite free or are at this moment being liberated: its other still subject or partly subject parts are moving through whatever struggles towards freedom. Only a little has to be done and that will be done today or tomorrow. There India has her part to play and has begun to play it with an energy and ability which already indicate the measure of her possibilities and the place she can take in the council of nations.
' The third dream was a world-union forming the outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind. That unification of the human world is under way; there is an imperfect initiation organised but struggling against tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and conquer. Here too India has begun to play a prominent part and, if she can develop that larger statesmanship which is not limited by the present facts and immediate possibilities but looks into the future and brings it nearer, her presence may make all the difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development. A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being done, but even then the final result is sure. For unification is a necessity of Nature, an inevitable movement. Its necessity for the nations is also clear, for without it the freedom may be at any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure. The unification is therefore to the interest of all, and only human imbecility and stupid selfishness can prevent it; but these cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. But an outward basis is not enough; there must grow an international spirit and outlook, international forms and institutions must appear, perhaps such developments as dual or multilateral citizenship, willed interchange or voluntary fusion of cultures. Nationalism will have fulfilled itself and lost its militancy and would no longer find these things incompatible with self-preservation and the integrality of its outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.
' Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever-increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice.
' The final dream was a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solution of the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society. This is still a personal hope and an idea, an ideal which has begun to take hold both in India and in the West on forward-looking minds. The difficulties in the way are more formidable than in any other field of endeavour, but difficulties were made to overcome. Here too, if this evolution is to take place, since it must proceed through a growth of the spirit and the inner consciousness, the initiative can come from India and although the scope must be universal, the central movement may be hers. 'Such is the content which I put into this date of India's liberation; whether or how far this hope will be justified depends upon the new and free India.'
In this Declaration the great Seer has given the nation and the world an infallibly-charted future and the broad fundamentals for its successful achievement. It is for the nation and the world to profit by it. In it he appreciatively noted some of free India's actions and laid down certain lines along which she should move. For him free India did not mean merely the victory of the national struggle or her rise to the ranks of free nations of the world. He looked upon it as a divine trust reposed in her to be divinely discharged.
Read between the lines, it will reveal what Sri Aurobindo has seen in the 15th of August 1947— an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.' It comes to this then that on this day, hand in hand with India, the world entered upon a New Age. What he had been insisting upon from the very beginning of his work for India's uplift—that her independence was a divine necessity and would be a divine event—came to pass and he had the satisfaction of seeing his dream fulfilled, fulfilled also was his vision of the Dawn of a New Age for the world. The central point of this start being India, he expects her to give a new direction to the political, social, cultural and spiritual trends of humanity, each from the standpoint of a ' higher and larger consciousness', the spiritual. For this India must be herself again, repossessing all the strength of her soul.
It is this unique and true role of resurgent India that Sri Aurobindo re-emphasized a year later in his Message to the Andhra University when it offered him the Sir C. R. Reddy National Prize: ' In this hour, in the second year of its liberation, the nation has to awaken ... to vast possibilities opening before her but also to dangers and difficulties that may, if not wisely dealt with, become formidable. There is a disordered world-situation left by the war, full of risks and sufferings and shortages and threatening another catastrophe which can only be solved by the united effort of the peoples and can only be truly met by an effort at world-union such as was conceived at San Francisco but has not till now been very successful in the practice; still the effort has to be continued and new devices found which will make easier the difficult transition from the perilous divisions of the past and present to a harmonious world-order; for otherwise there can be no escape from continuous calamity and collapse. There are deeper issues for India herself, since by following certain tempting directions she may conceivably become a nation like many others evolving an opulent industry and commerce, a powerful organisation of social and political life, an immense military strength, practising power-politics with a high degree of success, guarding and extending' zealously her gains and her interests, .dominating even a large part of the world, but in this apparently magnificent progression forfeiting its Swadharma, losing its soul. Then ancient India and her spirit might disappear altogether and we would have only one more nation like the others, and that would be a real gain neither to the world nor to us. . . . It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving light. This must not and will not surely happen; but it cannot be said that the danger is not there . . . . No doubt we will win through, but we must not disguise from ourselves the fact that, after these long years of subjection and its cramping and impairing effects, a great inner as well as outer liberation and change, a vast inner and outer progress is needed if we are to fulfil India's true destiny.'34
What is this inner liberation to the importance of which the Master-Seer of the race called upon his
34 Messages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, pp. 22-23.
countrymen to awake at one of the greatest hours in their country's history? Here is the answer in his own words: ' True freedom is only possible if we live in the infinite, live, as the Vedanta bids us, in and from our self-existent being; but our natural and temporal energies seek for it at first not in ourselves, but in our external conditions. This great indefinable thing, liberty, is in its highest and ultimate sense a state of being; it is self living in itself and determining by its own energy what it shall be inwardly and, eventually, by the growth of a divine spiritual power within determining too what it shall make of its external circumstances and environments; this is the largest and freest sense of self-determination.' 35
The form in which freedom exists today in man's external life is indeed very far from this great ideal. The cry for more of it that rises everywhere is the sign of a discontent that is divine in the sense that it will not rest till the highest is attained. The root of the problem lies not so much in the outer spheres of man's activity as in the inner, that impel those activities. Man lives in his ego, in his desires, in his mind ruled by the ego which drives him into the blunders that beset his life. It is from this subjection to his lower nature that man must be liberated into the truth and light of his higher nature whose seed lies hidden in his soul where dwells the Infinite, ' the Bright Immortal'. But to know Him is not the only end: to ascend into His Light in Heaven is also not the end. The Light must descend on earth, because it is that alone which can lift man beyond himself and newmake him into an expression of the Divine Nature. The deepest meaning of freedom is to break out of the ego-shell existence and consciousness into the unwalled heavens of infinite life, infinite light, infinite consciousness. It is therefore the freedom of his spirit that gives man the power to expand and grow into this perfection. And it is this freedom which
35 Sri Aurobindo: War and Self-determination, pp. 34-35.
is the foundation of true unity because by it alone is possible an entry into that supernal world where all is one.
How is this freedom to be attained by man? ' Man's true freedom and perfection will come when the spirit within bursts through the forms of mind and life and, winging above to its own gnostic fiery height of ether, turns upon them from that light and flame to seize them and transform into its own image.'36 ' You cannot realise freedom and unity unless you realise God, you cannot possess freedom and unity unless you possess God, possess at once your highest self and the self of all creatures.'37 Spirituality, that is to say, the growth of the whole being of man into its truth and light in the Spirit, is then the only solution of the vital problems of human life. ' The ultimates of life are spiritual and only in the full light of the liberated self and spirit can it achieve them. That full light is not intellect or reason, but a knowledge by inner unity and identity which is the native, self-light of the fully developed spiritual consciousness—and preparing that, on the way to it, a knowledge by intimate inner contact with the truth of things and beings which is intuitive and born of a secret oneness.'38
This knowledge comes through Yoga, by which the seeker opens into a new consciousness and becomes aware of the Divine not only in him but also in all, and this realisation is complete when it enables him always to live and act out of that constant awareness. This is the freedom that man must have today in order to be saved from the very ills that have sprung from his so-called freedom and which threaten to engulf or annihilate him —freedom from his petty empirical self of desires and passions into the luminous vastness of his infinite and immortal Self. How he can grow towards it is clearly pointed out in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, whose ' one
36 Sri Aurobindo: The Human Cycle, p. 303. 37 Ibid., p. 315. 38 Ibid., pp. 211-12.
aim is an inner self-development by which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature'.
' Sri Aurobindo's teaching states that the One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.
' But while the former steps in evolution were taken by Nature without a conscious will in the plant and animal life, in man Nature becomes able to evolve by a conscious will in the instrument. It is not, however, by the mental will in man that this can be wholly done, for the mind goes only to a certain point and after that can only move in a circle. A conversion has to be made, a turning of the consciousness by which mind has to change into a higher principle. This method is to be found through the ancient psychological discipline and practice of Yoga. In the past, it has been attempted by a drawing away from the world and a disappearance into the height of the Self or Spirit. Sri Aurobindo teaches that a descent of the higher principle is possible which will not merely release the spiritual Self out of the world, but release it in the world, replace the mind's ignorance or its very limited knowledge by a supramental Truth-Consciousness which will be a sufficient instrument of the inner Self and make it possible for the human being to find himself dynamically as well as inwardly and grow out of his still animal humanity into a diviner race. The psychological discipline of Yoga can be used to that end by opening all the parts of the being to a conversion or transformation through the descent and working of the higher still concealed supramental principle.'39
What the Vedic Rishis glimpsed as a distant light of heaven is now seized and realised more fully by Sri Aurobindo as a creative Light of the Supreme—called by him the Supermind—now on its way to the earth. It is interesting to note that this knowledge and realisation had come to him long before he read the Veda the study of which later only confirmed what he had already independently realised.40 Thus came into his possession the highest truth of India's soul, which, born in the Vedic Vision of the Light, passed through its long preparation to its vaster fulfilment promised by the Master. This preparation—evolutionary in its aim and nature— is outwardly marked by the various stages of her history.41 It is the descent of this Light on earth that will lift humanity beyond itself and remake it into a divine perfection. Says the Master: 'As there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of earthly nature that is ready for the change, so now there will be established on earth a gnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this new transformation.' 42
The conflicts and confusions that prevail almost everywhere in the world today are some of the signs of this coming spiritual change in the life of man. Mystics and prophets of all ages and climes have averred that the
39 Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo and His Ashram, pp. 56-58. 40 Ibid., p. 44. 41 See Chapter One of the writer's book The Vision of India. 42 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, Vol. II, Part Two, p. 1028.
brightest Dawns are always preceded by the darkest Nights. ' The adverse Forces,' says Sri Aurobindo, ' increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field of earth and Matter.' ' The supramental Force,' he said in 1934, ' is descending, but it has not yet taken possession of the body or of matter— there is still much resistance to that.' The same year he declared: ' I know this Descent is inevitable—I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age.' 43 Did not his Mahasamadhi point to this Descent?
Mystic experience says that the greater and nearer the Manifestation, the fiercer becomes the resistance of the hostile forces which refuse to part with their empire they have so firmly established on earth. It is this resistance, now so desperate in character, to the descending supramental Light that has thrown the world into unprecedented conflicts and disorders.
There are radiant rays, too, piercing through the inky gloom, that point to the peat hour for that Light to come down and be active in the earth-consciousness. True, the actual nature of man has not improved in proportion to his cultural progress; true, his science by which he has largely built up his civilisation now threatens to engulf him, at least to undo that very civilisation; but it is also true that through the progress he has so far made, his mind has reached the summit of its human possibilities,—a thing so necessary for the next evolutionary ascent of the race. This is the condition created for a higher power than the mind to descend and manifest on earth and effect a new saltus of evolution.
A hopeful sign of the situation is that the higher mind of the race is now catching the first glints of a dawning glory. Large ideas, vast thoughts, wonderful visions, matchless dreams are stirring it: it has begun to feel that out of the present painful throes a new
43 From Sri Aurobindo's letters in Sri Aurobindo on Himself.
world is coming slowly to birth,—a New Heaven, as it were, which evolutionary Nature has long been patiently building in secret. And the most heartening promise of that ' divine event' is that she who would liberate man is come and is here on earth today—she who is the Leader, of the Way, the Bringer of the Light. ' The Mother comes in order to bring down the supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.'44
' The Supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not the last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.' 45
As man's subjective tendency deepens, his vision begins to broaden; as he opens to the secret aim of his life on earth, there comes to him the knowledge that he will attain his highest spiritual perfection—for that is God's intention in him—when the Light from above descends into him and he rises into the supramental consciousness. It is this alone that can transform his present imperfect nature into the perfect Nature of the Divine.
Thus having completed the human cycle man enters upon a new cycle of divine living when there dawns upon earth a greater age, a new age of the Spirit. It is not that the whole race will be raised en bloc and at
44 Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, pp. 83-84. 45 Sri Aurobindo: The Mother, pp. 83-85.
Page-198 once to the supramental level. The individuals ready for it—whom the Mother calls the elite of humanity— will first attain to it and form a nucleus of what the Master terms as the gnostic community, the forerunners of the perfect race of the future. Founded in the Knowledge Of the Truth, the gnostic being will be one with the Spirit, one with the supreme Shakti, and will live and act in Peace and Power, Freedom and Unity that are for ever. This is how man is going to fulfil his highest individual and collective destiny and how a spiritual, a perfect social order is going to emerge out of the disintegrating chaos of the present.
What this new life will be and how the whole earth will change into it revealed itself to the supreme vision (paradristi) of the Kavi (Seer in the proper Vedic sense of the word) in Sri Aurobindo who revealed it in the authentic language of the Truth in his The Life Divine, and perhaps more intimately in his poetical masterpiece, Savitri, written, as he has himself said, from his highest spiritual experiences. We quote below a few lines from this epoch-making epic:
' The superman shall wake in mortal man And manifest the hidden demi-god Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force Revealing the secret deity in the cave. Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme, His bright unveiled Transcendence shall illumine The mind and heart, and force the life and act To interpret his inexpressible mystery In a heavenly alphabet of Divinity's signs. . . . Then shall the embodied being live as one Who is a thought, a will of the Divine, A mask or robe of his divinity, An instrument and partner of his Force, A point or line drawn in the infinite, A manifest of the Imperishable. The supermind shall be his nature's fount, The Eternal's truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal's truth shall be his light and guide. All then shall change, a magic order come Overtopping this mechanical universe. A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal's world. . . . The supermind shall claim the world for Light And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart And place Light's crown on Nature's lifted head And found Light's reign on her unshaking base. A greater truth than earth's shall roof-in earth And shed its sunlight on the roads of mind; A power infallible shall lead the thought, A seeing Puissance govern life and act, In earthly hearts kindle the Immortal's fire. . . . This world shall be God's visible garden-house, The earth shall be a field and camp of God, Man shall forget consent to mortality And his embodied frail impermanence. This universe shall unseal its occult sense, Creation's process change its antique front, An ignorant evolution's hierarchy Release the Wisdom chained below its base. The Spirit shall be the master of his world Lurking no more in form's obscurity And Nature shall reverse her action's rule, The outward world disclose the Truth it veils; All things shall manifest the covert God, All shall reveal the Spirit's light and might And move to its destiny of felicity. Even should a hostile force cling to its reign And claim its right's perpetual sovereignty And man refuse his high spiritual fate, Yet shall the secret Truth in things prevail. For in the march of all-fulfilling Time The hour must come of the Transcendent's will: All turns and winds towards his predestined ends In Nature's fixed inevitable course Decreed since the beginning of the worlds In the deep essence of created things: Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance. When superman is born as Nature's king His presence shall transfigure Matter's world: He shall light up Truth's fire in Nature's night, He shall lay upon the earth Truth's greater law; Man too shall turn towards the Spirit's call. Awake to his hidden possibility, Awake to all that slept within his heart And all that Nature meant when earth was formed And the Spirit made this ignorant world his home, He shall aspire to Truth and God and Bliss. Interpreter of a diviner law And instrument of a supreme design The higher kind shall lean to lift up man. Man shall desire to climb to his own heights. The truth above shall wake a nether truth; Even the dumb earth become a sentient force. The Spirit's tops and Nature's base shall draw Near to the secret of their separate truth And know eath other as one deity. The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face. Then man and superman shall be at one And all the earth become a single life. Even the multitude shall hear the Voice And turn to commune with the Spirit within And strive to obey the high spiritual law: This earth shall stir with impulses sublime, Humanity awake to deepest self, Nature the hidden godhead recognise. Even the many shall some answer make And bear the splendour, of the Divine's rush And his impetuous knock at unseen doors. A heavenlier passion shall upheave men's lives, Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam, Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire, Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul; Mortality's bond-slaves shall unloose their bonds, Mere men into spiritual beings grow
And see awake the dumb divinity, Intuitive beams shall touch the nature's peaks, A revelation stir the nature's depths: The Truth shall be the leader of their lives, Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and act, They shall feel themselves lifted nearer to the sky, As if a little lower than the gods. For knowledge shall pour down its radiant streams And even darkened mind quiver with new life And kindle and burn with the Ideal's fire And turn to escape from mortal ignorance. The frontiers of the Ignorance shall recede, More and more souls shall enter into light, Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear And lives blaze with a sudden inner flame And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight And human wills tune to the divine will, These separate selves the Spirit's oneness feel, These senses of heavenly sense grow capable, The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy And mortal bodies of immortality. A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell And take the charge of breath and speech and act And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns And every feeling a celestial thrill. Of ten, a lustrous inner dawn shall come Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind; A sudden bliss shall run through every limb And Nature with a mightier Presence fill. Thus shall the earth open to divinity And common natures feel the wide uplift, Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray And meet the deity in common things. Nature shall live to manifest secret God, The Spirit shall take up the human play, This earthly life become the life divine.'46
46Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Part Three, Book Eleven, Canto One, pp. 328-333. Page-202 —An earnest of the fulfilment of the Divine Word, of the Eternal Promise—the full manifestation of the Light that is enshrined in India's soul.
This is the Light that made her ' dawn's victorious opening' in the Past when the rest of the world was asleep in ignorance; the Light that sustained the lifeline of her civilisation through her long and chequered history; the Light that motived all her great movements and surged up in our day in a surprising revival of the national spirit and brought her political liberation.47 And as her Seer-Patriot has seen and assured us, it is the same Light which will complete and crown this liberation with a larger fulfilment in the everlasting integrity of the Mother's supernal Love, which will be for India and the world a new spiritual birth.
This is the Light that was visioned by the ancient Fathers of the race; the Light that is now unveiled, revisioned and restored to the firmament of India's consciousness as also of the world's by the Master Maker of the New Age.
And this is the Light that will burst forth in its noontide effulgence in the days drawing near; the Light that will fuse ' the unbeginning Past', ' the moment's beat' and ' the unending Future' into an infinite expanse of One Consciousness, One Life, One World,—all aglow with that divine splendour radiating from the vastness of the World-Mother's breast.
The whole of this canto of 1396 lines was the last thing dictated by Sri Aurobindo three months before his passing. And not a single word or a punctuation mark was changed after the first draft was dictated. A feat hardly possible or natural except to a Master-Seer. 47 Messages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, p. 11.
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