APPENDIX I

      MAHASAMADHI

December 5, 1950- I. 26 a.m. The fateful moment, The Great Withdrawal, Both self-chosen, self-willed.

      Hitherto Sri Aurobindo had been working on his Savitri in his own unhurried way. Then for some months he immersed himself in a deepening calm, seriousness and self-absorption. Then one day, two months before the day, out of this profundity he broke forth and sprang upon his amanuensis the surprise; 'I must finish Savitri soon!' Startling words. Why this all too sudden hurry? ' The assistant's bewildered look met only an impassive face.' He did hurry through the revision that he had been making and came to an abrupt stop. Abrupt, because of the planned twelve Books the Epic was to be composed of, he had completed revising all but the Eighth and the Epilogue. This Eighth Book, written only in part long ago, had been left over for completion later on. But now when the whole revision was completed this and the Epilogue were left out, untouched. When his attention was called to this, he simply said, ' We shall see about that later on.'

      This Eighth Book was to be the Book of Death! Who would explain this purposeful hiatus? Must he have the necessary actual experience to fill it? That may at least be one of the reasons that suggests itself to the groping human mind, especially as the whole book of Savitri is a record of explorations in untrodden fields of the Infinite, of actual personal experiences of the highest spiritual kind. Those who have any knowledge of Savitri know it for a fact that it is a book at once of reality and of revelation—realities of worlds within worlds, revelations of the new world that is to be. Seer-poets say nothing which they do not see or experience. Maybe, the Book of Death will be a book of revelation of what

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the Seer has seen and wrought in that mysterious domain.

      The Epilogue was there only in its first draft made years ago. It is a picture of the new world to which Savitri and Satyavan would return after their triumphant heavenly pilgrimage. Evidently, the Epilogue is the sequel to the Book of Death. That may be the reason why this too was left out of revision.

      This fact apart, there are others. In 1949 on a Darshan occasion, arrived the well-known French photographer, Henri Cartier Bresson asking to be allowed to take Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's photographs including the Darshan photo. Such requests had been consistently refused all these forty years. Only now on this occasion during this long stretch of time it was first conceded. And why? The answer perhaps is the subsequent event.

      On the 15th of August 1950, shortly after sun-set, occurred, on the north-eastern borders of India, an earthquake of an unprecedented character, the greatest in the century, the incalculable significance of' which the world has yet to know. What it has meant for India and the world time perhaps will show. But why this coincidence? It is a well-known fact that remarkable phenomena happen in Nature presaging the passing of divine souls. Was the birthday of Mother India's independence and of her chosen Son meant to be an augury of a more fateful event to follow sometime after?

      To the anxious questions why he did not use his invincible Yogic Force to throw off the attack of the disease just as he had thrown off more malignant attacks before, just as he had cured innumerable hopeless cases in others, he simply returned the answer, ' Can't explain; you will not understand.'

      His asking the time, his looking at the clock suggests a forechosen moment of departure.

      Neither the help of medical experts present nor the help of his own Yogic Force he would use. He was grimly carrying out his own decision.

      We have it from Dr. Sanyal to whom the Mother said :

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      ' People do not know what a tremendous sacrifice He has made for the world. About a year ago, while I was discussing things I remarked that I felt like leaving this body of mine. He spoke out in a very firm tone, " No, this can never be. If necessary for this transformation I might go, you will have to fulfil our yoga of supramental descent and transformation!" '¹

      An irresistible question arises in every mind: Why did he decide on his self-immolation? Says the Mother in her declaration of December 8, 1950:

      ' The lack of receptivity of the earth and men is mostly responsible for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding his body. . . .'

      Has he then left off his work for the earth as hopeless or impracticable because of its lack of receptivity? Unwearied Warrior of the ages, battering at the massive fort of Ignorance that is our earth, Sri Aurobindo would be falsifying himself even if he thought of it. Commander of the transforming Forces of Light, he has changed his strategy in order to work on wider fronts. Here is his assurance to Mother and Mother's assurance to the Earth:

      ' December 7, 1950.

      Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth-atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one Will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy Sublime Work!'

      It is his Compassion that threw him into the thick of the national struggle for liberation, his Compassion that sustained it to the end, his Compassion again that

      ¹ Dr. P. Sanyal: " A Call from Pondicherry " in Mother India, December 1953, p.187.

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plunged him into the work of world-liberation, for he knew that no single unit could ever remain liberated until the whole mass was liberated. Not division or isolation but wholeness, unity and oneness is the dominant mantra of his work.

      The death of his physical body he has chosen to give the Earth its life—its true life in the Light. The Light Divine that had its habitat in his inner self he now projected on his outer. His physical body after he had withdrawn from it remained aglow, ' surcharged with a concentration of this light', defying decomposition to the bewilderment of medical science and the reversal of Nature's law for more than 111 hours—' a period more than double the record time which Lyon's Medical Jurisprudence gives of a body keeping undecayed in the climatic conditions of the East.'²

      The Mother had foreseen it and whispered to Dr. Sanyal on December 6: 'As long as the supramental light does not pass away, the body will not show any signs of decomposition, and it may be a day or it may take many more days.'³

      Was not this light the first visible proof of the supramental Descent? Did he not by this supreme act of self-immolation establish the essential connection of the dynamic Light of Supermind with Matter—the one object of his aeonic labour? Was it not a momentous starting-point of a new career for earth-life?

      There are other details of fact, into which we do not enter here, which go to show that he controlled the disease at will, in order not to disturb the Darshan atmosphere or the annual functions of the Ashram School. Even he rose above it. when he chose to but would under no circumstances, under no pressure of his disciples, reject it. On the contrary, when both the functions were over, he let go his hold on it and gave it a free run.

      Towards the close of the day on the 9th of December

      ² K. D. Sethna, The Passing of Sri Aurobindo, p. 5.

      ³ Mother India, December 1953, p. 187.

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1950, four days after his passing the Mother gave the direction for the Mahasamadhi. The last rites performed were marked by the simplicity that had characterised his whole career on earth. The spot chosen was the centre of the Ashram courtyard, just below the multi-branching ' Service ' tree. It stands beside the Samadhi as the sleepless sentinel serving and guarding the divine remains in the Sanctum Sanctorum and casting its cool shade over it and the surroundings,—a solemn symbol of Nature's unvoiced gratitude to a body wholly spent in the service of God in Man. The Samadhi structure bears upon it an inscription, in English and in French, of an offering of the Mother's gratitude:

      ' To THEE who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to THEE our infinite gratitude. Before THEE who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before THEE who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before THEE we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to THEE.'

      We have already referred to the Master's assurance to Mother of his presence in the earth atmosphere. And the Mother has said that she is in constant contact with Sri Aurobindo. Nor did he withhold his presence from his disciples many of whom felt it when they were profoundly moved by his passing. ' I am here I am here', came his voice, clear and straight to Nirodbaran whose booklet bears a touching testimony to this fact.

      We may add that any heart, sincerely open, will contact the Master's presence in any part of the wide world over the whole of which is suffused his transforming Compassion, his growing Light from on High to lift the earth into itself:

      ' The Master leaves his material frame, but his work continues. He leaves the body, obviously for the reason that only by so doing he could consummate his work. His vision stands as the unfailing and infallible Light and mankind and earth shall accomplish whatever he

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aimed at and worked for—-the supreme Consciousness he brought down into earth's sphere is there, continuing to guide and shape and achieve.' ⁴

      Apart from this we have another assurance—of his manifesting in visible form. On December 8, three days after his passing, Mother asked him to resuscitate and he clearly answered:

      ' I have left this body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way.'⁵

      How this will be possible was made clear by Sri Aurobindo himself: ' In the theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety into the state of gross Matter directly by the intervention of an occult force and process whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material

      ⁴ Nolinikanto Gupta in the Bulletin of Physical Education, February 1951, p. 2.

      ⁵ A leading article in Mother India, June 1952, p.16.

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body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature.'⁶

       ⁶ Sri Aurobindo: The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 59-60.

      ⁷ Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book Seven, p. 154.

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