The Certitude of Victory and the Work of the Future (3/3)

Eventually the fumes of the war got doused and the Mother returned to the place of her future work with Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. It was during this meeting on her final return that the certainty of victory came about and the fate of the world and man was sealed with Her signature and fiery seal of Love. That brief moment unrecorded in the history of time had opened the gates of the future. The rest was a question of unfolding with time. She describes this experience beautifully:

I came here…. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house that’s now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House.261 I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs…. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me … and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion – the decisive shock.

But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiences – a ten months’ sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same way – did the END of the vision occur…. I was standing just beside him. My head wasn’t exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I don’t know how to explain it – physically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, ‘Now the Realization will be accomplished.’ That the seal was set and the Realization would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say – no words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.

[December 20, 1961]

Yes, the victory won in the depths of her consciousness and the world’s heart had to be translated in terms of actual events, inner and outer. What was achieved in principle had to be realised in all its details through the process of a New collective Yoga and an unprecedented journey of the human spirit. It is with this certitude of the final victory that the two started laying the foundations of the New Age, the Supramental Age. The first step towards this was the formation or rather the evolution of a small community of seekers and sadhaks of the New Way being opened by them. This was needed since they had seen that though the Adversary had momentarily withdrawn, the danger was still there since he lurked unseen in the human hearts. A representative humanity was needed to work out the victory there. Man must consent to this work. He must offer his heart and mind and bodily life as the field of action, the theatre of a new war where the Adversary and the Divine Mother’s Love shall battle and clear the ground for the supramental descent. The next step was starting an International Centre of Education in Sri Aurobindo’s Name where the humanity of tomorrow can be prepared from the very early years, directly under Her influence. Then came the momentous year and the date, the 29^th Feb 1956, when the promised Supramental manifestation took place. Soon it was followed by taking the work in the next phase that saw a number of Sri Aurobindo Society centres come up in India and a few outside India as well. Finally the whole world was taken up for the work so that the victory within is spread by contagion to each and every corner of the world.

Yes the victory has been won and the work is done. But it has still to be worked out in each one of us. We can surely facilitate it by growing in sincerity and aspiration and above all, opening to Her transforming power of Love. For this time the victory is not about merely pushing the Adversary back into his liar while destroying a few human representatives. It is his conversion and transformation so that the energies that had revolted from the One can now become faithful instruments for the Divine Work. Or else, choosing dissolution, they can return back to their origin for good hoping not to make man prey to their devious and diabolic design. The roots of evil have been removed. Now it is just a matter of time that the trunk and the branches dry up and its poison fruits shrivel and yield no more seeds for their growth. To write about this unknown chapter of Her life and work would go beyond our present scope. It is enough for the moment to remember this day of Victory with gratitude and love, gratitude that opens the doors to Grace, and Love, that accomplishes the Victory:

My Lord, through me thou hast challenged the world and all the adverse forces have risen in protest.

But Thy Grace is winning the victory.

[August 10, 1956]

But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integral – integral in that it applies to all cases. It’s even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesn’t have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesn’t need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesn’t destroy: it transforms.

 Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Love – pure, essential, supreme – melts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.

[January 10, 1961]

But it will take a long time. We mustn’t imagine that it will be done in the blink of an eye – I am ready to spend years on it (if it comes quicker, so much the better).

But it’s the key. The key….

This Power … is it Love?

Well … yes …. It is the essence of Love.

it translates itself into Love. And of course I am not at all speaking of the human, physical quagmire; I am speaking of the most wonderfully beautiful and pure Love imaginable. This Power is the origin of that Love, and it is in the Supreme.

And it has always been said that That and That alone could bring the adverse forces to a halt.

December 23, 1961