The Great Descent pp. 80-81

Opening remarks
Even as Aswapati continues his ascension further, he is greeted by an unexpected movement from Above. The Transcendent towards whom he is aspiring not only receives him but comes down and embraces him. It is with this experience that a new path of yoga begins to be carved out of the old. It is the yoga of Supramental descent that begins to enter into the yoga of Ascension. It is this that is being described now in passages full of Beauty and Power.

Divine Retreat
In a divine retreat from mortal thought,
In a prodigious gesture of soul-sight,
His being towered into pathless heights,
Naked of its vesture of humanity.

As we have already been told Aswapati has retired and withdrawn from the human fields. His consciousness is towering into pathless heights, beyond the cosmic into the Transcendent. He is able to glimpse the peaks that none has visited or trod up till now. Even as he does so his human nature is left far behind.

A strong Descent
As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure
A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,
A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,
Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs
And penetrated nerve and heart and brain
That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:
His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp.

In response to the aspiration there comes down the Grace, the Divine Shakti. It is this that begins to distinguish Sri Aurobindo’s yoga from other yogas. It is the descent of the Divine Power, Divine Light and Sweetness and Bliss that envelop and penetrate each nerve and fiber of our being. All this is being described in passages of exquisite beauty.

Torn out from mortality
In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time,
By a Power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven,
Taken sovereignly into eternal arms,
Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss,
In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
Hurried into unimaginable depths,
Upborne into immeasurable heights,
It was torn out from its mortality
And underwent a new and bourneless change.

Once the Divine Force descends, the work of transformation begins and does not stop until the whole nature undergoes a divine change. Whatever Time it may take, the Divine Shakti never abandons us. She continues to steadily increase the pressure, pouring Her Love and Delight until all is uplifted and transmuted. Under the pressure of the descending Force, our consciousness begins to deepen, heighten and widen beyond measure until all in us mates with the illimitable. Our limited death bound being enters the infinity of Her Bliss and Love and Power thereby undergoing a tremendous transmutation by Her transforming Touch.

Magnitudes of God’s embrace
An Omniscient knowing without sight or thought,
An indecipherable Omnipotence,
A mystic Form that could contain the worlds,
Yet make one human breast its passionate shrine,
Drew him out of his seeking loneliness
Into the magnitudes of God’s embrace.

The Transcendent secrecy then enters the human heart and settles down there with its Supreme Power and Knowledge. It surrounds and envelops the seeker with Her marvellous Presence. Our lives are then no more our own and an All-knowing Wisdom, an All-Powerful Presence then begins to carry us towards some predetermined Goal.

Closing Remarks
These are the first changes that Aswapati, the seer-yogi is undergoing following the descent of the Transcendent Supramental Consciousness into his being.