Beyond Credal Religions (3) The Moment of Transition

What we are witnessing today is a moment of transition. It is a twilight moment when light and darkness are mixed in such a way that they seem difficult to separate. It is only as the sun rises that they begin to part and the night is left behind with its horrid or beautiful dreams and the day begins demanding effort, calling us to the great adventure of consciousness and joy. Those who have felt the dawn have begun to put in the effort to open and receive the New Light. They are not the reason for the rising of the sun nor its cause. Yet they have aspired through the night and waited with faith. They become the first born, the natural heirs of the Dawn, the announcers of the new coming. They are the first witnesses of the Glory, it’s receptacles to fill their eyes and body and mind and heart and soul with the New Life. They have been led and still being led by the stars of destiny pointing the way and opening the path towards the Saviour New born Light.

There are others who are still asleep, dreaming their dreams. Their dreams are the realities of yesterday that the night has taken into its folds. Yet they linger in the past trying to close their eyes to the new body of Truth. They prefer the slain corpse and dead forms to the Reality that is ever new born and seeks for Itself new names and forms plastic and supple and wider and beautiful and luminous to embody itself. On the one hand the New Idea is taking hold of the human mind, the new impulsion is stirring the human life with sublime feelings and intuitive impulses. Even the body is being seized by a new aspiration for light and truth and immortality and freedom from suffering and disease. But on the other hand, the resistance of the old world and the old ways is lashing its proverbial dragon tail unwilling to concede to the New Light even though it somewhere knows it’s defeat inevitable.

These are indeed times of transition which like all transitions create a web of confusion intermingling the new and the old. It is just a moment from the point of view of earth’s history, a brief second when measured by the eyes of cosmic beings who watch over and govern our lines of destiny. Yet from the individual point of view with our brief and harassed existence it seems like a large space of time, a difficult and dangerous curve, a dark and narrow passage to negotiate. The lack of foreknowledge, this inability for prevision makes it seem all the more threatening and perilous. But what cannot be seen by the dim corporeal mind of man heavily dependent upon the data of the senses that conceal much more than they reveal can be felt and even seen by the eye of faith given to man to navigate through the passage, especially in the absence of a sure light of intuition.

These are therefore times of much confusion that try to deter our advance along the new paths opened for earth and man. During these moments a step forward seems a step backward even as sometimes what seems the way forward towards the new future is actually a falling backwards to the old life wearing a new fashion to appear acceptable and new. But the new is not always new and the old is not always old. There are things in the past that have waited for this hour to see the fulfillment of the aspiration of the Ages. Equally there are things that are being offered as the future, as the extension of human hope but are actually a forced prolongation of the past methods. There are ideas that have sprung up from the shadows of man’s inhuman and animal past that seek to occupy the space being vacated by Religion. They offer us dreams of the millennium through science and technology, new sects and cults repeating the old story, new philosophies and systems of knowledge that justify our animal and subhuman instincts, new ways of life that believe licentiousness to be liberty and give the name of freedom and equality to ruthless social and political ideologies. Indeed, these are times of much confusion as in all transitions and it will do good to remember the Mother’s words that caution and show us the way:

“I believe I already told you that there is as though a golden Force which is pressing down (gesture of pressing) that has no material consistence and yet seems to be tremendously heavy…
… and which is pressing upon Matter, thus, to compel it to turn towards the Divine inwardly—not an outward escape (gesture upward), but inwardly to turn to the Divine. And so the apparent result is as though catastrophes were inevitable. And yet along with this perception of inevitable catastrophe, there are at the same time solutions to the situation, events which come about that are by themselves altogether miraculous. It is as though the two extremes were becoming more extreme, as though what is good was becoming better and what is bad becoming worse. It is like that. With the formidable Power that is pressing upon the world — that was my impression…

And then, for individuals also, it is the same thing.

They who know how to turn towards… (how to say it?) who sincerely call the Divine, who feel that it is the only salvation, the only way out, and who sincerely give themselves, then (gesture of breaking through) in a few minutes it becomes wonderful. For the smallest things—there is nothing small or big, important or unimportant—it is all the same.

The values change.

It is as though the vision of the world changes. (Silence)

It is, as it were, to give an idea of the change in the world by the descent of the Supramental. Truly things that were neutral become absolute: a little error becomes categorical in its consequences, and a little sincerity, a little true aspiration becomes miraculous in its result. The values have intensified in people, and even from the material point of view the smallest fault, the very smallest, has big consequences, and the least sincerity in the aspiration has wonderful results. The values have intensified, become precise…

Well, it is very simple. The whole creation must want nothing but the Divine, nothing but to manifest the Divine. And all that it does, even all its so-called errors, are only means towards making it inevitable for the whole creation to manifest the Divine—but not the “Divine” as man conceives him to be, “this and not that”, with all kinds of restrictions: a Totality of tremendous power and light. It is truly the Power in the world, a new and tremendous Power that has come into the world and must manifest itself and must make “manifestable” (if one may so put it) this Divine All-Power…

All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground! Useless! It has no force any more, no reality any more; it no longer corresponds to what is. It is truly a new world.

(Silence) (Mother closes her eyes.)

But one essential condition: the reign of the ego must be ended.

The ego is now the obstacle. The ego must be replaced by the divine consciousness—Sri Aurobindo himself called it “supramental”; we can call it supramental so that there might not be any misunderstanding, because when one speaks of “the Divine”, immediately people think of a “God”, and that spoils everything. It is not that. No, it is not that. (Mother slowly brings down her closed fists) It is the descent of the supramental world, which is not a purely imaginative thing (gesture upward), it is an absolutely material Power. But (Mother smiles) it has no need of material means.

A world which wants to take a body in the world. [CWM 11: 313 – 316]