Let us raise our eyes and cast them upon the world around us. Wherever we turn our gaze, huge masses of strength rise before our vision, tremendous, swift and inexorable forces, gigantic figures of energy, terrible sweeping columns of force. All is growing large and strong. The Shakti of war, the Shakti of wealth, the Shakti of Science are tenfold more mighty and colossal, a hundredfold more fierce, rapid and busy in their activity, a thousandfold more prolific in resources, weapons and instruments than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous forms of Rakshasas, Asuras, Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world. We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life of Japan. Some are Mleccha Shaktis clouded in their strength, black or blood-crimson with tamas or rajas, others are Arya Shaktis, bathed in a pure flame of renunciation and utter self-sacrifice: but all are the Mother in Her new phase, remoulding, creating. She is pouring Her spirit into the old; She is whirling into life the new. [Bande Mataram, CWSA 06:79-80]
The world was longing for a change. The old world order had collapsed and the new was not yet tangible to human sight. All that was visible was an angst or the oestrus, not yet the labour pains. But post 2000 the labour pains have begun though the rumblings and the restlessness began in the 60s itself. 2014 saw waves of Nationalism whose main purpose was to turn the nation’s inwards to discover its Soul. The definitive process could be felt with the year 2020 marking a centenary of the Mother’s final arrival to Pondicherry, Bharat.
However, the old world and its empires, though collapsed and dying have not given up. Instead of looking inwards to discover the nation soul, some of them are still preoccupied with ideological and religious imperialism. Racism is dying but its place has been usurped by economic superiority as if the worth of human beings is measured by the money in their pocket or the machines at their command or the military gears and bombs they can manufacture. Now all these things have their place and importance and, in the present state of the world hanging in a precarious and uncertain balance of powers and rapidly shifting equations between the nations, no country can afford to disarm itself and risk being run over by Titanic forces waiting round the corner as hungry wolves. Equally it is important to be strong economically and work towards parity in social and economic frameworks needed to support our collective existence and outer life.
The question is if this is all that is needed? Or there is something more, something crucial, something not only fundamental but indispensable that is missing in our present self-view and world view. We believe it is needed and urgently so. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cautioned about it and clearly said that in this crucial element, the missing piece of the cosmic puzzle it is ‘India that is Bharat’ that alone can help the world and find novel and true solutions to the problems that vex mankind and mar his efforts to improve our individual and collective existence with failure and eventual collapse, or to use a significant term from Bharat, pralaya so to say.
About Savitri | B1C1-11 A Sacred Yearning (p.5)