Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

Sri Aurobindo came to reveal to us that a new stage is being prepared for a new evolutionary emergence. Just as man came behind the beast, and the animal cell emerged out of the plant, so too now man is used to prepare the ground for a yet greater emergence. Sri Aurobindo not only revealed this truth of the future but gave us a new sight to see and understand the present in this light. It is somewhat like explaining today on the basis of tomorrow rather than projecting today into the future and trying to understand it.

Sri Aurobindo came to reveal to us the nature of this evolutionary Force, its ways of working and eventual purpose. He came to tell us that evolution is essentially a manifestation. Creation holds within itself not just the divine essence but also the Divine Power and, even more so a divine seed. It is this seed divine that holds within itself all the potentiality of the Divine Consciousness. Slowly, through the long evolutionary process the outer crust of the seed gives way and out of it evolve living and thinking creatures that fill the earth with surprise and danger, beauty and delight, wager and wonder.

Sri Aurobindo came to tell us that there is indeed a purpose, a purpose beyond these experiences, a purpose beyond discovering the spiritual Source and the material conditions needed for the emergence of man through many a challenges and experiments of Nature with the plant and insect, the reptile, bird and beast. None of this is a random process. Evolution itself has a direction and a purpose. For behind the process of evolution there stands the force of evolution, one with an intuitive knowledge that leads to a perfect adaptation of the means as if towards a prefigured end.

Sri Aurobindo came to tell us that the wandering nomad called man will not only probe wander into far outer space but more importantly probe and wander into his inner territories, discover inner landmarks, submerged continents of love, mountains of peace and joy. This phase of man’s journey, the journey within has been also going on since quite some time, since the Age of the Vedas and perhaps even earlier. Man has made remarkable discoveries through his inner explorations as well. He has discovered the great Nihil, the Zero pregnant with Infinity. He has discovered the One without a second, the Source from where all emerged. He has discovered the great and lesser cosmic powers and given them picturesque forms and names divine. He has discovered the forces of nature, both physical and psychological and harnessed their powers to drive his engines, outer as well as inner. And yet what eludes him still is the purpose, if any, of this great cosmic drama being staged on a relatively small and insignificant planet called earth.

Sri Aurobindo came to tell us that the future of the world is secure despite the appearances. Man sees the surfaces, the appearances as they present itself to our senses and draws conclusions and makes short term predictions. For what are even a hundred years when we place them in the backdrop of a million years through which the Homo Sapiens itself has been evolving. Could anyone, watching the fight between the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnon in which the seemingly better subspecies lost, could have predicted that out of the ferment of these two there would arise the Homo Sapiens erectus who would not only inherit the earth but travel beyond the forests of Africa and Europe to the Moon, the Mars and the Sun and beyond!

Sri Aurobindo came to give us not just a hope but the certitude of the future. He came to tell us that the world is not an unfortunate accident or a series of random chain of events stretching endlessly in Time. There is behind the endless expansion of Space, a Presence Divine. This Presence is not just a static passive Witness, impassive and inert. It is also a dynamic Knowledge and Power that is constantly pouring upon creation, giving it direction and all else to move along the lines of some original determinism. It not only initiates, informs and conducts all the trillion and more processes, but enters into each one of them, rectifies when they stray, intervenes when the play becomes too dramatic and dangerous, carries us through the unexpected, through the rise and fall, through all the countless surprises and challenges.

It is perhaps for this reason that having completed his own sadhana-siddhi, Sri Aurobindo gave the charge of the collective Yoga to The Mother. Both these events, – the completion of Sri Aurobindo’s personal Yoga-Siddhi and handing over the charge of the Sadhana for those who would come, took place a hundred years back on the 24th November 1926. Siddhi meant here the highest realisation possible so far had been achieved. His Yoga that had started with the path of the Vedic Rishis went far and deep ascending to the plane of the great Gods.

The story reminds one of Radha and Krishna. Sri Krishna gave the integral path in the Gita. But Radha showed the direct path of surrender and love. Yet since mankind, even the closest gopa and gopis were not ready. They turned the psychic and spiritual love of Radha and Krishna into a vital play. Hence Radha remained in the background waiting for her hour while mankind went through a long and complex evolution including a terrible war and the destruction of a whole civilisation.

The Mother had in fact realised the same truths, the supramental consciousness and its possibilities of terrestrial transformation independently, before meeting Sri Aurobindo, so to say. Though an adept in the occult domains, an artist and an intellectual in her own right who wrote philosophical articles for the Cosmic Review. She had her own close relationship with the gods of every culture. Yet the unique thing that She brought for earth and mankind was the direct sunlit path through the psychic door in the depths of the heart. That is why Sri Aurobindo once remarked that the Mother entered the Supramental through the direct door. This, if any, is the shortest swiftest, safest route to the supramental transformation.