The Lord Has Promised
THE LORD has come and touched this struggling lump of clay and promised that one day this clay will reveal and manifest the divinity within it. Through the incarnate Divine He has touched all things with his Glory and Grace. The incarnation, the body of the embodied Divine, the Avatar, becomes the door and the path for each unfolding. He becomes the way and the means.
“O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:
All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.
All shall be written out in destiny’s book
By my trustee of thought and plan and act,
The executor of my will, eternal Time.
…
I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,
I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,
I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.
Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,
Because thou hast chosen to share earth’s struggle and fate
And leaned in pity over earth-bound men
And turned aside to help and yearned to save,
I bind by thy heart’s passion thy heart to mine
And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.
Now will I do in thee my marvellous works. [698]
O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine.
When all thy work in human time is done
The mind of earth shall be a home of light,
The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
The body of earth a tabernacle of God.
Awakened from the mortal’s ignorance
Men shall be lit with the Eternal’s ray
And the glory of my sun-lift in their thoughts
And feel in their hearts the sweetness of my love
And in their acts my Power’s miraculous drive.
My will shall be the meaning of their days;
Living for me, by me, in me they shall live.
In the heart of my creation’s mystery
I will enact the drama of thy soul,
Inscribe the long romance of Thee and Me.
I will pursue thee across the centuries;
Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,
Naked of ignorance’ protecting veil
And without covert from my radiant gods.
No shape shall screen thee from my divine desire,
Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.
In the nudity of thy discovered self,
In a bare identity with all that is,
Disrobed of thy covering of humanity,
Divested of the dense veil of human thought,
Made one with every mind and body and heart,
Made one with all Nature and with Self and God, [699]
The Lord is beyond everything we can ever conceive, experience, realise and imagine. But from time to time He comes down to us in a form that is visible and tangible and hence relatable. In the passage above we see the Supreme Lord is promising Savitri, the embodied Divine, that the future of the earth has been secured by her. She has been given the charge of the new creation that is being built here as the next manifestation of the Divine upon earth.
The Dual Power
ALWAYS the lord has come with his Power, his divine consort, his Shakti, at each crucial juncture to steer earth and mankind through the crisis. He always comes with his Shakti, the eternal Feminine who has gone forth into creation. But not always has the feminine Power been recognised. It is through these great incarnations that the creation advances as it is through Them that matter and material Nature receive the direct touch of the Lord. Let our hearts open with gratitude and our lives receive the redeeming divine touch.
O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri,
I sent you forth of old beneath the stars,
A dual power of God in an ignorant world,
In a hedged creation shut from limitless self,
Bringing down God to the insentient globe,
Lifting earth-beings to immortality.
In the world of my knowledge and my ignorance
Where God is unseen and only is heard a Name
And knowledge is trapped in the boundaries of mind
And life is hauled in the drag-net of desire
And Matter hides the soul from its own sight,
You are my Force at work to uplift earth’s fate,
My self that moves up the immense incline
Between the extremes of the spirit’s night and day.
He is my soul that climbs from nescient Night
Through life and mind and supernature’s Vast
To the supernal light of Timelessness
And my eternity hid in moving Time
And my boundlessness cut by the curve of Space.
It climbs to the greatness it has left behind
And to the beauty and joy from which it fell,
To the closeness and sweetness of all things divine,
To light without bounds and life illimitable,
Taste of the depths of the Ineffable’s bliss,
Touch of the immortal and the infinite.
He is my soul that gropes out of the beast
To reach humanity’s heights of lucent thought
And the vicinity of Truth’s sublime.
He is the godhead growing in human lives
And in the body of earth-being’s forms:
He is the soul of man climbing to God
In Nature’s surge out of earth’s ignorance.
O Savitri, thou art my spirit’s Power,
The revealing voice of my immortal Word,
The face of Truth upon the roads of Time
Pointing to the souls of men the routes to God.
While the dim light from the veiled Spirit’s peak
Falls upon Matter’s stark inconscient sleep
As if a pale moonbeam on a dense glade,
And Mind in a half-light moves amid half-truths
And the human heart knows only human love
And life is a stumbling and imperfect force
And the body counts out its precarious days,
You shall be born into man’s dubious hours
In forms that hide the soul’s divinity
And show through veils of the earth’s doubting air
My glory breaking as through clouds a sun,
Or burning like a rare and inward fire,
And with my nameless influence fill men’s lives. [702-703]
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are none other than the dual incarnate Power sent to earth again and again from time to time to open through their tapasya a greater age for man. They have assumed a human form for the next stage of the divine lila upon earth.
The Next Evolutionary Step
THE UNFOLDING of the lila of the Lord is not yet over. He has started the creation with the ‘intent’ or the ‘idea-will’ to manifest his own divinity through forms and names. The task is not yet over. Man is only the middle term for someone greater and diviner to come. Let us then rejoice and get ourselves to work. Let us come together and collaborate with the Lord’s work towards the new unfolding. He is here! He is here! We can find him in his work. We can find him through his work.
But more there is concealed in God’s Beyond
That shall one day reveal its hidden face.
Now mind is all and its uncertain ray,
Mind is the leader of the body and life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul
Carrying the luminous wanderer in the night
To vistas of a far uncertain dawn,
To the end of the Spirit’s fathomless desire,
To its dream of absolute truth and utter bliss.
There are greater destinies mind cannot surmise
Fixed on the summit of the evolving Path
The Traveller now treads in the Ignorance,
Unaware of his next step, not knowing his goal.
Mind is not all his tireless climb can reach,
There is a fire on the apex of the worlds,
There is a house of the Eternal’s light,
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power.
The Spirit’s mightiness shall cast off its mask;
Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world’s course:
It shall be seen in its own veilless beams,
A star rising from the Inconscient’s night,
A sun climbing to Supernature’s peak.
Abandoning the dubious middle Way,
A few shall glimpse the miraculous Origin
And some shall feel in you the secret Force
And they shall turn to meet a nameless tread,
Adventurers into a mightier Day.
Ascending out of the limiting breadths of mind,
They shall discover the world’s huge design
And step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast. [704]
Man is a transitional being since mind is not the highest climb in the gradations of consciousness. There are steps beyond the mind, levels of consciousness yet to emerge, just as there are steps below the mind. With the passage of time man shall evolve towards these yet to be discovered levels just as he has emerged from the ape. Out of the finite we shall grow towards the Infinite. Out of ignorance we shall grow into Truth, out of smallness and narrowness and limitation we shall grow towards the Vast, out of error and sin we shall grow towards God’s natural Right.
Coming of the Superman
THE LORD has given his own example of what a superman would be like. He has shown us the way, paved for us the path to be followed, sacrificed all so that man may grow into a perfect divine image, attempted, achieved all for us. Let us silently do what He wants us to do. What better way is there to express our gratitude towards him?
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre in man,
Yet is the source of all things thought and done,
The fount of the creation and its works,
It is the origin of all truth here,
The sun-orb of mind’s fragmentary rays,
Infinity’s heaven that spills the rain of God,
The Immense that calls to man to expand the Spirit,
The wide Aim that justifies his narrow attempts,
A channel for the little he tastes of bliss.
Some shall be made the glory’s receptacles
And vehicles of the Eternal’s luminous power.
These are the high forerunners, the heads of Time,
The great deliverers of earth-bound mind,
The high transfigurers of human clay,
The first-born of a new supernal race.
The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demigod
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave.
Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme,
His bright unveiled Transcendence shall illumine
The mind and heart and force the life and act
To interpret his inexpressible mystery
In a heavenly alphabet of Divinity’s signs. [705]
This is a prophesy based not merely on prevision but on actually working towards it. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother gave their life to the evolution and emergence of the new race of superhuman beings, the superman who will be like a man in his outer body but with a new consciousness, a higher consciousness moving towards the final embodiment of the supramental consciousness. This intermediate species is the superman who shall find the way towards the supramental transmutation.
The Superman as King of Earth
THE LORD has come and touched the earth with his golden smile, the smile that saves and redeems. The promise has been given. Death is an illusion, suffering is an illusion, error is an illusion. O Man, live awhile yet with this illusion if yet it is needed for our growth. But know that the age of death and falsehood is over. It is the age of truth, the age of unity, the age of true freedom. He has delivered the new race, the superman who is growing and soon will overtake the earth as the leader of the next evolutionary cycle.
The supermind shall be his nature’s fount,
The Eternal’s truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal’s truth shall be his light and guide.
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.
A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world.
On Nature’s luminous tops, on the Spirit’s ground,
The superman shall reign as king of life,
Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven,
And lead towards God and truth man’s ignorant heart
And lift towards godhead his mortality.
A power released from circumscribing bounds,
Its height pushed up beyond death’s hungry reach,
Life’s tops shall flame with the Immortal’s thoughts,
Light shall invade the darkness of its base.
Then in the process of evolving Time
All shall be drawn into a single plan,
A divine harmony shall be earth’s law,
Beauty and joy remould her way to live:
Even the body shall remember God,
Nature shall draw back from mortality
And Spirit’s fires shall guide the earth’s blind force;
Knowledge shall bring into the aspirant Thought
A high proximity to Truth and God.
The supermind shall claim the world for Light
And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart
And place Light’s crown on Nature’s lifted head
And found Light’s reign on her unshaking base.
A greater truth than earth’s shall roof-in earth
And shed its sunlight on the roads of mind;
A power infallible shall lead the thought,
A seeing Puissance govern life and act,
In earthly hearts kindle the Immortal’s fire.
A soul shall wake in the Inconscient’s house;
The mind shall be God-vision’s tabernacle,
The body intuition’s instrument,
And life a channel for God’s visible power.
All earth shall be the Spirit’s manifest home,
Hidden no more by the body and the life,
Hidden no more by the mind’s ignorance;
An unerring Hand shall shape event and act.
The Spirit’s eyes shall look through Nature’s eyes,
The Spirit’s force shall occupy Nature’s force.
This world shall be God’s visible garden-house,
The earth shall be a field and camp of God,
Man shall forget consent to mortality
And his embodied frail impermanence. [706-707]
The Supermind shall lead man towards the final conquest over death as the crowning Glory of creation. It is the last inevitable step of the supramental transformation which may be yet a thousand years ahead. But the word has been given and the promise stands until the deed is done. The supramental age will be the age of truth and harmony, truth that is one with harmony and harmony that is based on truth. The beings who will embody this higher divine truth and harmony shall be the pioneers, the new born of the new race.
The Union of Spirit and Matter
LO, THE DREAM of the ages has been fulfilled. By the taking of a human body, the Lord has touched matter. The Divine Mother has forged the golden link thus creating a new and direct bond between matter and Spirit. Let us sing the songs of the future. Let us invoke the Lord of the future.
Even should a hostile force cling to its reign
And claim its right’s perpetual sovereignty
And man refuse his high spiritual fate,
Yet shall the secret Truth in things prevail.
For in the march of all-fulfilling Time
The hour must come of the Transcendent’s will:
All turns and winds towards his predestined ends
In Nature’s fixed inevitable course
Decreed since the beginning of the worlds
In the deep essence of created things:
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.
But first high Truth must set her feet on earth
And man aspire to the Eternal’s light
And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch
And all his life obey an inner Force.
This too shall be; for a new life shall come,
A body of the Superconscient’s truth,
A native field of Supernature’s mights:
It shall make earth’s nescient ground Truth’s colony,
Make even the Ignorance a transparent robe
Through which shall shine the brilliant limbs of Truth
And Truth shall be a sun on Nature’s head
And Truth shall be the guide of Nature’s steps
And Truth shall gaze out of her nether deeps.
When superman is born as Nature’s king
His presence shall transfigure Matter’s world:
He shall light up Truth’s fire in Nature’s night,
He shall lay upon the earth Truth’s greater law;
Man too shall turn towards the Spirit’s call.
Awake to his hidden possibility,
Awake to all that slept within his heart
And all that Nature meant when earth was formed
And the Spirit made this ignorant world his home,
He shall aspire to Truth and God and Bliss.
Interpreter of a diviner law
And instrument of a supreme design,
The higher kind shall lean to lift up man.
Man shall desire to climb to his own heights.
The truth above shall wake a nether truth,
Even the dumb earth become a sentient force.
The Spirit’s tops and Nature’s base shall draw
Near to the secret of their separate truth
And know each other as one deity.
The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face.
Then man and superman shall be at one
And all the earth become a single life. [708-709]
It is still only a few infant steps that the new world has taken, but the new cycle of time has been set into motion and it cannot be reversed anymore. There are forces that would try to destroy the new born child of the supramental age, but they will be defeated and leave man forever. For it is the Lord and the Divine Mother herself who have reset the balance, and there is no human or any other power that can undo it.
The One Shall Become the Many
THIS IS the original plan of creation wherein each element shall become one with the Divine without annihilation or dissolution. The first definitive step has been taken in that direction. Let us be full of the joy of anticipation, the joy that comes with faith in the sacrifice of the Lord in matter that is bound to bring the desired results.
“Even the many shall some answer make
And bear the splendour of the Divine’s rush
And his impetuous knock at unseen doors.
A heavenlier passion shall upheave men’s lives,
Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam,
Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire.
Earth’s bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
Mortality’s bondslaves shall unloose their bonds,
Mere men into spiritual beings grow
And see awake the dumb divinity.
Intuitive beams shall touch the nature’s peaks,
A revelation stir the nature’s depths;
The Truth shall be the leader of their lives,
Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and act,
They shall feel themselves lifted nearer to the sky,
As if a little lower than the gods.
For knowledge shall pour down in radiant streams
And even darkened mind quiver with new life
And kindle and burn with the Ideal’s fire
And turn to escape from mortal ignorance.
The frontiers of the Ignorance shall recede,
More and more souls shall enter into light,
Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear
And lives blaze with a sudden inner flame
And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight
And human wills tune to the divine will,
These separate selves the Spirit’s oneness feel,
These senses of heavenly sense grow capable,
The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy
And mortal bodies of immortality.
A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.
Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come
Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;
A sudden bliss shall run through every limb
And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit’s ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.” [709-710]
The new creation will start with a few but it will spread with each passing year to encompass and include larger and larger sections of humanity. It will spread through contagion and above all by the very fact of the presence of the supramental consciousness in the very atmosphere of the earth.