Gratitude (8/18) The House of Undivided Time

A magical accord quickened and attuned
To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings;
It raised the servitors of mind and life
To be happy partners in the soul’s response,
Tissue and nerve were turned to sensitive chords,
Records of lustre and ecstasy; it made
The body’s means the spirit’s acolytes.
A heavenlier function with a finer mode
Lit with its grace man’s outward earthliness;
The soul’s experience of its deeper sheaths
No more slept drugged by Matter’s dominance.
In the dead wall closing us from wider self,
Into a secrecy of apparent sleep,
The mystic tract beyond our waking thoughts,
A door parted, built in by Matter’s force,
Releasing things unseized by earthly sense:
A world unseen, unknown by outward mind
Appeared in the silent spaces of the soul.
He sat in secret chambers looking out
Into the luminous countries of the unborn
Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true
And all that the life longs for is drawn close.
He saw the Perfect in their starry homes
Wearing the glory of a deathless form,
Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace,
Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy.
He lived in the mystic space where thought is born
And will is nursed by an ethereal Power
And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths
Till it grows into the likeness of a god.
In the Witness’s occult rooms with mind-built walls
On hidden interiors, lurking passages
Opened the windows of the inner sight.
He owned the house of undivided Time. [Savitri: 27-28]

It is impossible to speak of the tapasya that Sri Aurobindo was engaged in during his stay at Pondicherry. It was not the tapasya of the usual sannyasi kind nor was he living the life of a worldly person anymore. If anything he was busy joining the two ends or the two poles of One Existence now parted by the human mind into two different realities, apparently irreconcilable, Sri Aurobindo was engaged in finding the master clue that would join them and thereby transmute our earthly life into a life divine. We do get little scattered hints through his letters and poems, for example when he mentions to his brother Barin that he is able to enter into the first layers of the Supermind or to Motilal Roy that he could dwell in the Parabrahman (the Highest Reality) for 18 hours a day. Keeping in mind the scientific spirit of the Age he meticulously recorded his spiritual findings in a diary from 1909 to 1927 which give us some clue as to the nature of his work and vision. For example he does speak of perfection of trikaladristi (triple time vision) or of the complete freedom from the ego except for some remnants in the most material sheath. He mentions also about the various powers and perfections that were developing in him as a result of the yoga whose program he received soon after coming to Pondicherry. We can just take a little hint from Savitri where some of these early experiences and realisations are described.

He abode at rest in indivisible Time.
As if a story long written but acted now,
In his present he held his future and his past,
Felt in the seconds the uncounted years
And saw the hours like dots upon a page.
An aspect of the unknown Reality
Altered the meaning of the cosmic scene.
This huge material universe became
A small result of a stupendous force:
Overtaking the moment the eternal Ray
Illumined That which never yet was made.
Thought lay down in a mighty voicelessness;
The toiling Thinker widened and grew still,
Wisdom transcendent touched his quivering heart:
His soul could sail beyond thought’s luminous bar;
Mind screened no more the shoreless infinite.
Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed
Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars
The superconscient realms of motionless Peace
Where judgment ceases and the word is mute
And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.
There came not form or any mounting voice;
There only were Silence and the Absolute.
Out of that stillness mind new-born arose
And woke to truths once inexpressible,
And forms appeared, dumbly significant,
A seeing thought, a self-revealing voice.
He knew the source from which his spirit came:
Movement was married to the immobile Vast;
He plunged his roots into the Infinite,
He based his life upon eternity. [Savitri: 33-34]

We can only marvel and wonder. To use a metaphor, Sri Aurobindo was climbing beyond the Himalayan heights of spiritual experiences, diving deeper than the deepest Atlantic, moving in galactic vastnesses.

And yet something was yet not complete. The golden link was missing still. It was waiting for someone to arrive from the other shore of boundlessness who would take world and Nature and God in her arms and make them true and equal and one.