The Higher Power and Earth Nature, pp. 109-110

Opening Remarks
There has always been the touch of higher consciousness, awakening earthly life and invigorating it with sublime impulses. However it does not last long. The flesh responds for a while filling earthly creations with wonder and beauty of the higher worlds. Then it tires and the higher Power retires.

Earthly art
To copy on earth’s copies is his art.

The forms we find on earth are themselves imitations of heavenly realities. We as human beings copy this copy because we are unaware of the original reality.

Transient house of the divine Idea
For when he strives for things surpassing earth,
Too rude the workman’s tools, too crude his stuff,
And hardly with his heart’s blood he achieves
His transient house of the divine Idea,
His figure of a Time-inn for the Unborn.

Here Sri Aurobindo compares man to a transient house or a temporary Inn where the divine Idea lodges itself for a brief period. This is so because our human nature developing on the ground of earth-matter still remains largely crude both in the inner consciousness as well as the instruments that have evolved so far.

Beyond our reach
Our being thrills with high far memories
And would bring down their dateless meanings here,
But, too divine for earthly Nature’s scheme,
Beyond our reach the eternal marvels blaze.

There is a higher divine Nature from where our soul has emerged. That is why its memory always haunts us and moves us to seek higher things. But these higher truths and greater realities are too high for our earth nature to reach. Our soul tied to earth-nature remains thus bound even though somewhere within it it carries the memories of this ‘lost divinity.’

Absolute powers that dwell on the inner heights
Absolute they dwell, unborn, immutable,
Immaculate in the Spirit’s deathless air,
Immortal in a world of motionless Time
And an unchanging muse of deep self-space.

These higher Powers dwell in realms beyond time. They are not born but spring forth from the Immutable as His divine aspects. Pure in their being and movement these Powers are immortal and unchanging in their essence.

The godlike act
Only when have climbed above ourselves,
A line of the Transcendent meets our road
And joins us to the timeless and the true;
It brings to us the inevitable word,
The godlike act, the thoughts that never die.

It is only when we have ascended these summits through arduous effort that something from the Transcendent comes down like a transmuting Ray and links us to deathless heights and fills us divine thoughts and the breath of God impels us to act.

Figures of eternity
A ripple of light and glory wraps the brain,
And travelling down the moment’s vanishing route
The figures of eternity arrive.

It is during such God-moments that the light and glory of the Higher consciousness brings to us deep intimations from the Beyond.

Visitor’s and Guests
As the mind’s visitors or the heart’s guests
They espouse our mortal brevity awhile,
Or seldom in some rare delivering glimpse
Are caught by our vision’s delicate surmise.

These divine intimations enter our mind and heart as visitors and guests bringing to us the closeness of a greater existence for a brief hour. Or else we catch a fleeting glimpse of these greater realities in vision and sudden flashes of insight.

Hidden miracle of our destiny
Although beginnings only and first attempts,
These glimmerings point to the secret of our birth
And the hidden miracle of our destiny.

Though momentary and imperfect these glimpses that give birth to a genius in the clay are possibilities of the future. They point the inevitable destiny of man and the origin of our inmost being.

Contact and a call
What we are there and here on earth shall be
Is imaged in a contact and a call.

These first few intimations and glimpses, these brief momentary contacts with the Higher Truth, these uplifting aspirations and seekings are the pointers towards our highest destiny. They sum up as in a brief moment, who we truly are in our essence and shall yet be in the future.

Our present state and the greater future ahead
As yet earth’s imperfection is our sphere,
Our nature’s glass shows not our real self;
That greatness still abides held back within.

It is true that our present nature is very imperfect. Yet the seed of the Divine dwells within us and will sooner or later reveal and unfold in our life.

Godhead’s robe
Earth’s doubting future hides our heritage:
The Light now distant shall grow native here,
The Strength that visits us our comrade power;
The Ineffable shall find a secret voice,
The Imperishable burn through Matter’s screen
Making this mortal body godhead’s robe.

Though we may doubt this future given our present condition, yet the Light hidden in human heart is bound to grow, the strength and power of God emerge from our depths and reshape our life and speech and act. Even the body shall become a transparent and luminous and plastic robe of the Spirit as the crown of this evolutionary destiny.

The Source and the Future
The Spirit’s greatness is our timeless source
And it shall be our crown in endless Time.

What we are within, that we shall be outside. This is the great secret being revealed to us through this remarkable prophetic passage.

Closing remarks
Man’s true origin is from very high and he is meant to serve as a link between earth nature and the Higher Powers. So shall it be, assures Sri Aurobindo in his prophetic vision of Truth.