The coming together of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is surely among the most momentous events of the twentieth century. These are events that are hardly recorded by history or heeded by human eyes. By far they go undocumented though Nature marks them through subtle inner sense and the mystic feels its impact through his inner spiritual vision. Nevertheless whether heeded by human eyes or not the moment justifies itself through the impact it inwardly has upon the visible outer worlds.
One of the things that we see is that in less than year’s time since the first meeting of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the 29th March 1914, the world was suddenly engulfed in the fire of battle and death. Was it the last dying spasms of the old world that foresaw its death through the coming together of the Two who are secretly One though apparently separated in the mysterious play of Time, Space and Circumstance? Or was it the sudden surge of new possibility that sent Nature in a restless upheaval to find the seeds of a New World it senses within? Were the revolutions that were shaking the world during the first half of the previous century the ploughing of the fields of human nature so that the child of the New Creation, the flame-child can be born in the womb of the old? Or was it the last ultimate revolt of the forces of Darkness and Division rising up to slay the Divine Child while yet in the womb creating a massive confusion and convulsion of the earth-nature evolved so far by the animal and the Asura uplifted to some partial height by a rational humanity? Was it the sign of human seeking forcing its way through some dead resistance in the human heart towards a greater than human creation it foresaw in its depths and expressed in intuitive flashes? Or more pragmatically was it the coming together of the quintessential West and the Spirit of the East symbolically opening the doors of a greater and more synthetic future where the different strands of human seeking will join in a great consummation of the future?
At the turn of the twentieth century Sri Aurobindo had observed that great revolutions are coming that would shift the balance of the old world to make room for the emergence of the new world order. He wrote:
The old shall perish; it shall pass away,
Expunged, annihilated, blotted out;
And all the iron bands that ring about
Man’s wide expansion shall at last give way.
Freedom, God, Immortality; the three
Are one and shall be realised at length,
Love, Wisdom, Justice, Joy and utter Strength
Gather into a pure felicity.
It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,
What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed,
Vision and vain imagination deemed,
The City of Delight, the Age of Gold.
The Iron Age is ended. Only now
The last fierce spasm of the dying past
Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed,
Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow.
This is man’s progress; for the Iron Age
Prepares the Age of Gold. What we call sin,
Is but man’s leavings as from deep within
The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage.
He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain,
Because it clings and constantly returns,
And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns
More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain.
He rises to the good with Titan wings:
And this the reason of his high unease,
Because he came from the infinities
To build immortally with mortal things;
The body with increasing soul to fill,
Extend Heaven’s claim upon the toiling earth
And climb from death to a diviner birth
Grasped and supported by immortal Will.
[In the Moonlight, CWSA 2: 243-244]
What was foreseen in his soul depths is becoming more and more visible on the surface now. We may equally say, and with a greater force of an intuitive inner conviction, that the changes foreseen by him at the beginning of the previous century were initiated in that eternal moment of their first meeting as a seed cast from the Eternal in endless Time
Savitri puts it beautifully:
By the revealing greatness of a look,
Form-smitten the spirit’s memory woke in sense.
The mist was torn that lay between two lives;
Her heart unveiled and his to find her turned;
Attracted as in heaven star by star,
They wondered at each other and rejoiced
And wove affinity in a silent gaze.
A moment passed that was eternity’s ray,
An hour began, the matrix of new Time.
