There are two sides of our human story. The one that comes naturally to us and which we regard as true is that which we see and experience from our human side. We see ourselves as the apex of the evolutionary pyramid and think that we are the highest and the best. We see ourselves as evolutionary products of Nature, as an offshoot of the animal and think that to live as the animals do with some additional elements that nature has created such as speech etc, is our natural law of living. We see all around everything based on matter and its modifications and naturally come to believe that matter is the sole reality and to master the forces of matter is the way to our mastery and sovereignty upon earth. At the same time we do not see the soul nor the Divine and hence declare that such truths either do not exist or else are some kind of fictions of the mind that can well fabricate imaginary realities to support its journey. All this sounds so logical that we hardly question ourselves and our experiences. We hardly reflect and think that may be the limit of our vision and experience is not the limit of creation to say the least. May be there are things that escape us either because we have not yet developed the means or perhaps Nature has still to develop such instruments us that we see sometimes in the mystics who are able to pierce behind the iron and the gold braided curtains of nature and glimpse the Unseen. These exceptional samples of humanity are in a way the forerunners who indicate the future possibilities waiting for us much as the restless curious ape was the forerunner of man.
A time does come when we are drawn upwards and inwards and begin to sense, at first vaguely and then a little more perceptively that there is indeed something that has escaped us so far. Even it is perhaps the most important element of our humanity, the secret key to understanding ourselves and creation. This small little aperture that admits hardly a trickle of light begins to grow and grow until a clear patch of sunlit sky is visible before which our candle flares of the mind seem like a night. However here too for a long time we continue with our habitual thinking that all this change that is happening is due to our own efforts. Or else if the door has opened with the help of a religion or a Master we tend to believe that thus alone can it open. Once again we become bound to our experience rather than taking it as a luminous step to pass from truth to greater truth, light to greater light.
But a time does come when our very way of seeing is reversed. We begin to see and experience things from the other side, from the Divine side so to say. And what do we discover then? We discover that it is the Divine who has always been with us, drawing us through all the meanderings of our journey. He has been there with us through all the twists and turns of Fate. If we did not see Him or experience Him it is simply because we were not yet ready. Here too it is He was preparing us through all the pleasant and painful experiences for the grand apocalypse. It was not our efforts but His Grace that worked out the miraculous opening in the magic circle of nature whose rainbow colours had charmed and held us captive. The effort itself was an impulsion from Him who dwells secret within our hearts. The impulsion, the will, the vision all came from Him as a gift and yet our ego-self thought it is me who is doing it. Then we discover that the means and processes we seemingly used for the discovery are not the only means. In fact He can use any means, however humble and seemingly insignificant, for His grand disclosure. The method we used is also not the only one. He can use any method and all methods and no method. Our experience of His Presence and absence is itself an illusion, a limitation, for He is always there. He alone was, He IS and HE will always be there. Then all things begin to reveal His body and all disclose His mighty Presence that breathes as much in the drift of the galaxies as in the blooming of a flower. It is then that life becomes a perpetual miracle and a marvelous unfolding of Her Grace, a wonderful journey moved by Her Breath, a beauty and a freedom and bliss.
Then this question that we often ask in our present state as to where is the Mother, where is Sri Aurobindo loses its sense. We see Them as the Eternal who have been laboring upon earth since its very inception. They never left us, will never leave us. From life to life we have worked with Them for the great unfolding upon earth. When something has to be done directly upon matter then They enter the limits of our mortal state and having done what they came to do withdraw momentarily to prepare our souls and mind and body to reach out to that new state of being. This is the eternal game that They play with our soul and nature. So far we have played the game unconsciously. But a time comes when we become conscious and discover Them everywhere, in this body and other bodies and beyond all bodies, a luminous and mighty Presence, eternal, all-pervading, Alone.
