Sri Aurobindo said in His poem Evolution :
O thou who climbest mind from the dull stone
Turn to the miracled summits still unwon.
The first half of Evolution has been before us , the human beings — we have grown, step by step from Matter, which is described by Sri Aurobindo as “dull stone” — we have maneuvered to become the humans through the prolonged and difficult course of Evolution — from the stone to the human. That is the story of the Advent of Man, amidst the stone and the plants and the animals.
And now, there are the new summits before us, which are still unwon — the summits of consciousness and existence : we shall have to face and conquer the new summits beyond the human existence and the human consciousness. We need to conquer the new heights of Consciousness, beyond all our limitations, all our present imperfections and inacapacities, all our ignorance and darkness, and we need to have the miraculous capacities to transform ourselves for the New Creation, for the Advent of the New Man, the Superman, the Supramental Being.
That is the Truth — either we will have to achieve it or we will have to lose the struggle of existence and be doomed to the Abyss. That is what The Mother has said to us :
Men, countries, continents,
The choice is imperative — Truth or Abyss.
OOOOO
In spite of all the imperfections and ignorance and darkness in Man, in spite of all the prevalence and the pull and push of the animal nature in Man, since the early beginning of his civilization, he has an opening and an asking for the Divine, for the Supreme. He has always tried to have contact with some higher consciousness and force, however crude and incomplete the attempts for the contact may be. This tendency in him might have given rise to many a superstition, but it has also given rise to some great religions, which have led men to live some nobler and higher lives.
But in the religions, there were and are attempts by the incomplete and imperfect mind to suitably wrap up with ignorance and darkness the highest contact and the highest sentiments and emotions and ideas and thoughts within us. It was the lesser men, living in limitations and imperfections, who started managing the religions and the rules thereof and the do’s and the don’ts. Men have been seeking to go to heaven, or to go for Niravana or Moksha, making the human existence, as it were, a meaningless, purposeless, aimless play of the Supreme.
In the name of the religions, now the humanity is divided. Hatred and cruelty and division are now in force in place of Love and humanism and oneness. The Divine is far away, and the Divine Life is a distant impossiblity.
In the plane of Mind, thus, we are now in a fix. We shall have to go beyond it to find the true meaning and use and purpose of the human life and existence and also of the Mind itself.
And we should remember what The Mother has told: The Age of religion is over. Keeping aside the religious conflicts and debates, we shall have to go beyond the mental limitations and ascend the higher ranges of consciousness.
OOOOO
We need to ascend the heights of the higher ranges of Mind — of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind , the Overmind — the ascend the heights of the Gnosis, the Supramental Consciousness. And before all these Ascents are made, we shall to have to discover and know the truth in us, the Psychic Being.
That is the Task that we shall have to undertake, because, that is the Truth. The Spirit, involved in the Stone, has become Man, and now has to evolve further and manifest Itself.
The Mother has prayed before the Supreme, for all of us :
Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal.
Evolution is the Work of the Divine, the Supreme. The Supreme, the Existence Consciousness Bliss has become the Stone, the principle of Matter, through Involution. And from that stage, began the return journey of the Supreme — from Matter to the Supreme Consciousness again. And Man has come into existence, in course of the Evolution in the return journey of the Supreme Consciousness. That is the Play of the Supreme, which is also His Work.
OOOOO
But in Evolution, the One willed to become the Many and has become so.
It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said that he thought : “Ekoham, bahu syama.” [ I am alone, and shall become many.] When the Existence-Consciousness became many, countless many, and each of the many is a Soul, or the atman in Sanskrit, which is a part and portion of the Supreme Consciousness, the Divine — a part who is one with the Whole, who can be the Whole also, who can unite with the Whole.
Sri Aurobindo has used the word ‘the psychic being’ in expressing the active aspect of the ‘soul’ in Man. The psychic being is evoled only in the human being, as it has to participate and lead in the next evolution beyond Mind. Sri Aurobindo says :
The soul … … is something that comes down into birth and passes through death – although it does not itself die, for it is immortal – from one state to another, from the earth plane to other planes and back again to the earth-existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being that supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression. All this it does from behind a veil showing something of its divine self only in so far as the imperfection of the instrumental being will allow it. But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human. [Letters on Yoga — Sri Aurobindo]
OOOOO
The Divine has began His return March from the Stone and has reached the stage of the Human. And now the human being has to collaborate with the Divine to manifest the Divine in Many as the Supramental Race.
Now, ignorance, darkness, diseases and Death shall be conquered, as they belong to the falsehood. That is the Divine Will.
The Mother had prayed :
The hour has come when a choice has to be made, radical and definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory….
As ordinary human beings, we are leading ourselves to the Abyss, as we are deeply engrossed with our lowest emotions, passions, pre-occupations and occupations, as we are thoroughly involved with our fears and distrust and gross indulgence. Even if we got some Light of Faith and of Ideas and Thought, we bring in Darkness though the quarrels of religions, old and new, through the political labyrinths which mutilate and imprison the Ideas and the Thoughts. Often we close our eyes to the Light, often we shut up our inner windows when we hear the Call. We lend ourselves to be controlled and managed by the Asura.
The Mother has further said:
The Asura is the force of falsehood, antidivine, which reigns as sovereign over the physical world; his influence is felt everywhere, it is in everything in Matter. But the time has now come when the separation, the purification, can be made, the falsehood, the Asuric influence, rejected and there can be an exclusive living in the Divine Truth.
OOOOO
Sri Aurobindo has also summarised beautifully how the Ascent, the Next Evoultion will lead Man to the Transformation.
Earth was a cradle for the arriving god
And man but a half-dark half-luminous sign
Of the transition of the veiled Divine
From Matter’s sleep and the tormented load
Of ignorant life and death to the Spirit’s light.
Mind liberated swam Light's ocean vast,
And life escaped from its grey tortured line;
I saw Matter illumining its parent Night.
[Evolution : Sri Aurobindo]
The Supramental Being is the arriving God, the Divine, and the human being is the sign, the evolved reality, that is the instrument of the Divine. In Man, there is only a partial Light. He is not fully illumined. The arriving God, which is the veiled Divine, is there to bring a Transition from the Matter in sleep to the Light of the Spirit. When Mind will then be liberated — it will then swim the vast ocean of The Spirit, the Divine Consciousness. Life will also be freed from all the torture it has been tolerating all along. And even Matter will illumine its darkness.
This is in short the Message of Hope for Man, when he ascends.
OOOOO
About the message “Truth or Abyss,” The Mother has further said :
The message is only for those who are still asleep and quite satisfied with their sleep.
We find that still the majority of the mankind is asleep, asleep in darkness and ignorance with all satisfaction. Man is yet in an imprisonment of the ignorant senses and blind and limited and blocked thoughts and ideas, without any aspiration, any hope, any light, without any vision, any seeking, satisfied with the animal indulgences and the limited ego and death and darkness and division.
The Truth is that we shall have to aspire and endeavour for the Ascent, we shall have to prepare ourselves and be ready for the Ascent, we shall have to stop remaining satisfied with our present state of being immersed in gross indulgence and inner blindness and blocked consciousness, of being involved with hatred and jealousy and greed and violence, of being conquered by darkness and ignorance and death.
If we accept the Truth, we are opening the gates of great possibilities. The Mother says : This wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates for our call, to come down upon earth…
We shall have to accept this Truth. Otherwise the Abyss is sure. To stop remaining the grossly animal man, immersed in darkness and narrowness and hatred and violence, that is what is desired. Our Aspiration should be for the Ascent.
Barin Chaki
25-11-2008
O thou who climbest mind from the dull stone
Turn to the miracled summits still unwon.
The first half of Evolution has been before us , the human beings — we have grown, step by step from Matter, which is described by Sri Aurobindo as “dull stone” — we have maneuvered to become the humans through the prolonged and difficult course of Evolution — from the stone to the human. That is the story of the Advent of Man, amidst the stone and the plants and the animals.
And now, there are the new summits before us, which are still unwon — the summits of consciousness and existence : we shall have to face and conquer the new summits beyond the human existence and the human consciousness. We need to conquer the new heights of Consciousness, beyond all our limitations, all our present imperfections and inacapacities, all our ignorance and darkness, and we need to have the miraculous capacities to transform ourselves for the New Creation, for the Advent of the New Man, the Superman, the Supramental Being.
That is the Truth — either we will have to achieve it or we will have to lose the struggle of existence and be doomed to the Abyss. That is what The Mother has said to us :
Men, countries, continents,
The choice is imperative — Truth or Abyss.
OOOOO
In spite of all the imperfections and ignorance and darkness in Man, in spite of all the prevalence and the pull and push of the animal nature in Man, since the early beginning of his civilization, he has an opening and an asking for the Divine, for the Supreme. He has always tried to have contact with some higher consciousness and force, however crude and incomplete the attempts for the contact may be. This tendency in him might have given rise to many a superstition, but it has also given rise to some great religions, which have led men to live some nobler and higher lives.
But in the religions, there were and are attempts by the incomplete and imperfect mind to suitably wrap up with ignorance and darkness the highest contact and the highest sentiments and emotions and ideas and thoughts within us. It was the lesser men, living in limitations and imperfections, who started managing the religions and the rules thereof and the do’s and the don’ts. Men have been seeking to go to heaven, or to go for Niravana or Moksha, making the human existence, as it were, a meaningless, purposeless, aimless play of the Supreme.
In the name of the religions, now the humanity is divided. Hatred and cruelty and division are now in force in place of Love and humanism and oneness. The Divine is far away, and the Divine Life is a distant impossiblity.
In the plane of Mind, thus, we are now in a fix. We shall have to go beyond it to find the true meaning and use and purpose of the human life and existence and also of the Mind itself.
And we should remember what The Mother has told: The Age of religion is over. Keeping aside the religious conflicts and debates, we shall have to go beyond the mental limitations and ascend the higher ranges of consciousness.
OOOOO
We need to ascend the heights of the higher ranges of Mind — of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind , the Overmind — the ascend the heights of the Gnosis, the Supramental Consciousness. And before all these Ascents are made, we shall to have to discover and know the truth in us, the Psychic Being.
That is the Task that we shall have to undertake, because, that is the Truth. The Spirit, involved in the Stone, has become Man, and now has to evolve further and manifest Itself.
The Mother has prayed before the Supreme, for all of us :
Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal.
Evolution is the Work of the Divine, the Supreme. The Supreme, the Existence Consciousness Bliss has become the Stone, the principle of Matter, through Involution. And from that stage, began the return journey of the Supreme — from Matter to the Supreme Consciousness again. And Man has come into existence, in course of the Evolution in the return journey of the Supreme Consciousness. That is the Play of the Supreme, which is also His Work.
OOOOO
But in Evolution, the One willed to become the Many and has become so.
It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said that he thought : “Ekoham, bahu syama.” [ I am alone, and shall become many.] When the Existence-Consciousness became many, countless many, and each of the many is a Soul, or the atman in Sanskrit, which is a part and portion of the Supreme Consciousness, the Divine — a part who is one with the Whole, who can be the Whole also, who can unite with the Whole.
Sri Aurobindo has used the word ‘the psychic being’ in expressing the active aspect of the ‘soul’ in Man. The psychic being is evoled only in the human being, as it has to participate and lead in the next evolution beyond Mind. Sri Aurobindo says :
The soul … … is something that comes down into birth and passes through death – although it does not itself die, for it is immortal – from one state to another, from the earth plane to other planes and back again to the earth-existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being that supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression. All this it does from behind a veil showing something of its divine self only in so far as the imperfection of the instrumental being will allow it. But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human. [Letters on Yoga — Sri Aurobindo]
OOOOO
The Divine has began His return March from the Stone and has reached the stage of the Human. And now the human being has to collaborate with the Divine to manifest the Divine in Many as the Supramental Race.
Now, ignorance, darkness, diseases and Death shall be conquered, as they belong to the falsehood. That is the Divine Will.
The Mother had prayed :
The hour has come when a choice has to be made, radical and definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory….
As ordinary human beings, we are leading ourselves to the Abyss, as we are deeply engrossed with our lowest emotions, passions, pre-occupations and occupations, as we are thoroughly involved with our fears and distrust and gross indulgence. Even if we got some Light of Faith and of Ideas and Thought, we bring in Darkness though the quarrels of religions, old and new, through the political labyrinths which mutilate and imprison the Ideas and the Thoughts. Often we close our eyes to the Light, often we shut up our inner windows when we hear the Call. We lend ourselves to be controlled and managed by the Asura.
The Mother has further said:
The Asura is the force of falsehood, antidivine, which reigns as sovereign over the physical world; his influence is felt everywhere, it is in everything in Matter. But the time has now come when the separation, the purification, can be made, the falsehood, the Asuric influence, rejected and there can be an exclusive living in the Divine Truth.
OOOOO
Sri Aurobindo has also summarised beautifully how the Ascent, the Next Evoultion will lead Man to the Transformation.
Earth was a cradle for the arriving god
And man but a half-dark half-luminous sign
Of the transition of the veiled Divine
From Matter’s sleep and the tormented load
Of ignorant life and death to the Spirit’s light.
Mind liberated swam Light's ocean vast,
And life escaped from its grey tortured line;
I saw Matter illumining its parent Night.
[Evolution : Sri Aurobindo]
The Supramental Being is the arriving God, the Divine, and the human being is the sign, the evolved reality, that is the instrument of the Divine. In Man, there is only a partial Light. He is not fully illumined. The arriving God, which is the veiled Divine, is there to bring a Transition from the Matter in sleep to the Light of the Spirit. When Mind will then be liberated — it will then swim the vast ocean of The Spirit, the Divine Consciousness. Life will also be freed from all the torture it has been tolerating all along. And even Matter will illumine its darkness.
This is in short the Message of Hope for Man, when he ascends.
OOOOO
About the message “Truth or Abyss,” The Mother has further said :
The message is only for those who are still asleep and quite satisfied with their sleep.
We find that still the majority of the mankind is asleep, asleep in darkness and ignorance with all satisfaction. Man is yet in an imprisonment of the ignorant senses and blind and limited and blocked thoughts and ideas, without any aspiration, any hope, any light, without any vision, any seeking, satisfied with the animal indulgences and the limited ego and death and darkness and division.
The Truth is that we shall have to aspire and endeavour for the Ascent, we shall have to prepare ourselves and be ready for the Ascent, we shall have to stop remaining satisfied with our present state of being immersed in gross indulgence and inner blindness and blocked consciousness, of being involved with hatred and jealousy and greed and violence, of being conquered by darkness and ignorance and death.
If we accept the Truth, we are opening the gates of great possibilities. The Mother says : This wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates for our call, to come down upon earth…
We shall have to accept this Truth. Otherwise the Abyss is sure. To stop remaining the grossly animal man, immersed in darkness and narrowness and hatred and violence, that is what is desired. Our Aspiration should be for the Ascent.
Barin Chaki
25-11-2008
