The Pioneers

The Earth, along with the humanity, is moving and progressing towards a vast and complete Transformation, towards a New Step in the Evolution on earth towards the emergence of a New Race on earth. And the Pioneers are Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mirra Alfassa].

Sri Aurobindo stated that Man is a transitional being, who will have to be transformed, collectively, towards the formation of a New Race. His appearance in the human race is one of the biggest events that has taken place in the history of the Earth.

When The Mother met Sri Aurobindo for the first time, She wrote :

"Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude.
It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth ; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hopes have no bounds.
My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent."—The Mother, Prayers and Meditations.

These were the words from The Mother, who joined Sri Aurobindo and organized Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. She came from France to Pondicherry, India, and met Sri Aurobindo on the 29th day of March, 1914. These were the words from her on her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo, recorded on the next day.

These words are self-explanatory. The existence of Sri Aurobindo gives rise to the boundless hope that, one day, the Divine reign shall be on earth and that darkness shall be transformed into light. Sri Aurobindo is the Hope of Man, in spite of the fact that multitudes of human beings are plunged in the densest darkness and ignorance. Prayers of millions of human beings through millennia have been answered by the Supreme in the form of Sri Aurobindo

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Often, a few persons have stated that Sri Aurobindo is not unquestionable and that an Avatar may not always be above the ordinary human level. These persons also express their belief that there is a Higher Consciousness that does not even recognize the Sri Aurobindo or The Mother or any other Avatar.


I know and believe that Sri Aurobindo is unquestionable. Question belongs to a mind that is in ignorance. It comes from doubt, half-knowledge, ignorance and un-receptivity.
A question may also come from a seeking, from a seeker. But that is from a mind that seeks to drift from Darkness to Light.

When a Person like Sri Aurobindo becomes questionable to someone, then there is some error somewhere in the consciousness of the person so questioning. Because generally ordinary human beings are fallible in their habits and character and nature, and then a question crops up. When someone has the firm belief and conviction that a man cannot be perfect, that a man cannot be above the animal frailties, then only one has the doubts and questions!

Sri Aurobindo did not come on earth to live like a common man, though definitely he was born amidst us. Whenever someone like Peter Heeh or anybody else has expressed that there is some questionability in the Person or character of Sri Aurobindo, I feel that such tendency is certainly there in the mind of the questioner.

When we go through the several spiritual treatises on Yoga given to us by the ancient India, we find that one has to undergo a Sadhana of self-discipline and self-mastery, before one can go beyond the ordinary mental level. We know of yama and niyama of Patanjali Yoga. When we find Sri Aurobindo attained Nirvana within three days of starting the yogic Sadhana, how can we ever assume that He was a questionable Person! And He is the First human being who has realized the Supermind, reached the Supermind, and then lived for forty years thereafter, whereas it was known that generally a man can generally live for a few days only after having touched the supramental level. A person with a questionable character and personality cannot have such a miraculous record of spiritual height. The question about the questionability of Sri Aurobindo comes only when there is doubt and ignorance in the mind. To know truly a Person like Sri Aurobindo, one has to rise above doubt and ignorance.

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Can there be any Avatar who is not recognized by a Higher Consciousness? What is an Avatar? It is the Descent of the Highest Consciousness itself. So, can the Highest Consciousness de-recognize any Person who is Himself having a Descent on earth? It is the Divine Will that causes the Appearance of a Person named Sri Aurobindo, who begins the New Way that would lead humanity beyond itself towards the New Race. Sri Aurobindo is bringer of the New Age, that will put an end to all Darkness and Death and Divisions and Ignorance, all Sorrows and Sufferings from the surface of the Earth. If any Consciousness is there that seems to de-recognize The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, it is then a Consciousness belonging to Tamas itself. It is, as I find, is rather a mental deformation that is obstinate.

Sri Aurobindo has said :
Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity – for that is the meaning of the manifestation….
It is the omnipresent cosmic Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it does not in the least diminish the cosmic Presence and the cosmic action in the three or thirty million universes.
The Descending Power (Avatar) chooses its own place, body, time for the manifestation.
The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution.

[Letters on Yoga — Sri Aurobindo]

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Let us find what K D Sethna has said in this matter:

Sri Aurobindo interprets as a parable of evolution the Hindu idea of the procession of the ten Avatars. Vishnu the Supreme Godhead makes a progressive series of incarnations, so that — to take for our immediate purpose the human portion of the traditional sequence — He who was Vamana (the Dwarf Avatar, the Divine in the primitive and mainly physical human stage) becomes afterwards ParasuRama ("Rama of the Axe", the Divine in the kinetic or vitalistic phase of humanity) and then Rama, son of Dasaratha (the Divine as the mental Man, the embodiment of Dharma, the perfect Moral Consciousness) and, again, Krishna (the Divine as the "Overman", openly exemplifying a more-than-mental Consciousness, what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, the world of the Great Gods) and, later, Buddha who shoots beyond the cosmic formula to the sheer Transcendent but to that Transcendent's absolutely immobile aspect (Nirvana, an indescribable Permanence void of all that we know as existence, or, in positive Vedantic nomenclature, Nirguna Brahman, Silent Qualityless Eternal Being) and, finally, Kalki who will come to set right the balance by bringing the Transcendent's power to base on the Transcendent's peace a new earth-order, a terrestrial Heaven. In this tale of evolutionary humanity we would indentify Kalki with Sri Aurobindo (the Master of the Integral Yoga, the Yoga not only of liberation but also of the perfect divine dynamism/ the Supermind, the all- transformative Truth-Consciousness manifesting as Super- man).
[Our Light and Delight: : K D Sethna]

I do not think that there should be any further need to emphasize that the Supreme, the Highest Consciousness has any reason to de-recognize or to fail to recognize any Avatar, for the Avatar is the Divine Himself.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
30-06-2009

Thoughts and Aphorisms 15

15. That which men term a hallucination is the reflection in the mind and senses of that which is beyond our ordinary mental & sensory perceptions. Superstition arises from the mind's wrong understanding of these reflections. There is no other hallucination.
[Thoughts ad Aphorisms, Sri Aurobindo]

That which is beyond “ordinary mental & sensory perceptions,” when reflected in the mind and the senses, the reflection is termed by the people a “hallucination,” meaning a false illusion.

But that is, indeed, a wrong understanding, a wrong approach, as Sri Aurobindo explains. As He has said, what is termed as a hallucination, indicating an illusion, is not really an illusion or falsehood. We have earlier seen that He has described that the word “hallucination” as a scientific term refers to some irregular glimpses of truths which are ordinarily closed and shut to us, as we are preoccupied with matter. That is an experience of something that is beyond the mind and the senses. The experience by an unprepared mind and the unprepared senses gives a wrong impression, a wrong understanding, and it creates on repetition, in due course of time, a superstition. Had the truth or some of its aspects been correctly understood and sincerely realized, then it would neither have been termed a hallucination or an illusion. As Sri Aurobindo has said, “superstitions” are the results of the wrong understanding of the reflections of the mind and the senses. In reality, there is nothing else which can be termed “hallucinations” and the seeker of Truth should prepare himself to go beyond the wrong understanding.

Our preparations can lead us from the hallucinations to the Visions. There is a great difference between a hallucination and a Vision. Visions are what the human consciousness may experience, when it is prepared, aware or awakened, and sincere.

The Mother was asked a question: Can hallucinations be compared to visions?

In answering the question, The Mother says: “When a human being is sufficiently developed, he possesses an individualized vital being, with organs of sight, hearing smell etc. So a person who has a well-developed vital being can see in the vital world with his vital sight, consciously and with the memory of what he has seen.”

The Mother further says: “It is the same for all the subtle worlds — vital, mental, Overmental, supramental — and for all the intermediate worlds and planes of the being. In this way, one can have visions that are vital, mental, Overmental, supramental etc.”
[Collected Works of The Mother: Vol. 10]

So, one has to grow in awareness, in consciousness, in a true spiritual individuality, in all sincerity, and then one has visions of the Worlds, beyond the Reason, beyond the mind and the senses. And the higher one ascends, nearer one is to the Supreme Truth.

Thus the human being, with his consciousness and thought, can go beyond himself, through a progressive preparation, through silence, awareness and receptivity, and then have the visions of the higher worlds.

For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
It is greater than its earthly instrument:
The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
Escapes on every side into some vast
That is a passage to infinity.
It moves eternal in the spirit's field,
A runner towards the far spiritual light,
A child and servant of the spirit's force.
But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.
His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.
For the spirit is eternal and unmade
And not by thinking was its greatness born,
And not by thinking can its knowledge come.
It knows itself and in itself it lives,
It moves where no thought is nor any form.

[Sri Aurobindo — Savitri: Bk 2, Co XI]

However, one may have a piercing but a synthesizing reason, with soaring thoughts and ideas, or one may have many series of visions from the vital and mental planes or even from the planes of the higher levels of mind, but that is not sufficient. A question will be there, in the words of M P Pandit : “It is when all ceases that there is something.”

He further says: “We are all the time seeing things with the physical eye, the mental eye and some with still another eye. There is a constant procession of images leaving the being no scope at all to see the reality of things.” [Dialogues and Perspectives, M P Pandit.]

The Aim should be to know the Unknown, to see and realize the Unseen, the Alone, so that one can become Oneself.

Barindranath Chaki
12-06-2009