The Task before us

The Task before us is to change the world — from the imperfect mental world to the Supramental World of Perfection, the New World.   But why? And how?   Why: Some fifty thousand to more than a million years back, the early human beings started their journey on earth, definitely with hopes for Joy and Bliss, for satisfaction and fulfilment, for conquering diseases and Death, with inquisition and thirst for knowledge in their eyes and their fresh undisturbed intelligence. They marched onwards and created civilizations and cultures, created Arts and Literature and Poetry and Music, created the Society and all the social norms and rules and paraphernalia. Even they tried to solve all the problems and difficulties of life.   But in their attempts for doing so, they now find themselves in a world, which they have almost completely spoiled. Now, men and women and their world are ruled and conquered by darkness and ignorance, by sorrows and sufferings, by chaos and disorder, by battles and warfare and destructions, genocides and mass-murders, by incurable mental and physical ailments and diseases and untimely deaths, in spite of all their wisdom and knowledge, all their feasts and festivals and parties and merry-makings, all the assortments and arrangements of enjoyment and pleasure, in spite of all their prosperities and riches, in spite of all their medical and scientific researches and discoveries and preparations, in spite of all religions and worships, in spite of all their peace talks and preaching of Ahimsa or non-violence, in spite of all their civilizations and progresses. Mankind has lost all their hopes and aspirations, all their spontaneous inborn simplicity and clarity and peace.    OOOOO So, we have to change the world.   And how?   We will change the world, never by preaching this and that religion. They are already fighting against each other for centuries. I do not mean to attack any religion; Persons who represented the Supreme Consciousness initiated them all. But we have added so much of falsehood, doubts, hatred, clashes and even bloodsheds into them, that they can seldom lead us to our Goal.   We will bring the change never by political changes and revolutions, by change of Governments or creating League of Nations or commonwealths or UNOs, however noble and lofty may be the Ideas behind.   We will make the change, never by changing external activities or habits of society or of life, not by keeping or shaving beards or hairs, not by changing dresses, not by changing political parties or social groups, or by changing religions.   Never can we reach the Goal by trying to change others in a prototype, as the Communists tried and failed, or by trying to criticize others or by trying to find faults with others, NOT by declaring that we alone are the conveyors of Truth, and others are of Untruth. I will come to the issue of Truth or Untruth later.   We are to change ourselves, first.   Each of us is to change himself or herself..   If we prescribe to find the Ego and hunt it, and we really then go after the Ego, we will NEVER find it. Within there is Darkness, and the Ego is reigning there. While going after Ego, we will be lost in the Darkness. We shall follow the Light. We shall seek and find the Light within.   OOOOO   We are all moving towards the New Horizon, towards the New World, the New Creation — all human beings are so moving, knowingly or unknowingly. Some are marching ahead, some are moving slowly, some are loitering and gossipping and some are sleeping in Tamas, but all are on the Way.   Sri Aurobindo has said : When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man.   In the New Horizing, the Supramental Sun has been arising, and it is now the Pre-Dawn time. And we are listening to the dawn chorus chanting. The voices of the Aspirants are being heard throughout the world.   As Sri Aurobindo has said, Man is a transitional being. When the earth was inhabited only by the animals, Man came into being, ushering in the next step on Earth, the step of Mind and Reason. The Earth itself is a process of Evolution; Matter — which involves the Sachchidananda, the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, the Original Supreme Consciousness — formed this Earth, amid all the stars and the Sun and the planets, and it began evolving for the Manifestation of the Supreme Consciousness, step by step. Man emerged, the Neanderthal Man grew into the civilized Man of the twentyfirst century and still the Evolution has continued.. The marching ahead continues and it shall continue till Man grows into a Superman, and then into the Supramental Being — and the Evolution shall continue even beyond.   Satprem, while writing an Introduction to Mother's Agenda, has spoken of  the New Man, of the Supramental Being:   This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way - and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.   One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the world was very vast. To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible. Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done. [Mother's Agenda, Vol.1]   OOOOO   However, as we find, Man is, mainly and in majority, still far away from the Divine Possibility : Man is greatly involved in egoism, in Tamas, in vital and mental limitations and obstructions. Sometimes, even if and even when Man delves in and professes higher thinking and spirituality and a further evolution beyond humanity, he is still living and moving with a predominantly active lower nature. The human beings are more or less engrossed in limited or partial ideas, mental opinions, preferences, ignorant habits and mental constructions centered around lower vital nature, which has enslaved him with pride, arrogance, enmity, hostility, jealousy, envy, greed, cravings, passions,selfishness, egoism. Man is still living with ignorance, doubt, stupidity, falsehood, laziness, and Tamas.. If somewhere there is an endeavour for growing or creating something noble and great and aspiring for a higher possibility, forming a collectivity for moving forward, then it may also be found that from several corners attacks are creeping in, overtly or covertly, vehemently or stealthily, from the lower nature full of darkness and ignorance. Ego becomes the main force in Man, along with all narrowness, all crookedness, all poisonous divisions, tending to pull down all that great and noble in Man.   The change, as some may think, is not at all easy.   The change I am speaking of is not easy. Had it been easy, it would not have delayed by 50,000 years. All the religions, all the lofty social endeavours, including the French revolution or the Marxist revolution in Russia, have failed to change the human nature from what it is practically and what it should be. That is because the matter is very very difficult. Why difficult? Because we are insincere, egoistic, driven intolerance and hatred and animal enmity and anger, and above all we fail to know and understand Truth in its entirety. The change needs a sincere and an undefeated ceaseless sadhana.   OOOOO   O thou who climbest to man from the dull stone, Face now the miracle summits still unwon. [ Evolution : Sri Aurobindo ] Thus said Sri Aurobindo to us, to the beings who have maneuvered and become the humans through the long and prolonged difficult course of Evolution — from the stone to the human. That was the story of the Creation of Man.    And now we will have to face and conquer the new summits beyond Man, beyond human being and the human consciousness. We shall have to conquer the new heights of Consciousness and have the miraculous capacities to transform ourselves for the New Creation, for the Advent of the New Man, the Superman, the Supramental Being. We shall have 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 to be made, we shall to have to discover and know the truth in us, the Psychic Being. That is the Task before us. For, that is the Truth. The Spirit, involved in the Stone that has become Man, has to evolve further and manifest Itself. The Mother has prayed before the Supreme : 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. This 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 thence the return March of the Supreme — from Matter to the Supreme Consciousness again. And Man has come into being in course of Evolution in the return March. But in Evolution, the One willed to become the Many. OOOOO "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.    "A soul, or the atman in Sanskrit, 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.   [ Excerpts quoted from The Psychic Being :  The New Horizon — Barindranath Chaki]   OOOOO   The Divine began His return March and has reached the stage of the Human. Now the Human has to collaborate with the Divine to manifest the Divine in Many as the Supramental Race.   Ignorance and Darkness and diseases and Death have to conquered, as those belong to the falsehood. That is the Will of the Divine.   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, through our lowest emotions, passions, pre-occupations and occupations, through our fears and distrust and gross indulgence. 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.. On the 1st January 1967, The Mother gave us the Message : Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the 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 humankind is asleep, asleep in darkness and ignorance with all satisfaction. 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 Next Step, 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 pre-occupation and occupation should be The Next Step, the New Evolution. Barin Chaki 22-01-2010 [Revised from some of my previous writings published elsewhere]     Please visit ASPIRATION  The New Horizon  All choice  The New Platform  Barin Chaki