On Sri Aurobindo III

On Sri Aurobindo

III

Sri Aurobindo said: Man is a transitional being.

 

Man, an evolutionary being, has emerged as the Neanderthal man from the Ape, and presently, he is on the Way towards becoming the Supramental Being through a Higher Evolution. 

The earth is a field of Evolution — Evolution of the Spirit that has become Matter and is involved in Matter. All living beings on earth including the humans have emerged out of this Evolution. But Man is not the final result of Evolution. He is in an initial and rudimentary stage of the Manifestation of Consciousness _  an imperfect and incomplete stage. 

All of us want to have happiness, joy, creativity and prosperity in life, for as long a period as possible. We think that we should have all knowledge and wisdom and want enough force, strength and power, ever with hope and dream of success and victory. Ever, we hope of Light, Joy, Consciousness and Power. 

But that has not been our reality in life. Our existence as human beings is quite miserable, with enough of sorrows and frustration, falls and failure, and ignorance and inconscience. We are all in bondage of darkness, defeat, division, disease and death!

However, should we stop there? Should we not go ahead with our invincible hope, our golden and happy dreams, our joyous expectations?

We should be more progressive, more adventurous and warrior-like, more struggling, more hopeful and endeavouring. We should inflame the Fire of our Aspiration to dispel all darkness around us.

OOOOO

As Sri Aurobindo said, the time has already come when evolution has to progress ahead beyond man. As we know, Man is not the perfect being, not the complete being. But he has in him the Aspiration, the HOPE and the DREAM for becoming perfect and  complete, for conquering darkness, division and death. The aim of Evolution is to manifest the  Divine, the Source of this Manifestation, the Supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.         
                  
The Superman shall emerge and manifest out of Man. Man should prepare and transform himself for the Advent of the Superman. He has to grow and become the Superman. That is the only purpose of Man's existence on earth - the coming of the Superman, the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness - and the purpose has now to be fulfilled. Man shall do that by surpassing himself. If Man fails to collaborate with this new task of evolution, the evolutionary forces will surpass him, go beyond him, push him aside, and find out a new and different means to manifest the New Man, the Superman.

Has not The Mother warned us in a message quoted earlier that we , the human beings, should choose  between Truth or the abyss? 

The Divine Consciousness has descended and become ready to answer the Call and the Aspiration of the human being, to lift him up to Light, Force, Joy and Love, but Man fails, in spite of the Call given by him. The Divine gives us Light, shows us the Way, but we cover the Light with the Shadow of Ignorance and Darkness and create hurdles on the Way by creating walls and barriers of Ignorance and Egoism. Often, we adhere to Darkness and Ignorance and ignore Light and Truth and Wisdom. We are not yet prepared for the Next Evolution.

As The Mother has declared, the Supramental Consciousness has descended on earth on the 29^th day of February 1956. It is actively present here and now on earth.
 

I am quoting the oft-quoted message of the Mother from Mother’s Agenda Vol.1:

First Supramental Manifestation 

(During the common meditation on Wednesday

The 29^th February 1956)

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine.

As I looked at the door, I knew and willed in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come’, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.

And then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow. 

The Time now has indeed come for the Human Being to evolve and become the Supramental Being. The Hour of God that came on earth along with Sri Aurobindo still continues and will continue till the Work is done and  the Supramental Beings emerge on earth.

Now, what is the most needed in us is Aspiration, a fixed and unfailing Aspiration.

There is no end to our march. Sri Aurobindo said:

There is no end to the world’s stupendous march, 
There is no rest for the embodied soul. 
It must live on, describe all Time’s huge curve. 
An Influx presses from the closed Beyond 
Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease, 
Till he has found himself he cannot pause.
A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
Ignorant, he forms the All-conscient in his depths,
Human, looks up to superhuman peaks: 
A borrower of Supernature’s gold; 
He paves his road to Immortality.

Savitri Bk III Co IV p339 : Sri Aurobindo

Barindranath Chaki

15-08-3013

Posted on 17-9-2013

On Sri Aurobindo II

On Sri Aurobindo

II

Sri Aurobindo   is The Leader of the next evolution.

He is the first Person to know and say that humanity must go beyond itself and Man has to evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, towards becoming a supramental being. That is the Will of the Supreme, the design of Nature, of Supernature as He termed.

Sri Aurobindo  said :

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature

While Matter is apparently Inconscient, evolution from Matter to Man is through Ignorance. Though Man has grown with more consciousness and knowledge in his evolution out of evolving animal-hood manifesting Life, he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, having some incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, some more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as Mind is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind, which the humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of. The higher and deeper ranges of Mind is touched and partly used only by a few. However, these few persons let us believe that transcendence of the present state is possible. Our endeavor for self-discovery and world-discovery is also only partially fulfilled, inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some individuals, but the mass still gropes in darkness, and the followers have begun clashes, feuds and wars, and have the journey regressive and backward towards the primitive state of mind, though dressed and decorated with ornaments of modern superficialities. 

Sri Aurobindo said :

Inheritor of the brief animal mind, 

Man, still a child in Nature's mighty hands,

In the succession of moments lives;

To a changing present is his narrow right,

His memory stares back at a phantom past,

The future flees before him as he moves;

He sees imagined garments, not a face.

Savitri: Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo further said:

Armed with a limited precarious strength,

He saves his fruits of work from adverse chance.

A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate:

He waits to see the consequence of his acts,
He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts,
He knows not what he shall achieve or when;
He knows not whether at last he shall survive,
Or end like the mastodon and the sloth
And perish from the earth where he was king.
He is ignorant of the meaning of his life,
He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate.

 Savitri: Sri Aurobindo.

Blessed with an incomplete and imperfect mental consciousness that Nature has bestowed on him, Man lives with Ignorance in all walks of his life and existence. He is uncertain about the results of his actions or about the certainty of his thoughts, of his future achievements and even about his own survival or his purpose on earth or his destiny. Our history is filled with our repeated battles, bloodsheds, and massacres, along with two World Wars. Instead of loving our earth, we have divided, sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. We live backwards towards a regression.

Generally, we are not conscious of any higher aim and meaning of our life. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We spend our time for sensuous and gross satisfactions, not even caring for the well-being and health of our body, life and mind, not to speak of the unknown and unseen soul or psychic being or the Divine. We are not sure whether our activities would lead us to an extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the Mesozoic Era.   

This is one side of the matter. The other side is hopeful. In spite of the Darkness and Ignorance around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born in on earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts, education, social and economic activities, religion, spirituality and yoga. Though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. All our endeavors, all our inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration for more than last fifty millennia have been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility and New Hope that Sri Aurobindo has given us.

We shall have to transcend and then transform ourselves, finally with the Light of the Supramental Consciousness. This is to be done both individually and collectively. To transform ourselves, we should know ourselves, know all the parts of our beings and bring the Light in all the realms of our being.

Our aim is no more to have Nirvana, merge ourselves into the Absolute Brahman, leaving the earthly evolution and manifestation. We are to participate in the Manifestation of the Divine, of the Supermind here on earth. We need no more escape into any Nihil or Brahman or Far-off Heaven, we will change this Earth.  

Sri Aurobindo said :

A heavenlier passion shall upheave men's lives,
Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam,
Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire.
Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
Mortality's bond slaves shall unloose their bonds,
Mere men into spiritual beings grow

And see awake the dumb divinity.
Intuitive beams shall touch the nature's peaks,
A revelation stir the nature's depths;
The Truth shall be the leader of their lives,
Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and act,
They shall feel themselves lifted nearer to the sky,
As if a little lower than the gods.

Savitri: Sri Aurobindo

This is the luminous Future Sri Aurobindo has seen! More humans will grow into spiritual beings, who will be freed from the slavery of darkness, ignorance, sufferings and death !! Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and acts. 

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron law,

Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power…

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

Savitri : Sri Aurobindo

This earth is a field of Evolution. From the scientific viewpoint, man is at the apex of Evolution. But he is not a perfect being. He lives with ignorance, chaos, disorder, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, aimlessness, unhappiness and sufferings. However, that is one aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, Bliss. And ever with him there is Hope. Hope is an eternal companion of man. The humanity has to evolve into a race of supramental beings, or else he will be replaced by a race of higher beings, in order to give effect to the evolutionary progress: this is the necessity of the evolutionary principle, and this is what The Mother has said :

Men, countries, continents!

The choice is imperative:

Truth or the abyss.

A beautiful, joyous, harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for man as his evolutionary possibility and goal, his evolutionary Future. He cannot continue for ever as he is till now. He has to proceed ahead from the present position. Or else, the evolutionary forces of Nature, Supernature, will surpass him and choose some other means for fulfilment of the goal: ever-progressive manifestation of Consciousness.

That is our Future, preordained. We shall have to ascend, integrally.

Should we discard our normal life, the society, the family and the social and material responsibilities for this journey to the Future, for this Goal? No. We can start the journey from where we are now, simply by changing our inner attitude and inner aspiration, our approach and activities.

Barindranath Chaki

15-08-3013

Posted on 24-8-2013

Sri Aurobindo I

On Sri Aurobindo 

I

The Mother has said about Sri Aurobindo:

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation ; it is a decisive action, direct from the Supreme.  [The Mother]  

Sri Aurobindo, in His Teaching to the mankind, initially accepts what the ancient sages of India taught: that behind the appearance of the universe, of the Manifestation, there is the Reality of a Being that is Consciousness.

According to Sri Aurobindo, this universe is the Manifestation of this One Being-cum-Consciousness through a continuous Evolution. This One Being-cum-Consciousness is involved on earth in Matter. Evolution is the way by which this Being-cum-Consciousness liberates itself. Consciousness liberates itself in what appears as inconscient, and once having this liberation, it impelled it self to grow higher and higher and simultaneously to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. The first step of this liberation of consciousness is Life.  The next step is Mind. But Evolution does not end with Mind. It aims to move ahead into something greater, into a Consciousness that is spiritual and supramental. The next step of Evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. Because, then only the involved Divinity in things will release itself fully and manifestation of perfection will become possible in life.

Sri Aurobindo had never aimed at developing any particular religion or amalgamating the older religions or founding any new religion – for any of these things would lead away from His central Truth. The aim of His Yoga is an inner self-development by which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a Spiritual and Supramental consciousness which will transform and divinize human nature. 

OOOOOO

Beyond all sufferings, beyond all sin and fall, beyond all struggles and tussles and wrestles of human life, there is a Truth, a Hope — the ensured Hope of the Dawn, of the Sunrise after the Darkest of the Dark Nights. There is the ensured Hope of the Eternal Joy after Time, and even after Death! There are Dreams of Hope and Joy and Victory beyond all the harsh realities and sins and falls of life — Dreams which are more real than life. 

 “One step and there is all sky and God”

Sri Aurobindo has kindled this flame of Hope for all of us.

Even Sri Aurobindo had to undergo experiences, which we name “suffering”— He was even imprisoned for one year, though He was honorably acquitted. And His imprisonment has been leading us all to the Life Divine, to the New Supramental World.

In some close unattained realm which yet we feel,
Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,
Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,
In bright enchanted safe peripheries
For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.
In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns.

This, once a star of bright remote idea
Or imagination's comet trail of dream,
Took now a close shape of reality.
The gulf between dream-truth, earth-fact was crossed,
The wonder-worlds of life were dreams no more;
His vision made all they unveiled its own:
Their scenes, their happenings met his eyes and heart
And smote them with pure loveliness and bliss.

Savitri: Bk II, Co III: Sri Aurobindo

As a consequence of the Tapasya of The Master and The Mother, the humanity is now to cross the present earthly realities and reach the wonder-worlds of the New Creation, the Supramental Creation. That is the Task and the Future of the humanity

Barindranath Chaki

15-08-3013

 
Posted on 20-8-2013