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

Thoughts and Aphorisms 38

Thoughts and Aphorisms 38 38. Strange! the Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar.  [Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms] There is a Christ myth theory which is based on the idea that Jesus Christ of Nazarath was not a physical historical person, but was a fictional or mythological non-physical character created by the early Christian community. Scholars such as Paula Fredrikson, Robert Funk, E P Sanders, Hector Avalos, Albert Schweitzer, Earl Doherty (who popularized the myth theory), German historian George Albert Wells, historian Richard Carrier, French thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis, Bruno Baner, Willaiam Benjamin Smith, John Mackinnon Robertson, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchond, Richard Dawkins, French atheist philosopher Michwl Onfray and many others from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century have stated that the character of Jesus Christ was not a physical historical fact. But he was, according to them, was a myth. They said that the much of the material in the New Testament should not be taken ast face-value. Some Christian sects, within 300 AD, claimed that Jesus Christ did not exist as a physical human being. He was considered to be an incorporeal being. Docetists held that Jesus Christ only seemed to exist; he was a n incorporeal being, a phantasm, a pure spirit and therefore immortal. He could not die. Marcion of Sinope (c.85 – c.160) was a bishop in early Christianity. Marcion held Jesus to be the son of the Heavenly Father but understood the incarnation in a docetic manner, i.e. that Jesus' body was not physical, but only an imitation of a material body, and denied Jesus' physical and bodily birth, death, and resurrection. George Albert Wells (born May 22, 1926), is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London. He studied about the historicity of Jesus and wrote a book The Jesus of the Early Christians in 1971. He is supported the thesis that Jesus is essentially a mythical rather than a historical figure. This theory was presented by German biblical scholars such as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews. However, the purpose of this presentation is not to elaborate that the character of Jesus Christ was a myth, but to state that according to Sri Aurobindo, Jesus Christ was an Avatar, like Krishna and Buddha. According to Sri Aurobindo, an Avatar  is 'a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity' born on earth to act as the instrument of the divine consciousness and power and the divine works. Sri Aurobindo has said: 'The Avatar is always a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity; the Divine takes upon himself the human nature with all its outward limitations and makes them the circumstances, means, instruments of the divine consciousness and the divine power, a vessel of the divine birth and the divine works. But so surely it must be, since otherwise the object of the Avatar's descent is not fulfilled; for that object is precisely to show that the human birth with all its limitations can be made such a means and instrument of the divine birth and divine works, precisely to show that the human type of consciousness can be compatible with the divine essence of consciousness made manifest, can be converted into its vessel, drawn into nearer conformity with it by a change of its mould and a heightening of its powers of light and love and strength and purity; and to show also how it can be done. If the Avatar were to act in an entirely supernormal fashion, this object would not be fulfilled.'  [Essays on The Gita, Ch.XVI] Thus, according to Sri Aurobindo, an Avatar is a real, physical person born on earth and is not a myth. Sri Aurobindo, whom The Mother has declared to be an Avatar of the Supreme Divine, says that Jesus Christ was a real physical person, and an Avatar of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo has further said, explaining the purpose of Avatarhood on earth: 'It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion, – not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living, – a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is no mere isolated and individual phenomenon, but like all in the divine world-activities a collective business, a work and the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation when they grow too insistent, to uphold or restore the great dharma of the Godward law in man's nature, to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection, sādhūunām, and the  overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may berepeated in the inner life of all human beings'. [Essays on The Gita Page 150 ] Sri Aurobindo has further said in "Letters on Yoga" on Avatarhood: 'There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forth the instrumental personality in Nature under the conditions of Nature and it uses it according to the rules of the game – though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipotent Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness – if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is also that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is quite futile. X seems to say that there is no way and no possibility of following, that the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug, – there is no possibility of struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such a conception makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood; there is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning. The Avatar is not supposed to act in a non-human way – he takes up human action and uses human methods with the human consciousness in front and the Divine behind. If he did not his taking a human body would have no meaning and would be of no use to anybody. He could just as well have stayed above and done things from there.' [Letters on Yoga, pp 408-409] When the Divine becomes an Avatar, He or She accepts all the shortcomings and limitations of the human nature, with the aim of showing the mankind how to conquer and surpass all the human limitations in order to evolve and proceed towards the Goal: the growth and development and evolution towards Divinity. But that is not to be done through exhibition of supernatural powers. Christ accepted crucifixion but did not show any supernatural power to be liberated from the Crusade. The Divine exhibited His Sacrifice for the humanity. The Mother has said: 'The story of Christ. as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the Divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human  ignorance and in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.'  [The Mother : On Thoughts and Aphorisms] Barindranath Chaki 4th June 2013