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Friday, January 22, 2010

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 BeingThe 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]
 
 


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Friday, January 01, 2010

The Luminous Future


 

More than seventy-five years back, The Mother gave us a Call:

"Leaving the past far behind us, let us run towards a luminous future."

 

The luminous future was not only a dream, not only a hope : though the words created some aspiring dreams in some people and had arisen some hopes, some inspired hopes in some people. It was a direction given by The Mother to the human race. We were asked to transcend our past and run towards the luminous certitude in Future.

 

The Future of the earth will certainly be luminous — whether we believe it or not, whether we understand it or not, it is a certainty. The future of mankind is surely to be of a great spiritual, or rather, integral possibility. Beyond his imperfections, his present failures and follies, his succumbing to lust, anger, greed, hatred, jealousy and envy, to ignorance and hatred and darkness, to divisions and narrowness and mutual confronts and bloody warfare, to destructions and inimical activities, to diseases and death — beyond all these shortcomings, beyond all the records of his violent and ignorant history, he has to rise to a Divine possibility. As Man — the evolving Man — rose out of the Ape, the New Man will arise out of the half-conscious, half-inspired, imperfect animal man, fulfilling all the Hopes and Dreams Man has within him throughout the past millennia. The New Man, to be specific with the Words used by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, the Gnostic Man or the Superman, the Supramental Race will rise out of the present Man with the half-conscious nature.

 

Then shall the embodied being live as one
Who is a thought, a will of the Divine,
A mask or robe of his divinity,
An instrument and partner of his Force,
A point or line drawn in the infinite,
A manifest of the Imperishable.
The supermind shall be his nature's fount,
The Eternal's truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal's truth shall be his light and guide.
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

In spite of all our heavy and dark and ignorant past, of our animal origin and animal past, we have in us the Blessings of a Mind and, above all, the blessings of the psychic being within each of us — the human beings. The human mind, with its central power of reason, may not reach Perfection or even a Perfect Conclusion by itself — but definitely it has raised us from the aboriginal stage of existence to the present stage of civilization, when the World is becoming One, when the mankind is becoming One, when we have far-reaching gems and treasures of philosophy and science and logic, of arts and culture and civilization. Mind has helped us to search and try — but we are not yet able to reach the Final Truth by the present state of our Mind.

 

The psychic being is within us — as revealed to us by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Previous Seers and Teachers and Philosophers have told us of the Soul — the Sankhya philosophy of India has spoken of the plurality of the Souls. But the Realization of the Soul or of Brahman, the Ultimate Existence that is the Source and the Origin, has prompted us to lead to Moksha or to Nirvana or to the distant Heaven. The Goal was to go back to the Origin, a non-cooperation with the Creative Force of the Supernature, which is now preparing to create the higher beings out of the human beings through Evolution.

 

But Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have said that Time has already come, when the Goal will be the Transformation of the Earth — along the Transformation of the human race. No more of Moksha, no more of Nirvana, no more of going back to the joyous Heaven: the Earth will be transformed.

 

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo came to change this Earth of darkness and death into an Abode of the Divine Life.

 

To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

The psychic being has to be unveiled by the Seeker — in order to seek the Light of the Supramental Consciousness and Force, which will change the human mind into the Mind of Light. And as some of us know, The Mother has already brought down the Supermind on the 29th day of February 1956. That is, indeed, one of the greatest Work done for the humankind, for the fulfillment of the Aim of the Supernature, for the fulfillment of the Will of the Supreme Divine.

 

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

The Goal is now before us. The Way is open before us. The Help from the Supramental is now always ready. The Blessings of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are always there — and the conditions are made ready. Only we shall have to march, taking our individual initiative.

 

Then shall the embodied being live as one
Who is a thought, a will of the Divine,
A mask or robe of his divinity,
An instrument and partner of his Force,
A point or line drawn in the infinite,
A manifest of the Imperishable.
The supermind shall be his nature's fount,
The Eternal's truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal's truth shall be his light and guide.
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

But are we sincere? Are we ready? The Mother once asked the mankind : Are you ready? Again, She forewarned us: The Choice is imperative: Truth or Abyss.

 

We shall have to reach the Luminous Future — otherwise, the consequence for us, the humans, will be the Abyss — the destructive Darkness.

 

Let us not be hopeless. Let us fear that the Abyss is a certainty. That will be the possibility only when the mankind will refuse the Supramental hope and possibility. Sri Aurobindo has assured us in Savitri that some seekers will receive the Glory of the Supramental possibilities.

 

Some shall be made the glory's receptacles
And vehicles of the Eternal's luminous power.
These are the high forerunners, the heads of Time,
The great deliverers of earth-bound mind,
The high transfigurers of human clay,
The first-born of a new supernal race.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

A few persons will certainly walk along the Path of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and reach the Light of the Supramental Sun.

 

A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray.
[Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]

 

Let us have the flame of Hope burning ever in us, for Sri Aurobindo has told us :

 

Even if the struggling world is left outside
One man's perfection still can save the world.
There is won a new proximity to the skies,
A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,
A deep concordat between Truth and Life:
A camp of God is pitched in human time.
[Savitri: Bk VII, Co V]

 

Barindranath Chaki
01-01-2010

 

 

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