Sri Aurobindo 1
An Introduction 1
Sri Aurobindo was a philosopher par excellence, a poet par excellence, a rare and superb visionary of evolution. But that is not the complete truth about Him. Further, He has been described as the Hope of Man. And Satprem, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Mira Alfassa, has described Sri Aurobindo as the Adventure of Consciousness. He was not only an Adventurer of Consciousness, but Himself the Adventure. Yes, He was an Explorer of Consciousness, and further, He was also the builder of the New World, basing on the New and a Higher Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, a much higher level of Consciousness, which was hitherto unmanifest, and which is discovered by Him. And He has shown us the Way, the Integral Way to the New Realisation, not of realising the Divine Consciousness and merging into It, transcending and leaving the Manifestation, the World and the Universe, forgetting the mankind and its past and present and future. He did not teach us to have Nirvana, or Moksha, or of reaching the Heaven and staying there forever hereafter. He did not ask us to return to the Source, to the Origin. He has given us a Way to discover and manifest and realise our own possibilities, our human and also our superhuman and divine possibilities, step by step. He tells us about transforming our individual existence and also the world, breaking all our personal and egoistic limits, becoming one with our earth, as vast as our earth. To divinise and supramentalise the world was ans is the Task he performed and asked us to perform.
As a philosopher, we find Him to be at the topmost level of Consciousness, denying none of the philosophical truths reached by the earlier philosophers, but by accepting and transcending and integrating them all in a new synthesis into one whole Truth.
As a poet, he shows us the Way to the Future Poetry, and His Poems were expressions of the Truth, which He saw and realised and lived, and which creations of highers planes of mind and Consciousness.
The Mother has said :
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.
What is this Action from the Supreme? We may try to have some understanding of the Supreme and His Will and His Action.
The Infinite and One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the Ultimate Reality, whom we name as the Brahman, the Divine, the Supreme, God etc. He has three aspects, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual.
In the Transcendental mode, He is above all manifestation, above all the Universes, all the worlds. He is the Supreme Divine, the One, Indivisible, Infinite, Pure, and bears the eternal consciousness in Him, above all Time and Space.
The Supreme Divine is the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, as is told. He is, He is Existence, eternal existence, and can even become Non-Existence, beyond the apprehension of any manifested existence.
In the Universal mode, He is one with the Universes, though above them and is their Creator. He is One who is the Manifestation, who is manifested, and He is the One who manifests. It is His Will that is manifested. The entire Manifestation is He, and it is His Leela, Play. He is both beyond it, and within it, and in each atom, each living being.
And He is also the Individual, Personal God. All the Avatars are but His Individual Manifestations.
The Supreme is with His Creative Force, the Mahashakti, whom we call the Divine Mother. They are One and Indivisible, and yet They are Two in Manifestation and even above Manifestation.
It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said, in limited human parlance, that He thought: “Ekoham, bahu syama.” [ I am alone, and shall become many.] And the Existence-Consciousness became many, countless many, and each of the many is a Soul.
However, there was no Time, when Souls were created. They are eternal aspects of the Eternal Supreme. There was and is no time, when the Souls were not there, or when the Souls will no more be.
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. In all living beings, there is a soul, who resides in the background, not easily known or realized. The soul presides over the living being, but somewhat inactively, in the background. The Soul does not generally participate in the Evolution.
In the Evolution from the animals to the human beings there has been generally no active role of the Soul, though the Divine Will was ever active. The Divine Will is the Source of the Action
A human existence is a part and portion of the Pure Existence, conditioned by all the inconscience (unconsciousness) and half-consciousness of our earthly and physical surroundings. Inconscience belongs to Matter. Or it seems inconscient to the half-awakened human being. Half-consciousness belongs to the animal world, the world of the vital consciousness, as per the definition given by Sri Aurobindo.
However, Man is not only an animal. He contains in him the Divine possibility. As is generally accepted by many of the philosophical and spiritual thinkers, all living beings have a soul.
In Man, there is an active part or aspect of the Soul, which is termed by Sri Aurobindo as the Psychic Being, which participates in the Evolution of Man, in the onward journey of the human being on the Path of Evolution into the higher beings, the supramental beings, towards the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness, the next phase of the Evolution. The Psychic is not present in any other living beings, as there is no such evolutionary necessity.
Sri Aurobindo adopted the term “psychic being” for the word soul is vaguely used:
The word soul is very vaguely used in English- as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.
The Presence of the psychic being in man is the Promise that one day a new and higher Divine race shall emerge on earth and shall form the crown of the Evolution, shall be the apex of the Manifestation. The psychic being is a special term and it should not be confused with the other uses of the word in general.
In spite of the Presence of the psychic being, human beings are in general not yet conscious of his Goal, of his higher possibilities, of the Higher Existence on earth.
But there are persons, who are becoming conscious, maybe in an imperfect way, incomplete way, but they are being conscious, growing towards the New Becoming.
In the onward progression of Evolution, Time has now arrived, when Man has to transcend himself and further the Evolution in manifesting the Supreme Himself, as per the Will of the Supreme.
Man dwells only superficially in the Mind, mainly as a mental animal, not always a rational animal. But he is generally in the lowest rung of the mental principle, covered by some grossness, some darkness, some ignorance, more or less to a great extent.
Time has come that the scene and the situation has to be changed, uplifted, and man has to be established in his divine consciousness, with his divine possibilities. That is the Reason why Sri Aurobindo was / is here - on earth.
Sri Aurobindo has began the journey to the New World, for the entire mankind, scrapping all religions, all sectarianism, all divisions, all differences. Not theoretically, but in action, by discovering and ascending to the Supermind, by preparing for the Descent of the Supermind on earth, for the well-being and progress of the humanity. For this Descent, in the Course of this Descent, He sacrificed His own body on the Day of His physical withdrawal, on 5th December 1950.
The Mother met Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914.
The next day, on 30th March, She wrote :
Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certiude.
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 overwhelms with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.
My adoration is beyond all words, and my reverence is silent.
This prayer of the Mother is self-explanatory. It shows what She saw in Sri Aurobindo. Inspite of the fact thousands of beings are ‘in the densest ignorance', it matters little, as Sri Aurobindo was there on earth. When such a Being as Sri Aurobindo is / was on earth, Darkness will cease to be and will be transmuted into Light, and the Divine reign shall be there on earth. To Her, He was the Hope of Man. Through Him, the Divine has assured the world, the earth, that it shall be tranformed, and and the dream for a better, happier, diviner world shall be fulfilled.
Sri Aurobindo was born on
Sri Aurobindo spent his life - through his vast writings and through his own development - working for the freedom of India, for finding and showing the Way to the further Evolution on earth, and to bring down the Consciousness beyond Mind, that he named the Supermind to enable such progress.
During the period from 1905 to 1910, He became a leader of the Indian nationalist movement, and His younger brother Barin was diectly involved with the extremist activities of the group, known as Jugantar, an underground revolutionary organisation. Sri Aurobindo was one of the founders of the said organisation. During the period, He was also the editor of a nationalist Bengali newspaper Vande Mataram and, consequently, came into frequent confrontation with the British administration. In 1907, he was already regarded as the new leader of the Indian nationalist movement.
Sri Aurobindo was arrested on 2nd May 1908 in connection with the trial of Alipore Bomb Case. And He was acquitted on 5th May1909.For one full year He was in prison.
When there was the partition of Bengal in 1908, it sparked an outburst of public anger against the British administration. It caused civil unrest, and a nationalist campaign was carried out by several groups of revolutionaries, led by Sri Aurobindo and others. The British took hard steps to incapacitate and render ineffective the activists and the consequences led to an event on April 30, 1908, as two revolutionary disciples, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford, a judge ill-famed for passing harsh sentences particularly against nationalists. However, the bomb thrown by them missed its target and instead landed in a horse carriage carrying two British women and killed them.
The local police immediately raided a place owned by Sri Aurobindo where His younger brother Barin, along with many other activists, was imparting training to the revolutionaries. Sri Aurobindo was Himself arrested on charges of planning and supervising the attack and was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore for one full year. After an intense search, Khudiram Bose was arrested, but Prafulla Chaki shot himself, instead of falling into the hands of the police. The trial soon began. Khudiram Bose was hanged to death. Barin was also awarded the capital punishment, but on appeal, it was changed to life imprisonment.
During the trial, Chittaranjan Das, the Advocate for Sri Aurobindo, uttered the following sentences, which proved to be a prophetic speech :
My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History…
Sri Aurobindo was acquitted in 1909.
But still, the British Police were after Him.
Sri Aurobindo then arrived at the then French colony at Pondicherry on 4th April 1910. Thus began a New Era for Him, and a New Era for the mankind, for theWorld.
Never did He leave Pondicherry again.
During the Birth Centenary of Sri Aurobindo in 1972, The Mother gave us the following Message:
Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.
Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.
There are other messages on Sri Aurobindo, given at that time by the Mother. One of the messages is also given below:
Man is the creation of yesterday.
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.
And yet another, written on 1 January 1972:
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to a country but to the whole earth. His teaching leads us towards a better future.
On 30 January 1972, she further told us:
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavor to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.
I have quoted The Mother, as She knew and understood Sri Aurobindo the best and in the most perfect way. More than half a century has passed away after Sri Aurobindo's departure, and yet His Life has still not touched the understanding of the great mass of humanity, and His message is not yet listened to by this mass. To some, He is just a saint from India, though His Touch, in consciousness, has created many saints, or better, many spiritual men, throughout the world. They are the spiritual people, without the guise of the saints or mahatmas.
Sri Aurobindo did not come to be known as a saint or a guru or a spiritual man. He came to announce “the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.” He was an Avatar, an emanation of the Divine, and He came with the special purpose of discovery of the Supramental Consciousness beyond the mental plane, of descent of the Supermind in His body, so that other people may follow His footsteps and further the achievement of the cause Descent of the Supermind on earth and of consequent manifestation of the supramental world on earth, the coming of the supramental beings on earth.
[Continued]
Barin
12-06-2006
