The New Vision

Remembering Satprem

2008-10-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

The world is continuing with death. The humanity is still a continuing sacrifice to death.

However, for Mira Alfassa, The Mother, one of the most important aspect of the Work to be done was the conquest of death.

She said :
"Death is the problem given me to resolve."
"I am on my way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted.... Death is the result of a distortion of consciousness."
To the unseeing humanity The Mother has passed away, though a few have known Her in a New Body. And one of those bright few is Satprem.

He, too, believed in the Task of fighting away death. And that was his Work. He has fought with death till the last of his physical body. Before his departure, he told that the Work is done.

OOOOO

TODAY, the 30th day of 2008, is the birthday anniversary of Satprem. He dedicated his life and existence for the Future of the mankind, for the mankind of the Future, having followed the steps of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, on the Way towards Supermanhood from the present state of the mankind, on the Way for transforming the mankind into the New Race, the race of the Supermen, the race of the Supramental Beings. After the passing away of The Mother, he left Sri Aurobindo Ashram and published the thirteen volumes of Mother’s Agenda. Further, he also wrote a number of books of everlasting value, that give us Light and directions on the New Way, which he received from The Mother during his conversation with Her.

He was born in Paris in 1923. When he was twenty years old, he was arrested by Gestapo (of Germany during Hitler’s regime) and spent about a year and a half in some concentration camps. When he came out, he was a sad, shocked and disturbed person. However, a higher spiritual destiny led him to Egypt and from there to Pondicherry in India. In Pondichery, he knew Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Soon, he left for Guiana, Brazil, Africa etc. But again, he finally returned to India in 1953.

On 3rd March 1957, The Mother named him Satprem. His original name was Bernard. Satprem became a close disciple and a confidante of The Mother. He stayed in Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Soon after the Mother’s Departure on 17th November 1973, Satprem left the Ashram.

In 1982, having followed The Mother’s footsteps, Satprem withdrew completely to set out on a new venture, on a new adventure, uncertain and dangerous, of finding out the great passage into the next evolution beyond Man, which also means a conquest of death. And he undertook the work of exploring the cause of death and the ways and means of conquering death — Life has evolved since billions of years, but it has been conquered by death — and it still has continued to be an enigma for Mind also. Evolution beyond Mind has to be an Evolution beyond death also.

Sri Aurobindo made a prophecy in Savitri:
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.In order to find out the secret of going beyond mankind, beyond death and ignorance, The Mother says, one has to plunge into the cells of the Body. The cells are the roots. The secret of the Transformation lies there.
During the 1960s and 1970s, The Mother stated that the cells of Her body were becoming more and more conscious. She said that the transformation of the cells, of the "mind of the cells", is the secret means for the physical transformation, which is of crucial importance and significance. She also said that the cells of Her body were progressively organizing themselves to a have a kind of mind of their own.

She regarded death as a state of mind of the cells which the cells accepted. If they could change their perspective, if they did not accept death as something inevitable, this would help the cells maintain themselves without any deterioration and linger their longevity.
She said that one of the secrets for physical transformation was/is to overcome the effect of the "physical mind" and the subconscient. This part of the nature is filled with inertia and has the habit of being resigned to defeat, of being negative and pessimistic in attitude and tendencies, and of grumbling. As a result, it reinforces illnesses and is a great obstruction to the physical transformation. According to Her, this was a great obstacle to the emergence of the new species. The Mother strived hard to bring in the higher consciousness into the physical and sub-conscient aspect of Her being.

The Mother said :
There is a consciousness in the cells: it is what we call the ‘body consciousness’ and it is wholly bound up with the body. This consciousness has much difficulty in changing, because it is under the influence of the collective suggestion which absolutely opposed to the transformation. So one has to struggle with this collective suggestion, not only with the collective suggestion of the present, but with the collective suggestion of the earth consciousness as a whole, the terrestrial human consciousness which goes back to the earliest formation of man. That has to be overcome before the cells can be spontaneously aware of the Truth, of Eternity of matter.

What is more essential in an Integral Transformation is to transform the consciousness of the cells. Transformation of the mind and the vital being has been achieved through yogic discipline — there has been transformation of consciousness. As The Mother has said, at least quite a few persons have been aware of the Divine Presence or the Truth of their being. But they have not attained the Total Transformation, the Integral Transformation. Even the global consciousness of the physical has been transformed — but that is not enough for going beyond human state of darkness and disease and death. There has to be a transformation of the consciousness of the cells.

The Mother has said:
Finally, there is the physical consciousness itself, the material consciousness, the body consciousness, and that is the one which has so far never been entirely transformed. The global, overall consciousness of the body has been transformed, that is, one can throw off the bondage of thoughts, of habits that one no longer considers inevitable. That can change, it has been changed. But what remains to be changed is the consciousness of the cells.

OOOOO

Satprem concentrated and worked on bringing this change in the consciousness of the cells in the physical body.

That is the Way for integrally transforming the human being towards Supermanhood. That work is Satprem’s contribution to the mankind, in which he is indeed unique and it is not yet known if any one else has walked on this Way.

Satprem says:
And then you begin to wonder if it is not the body that holds the true secret — if it is not these first cells or that microorganism from a few billion years ago that hold what we have been seeking in vain with all our scientific or intellectual artifices, if it is not this first spasm of “life” enclosed in a bubble that knows or recognizes its Nectar, its air from beyond the graves, its life denser than all our lives, its breathing more powerful than all our oxygens — and that, finally, not only the way out of this grave, but the way to let another air in here which will bring our walls down.
A new Life.
A new Earth.
A new Evolution — Evolution II.
[Satprem : Evolution II]
Satprem lived and worked for this progressive journey beyond death and beyond Ignorance. He has definitely made a great deal of progressive exploration and advancement on the Way.

And the Work must go on till the goal is achieved. That is the greatest and the most important for the mankind — to go beyond mankind. The Work has to continue and will definitely continue, as that is the Will of Divine in Evolution.

OOOOO

Some persons have recently equated Satprem and Peter Heeh. This is sheer ignorance and ingratitude. Heeh cannot simply be compared to, or raised to the height of, Satprem. Satprem has NEVER done or written anything to belittle or understate Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He was one of the closest disciples of The Mother. And his book Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness is definitely one of the books on Sri Aurobindo. He is definitely a source of inspiration for the followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

That is why Satprem, the brilliant pioneer, is remembered.

Barindranath Chaki

Written on 30-10-2008,
Published on 31-10-2008

Posted simultaneously also in ASPIRATION and Sulekha.

Tags : Sri Aurobindo Mira Alfassa The Mother Satprem A new Evolution Evolution II Integral Transformation Consciousness of the Cells

The First Step

2008-04-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

Hill after hill was climbed and now,
Behold, the last tremendous brow
And the great rock that none has trod:
A step, and all is sky and God.

[One Day : Sri Aurobindo]

The Evolution from the Ape to Man was over many a millennium back. The Homo Neanderthal and then the Homo Sapiens came into being. But Man was groping in utter Darkness : he did not find his Way, and even if it was shown to him or even if he discovered it, he lost it. He lost his Way, though his existence was and is the Search of the Way from Darkness to Light.

“Hill after hill was climbed…” — several realizations were there before Man — the Divine came to us in one form or another and led the Way. Avatars were there who climbed the hills.

And the last great rock was still there untouched, unclimbed — the rock “that none has trod” : the rock of the Supramental Consciousness. The Supramental Realization was the Step that was to be taken.

And it was Sri Aurobindo who took the Step— the first Step. That was the Task before Him, before Sri Aurobindo The Avatar.

OOOOO

On 4th April, 1910, at 4PM, Sri Aurobindo arrived at and took His first Step on Pondicherry. He had left Calcutta and, thereby, British India on 1st April 1910, and proceeded towards Colombo in a steamer named SS Duplex. As revealed from the records, He traveled in the steamer as one Jyotindra Mitter and the ticket was up to Colombo, so that His movements remain utterly misleading to the Police of British India. Bijoy Nag, Sri Aurobindo’s companion in the journey, was named Bankim Chandra Basak. On the way to Colombo, they dropped in Pondicherry.

That was the First Step by the One who brought the Greatest Revolution in the spiritual endeavours taken by Mankind. That was the end of the revolutionary chapter in the life of Sri Aurobindo — and then began His journey towards to the New World, the Supramental World, the New Creation — His true Work —the New Vision and the New Way before mankind.

OOOOO
In 1906, Sri Aurobindo left Baroda and came to Calcutta, as the first Principal of the newly formed Bengal National College. However, He soon resigned that post, being more and more actively involved in the Nationalist Movement. We should know and remember that Sri Aurobindo was the first of the Nationalist leaders who thought about a completel independence for India as the goal of the Movement, and for several years he was practically involved in this struggle. Consequently, He was arrested in the well-known Alipore Bomb Case. He was kept in solitary confinement for about a year as an 'under-trial' prisoner in Alipore jail. During this period, He had a great spiritual experience, the second of the major spiritual experiences of his life.
After He was acquitted and released, the British authorities continued to pursue him, due to the continued activities of the Revolutionaries. An inner Voice asked him to go, at first to Chandernagore, and then to Pondicherry. He secretly left British India, as He was being persecuted as a politically dangerous person, for having dreamt of the Independence of India, and then took refuge in Pondicherry.

OOOOO

In Pondicherry, He concentrated intensively and extensively to the exploration of the new spiritual possibilities. When The Mother [Mira Alfassa] joined Him and when, later, the Ashram was formed, with Her collaboration and using His newfound spiritual and Supramental discoveries and experiences and wisdom, He continued His Work: the Adventure of Consciousness, through the Supramental Discovery and Its Ascent, Descent, and through the Supramental Transformation, which He found to be the only solution for all the human problems, continuing for millennia.

What happened in Pondicherry on the 4th of April 1910, was the beginning of a unique Spiritual History. As it happened, it seemed that everything was set by the unseen Hands, ready from beforehand, and unfolded by The Divine Dreamer’s Will, through previously thought and shaped events, like the unfoldment of the Divine Lotus! And in ourse of Time, we find that as a consequence of this First Step, now the Whole earth and the the mankind are on the threshold of a Great Change.

Sr Aurobindo, along with The Mother, had the New Vision, the Golden Vision. He has foreseen the enlightned and golden Future on our earth, and hasthen endeavoured to transform the earth, to make His Vision true and real.

I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
architects of immortality.

OOO
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.

OOO
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
Behind man's inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:

OOO
He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth's thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth's deeds shall touch the superhuman's height,
Earth's seeing widen into the infinite.

[Savitri, Book III, Canto IV: Sri Aurobindo]

Barin Chaki
Written on 04-04-2008,
Published on 07-04-2008

On 'The Divine Moment'

2008-04-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

Comments on 'The Divine Moment'

[The Divine Moment was simultaneously published in Sulekha. The following are the comments made on The Divine Moment in Sulekha.]

♥ komlet posted in Sulekha 3 days ago
Barin Chaki.....the whole write up is so well versed and aims to strike the heart of a seeker
......read and get in touch of something special...........perhaps i can not define it right now,
thanks for your wonderful notes.

♥ krishnabaalu posted in Sulekha 3 days ago :
Wonderful; The Mother and Sri Aurobindo would have changed the world if we Indian's had realized the power of Sri Aurobindo. The true spiritual power and yogi of Modern World.

Krishna Baalu

♥ barin chaki posted in Sulekha 24 hrs ago
Thank you, komlet.
Thank you, krishnabaalu

Both of you are really special, as The Divine Moment has touched both of you.

When komlet said that there is something special, she was right, as the said Divine Moment is still alive and active, more alive and active than the otherwise dull and fleeing moments!!

krishnabaalu rightly said that the world would now have already been changed, if Indians would have accepted Sri Aurobindo wholeheartedly. But the majority of the Indians tried to follow half-truth and was diverted by other aims. That is a sad story many people know, who at least think and feel like krishnabaalu.

But let it be so!
Truth will manifest, surely, without waiting for any immature instruments!!
The lethargy and slow and tedious lives of the unchanging Apes and monkeys could not stop the coming of the Humans!!!

Barin Chaki
01-04-2008

Posted by me in
The New Vision
on 02-04-2008
Barin Chaki

The Divine Moment

2008-03-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

Ninety-four years back, a French lady, not much known at that time to the outer world, had a meeting with Someone who secretly left British India, being persecuted as a politically dangerous person, for having dreamt of the Independence of India, and then too refuge in a corner in French India, in Pondicherry. Few people knew or anticipated the result and the outcome of the meeting.

The Mother met Sri Aurobindo on the 29th March 1914.

The consequence was the ongoing Transformation of the human world towards the Supramental Manifestation on earth. That meeting was definitely one of the most important turning point in the human history, the turning point when Man has begin his journey for transcending his imperfections and his living in ignorance and darkness, for growing towards Supermanhood, leaving his checkered human existence.

It was a Divine Moment, chosen by the Divine.

The Mother saw Him for the first time, at 3:30 PM on that particular day, in His house in Rue Francois Martin in Pondicherry. “At the very first sight, recognition came like a flash of lightning: Sri Aurobindo was verily the ‘Krishna’ she had met so often in her dreams. There was no need for speech, she sat at Sri Aurobindo’s feet and closed her eyes, only her mind was open to him. A great silence now encompassed her and flooded her soul. There was a breaking of past intellectual moulds, a dissolution of arduous mental constructions, followed by a new crystallization in the image of total identification with the incarnate Divine.” [Sri Aurobindo by K R Srinivasa Iyengar]

Of this Moment, The Mother later wrote the next day:

Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude.

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth, and Thy reign shall be indeed established on earth.
[Prayers and Meditations]

OOOOO

The densest darkness is still around — darkness and dark activities therein. Millions and million human beings are still immersed in that darkness — the so-called human beings who are more inhuman, and even subhuman, than human, and they are grossly involved in activities and habits that are leading the Race to disintegration and destruction and still more darkness. It seems that a significant portion of the Race has forgotten any impression of a higher Aspiration, that has been leading mankind always.

We find the instances of mass killings, for several reasons, for fulfilling dark political and religious ambitions, for satisfying insatiable animal passion and greed and deformed lust. We find disturbances everywhere, in smaller and bigger scales. We find clash and hatred and genocide at many places —in Tibet, in Afghanistan, in India and Pakistan. Killers are firing free everywhere.

But also we find that the Hope is there, the non-flickering Ray of Hope. And it has been there, since Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have kindled the Hope. Their Action together began on this day the 29th March 1914.

The greatest consequence of Their Collaboration was, and is, the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth on the 29th February 1956, preceded by the Descent of the Supramental in the Person and in the Body of Sri Aurobindo on the occasion of His Physical Departure and even earlier.

The Supramental Descent was the Hope and then it turned to become the New Reality. That is the Key to the Next Future — the New Future, the New Creation.

OOOOO
Like the squirrel helping in the Setubandha in Ramayana, we also have a role in the formation of the New Future, the Supramental Future — to Work for IT within our capacity and scope, and the minimum of IT is not to have a regression, never to go back, to the World of Darkness and dense and gross animality and never to put off the fire of Aspiration..

Barin Chaki
29-03-2008

The New Way 2

2008-03-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

The New Way 2A

When we look around, we find ourselves, the human beings, generally satisfied with our ignorance and doubts and darkness, our passions and weaknesses, our narrowness and selfishness, our divisions and limitations, our diseases and death. We are proud that we are human beings, because we are somewhat better in our existence and in our situations, in comparison with other forms and expressions of life on earth, the animals and insects and plants. Life is and was an expression of a Force of vitality and strength, of joy and happiness in the inertia and Inconscience that Matter is. But this expression is limited. There is movement in life, but limited by inertia and laziness and indolence. There is force in life, but limited by weaknesses, illnesses and diseases, by sleep and death. There is joy and happiness in life, limited by sorrows and sufferings and pain. There is freedom in life, but limited by all incapacities, falls and failures, by inertia and indolence, by endless bondages and hindrances, and ultimately by death. There is consciousness in life, but it is limited and overwhelmed by ignorance and Inconscience, by the sheer absence of Light and Wisdom and Knowledge.

But if we look back, before the Advent of Man on Earth, we find that it was a movement of a Consciousness-Force towards manifestation of Light in darkness, of Consciousness in Inconscience, of Wisdom and Knowledge in Ignorance, of Joy and Creativity in barren inertness.

When Man evolved out of the Ape, it was the first expression of the principle of Mind, the principle that seeks Truth, searches Truth through layers of Darkness, and aspires to bring Light into Darkness, Consciousness into Inconscience, Life into diseases and Death. Manifestation of Life on earth would have been meaningless, had not the human race come into being.

In the evolutionary history of the earth, ‘the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic’* signifies a very important Moment. [*Satprem: Mother’s Agenda, 1951-1960, P11]

Let us note that Satprem states of birth of the first man amid the hostile hordes! This is remarkable, as the birth of the new race was the result of an evolutionary urge of Nature, and the majority of the horde was unable to be fit and worthy of the Progress. All apes have never turned into the human beings.

Satprem has further said: A first man is the 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 man.

A certain simian fellow turned into a man, as chosen by Nature, representing the Supreme Consciousness-Force, but it did not know that he is a New Being, a Man. And his coming into existence was beyond all understanding and logic of the “hostile horde” of the Apes.

And began the March towards the manifestation of Truth, Goodness and Beauty, the March of human civilization and logic and philosophy and arts and Science. But was our March satisfactory? Have we reached anywhere near the Goal — the goal of fulfilment and creativity, of Light and Joy and Immortality?

As we have seen, we are still hovering in Darkness, aided and empowered by all logic and Science and Philosophy. We are still limping in our march and are baffled on our Way, as we are in constant perplexion and the searches have become never-ending: which way to go? We are still living in sadness, with sorrows and sufferings and pain, though we are in search of happiness for centuries and millennia. Mind has become a vicious circle and we are continuously groping in uncertainties.

However, there is the Way, the New Way, the New Vision — as visioned by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, as expressed in Their numerous writings and sayings, including the Sayings of The Mother — Mother’s Agenda, as recorded and given to the humanity by Satprem and named by him as ‘this fabulous document’.

As the birth of the first man was a very important turning point in the evolutionary history of the earth, so also, the coming into existence of this fabulous document, Mother’s Agenda, is another and a greater turning point in the earthly evolution.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
20-03-2008

February

2008-02-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

Indeed, the 21st, 28th and 29th days of February bring along with them the Force and Light and Joy of a New Consciousness that vibrates in the air — one may feel it also, if one tries to remain quiet and receptive and open.
That is the Force that is there on earth, in order to bring a Big Change here, from the mental and vital world to the Supramental Manifestation.
To try to commune with The Mother, with the Divine — that will be and is the best way of celebration of these days.
Let us sincerely try to have a constant communion with Her.

Barin
21-02-2008

Remember Her Always

2008-02-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

Today is The Mother’s Birthday.

The Mother has told : "Keep yourself always open towards me". And that is the Way. In fact, that is the Sadhana, the highest range of human sadhana, that is the Way towards the New World, towards the Integral Transformation, towards supermanhood. When we keep ourselves open to Her, the Supramental Light tries to touch us. If we are conscious enough to receive It, we are truly successful.

Let us remember The Mother as much as possible. Let us try to have a contact and communion with Her, as much possible and as sincerely and perfectly as possible. Let us renew our surrender to Her, to Her Work, to Her Cause, the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness, as much as possible.

The Question that has been asked [in ‘In Search of The Mother’ in Orkut] is about Meditation. In meditation, one may sit quietly at a place, but that is not sufficient. One has to bring in quietude in the Mind, trying to stop the ever-busy movements of the mental ideas, opinions, habits and constructions, and also the recurrence of the impressions of vital activities, desires, cravings, sensations, lust, greed, jealousy, pride, envy, hostility, selfishness and egoistic tendencies. Also one has to try to conquer the darkness of the physical nature, the stupidity, doubt, disbelief and obscurity of the physical nature.

But how? By aspiring for the Light, for the Truth, for the Higher Consciousness, by trying to replace the lower nature by the Higher Nature. Again the question comes: how? By remembering The Mother.

When one meditates for some time everyday and calls The Mother, calls the Higher Consciousness for some days, Peace descends, Bliss descends, Light descends, and one feels elevated in Consciousness. The Consciousness widens and widens and all barriers and limitations seem to break down and collapse.

M P Pandit says: “…it is not enough that one sits with closed eyes once the higher and deeper Consciousness. It is necessary to be vigilant and keep oneself in the current of the Force, without MEANDERING of the MIND.” [The emphasis is given by me.]

To sit for a while in a silent and quiet way and then to get up and forget it and mix up oneself in the half-blind whirlpools of life — that is not meditation. That brings failure to the sitting in quietude for a while.

Meditation can be done and has always to be done, as far as possible, during the Works also.

Remember The Mother, concentrate on Her, commune with Her, refer everything to Her, surrender everything to Her.

That is the best expression of our Love for Her.
On Her Birthday, let us take one step further towards The New World, The New Horizon.

Barin
21-02-2008

The Transition

2007-11-24T23:17:00.000-08:00

The Transition — The Seventeenth November

Thirty-three years back, on the Seventeenth Day of November, 1973, Mira Alfassa, The Mother in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, left Her physical body and walked and entered into the then newly formed Supramental Body. The World knew and told that She has passed away.

She wanted to walk into Her new supramental body along with Her old body. But that did not and could not happen. The cooperation that She deserved from the fellow human beings was not received. Someone who was close to Her on that day, did not render the needed assistance and She had to lie on Her bed, as She was medically ill. Her instructions were ignored and unheard. Her entreaties were not listened to or cared for. Someone failed to become a true representative of the aspiring mankind.

OOOOO

Medically, The Mother was ill. It was told that She was sick. Though, according to The Mother and Her followers Satprem and Sujata, She was really at the concluding stage of preparing and entering into a New Body, the Supramental Body. Many others heard of it — some believed it. Some could not believe it — some did not believe it.

The Mother had told Sujata of the New Body on 24-03-1972 :

For the first time, early this morning, I saw myself: my body. I don't know whether it's the supramental body or ... (what shall I say?) a transitional body, but I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was sexless: it was neither woman nor man.
It was very white. But that could be because I have white skin, I don't know.
It was very slender (gesture). Really lovely, a truly harmonious form.
That's the first time.
I hadn't the least idea, the faintest notion what it would look like, nothing, and I saw - I WAS like that, I had become like that. I thought Satprem should know, so he can note it down.
I don't know if I'll remember, that's why I am telling you. Because today is Friday and I won't see him till tomorrow. This way, I am sure I won't forget. You'll tell him, won't you?

Sujata: Yes, Mother.

The next day, the 25th March 1972, Satprem had asked The Mother about the New Body:
Sujata told me about the experience you had the other day, that vision you had of your body, the transitional body.

The Mother replied:
Yes, I WAS like that. It was me; I didn't look at myself in a mirror, I saw myself like this (Mother bends her head to look at her body), I was ... I just was like that.
That's the first time. It was around four in the morning, I think. And perfectly natural - I mean, I didn't look in a mirror, it felt perfectly natural……

The Mother revealed Her Agenda and Her Work before Satprem and Sujata, and they were told by Her of Her programme of creation and preparation of the New Body as a very important step in the Supramental Manifestation.

OOOOO

K D Sethna has said:

We are aware that the Supramental Body was already with Her, waiting to fuse with the human form She had worn for our sake. We are aware also that the lengthy struggle she recently went through was only the Yogic endeavour of the human form to open completely to the Supramental Body. Perhaps this form did enough and its exalted agony was needed no more to enable the Supramental Body to manifest. Perhaps that Body having assimilated the achievement of the other and thereby gained sufficient density for its subtle-physical substance, can now materialize itself on its own in a not too distant future.

OOOOO

What M P Pandit said is highly relevant :

A new body was under formation, the supramental body, in which She was to take Her embodiment as the end-result of the transformation of this body. The body was being prepared. She gave in “Notes on the Way” descriptions of this body, described how it looked. And about a year ago, She told someone, “I am trying to fuse this material body into that body but I have not been able to get the clue.” She said, “Nobody on earth has tried this, the secret is not given to me. On that point, She said, there was no help from above. She was searching.

Thereafter ……… one day it flashed to me that as soon as that luminous body was ready, the Mother would just walk into it without dying, “without dying” means not necessarily keeping the body, but without the gap in consciousness; keeping up the continuity of the personality, She would just cross in to that luminous body. It just flashed, and the way it came I thought it was more than just an idea: I noted it down in my diary. I looked up it the other day, it was dated the 24th of July 1973. I did not think it wise to speak of it to people except in my closest circle, which I did… …

Then on the morning of 17th November at about nine o’clock, a particular friend of mine — he has a certain grounding in occult experience, occult knowledge, and normally when we meet we exchange notes — told me, “I have seen the Mother’s body of light.” I got interested. “The new body is full of light but it is not dense enough to function is earth conditions. It is there, and as I was looking at it I got the feeling that the Mother would enter this body the moment it became dense enough to stand and function in the earth atmosphere, seen or unseen. But there is no question of revival of the material body.” And he added, “Those who are capable of seeing the Mother’s halo, aura, they will be able to see that luminous body.” It confirmed what I had perceived some four month’s earlier; I told him as much.

That evening at 7-25 p.m., as you all know, the Mother withdrew from her body. They say the cause was heart failure, but let me tell you the heart failure was not the cause, the heart failure was the result of her withdrawal. She had decided, the moment things were ready she walked into that body.

She has not passed away, She has just changed her body. Not changed in the manner of the Gita — soul changing bodies — consciously ; keeping the full personality she has gone into that body. And, as it was revealed to me.…, she will function in that body, work through those instruments who are open to her, expedite the remaining work — the working out of the consequences — but her activity will not be confined to the Ashram or to Auroville; for her the whole world is her Ashram….

OOOOO

A divine possibility failed due to the non-co-operation and disobedience of Man. The negative force and will prevailed for the time being and the Destiny of Mankind and the Evolution had to have a different Course. When the Old Form could not walk into the Supramental Body, a New Course was taken by divine possibility — the New Body must not have failed and must have assimilated the essence of the Old Form.

The Mother, in Her subtle body, walked into the New Body. That was the triumph of which the mankind did not know. She is continuing Her work of the Supramental Manifestation and Transformation through those instruments who are open to Her and to Her Action or Her Will, throughout the world, and it is not limited to the Ashram or to Auroville. Her work is now for the entire world and for the entire humanity

Barin Chaki
25-11-2007

Written on 17-11-2007,
Revised from 18-11-2007
To 20-11-2007

Pubished on 25-11-2007

The Hope

2007-08-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

One hundred thirty-five years ago, on this day, the fifteenth of August, the Supreme answered the human call for several millennia:

Asato maa sad gamaya
Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya
Mŗtyormaamŗtam gamaya.

From the unreal, lead me to the real;
from darkness, lead me to light;
from death, lead me to deathlessness.

The Answer is Sri Aurobindo.
And Sri Aurobindo’s answer to this prayer is: tathaastu.

One hundred thirty-five years ago, there was the beginning of a very Big Change on earth, in our World, the beginning of the Next Evolution, from Man to a new species, beyond this ignorant imperfect death-bound human beings, living with and in Darkness, within and without.
That was the beginning of a Fundamental Change on earth. The seed was sown on that day.
Sri Aurobindo’s birth on earth is the most positive Answer from the Supreme to the humanity that gropes in darkness. He is the Divine Will personified — for an Evolution from Man to Superman and beyond, towards the advent of the supramental beings.

OOOO

The Mother [Mira Alfassa] met Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914 for the first time.
She wrote on the next day :

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.

OOOO

The Mother gave us the following message, in 1972:
“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 endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation…”

The Mother also told us:
“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.”

On 15 August 1972, the Message given by The Mother.
“Sri Aurobindo’s message is an immortal Sunlight radiating over the future.”
And yet another: “Man is the creation of yesterday.”
“Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.”

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo is The Leader of the next evolution.
He was the first Person to know and declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man has to evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, and then towards becoming a supramental being. That is the Will of the Supreme, that is the design of Nature, rightly speaking, of Supernature.
While Matter is apparently Inconscient, evolution from Matter to Man is through Ignorance. Though Man has been evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings, still he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has been evolved with Mind, is still being evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are 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 half-fulfilled, partial and inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some, 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.

OOOO

This earth is a field of Evolution, and from the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution. But as we know, Man is not perfect. He lives with ignorance, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, chaos, disorder, aimlessness, unhappiness, sufferings, diseases and death. However, that is only an aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, joy, for light and knowledge. And always with him there is Hope. Without hope, he cannot be. 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 Evolution. This is what the Mother [Mira Alfassa] 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. This is our evolutionary Future. Man cannot continue for ever as he is and has been till now. He has to proceed ahead from the present situation, taking the opportunity given by The New Consciousness and Force that has descended. 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.

OOOO

The most important and unique Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is leading the humanity and the earth the Next Evolution. They have told of a New and Higher Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, and of the Advent of this Higher Consciousness. The Supramental Consciousness is the Next plane of Consciousness that has to be evolved, for that is the Aim of Evolution. Evolution is the Manifestation of All that is ‘involved’ in Matter. And what is involved is nothing less than the Highest Principle of Existence, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, or in simple language, the Divine.Matter is apparently Inconscient, and evolution from Matter to till the appearance of Man is through Ignorance. Man has evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings. Yet he is only partially conscious, partially fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are touched and partly used only by a few. However, these few persons have led us to believe that transcendence of the present state is possible. Our endeavor for self-discovery and world-discovery is also only fulfilled in a partial and inconclusive and insufficient manner. Our previous spiritual Leaders have led some, but the mass of the humankind is still groping in darkness. And the followers are busy with clashes, feuds and wars, and have made the situation regressive and backward towards the primitive state of mind, though ornamented with modern superficialities. Man lives with Ignorance in all walks of his life and existence, with an incomplete and imperfect mental consciousness that Nature has bestowed on him. He is ignorant and in dark about the results of his actions or about the certainty of his thoughts, of his future achievements, about his own survival, about his purpose on earth or even about his destiny. The human history is made of stories of our repeated bloodsheds in wars, battles and massacres. And we have divided and sub-divided and further subdivided our earth into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. Hatred is our way, and not Love. We are moving backwards to a regression. We are not conscious that there is a higher aim and meaning for our life and existence. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and selfish activities. We fail to know beyond our nose and most often, we shut up our eyes, outer and inner.

OOOO

On this birthday of Sri Aurobindo, let us remember Him and The Mother and also let us remember about our possible participation in the great Work of Transformation, so that the Next Future ushers in. Let us have faith in the Promise and march forward:
To eternal light and knowledge meant to rise,
Up from man’s bare beginning is our climb ;
Out of earth’s heavy smallness we must break,
We must search our nature with spiritual fire :
An insect crawl precludes our glorious flight;
Our human state cradles the future god,
Our mortal frailty an immortal force.
[Savitri]

Sri Aurobindo has also told us that man has to and will transcend himself progressively and march forward towards the advent of a ‘mightier race’ — the race of the supermen, and then of the supramental beings.

This Hope, this Dream inspired within us by Sri Aurobindo, may become as the very Inspiration of our life.

Let us remember what Sri Aurobindo has said:

A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal man’s world.
On Nature’s luminous tops, on the Spirit’s ground,
The superman shall reign king of life,
Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven
And lead toward God and truth man’s ignorant earth
And lift towards godhead his mortality.
[Savitri]

o0OOOOO0o

Barindranath Chaki

15-08-2007

Posted simultaneously in The New Vision , Zaadz and Sulekha.

The New Way

2007-08-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

The New Way1

A study of the Agenda

Barindranath Chaki
11th August 2007

The Beginning
[From continuation]

A question has arisen whether the Way shown to us in Mother’s Agenda is the New Way or an old one.
A friend has commented as follows:
“Your idea is both Old and New - old to those who have read them and new to those who are new to Sri Aurobindo and Mother's path. The Agenda is the record of the Mother's day to day work on her body, up to the point it served her. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's other works are to be joined with it to make it a whole. A great hope indeed but it has to be activated and those will be benefitted who do it. The time has not been foretold.”

Indeed, all members of the human species belong to the old world, even the devotees and the followers of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Simply by reading some of the books written by Them or about Them, or even by writing some books about Them, one does not come over to the New World. Similarly, under the same circumstances, The Mother’s Way does not become an old Way to anyone, unless he or she is a part of the New World. It is a misnomer to say that the Way becomes old for those, who know The Mother and Sri Aurobindo or have read from or about Them or even have written about Them. We have a long Way to go, from the state of the human species to the New Species, there has to be the habitation of the New Species on earth.

The Mother has spoken of the New Light, the New World. On 23rd September 1914, She has written in Prayers and Meditation :

The Lord hast willed, and Thou dost execute;
A new Light shall break upon the earth.
A new world shall be born.
And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.

The Mother has rewritten the same as follows in 1956, after a lapse of 42 years:

29th February — 29th March
Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute:
A new light breaks upon the earth,
A new world is born.
The things that were promised are fulfilled.

The Mother has spoken of the New World, the New Light, obviously with reference to the Supramental World that began its manifestation through the Supramental Descent on 29-02-1956.

Again in 1962, after a lapse of six years, The Mother says:
May the New Light illumine your thoughts and your lives, govern your hearts and guide your action.
Blessings.

Again, after 7 years, in 1969, The Mother says:
Hail the new light.
That it may grow in all hearts.
Blessings.

Thus, it may be seen that even after a period of fifty-five years, The Mother referred to the New Light as the New Light, and it did not become old to Her!!!

In an article on the Mother published in BookRags.com, we find reference to the words ‘the new race’ and ‘the new species’:
“From 1960 till her passing in 1973 the Mother had a number of near weekly meetings with one of her closest disciples, Satprem. There she discussed her progress in her physical transformation, world events and her effect on world events, the new workings of the supramental consciousness in the world, her earlier life's experiences including her spiritual experiences, the changes and spiritualisation in the functioning of her physical body, her visions of the new race, and many other topics. These conversations were kept and were published in French and English in the 13-volume set known as The Agenda.”

♣♣♣

“She professed that one of the keys to physical transformation was overcoming the effect of the "physical mind" and the subconscious (subconscient). She said that this part of the nature is defeatist, grumbling, filled with inertia, where illness gets reinforced, and perhaps the great physical barrier to the physical transformation. Claiming that this was one of the great impediments to the emergence of the new species, she tried to bring in the higher consciousness into this part of her being.”

OOOO

What happened on earth on 29th February 1956 is an event of the greatest importance for the earth. The Mother describes it as follows:

FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION

(During the common meditation on Wednesday

The 29th February 1956)

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there 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.Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

The Mother has further said in this regard:

“The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.”

Let us see the following messages from The Mother, issued thereafter :
To all those who aspire
Open yourself to the New Force. Let it do in you its work of Transformation.
April 1956
♣
Open yourself to the New Light that has dawned upon earth and a luminous path will spread in front of you.
28 May 1956
♣
Let the New Light be spread upon earth and spread the conditions of human life.
6 January 1957
♣
A new world is born — all those who want to have a place in it must sincerely prepare themselves for it.
15 August 1957
♣
Heralding the birth of a new world, we invite all those who want to have a place in it to prepare themselves sincerely for it.
15 August 1957
♣
To celebrate the birth of a transitory body can satisfy some faithful feelings.
To celebrate the manifestation of the eternal Consciousness can be done at every moment of the universal history.
But to celebrate the birth of a new world, the supramental world, is a marvelous and exceptional privilege.

OOOO

The Mother was asked a question on 29 November 1969:
In 1919 Sri Aurobindo wrote that the chaos and the calamities were perhaps the pangs of the birth of a new creation. How long is this going to continue? In the Ashram, in India and eventually in the world?

The Mother answered:
It will continue until the world is ready and willing to receive the new creation; the consciousness if the new creation is already at work upon earth since the beginning of this year. If instead of resisting, people were collaborating, it would be quicker.
But stupidity and ignorance are very obstinate.

Another question The Mother was asked in 1970:
Mother, “The world is preparing for a bid change, will you help?” what is the great change of which you speak? And how are we to be of help to it?

The Mother answered:
This great change is the appearance upon earth of a new race which will be for man what man is for the animal. The consciousness of this new race is already at work upon earth to enlighten all who are able to receive it and heed it.

The Mother was asked another question:
You have asked us to help you. How can I help you? What am I to do?

The Mother replied:
To concentrate and open to receive the progressive new consciousness, to receive the new things which are coming down.
3 March 1970

The Mother has said —
The new world: the result of transformation.

Let us find what the Mother has said about the New Creation:

Realisation of the new creation: it is for this that we must prepare ourselves.
♣
Matter prepares itself to receive the supramental: matter tries to liberate itself from old habits to prepare for the new creation.
♣
Ideal of the new creation: the ideal must be progressive in order to realize itself in the future.
♣
Usefulness of the new creation: a creation which aims at teaching men to surpass themselves.
♣
Charm of the new creation: the new creation is attractive for all those who want to progress.
♣
Beauty of the new creation: the new creation better to manifest the Divine.
♣

The new way is the path that leads us to the new creation. Have we all, or some of us, already reached the New Creation, of which The Mother has spoken? Are we already in the Future, in The New World of which The Mother has spoken? Have we all, who have read or written some books by or about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, have already made the required progress and surpassed ourselves? Have we manifested the Divine in our lives and in the world? To claim that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and Their Way have become old for us will really be an error. The Way will remain ever new for the imperfect humans. Only those who surpass manhood can claim the Way to be old.
The answer can only be, emphatically: no.
And therefore, we can never say or claim that the new way has become old for us. To claim so would mean that we have not understood the true meaning and the purport of the words ‘the new way’ and that we are yet to understand The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

OOOO

The other works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not left out or intended to be left out, when we study the Agenda. The Idea itself is impossible. Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching leads us to the Event of the 5th December 1950. And what happened on the 29th February 1956 is the consequence thereof, caused by the Tapasya of The Mother. And then was the New Way gradually opened by The Mother. They do already form a linked whole. They are already one whole : there was no suggestion by me that The Agenda will be separately treated, apart from the Works of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

The Agenda is, however, a distinct aspect of the Words that The Mother ever uttered for us, the humans.
M Alan Kazlev has said in this regard in his comment:
It's great that you've posted this, Barin! I feel the Agenda to be the single most important document ever written; because it so clearly holds the key to the divine transformation of the Earth.

OOOO

It has been stated that “The Agenda is the record of the Mother's day to day work on her body, up to the point it served her.” However, that is but one aspect of The Agenda.

The Agenda, simultaneously, has several aspects. On the one hand it is a record or logbook of the Mother's own explorations and work at the transformation and supramentalisation of the physical body, through Her own body. And we also find Her discovery of a deep physical consciousness, which has the capability of restructuring the nature of the physical and the laws of nature in a very radical way. It also provides, in another aspect, an intimate glimpse of the Mother's personality, of which there are no other records available.
In another aspect, it is a record of Satprem's own spiritual development, including his letters to the Mother.
On another aspect, the Agenda include the development of the Ideas of Spiritual evolution and of “the new species," of The New World, of The New Creation, The New Consciousness. The Agenda are not limited only to the spiritual progress of The Mother, in the supramental plane, or of Satprem, but the Aim here is also the Total Transformation of the humanity, from manhood to supermanhood, and further even to the Advent of the supramental beings. On the Future of mankind, the Agenda throw a promising Light also.

And inevitably, the Agenda is "a work of literary magic."

OOOO

This study of Mother’s Agenda has been named as The New Way, following The Mother. None else has been followed.

Let me quote from the Agenda Her words on the 18th September 1971:
The body feels it no longer belongs to the old way of being, but it knows that it isn’t in the new way yet; it is still.... It is no longer mortal and not yet immortal. It's quite strange. Quite strange. And sometimes you go from the most dreadful discomfort to ... the marvel — it's strange. An inexpressible bliss. Things are no longer what they were, and they aren’t what they are supposed to be. There it is. Strange.

Further, The Mother has expressed the words even earlier in 1963 [9th January 1963]:
But it's very difficult for the body to change, because it lives only out of its habit. So every time something of the new way of living slips in, free of thought, free of reasoning, free of anything resembling an idea, almost free of sensation — almost automatically —the newness of it throws the cells into a panic. So, everything has to be changed, you see. It's no longer that the heart must pump the blood or receive the Force; it’s no longer the stomach that must digest the food, no longer all that — it must function in another way. The base of it all must be changed, the functioning completely modified — while every single one of all these cells tries to make sure that everything should work as usual!
Terrible. A strange difficulty.

We can also find that The Mother has expressed Herself through these words as early in 1962 [13th February 1962]:
Take the change of the functioning of the organs, for example. What is the procedure? And both ways are already starting to exist side by side.... What is required for one to disappear and the other to stay all by itself, changed? Changed, because as it is now, it wouldn't be sufficient to make the body function; there are all those functions the body must still perform which it couldn’t perform. It would stay in a blissful state, would enjoy its condition, but not for long – for all its needs would still be there! That's the difficulty. Those who come later, in a hundred years, two hundred years; won’t have these difficulties. They will just have to choose: no longer to belong to the old system, or to belong to the new. But at present.... A stomach must digest, you see! There has to be a new way of adapting to the forces of Nature, a new functioning.

We may also note what the Mother stated on 4th April 1970:
When the new way comes in pure, unmixed, the body, the consciousness of the body, still has that reaction of ... (Mother makes a movement of surprise) wonder at something that still seems impossible.

Thus, we find that the phrase the new way has been used to express what is stated by The Mother. Satprem and his translators, while rendering into English what The Mother stated, have used the words. I have not been influenced by any other writer in this regard.

Zaadster Lori has referred to Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet and her book “The New Way: A Study in the Rise and Establishment of a Gnostic Society” and her blog 'The New Way - The Vision and Application of the Supramental Truth-Consciousness.' I have known Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet from the pages of Mother India, edited by K D Sethna, since 1970’s, for her fascinating and interesting writings on spirituality and vedic astrology. I agree with many of her views in vedic astrology. I have heard and read about this book of hers, which has been referred to, but due to lack of time and opportunity, I could not as yet read the book. But surely, I will read it.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
11-08-2007

Posted on 11-08-2007. Posted simultaneously in The New Vision , Zaadz and Sulekha

The New Way

2007-07-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

A study of the Agenda

Barindranath Chaki
21st July 2007

The Beginning

To eternal light and knowledge meant to rise,
Up from man's bare beginning is our climb;
Out of earth's heavy smallness we must break,
We must search our nature with spiritual fire:
An insect crawl precludes our glorious flight;
Our human state cradles the future god,
Our mortal frailty an immortal force.

OOO

A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal man's world.
On Nature's luminous tops, on the Spirit's ground,
The superman shall reign king of life,
Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven
And lead toward God and truth man's ignorant earth
And lift towards godhead his mortality.

[Sri Aurobindo: Savitri]

The Mother, Mira Alfassa, the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, has Her Agenda for all of us, the humankind, and for this earth, the abode of ours — the Advent of the supramental consciousness, of the supramental beings on Earth. That is the Work to be done here on Earth — the Work of the greatest importance — furthering the earthly Evolution beyond the humankind, beyond the human imperfection and ignorance and sufferings, bringing in a total transformation of the human beings into the gnostic beings, the supramental beings.

The Earth is a field of Evolution. The Earth has seen an Evolution from the cell, that was the first manifestation of life, to the human beings, the Homo Sapiens; and it is now becoming the field of an Evolution from the human beings to the supramental beings. About this, however, the human beings in general may not be as yet aware or conscious. Evolution, at first, was the manifestation of Life in Matter, and then it manifested Homo Neanderthals and the Homo Sapiens — the human beings, as Mind descended into Life and Matter, into the earth-atmosphere. Time has come now for going beyond Mind.

Man is conscious, but to a very small extent. Of course, in Man, the dreamer and the seeker is there; the further possibility is there in him. There have been a few Leaders among us and they are regarded as the Manifestations of the Divine among us: They have spoken of Nirvana, Moksha, Liberation and the Kingdom of God. They have also accepted death and decay and sufferings like all of us, out of Their Love for us. The Way They found for us was the way of escape from this worldly manifestation. A few individual’s nirvana or moksha or journey to the Kingdom of God could not solve the problems of the remaining billions of human beings that remained on earth. As a whole, the humanity has remained far away from Light and Joy and Peace and deathlessness, from Perfection and Consciousness that can give Victory and Conquest.

Man is not the last thing in Evolution on earth. He has to surpass himself and grow and become a higher being. This is the message of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

Sri Aurobindo has said:
Man is a transitional being; he is not final….The Step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in earth’s evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature’s process. [The Hour of God, page 7]

So far, the earth has been a vale of tears, a vale of owes and sorrows and sufferings, and also a vale of bloodshed and cruelty, of destructions and devastations and Death, of falls and failures and frustrations, of fights and feuds, of fears and foes. We are all sitting upon a heap of bombs — atomic or non-atomic, real or virtual. Human beings have become absolutely selfish and egoistic. Religions have turned into the reasons for battles, group-wars and terrorism. Political institutions and activities are grossly infected by crimes and corruptions. Love is lost. Truth is lost and hidden. Light is engulfed in Darkness.

This cannot be the Earth that the Divine, the Supreme, has designed and dreamed to manifest. The earth can be and has to be transformed into Abode of God. Man has to change himself and the earth atmosphere. Man has to change this world, in all aspects, in totality, integrally.

Sri Aurobindo has said:
Man in himself a little more than an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that reaches to a wideness and grandeur that are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a dark ray in the splendours of the Universal Mind. His life is a striving, exulting, suffering, an eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dumbly longing petty moment of the universal Life. His body is labouring perishable speck in the material universe. This cannot be the mysterious upward surge of Nature.
[The Hour of God, page 8]

The base of this worldly manifestation, as we know, is Matter, which appears to us to be inconscient, gross, inert, without Life or Mind. However, Matter, as Sri Aurobindo has stated, is the self-willed involution of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, the Superconscient Spirit, the Supreme. The Divine has Himself become Matter, as the ultimate process of an Involution. Evolution is the urge, ‘the upward surge’ of the involved Divinity in Nature — to express and manifest Itself in this and as this evolving world.

Sri Aurobindo has further said:
In every particle, atom, molecule, cell of Matter there lives hidden and works unknown all the Omniscience of the Eternal and all the Omnipotence of the Infinite.
[The Hour of God, page 14]

He has also said:
Involution of a Superconscient Spirit in inconscient Matter is the secret of this visible and apparent world and the evolution of this Superconscient out of inconscient Nature is the key-world of the earth’s riddle. Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple.
[The Hour of God, page 17]

Thus, it is an inevitable conclusion that the earth-nature and the circumstances on earth must change. Evolution cannot stop and be finalized after creating a being, the human being, whose nature is quite insufficient and insignificant and contrary to what is involved: the Superconscient. So, Man has to grow as an expression of the Divine. Man has to grow into something that is beyond his present state : half-conscious, ignorant, mortal and enslaved to the lower nature.

Sri Aurobindo has again said :
There is something beyond, something that mankind shall be; it is seen now only in broken glimpses through rifts in the broken walls of limitations that deny its possibility and existence. An immortal soul is there somewhere within him and upholds the soul-continuity if his nature. But this greater Spirit is obstructed from descent by the hard lid of his constructed personality; and that inner luminous soul is wrapped, stifled, oppressed in dense outer coatings.
[The Hour of God, page 8]

Sri Aurobindo has further said:
The earth-law has to be changed and a new atmosphere has to be created.
[Evenings talks with Sri Aurobindo by A B Purani, page 148]

Body has been seen, almost always, as a barrier for spiritual sadhana and progress. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of this as follows:
In the past, the body was regarded by the spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome as discarded, than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of spiritual change. It has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment, and the limitations of the body as something unchangeable, making transformation impossible.[The Supramental Manifestation, page 7]

But now, in the New Way of the Supramental Transformation, the role of the body is essential and of high importance. The secret of the Change lies here, in the body. Man has to surpass all his imperfections and shortcomings and become the supramental being. The earth shall grow into an abode of the supramental consciousness. That way only, the humankind can conquer all his sufferings, fears and shortcomings, all his imperfections, inconscience and ignorance, and even Death. That is the Task ahead. That is the Work to be done. Conquest of Death — that is the Aim. “Even the body shall remember God,” said Sri Aurobindo [in Savitri], and thus shall body conquer Death and Darkness and Ignorance.

OOOO

The term ‘the Agenda’ definitely means The Mother’s Agenda. The reference is to the thirteen volumes of Mother’s Agenda, and it also includes in it scope the very central Idea of that has been the Aim and Goal and Purpose of all the endeavours of The Mother: the terrestrial transformation and the Advent of the supramental beings — the Supramental Transformation. It was destined that the 13 volumes of the Agenda would be published, the main contents of which put forth the Message of the Mother to the humanity, to the world, through Her words and sayings and conversations. Some persons perhaps did not desire that these Words should not se the daylight, but the Divine Will prevailed. Satprem came out to the world with these Words. In fulfillment of the Divine Will, Satprem was The Mother’s instrument.

The Mother’s Words in these volumes of the Agenda are essentially important, as they form the New Truth, create the New Vision that will lead and guide the humanity, the world, to The New Horizon, The New World, of the supramental manifestation. These words show us The New Way.

Should we continue for ever to be as imperfect and ignorant and mortal as we are now? Should we ever remain enslaved to Tamas and Darkness and Inconscience, to Death, to division and disorder and chaos? Should our existence for ever be meaningless, purposeless? Should our cycles of birth and death be aimless, meaningless? Should our existence remain for ever subject to sorrow and sufferings? Should always there be the continuance of the problems of warfare and battle, terrorism and bloodshed, of the innocent killings of the religious intolerance and atrocities, of the false and narrow and ignorant social rules, regulations, thoughts and ideologies on earth?

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have answered with an emphatic no. There shall come a change — as certain as the sunrise. And there is a Way — as true as the sunlight. And there is a Hope — as sure as the Dawn — for all of us who are willing to collaborate and cooperate with the Divine, with Truth.

As we know, Sri Aurobindo departed after effecting the Descent of the supramental consciousness and force on and in His Person. The Mother took up the thread by bringing down the supramental consciousness on earth. She continued with after the Descent on earth for a progressive realization of the supramentalized manhood — supermanhood — by Man.

The Agenda hold the clues of the Transformation of man into superman, of the manifestation of the supramental consciousness on earth.

The Agenda hold the secret.

OOOO

These notes are my humble endeavours in understanding and realizing what these volumes of the Agenda say.

I hope the fellow seekers will be delighted to walk on The New Way.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
21-07-2007

A Comment on Savitri

2007-05-11T00:31:00.000-07:00

[I read the following in one of the blogs of Tusar N Mohapatra — Savitri Era Open Forum. I am sending this comment thereon.

Marko Says: May 10th, 2007 at 1:15 pm Hi anon, I can appreciate what you are saying and agree with most of it. But I was coming from a different perspective, that of literature and poetry, while you seem to be coming from that of teaching, transformation and transmission.
The perspective of literature was actually started by Tusar by his remark “For his poem Savitri, he ranks along with Dante, Milton, and Goethe.” Those three did not write from the perspective of a teaching that they wanted to put into the world like Aurobindo, although obviously Dante and Goethe were spiritual developed. So when Tusar says Savriti ranks along with Dante, Milton and Goethe he is coming from the perspective of literature.
And I don’t think that you can maintain Savriti is on the same level as the Divine Comedy here. And this is not a subjective experience thing. Specialists in the field of literature and poetry are the ones would have the last say in this. Well, those specialists have written libraries full of praise for the Divine Comedy and they did not and will not do so for Savriti. And again this is not because I don’t like Aurobindo, because I do, but I also want to keep things in perspective and stay realistic. In my view, Tusar’s comment was not realistic. Open Integral ]

A Comment on Savitri :

I think my friend Tusar N. Mohapatra was too modest and not really unrealistic, when he said : “For his poem Savitri, he ranks along with Dante, Milton, and Goethe.” What one finds what the Future Poetry will be and when one reads through the poems and even the prose of Sri Aurobindo, I find them to be far above even the best normal poems on earth, including even The Divine Comedy. Savitri cannot be compared to any other poem, when we think of the New Vision that Sri Aurobindo has given us.

In the Future, of which Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had the dream, and for bringing upon which They worked so much, the present ‘realistic’ standards of valuation of literature will change. And the Future seems not to be too far. There will be difference between poems with some Inner Vision and poems with high imagination and even visions from layers NOT too high. From the highest literary appreciation of the present day literary critics, The Divine Comedy may be one of the best. But I have not heard or read anywhere that The Divine Comedy has been sought after as The Light by anyone, as millions today have accepted and are accepting Savitri. As a thing of Beauty, The Divine Comedy has been a Joy for ever, no doubt. But it has never really been the equal to Savitri in bringing us to Light and Truth and the eternal Beauty.

We are advancing on earth. And as we are marching ahead, our standards are also growing and changing. As we are on the Way to live more and more in and with an integral consciousness, our standards of evaluation will also change. Arts for arts sake will be there, pure literature will also be there, but the true evaluation will only be from the integral viewpoint.

One — who is sincerely trying to understand Sri Aurobindo, what Consciousness He represents — will never compare Him with Goethe, Milton or Dante, though they were very great. And His creations, which really belong to the Future and Truth, cannot be compared to any creation of imagination, even of the highest poetic value as per the present day or past valuation. Dante and Goethe were no doubt spiritually developed. But was Sri Aurobindo simply spiritually developed? HE is the Light and the Leader of the Next Evolution.

The Mother has said in 1972 :
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 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.

In 1972, in the birth centenary of Sri Aurobindo, 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.

Again, She said:
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.

In the Words of Sri Aurobindo, Savitri is the Divine Word. And it is the most realistic Truth.

Barin Chaki
11-05-2007

SUJATA

2007-05-10T00:43:00.000-07:00

The beginning of a New Age

As Satprem completed his Work in his old human body and began his new journey in a new exitsence for manifestation of The New World of supramental consciousness, following The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Sujata also followed him on 4th May 2007. She was 81 years old.

My friend Tusar N. Mohapatra informed me today as follows :

Sujata also left us
10 May 2007, 5:15 Uhrjj.vanhoutte

For information of the community, Sujata have also left us, more or less a month after Satprem, on May 4, 2007. She was 81 years old and lived since the age of 9 in the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo.

OOOO

Sujata cannot really leave us.

She spent a much long period of her life in collaboration with Satprem to transform the human existence, following the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
How can she leave us who the way-farers to the same goal?

We will always meet her and be inspired by her on the Way.

The Consciousness and the Spirit of Sujata can never die. The spirit will continue to work for conquering death and ignorance and help others in conquering death and ignorance, in the Way led by The Master and The Mother, in collaboration with Saprem. She will be present, along with Satprem, in the New World, among the New Race!

There has been now a beginning of a New Age — of a Rejuvenation of the march towards The New Horizon, The New World. Death can never win.

The Progress towards the Supramentalisation of the World will continue till the Work is finally done.

Barin Chaki
10-05-2007

On Satprem

2007-04-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Satprem: Life without Death

From Sandra ►

Sandra says :

I'm a bit stunned as I write this. I'm not an obituary writer, but here I am, for the third time in the past month-and-a-bit, writing about someone who died recently. I was just looking online for a link to Satprem 's book The Mind of the Cells for a girlfriend of mine who I chatted with today in the sunny garden here in Bonn. Another friend overheard us, and told us about his experience of being with Satprem in 1973, just after the death of Mirra Alfassa, The Mother.

And now, a few hours later, I read that Satprem died on the 9th of April this year.
I know virtually nothing about Satprem, other than he wrote The Mind of the Cells and other books ( e.g. Life Without Death, on my 'to read' list…) and that he was one of the few people who understood what The Mother was doing. What he shared in The Mind of the Cells lives in my own cells…. in my heart and mind and soul and body, always there, reminding me of so something rare and often forgotten – unseen or unknown even – & not only forgotten in my own consciousness, but in the thoughts and consciousness and life of so many of those around me.

OOOO

The Mind of the Cells is about The Mother's extraordinary 'experiments' in transformation and evolution through the body. What Satprem and the Mother explored has stayed with me like a light in the darkest tunnels of my own journey. I believe I 'left' my body (as much as was possible without actually going insane or dying) when I was seven, - and that my life from that point onwards has been a path of reconnecting to this body. I deeply sense and experience that this reconnection is not simply a 'getting back in'- it's wider than that, part of my own evolution – and because I'm in the middle of this journey ( or somewhere along a spectrum that may not be vertical), I can't quite express what is actually happening.I've always felt that I am here in a 'body' for a reason, that the wild and often extremely uncomfortable physical ride this body is on is not a 'mistake' or a problem. I believe that the evolution of consciousness, of being human - of becoming - is through this body; I believe that 'enlightenment' is not a process of disconnecting from the physical into some 'higher' more ethereal realm, rather it is a fully physical and felt experience (I have to say that this is more than a belief, it's a kind of knowing that is not about being 'right'). Reading The Mind of the Cells washed over me like a wave of warm ocean, curling me into its heart, saying Yes, what you experience is absolutely precise and on track.

OOOO

Thank you Satprem, thank you Mother Mirra.
I had the same thoughts about Satprem that I had about U.G. Krishnamurti - I hoped that 'one day' I would meet him. Both lived quite reclusively, out of the public eye, and I'm sad that I did not make a greater effort to sit with them in this life. I'm reminded to never take for granted what is here, and to reach out to all who have touched me, supported me, encouraged me, and tell them how grateful I am.

And, I loved what Barindranath Chaki wrote on his Satprem blog: “Satprem cannot die…He will be there, till the Work he has undertaken is done”. Perhaps this is why I'm writing this - so that the flame of Sri Aurobindo, The Mother and Satprem can be passed along - to anyone who is touched by anything I've written, to anyone who feels that the physical experience is absolutely integral to consciousness, then please, read these extraordinary people's books, share the flame. Let's live in the fire of life, exploring all its corridors and pathways, let us – hand-in-hand – walk where there are no roads, no maps, on and into this great adventure of the unknown.

OOOO

Added later:

“It happened in the deserted canyons near Pondicherry. I was sitting there quietly, when out of a hollow came three men. Instantly I knew: “They're coming to kill me.” I stayed where I was, without moving. And strangely without any effort or concentration, I suddenly felt as if emptied of myself, without any reaction, without fear, without anything, like a stone, but a conscious stone looking unconcerned at some kind of show, just as one can be both witness and actor in a dream. Except for its neutrality, the feeling was not really that of a rock, but rather that of a body, my body, as something utterly transparent and null, and a little indistinct. Nothing moved, there was not a quiver or a throb - and I had nothing to do with it, there was no “self-control” involved, no effort. Something had taken hold of me in a transparent immobility The three men were there: two in front, one behind. I didn't move. they talked amongst themselves. Then a kind of voice in me said, “Get up.” I rose, with my back to the canyon. One of them took off my watch, no doubt to simulate a robbery. The man behind came in front of me. I saw the killer raise his arm to push me into the canyon. I followed the movement of that arm, my eyes met the gold-coloured eyed of the killer. he lowered his arm, hesitated a moment as if he was not sure what to do , or exactly why he was there. It seemed that he too now watched the scene as if it did not make any sense, or as if he had forgotten what he had come for. He turned around, the others turned, around, and they left. Then they started to run as if panic stricken. And my heart suddenly remembered that it should have been frightened, that they had wanted to kill me.. and it started pounding like mad.The only thing I know is that had there been the slightest effort on my part, the slightest contraction or reaction to push those men back, even an inner refusal, a mere “no” inside, they would have killed me instantly: the opposition thus raised would have met and challenged their vibration and the reaction would have touched off the whole process. But there was nothing, not even a breath of reaction; I was like thin air, as it wore: the others vibration passed through me like a breeze, unobstructed. Can you kill a breeze? Some kind of contact is necessary in order to kill, you have to have a handle - here, there was no handle, for the was nothing, and since there was nothing, there was nothing!”

[ From Satprem: The mind of the cells ]

Sandra Jensen

[http://sandrajensen.zaadz.com/]

[As a comment on my blog Satprem, simultaneously published in Zaadz, Sandra says :
Thank you so much for this, dear Barindranath. I was just writing my own Satprem blog, only having discovered today that he died, and while I was researching him I found you here, what a gift.
Love,
Sandra]
~Barin Chaki~

A comment on 'Satprem'

2007-04-27T22:17:00.000-07:00

From Juliette ►

juliette said...

Dear Mr Chaki

I don't know why since some days I was trying to remember the title of Satprem's book : the Sannyasin I have read more than thirty years ago on the land of India when I stayed for a visit in Auroville. This book was kind of a bible for me at that time, when I was opening it at any page I found a relevent answer to my quest to find truth in this life. This book was the seed to show me the way. Then after a while I gave that book to some one but still keeping strong inside the impact of it. Then as a sign, suddenly, some days ago, I remembered the atmosphere of this book but forgoten the title and wondering if Satprem was still alive. So I searched in Internet and found out from your article that he died ten days ago. What a coïncidence although I've rarely thought of him during those past years. I share with you the sadness of his lost as he is a human being of our time who brought light on the way of many people's life and I am very grateful to him. For all the best to you and to those who loved him.

Juliette
4:06 AM

Satprem

2007-04-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

Satprem
[30-10-1923 — 09-04-2007]

This cannot be an obituary. I will not say that Satprem is no more! I cannot say that he has passed away! I will not write about his works and achievements and then forget him.

Definitely, he was an author. He wrote several beautiful books, the likes of which nobody has written. He has edited and organized Mother’s Agenda, which contain the seed of the Next Future, the Next Evolution. And not only that, he is a part and parcel of Mother’s Agenda.

The possibility that there will be many more authors like him is rare. His writings are what he is! And he is unique, only one.

But Satprem is not only an author, he is an adventurer, following the footprints of The Adventure, and of The Creatrix. He wanted to break the habit of the body, the habit of death. He wanted to break into the realm of the supermen's world, the New World.

Man has to pass into the becoming of the Superman. Man has to transform himself, individually and socially, so that the New Race will come into being on earth. The Supramental World cannot come on earth, unless there is some real endeavour for it. And that has to come as soon as possible. That is the only Solution before the humankind.

And that is what Satprem has been doing. Satprem, along with Sujata, concentrated exclusively to the transformation of the cellular consciousness of the body and to the realisation of the next evolution, from Mind to the Supermind. They were / are in search of the great journey from manhood to supermanhood. And all this is the Work of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Satprem described Sri Aurobindo as The Adventure of Consciousness. He wrote :

“The age of adventures is over. Even if we reach the seventh galaxy, we will go there helmeted and mechanized, and it will not change a thing for us; we will find ourselves exactly as we are now: helpless children in the face of death, living beings who are not too sure how they live, why they are alive, or where they are going. On the earth, as we know, the times of Cortez and Pizarro are over; one and the same pervasive Mechanism stifles us: the trap is closing inexorably. But, as always, it turns out that our bleakest adversities are also our most promising opportunities, and that the dark passage is only a passage leading to a greater light. Hence, with our backs against the wall, we are facing the last territory left for us to explore, the ultimate adventure: ourselves.”
He further wrote :
“There is no more room on the teeming beaches, no more room on the crowded roads, no more room in the ever-expanding anthills of our cities. We have to find a way out elsewhere. But there are many kinds of "elsewheres." Those of drugs are uncertain and fraught with danger, and above all they depend upon an outer agent; an experience ought to be possible at will, anywhere, at the grocery store as well as in the solitude of one's room--otherwise it is not an experience but an anomaly or an enslavement. Those of psychoanalysis are limited, for the moment, to the dimly lit caves of the "unconscious," and most importantly, they lack the agency of consciousness, through which a person can be in full control, instead of being an impotent witness or a sickly patient.
Those of religion may be more enlightened, but they too depend upon a god or a dogma; for the most part they confine us in one type of experience, for it is just as possible to be a prisoner of other worlds as it is of this one--in fact, even more so. Finally, the value of an experience is measured by its capacity to transform life; otherwise, it is simply an empty dream or a hallucination. Sri Aurobindo leads us to a twofold discovery, which we so urgently need if we want to find an intelligible meaning to the suffocating chaos we live in, as well as a key for transforming our world. By following him step by step in his prodigious exploration, we are led to the most important discovery of all times, to the threshold of the Great Secret that is to change the face of this world, namely, that consciousness is power.”
Following the footprints of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Satprem himself became an adventurer. His existence is a dedication to the Cause of passing on to the Next Evolution, for creating the New World, where there will no more of any death or decay, any old age, any disease, any defeat for man. He endeavoured for translating this dream onto the reality. He was preparing himself for the great leap beyond ordinary humanity.

Satprem cannot die. I feel his presence, without any vacant feeling. He will be there, till the Work he has undertaken is done! If he dies, along with him dies the human hope and the human dream. He is a hope for all of us — the dreamers. He is a hope for all of us — the rebels. He is the hope for all of us — the adventurers towards The New Horizon, The New World.

He is the Spirit that can never die. The spirit will conquer death and let others conquer death, in the Way led by The Light and The Force.

His name will shine for ever at the Feet of The Master and The Mother. He will be present in the New World, among the New Race!

{Also published in Barin Chaki, Barin's Blog and barin chaki's blog simultaneously.)

Barindranath Chaki

The Next Evolution

2007-03-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Next Evolution 5

Some clarifications

To begin with, I am to say that, I am not a scientist, not a biologist, though my search and research is as a student of Philosophy, with a special emphasis in the Philosophy and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa]. I am a humble seeker of Truth, and that is the reason why I have read some scientific literature, as much and as thorough as possible, as required in the search and research of Philosophy. It is aptly said, Philosophy begins when Science ends.

In The Next Evolution 4, I wrote :

"From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution.

"This statement was commented by someone in barinchaki.sulekha.com as follows :

“I have never heard any serious scientist make a ludicrous claim like that. Would you cite research publications that arrive at that conclusion. This is a popular myth that most scientists try to correct.” The comment is quoted below.*

I am making some references below which will demonstrate that serious and real scientists are / were there on earth who holds / held the same view, as that of mine.
1. Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975), a Russian geneticist, said in his famous 1973 essay Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution :
“A biologic species does not say to itself, "Let me try tomorrow (or a million years from now) to grow in a different soil, or use a different food, or subsist on a different body part of a different crab." Only a human being could make such conscious decisions. This is why the species Homo sapiens is the apex of evolution [Note by Evowiki : Dobzhansky is not suggesting humans are the purpose of evolution….]
2. Edward L. Crisp, Ph.D., Professor of Geology, West Virginia University at Parkersburg, writes in his essay ORGANIC EVOLUTION :

“Classification of Organisms: classifying organisms into groups based on their similarities. A formal classification of organisms into major groups was devised by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1798) during the late 1700s. The Linnaeus system of classification is a hierarchical scheme, as one proceeds up the classification ladder the categories become more inclusive. Obviously Linnaeus used similarities of shared characters to relate organisms into groups, however, he believed in the immutability of species and thought his classification reflected God's plan, from simple primitive organisms to complex organisms with man at the apex.

3. Constance Areson Clark writes in his essay "Evolution for John Doe** : Pictures, and the Scopes Trial Debate " in Journal of American History, 87 (March 2001), 1275-1301 that man is the culminating point in Evolution :

“Many of the diagrams designed by Osborn and his colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History resembled Darwin's diagram in their bushiness, especially those illustrating the concept Osborn named "adaptive radiation," the diversification of related organisms as they adapt to different environments. Darwin's branching concept of evolution was not, however, the primary image offered to the public in diagrams of the 1920s. A characteristic example is the tree (figure 4.) in Benjamin C. Gruenberg's The Story of Evolution, a highly stylized, conventionalized rendering, including no information about time or extinction, conveying the impression that there is a single "main line" of evolution, culminating in "man" (in a suit!).

Thus we find that some scientists of worth and fame accept and state that man or the Homo sapiens is the apex of evolution.

No more, then, is this statement Man is at the apex of evolution is ludicrous, as scientists, including geologists are sayimg so.

OOOO

The comment referred to Stephen Jay Gould :
“This centuries most noted evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould spent a large part of his career decimating what
he called the idea of the "Ladder of Progress" citing evolution as a progressive march from the worms , culminating in
Humans.”

Thus, Stephen Jay Gould had the main objection with the idea of Ladder of progress. I have never used the idea of the Ladder of progress, for that was / is not the purpose of my essay.

Anyhow, there were / are several scientist who totally disagreed with Gould. Professor John Maynard Smith, (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004), a British evolutionary biologist and geneticist, was one of them. About him, let me quote from Wikipedia :

“Maynard Smith thought that Gould trivialized the role of adaptation, and criticised Gould's periodic invocation of large scale mutations. In a review of Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Maynard Smith wrote that Gould "is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.

“One reason for such criticism was that Gould appeared to be presenting his ideas as a revolutionary way of understanding evolution, which relegated natural selection to a much less important position. As a result, many non-specialists inferred from his early writings that Darwinian explanations had been proven to be unscientific (which Gould never wanted to imply). His works were sometimes used out of context as a "proof" that scientists no longer understood how organisms evolved, giving creationists ammunition in their battle against evolutionary theory. Gould himself corrected some of these misinterpretations and distortions of his writings in later works. "

Another such Scientist is Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941), who is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
Dawkins writes in his book Human Chauvinism :
“To evolution: is it progressive? Gould’s definition of progress is a human-chauvinistic one which makes it all too easy to deny progress in evolution. I shall show that if we use a less anthropocentric, more biologically sensible, more ‘adaptationist’ definition, evolution turns out to be clearly and importantly progressive in the short to medium term. In another sense it is probably progressive in the long term too…xxx xxx xxx xxx
“Gould is wrong to say that the appearance of progress in evolution is a statistical illusion. … To be sure, complexity, braininess and other particular qualities dear to the human ego should not necessarily be expected to increase progressively in a majority of lineages – though it would be interesting if they did…. But if you define progress less chauvinistically – if you let the animals bring their own definition – you will find progress, in a genuinely interesting sense of the word, nearly everywhere.
Now it is important to stress that, on this adaptationist view (unlike the ‘evolution of evolvability’ view to be discussed shortly), progressive evolution is to be expected only on the short to medium term. Coevolutionary arms races may last for millions of years but probably not hundreds of millions. Over the very long timescale, asteroids and other catastrophes bring evolution to a dead stop, major taxa and entire radiations go extinct. Ecological vacuums are created, to be filled by new adaptive radiations driven by new ranges of arms races. The several arms races between carnivorous dinosaurs and their prey were later mirrored by a succession of analogous arms races between carnivorous mammals and their prey. Each of these successive and separate arms races powered sequences of evolution which were progressive in my sense.…
“Ironically for such an eloquent foe of progress, Gould flirts with the idea that evolution itself changes over the long haul, but he puts it in a topsy turvy way which has undoubtedly been widely misleading.… For Gould, evolution in the Cambrian was a different kind of process from evolution today. The Cambrian was a period of evolutionary ‘experiment’, evolutionary ‘trial and error’, evolutionary ‘false starts’. It was a period of ‘explosive’ invention, before evolution stabilised into the humdrum process we see today. It was the fertile time when all the great ‘fundamental body plans’ were invented. Nowadays, evolution just tinkers with old body plans. Back in the Cambrian, new phyla and new classes arose. Nowadays we only get new species!
“Gould expects us to be surprised. Why? The view that he is attacking - that evolution marches inexorably towards a pinnacle such as man - has not been believed for 50 years. But his quixotic strawmandering, his shameless windmill-tilting, seem almost designed to encourage misunderstanding (not for the first time: on a previous occasion he went so far as to write that the neo-Darwinian synthesis was ‘effectively dead’!). The following is typical of the publicity surrounding Wonderful Life (incidentally, I suspect that the lead sentence was added without the knowledge of the credited journalist): "The human race did not result from the ‘survival of the fittest’, according to the eminent American professor, Stephen Jay Gould. It was a happy accident that created Mankind" (Daily Telegraph, 22nd January 1990). Such twaddle, of course, is nowhere to be found in Gould, but whether or not he seeks that kind of publicity he all too frequently attracts it. Readers regularly gain the impression that he is saying something far more radical and surprising than he actually is.”
Quoting all these extracts is, no doubt, have nothing much to do with The Next Evolution, excepting that I have to take necessary steps in order to clear off the mist created in the atmosphere by the reference to Gould. We find above, in the quotations from Smith and Dawkins, that in Evolution, there may not be any Ladder, but there is Progress! Evolution is progressive.
OOOO

Besides Science, even in Philosophy and Mysticism, there are schools of thought which speak of the human being to be the apex of evolution. Let us see what Julio Savi has written in his book on Bahai faith — The Eternal Quest for God :

“When we study the phenomena of the world of creation, we will see how `... all phenomena of being attain to a summit and degree of consummation, after which a new order and condition is established'. This concept applies also to the world of creation as a whole: man is the apex of the evolutionary process of the world of creation, its `fruit', its `degree of consummation'. But since the evolutionary process must necessarily go forward, in man `a new order and condition' must appear, and such is that condition which Bahá'ís call spiritual, others metaphysical.”

OOOO
What I wrote in The Next Evolution 4 is not “a re-iteration of the popular belief of what science is all about.” That was / is the comment that has been made, an insignificant comment which itself is ludicrous, baseless and unfounded. My essay is not about what is Science, rather it is about something which is beyond Science, but not against or contrary to Science. Nor do I accept the popular belief about Science to be the real Scince. The difference is well known to me.
The person commenting said : Real science is...well...different.

This is not the definition of Science. Science is not mystic poetry, so that you can describe it as something which is indescribable. A real student of Science should be specific and definite, not vague, poetic, mystic.

Wikipedia describes Science as follows :

Science in the broadest sense refers to any system of objective knowledge. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research. There are different points of view regarding the scientific method: Methodological naturalism maintains that scientific investigation must adhere to empirical study and independent verification as a process for properly developing and evaluating natural explanations for observable phenomena. Methodological naturalism typically, therefore, rejects supernatural explanations, arguments from authority and biased observational studies. Critical rationalism instead holds that unbiased observation is not possible and a demarcation between natural and supernatural explanations is arbitrary; it instead proposes falsifiability as the landmark of scientific theories and falsification as the universal scientific method. (This approach has been generalized to pancritical rationalism.) Instrumentalism rejects the concept of truth and emphasizes merely the utility of theories as instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. Fields of science are commonly classified along two major lines:
Natural sciences, which study natural phenomena, and Social sciences, which study human behavior and societies.

OOOO

The purpose of this series of essays by me is neither to define or describe Science nor to state that Man is the culmination of Evolution. The aim is to speak of the Next Evolution, definitely after and beyond Man. I had to post these clarifications today on the face of the comment made, so that what I am to present as the Next Evolution is not misunderstood. As I have said, the Leaders of the Next Evolution are Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and I am presenting things here inspired by Them and in Their light.

[* It was commented by protobion on The Next Evolution 4 in barinchaki.sulekha.com, as follows:

"From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution."

With all due respect, I have never heard any serious scientist make a ludicrous claim like that. Would you cite research publications that arrive at that conclusion. This is a popular myth that most scientists try to correct. This centuries most noted evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould spent a large part of his career decimating what he called the idea of the "Ladder of Progress" citing evolution as a progressive march from the worms , culminating in Humans. I do not blame you, not do I which criticize, but much of your post seems a re-iteration of the popular belief of what science is all about. Real science is...well...different.

Dare I say, that you are no scientist, or at the very least, certainly no biologist?]

[** The name John Doe is typically used as a placeholder name for a male party in a legal action or legal discussion whose true identity is unknown A female who is not known is often referred to as Jane Doe. A child or baby whose identity is unknown can be referred to as Baby Doe, or as Precious Doe. Additional people in the same family may be called James Doe, Judy Doe, etc. Commonly used in the United States of America, though rarely used now in developed countries.
The Doe names are often, though not always, used for anonymous or unknown defendants.]

[Simultaneously published in barinchaki.sulekha.com. and in barin.zaadz.com.]

Barindranath Chaki
27-03-2007

Thoughts and Aphorisms 3

2007-03-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

3. When I speak, the reason says, "This will I say"; but God takes the word out of my mouth
and the lips say something else at which reason trembles.
[Thoughts and Aphorisms, Sri Aurobindo]

Obviously, here Sri Aurobindo is speaking about himself. People, who are in limited consciousness, whose consciousness is mixed with “lower impulses, unreasonable emotions and the vital reactions,” cannot say that this will be applicable to them, as The Mother says.

Ordinarily, sometimes we use our reason calmly, in peace and quietude and some concentration, and reach a decision to say something. But when we start speaking, we are influenced by our lower impulses, irrational emotions and vital reactions, and we utter something that should not be said.

But what Sri Aurobindo says here, is just the opposite. In case of an ordinary person, lower impulses, excitement and passion take hold of the mouth which speaks something different and lower and contrary to what reason decided.

But with regard to the phenomenon, of which Sri Aurobindo is speaking, an Inspiration
comes from above, with a light and a knowledge, greater than the light and knowledge attained through reason. And it makes one speak something which is beyond reason, beyond what is known and decided by reason, something that is beyond the capacity of “the most enlightened reason”.

Sri Aurobindo says that “reason trembles.” Reason trembles, because the higher Truth that comes from a higher region is beyond its comprehension and expectation and acceptance.
The inspirations and revelations which come from above are always more advanced than
whatever is understood and accepted by reason.

What man finds today to be reasonable may not have been accepted by reason in the past, as The Mother says. All revelations and inspirations, that come today to the Consciousness, higher and open, may seem today mysterious.

It may seem paradoxical, unexpected and revolutionary. And reason may tremble today. But in the Future, it will become a reasonable knowledge.

Truth is something which is ever progressive, moving, always being transformed and changed. Truth always leads us forward and reveals us to the relativity of all the manifestations in the world. The world is always progressing towards a higher Truth, a greater Truth.

The Supramental Manifestation is now the highest Truth, but still now this is not understood by the humanity. The ordinary human reason trembles before this highest Truth. But time will come and is sure to come when the majority of the human race shall understand accept It.

As Sri Aurobindo and The Mother say, the Unmanifest will manifest tomorrow.

(Simultaneously published in barin chaki's blog in Sulekha.)

Barin Chaki
23-03-2007

On The Mother

2007-02-23T04:01:00.000-08:00

On The Mother I

The 21st day of February 2007, was the birthday anniversary of The Mother, Mira Alfassa, the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo.

The Mother was born in Paris on 21 February 1878. She was named Mirra, and she grew up in Paris where she spent the first part of her life. Her parents had settled down in France a year before her birth.
In her early years She was conscious of the special purpose of Her life, of Her mission on earth. From the age of five she became conscious that she was not of this world and did not have a human consciousness. At this age she began her spiritual discipline, her sadhana.
She came in contact with Max Theon and Madame Theon around 1905-6. She met Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry on 29th March 1914. She left Pondicherry in February 1915 and proceeded to France and Japan. Later, on 24th April, 1920, She returned to Pondicherry for ever.

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo, whom millions throughout the world have already regarded as an Incarnation of the Divine Consciousness, had specifically pointed out that ' the One whom we adore as The Mother,' also descended and became manifest before us on earth. He referred to Mira Alfassa, and millions on earth adore Her. Who is this Mother? What is this Principle of the Mother? How is this Principle related to the Supreme? The Ultimate Reality is the Infinite and One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, whom we have termed as the Brahman, the Divine, God etc. He is the Supreme Divine, the One, Indivisible, Infinite and Pure, who has three aspects, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. In the Transcendental mode, He is the Source of and is also above all manifestation, all the Universes, all the worlds. As the Supreme, He bears the eternal consciousness in Him, above all Time and Space. The Supreme Divine is the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, as I have already 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 He is above them and is their Creator. I am not speaking of any religious narration of creation, like that of creation in six days etc. As the Supreme, who is both Impersonal and Personal, He is the Source of all that is, of the this Universe, or rather the Universes. He has no form, no shape, and simultaneously, He is the Source and Creator of all forms and shapes. He ha become all this Universe, or rather all these universes. He is the Manifestation and the One who manifests. It is His Will that manifests and 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, in 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.” [The Psychic Being in The New Horizon]
OOOO

Almost all the followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother know the following that Sri Aurobindo has said on the Mother :
“The One whom we adore as the Mother is the Divine Cobscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible evn for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence.”

Sri Aurobindo has further said :
“Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible.”

That is why She is so valuable for the mankind and for the earth. “She is the golden bridge …,” says Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. She is the Force that enables Man and the earth to leap beyond and pass over the gulf of difference between Mind and the Supramental Consciousness, between Darkness and Ignorance and Falsehood on the one hand and on the other hand Light and Wisdom and Truth.

She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,A power of silence in the depths of God;She is the Force, the inevitable Word,.....To heal with her feet the aching throb of lifeAnd break the seals on the dim soul of manAnd kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.
[Savitri : Sri Aurobindo]

OOOO

the Mother said :
“Throughout all this life, knowingly or unknowingly, I have been what the Lord wanted me to be, I have done what the Lord wanted me to do, I have done what the Lord wanted me to do. That alone matters.”

She has also said :

“Since, the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.”

And She has also shown us the Way, the most sublime Way of the Child in us, in all of us :

“You have to aspire, you have to reject; but the best is if you can keep me in your heart, if you love me, then you will have to do nothing. I shall do all for you.”

That is the best Way.
And let us remember always what She has told us to march ahead towards the Goal, towards the New Horizon :

“Let us advance always, without stopping, towards an always more complete manifestation, an always more complete and higher consciousness.”

Barin
23-2-2007
[Written on 21-02-2007]

The Next Evolution

2007-02-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

The Next Evolution 4

When we look at the question of survival, as viewed by Darwin, we find that the fittest only survives. The principle of the survival of the fittest is the Way of Evolution. It is also observed by some, that the survival of animals is enhanced by the formation of groups. In human society also, it is seen that survival is enhanced by the formation of groups. It is found that all groups have a ‘core’ leader, and following such a leader means subservience both on the physical plane and the mental and philosophical plane also. It is further observed that subservience mentally and philosophically is a vital instinct for the survival and the mind does not work there. Ants have survived, as they are always in a group. These are scientific observations and they are true — but true within certain limitations.

Science has seen the past only and it does not look much into the future, and even it does, it is in a very limited way, limited within the senses and sense-bound limitation.

On the onward march in Evolution, especially in the Next Evolution beyond Man, such limits are passed. Whatever Darwin has told is true of a certain level — in Sri Aurobindo’s language, of the vital plane. That may also be true of the crude humanity in the rudimentary stage of the Homo Neanderthal, or even of the early stages of the Homo Sapiens.

But Man is on the Way towards a higher Evolution. Evolution has not reached is culmination with the human beings. It is going, and it will go farther.

From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution. But as we know, Man is not perfect. He lives with ignorance, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, chaos, disorder, aimlessness, unhappiness, sufferings, diseases and death. We live only in moments, having inherited a ‘brief animal' mind. We do not know our past, our future, or our destiny.

But civilized man, in spite of all his imperfections and incompleteness, has already passed and left behind the herd mentality, the group mentality, to a very great extent. And the Idealist in him is dreaming and aspiring for a larger life, more conscious and perfect and divine a life.

Sri Aurobindo and His spiritual collaborator The Mother [Mira Alfassa] speaks of the Next Evolution.Sri Aurobindo and His spiritual collaborator The Mother [Mira Alfassa] speaks of the Next Evolution. They have told of a New and Higher Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, and of the Advent of this Higher Consciousness. The Mother has also declared that the said Supramental Conscious is the Next plane of Consciousness that has to be evolved, for that is the Aim of Evolution. Evolution is the Manifestation of All that is ‘involved’ in Matter. And what is involved is nothing less than the Highest Principle of Existence, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, or in simple language, the Divine.

Matter is apparently Inconscient, and evolution from Matter to till the appearance of Man is through Ignorance. Man has been evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings. Yet he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has been evolved with Mind, and is still being evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are 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 half-fulfilled, partial and inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some, 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.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 stories of our repeated bloodsheds, battles and massacres, including two World Wars. And instead of loving our earth, we have divided and sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. We live thus backwards towards a regression.We are not conscious that there is some higher aim and meaning for our life and existence. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We do not want to know beyond our nose and most of the time shut up our eyes, outer and inner.

However, that is only an aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, joy, for light and knowledge. And always with him there is Hope. Without hope, he cannot be. Hope is an eternal companion of man.

A beautiful, joyous, harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for Man as his evolutionary possibility and goal. This is his evolutionary Future. He cannot continue for ever as he is and has been now. He has to proceed ahead from the present square. 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. Despite all Darkness and Ignorance around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born in on this earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts, education, social activities, spirituality and yoga. We are not sure whether our present ignorant activities would lead us to extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the Mesozoic Era.

However, though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. And to all our endeavors for more than last fifty millennia, the inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration of the humankind has been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility, with the New Hope, that Sri Aurobindo has brought for us.

The Mother has said that the Supramental Consciousness has already descended on earth on the 29th February 1956. And that will lead the Evolution towards the Manifestation of the Supramental on earth, towards the New Creation, towards the Coming of the New Race, the Race of the Supramental Beings.

Supermind is term given by Sri Aurobindo for the Divine Truth Consciousness, the Logos, the Manifest Godhead, Existene-Consciousness-Bliss or Sachchidananda in manifestation. The Aim of Integral Yoga, the Integral System of Yoga given to us by Sri Aurobindo, is to bring down the Supermind into the terrestrial existence, which will put an end to the present imperfection of physical life and existence, and begin and establish the Divine Life on Earth, through an Evolution of harmony and perfection, an Evolution of Light and Truth towards a greater Light and a greater Truth. It will fulfil the Vedic prayer : Lead me from Falsehood to Truth, lead me from Darkness to Light, lead me from death to immortality [Asato ma sadgamaya, tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrtyormamrtam gamaya.]

The Advent of the Supramental Race is thus the goal and the aim and the inevitable result of the Next Stage of the Evolution. However, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo said that there will be a New Man, an intermediary being, the superman, before the coming of the pure Supramental Race.

The Mother has said : ‘He [the Superman] will still belong to the human species of animal origin by most exterior form, but who will transform his consciousness in a sufficient manner to belong, in his realization and activity, to a new race, a race of supermen.’

Obviously, the race of the supermen will not be the race of the supramental beings. With the supramental beings, the question of survival will no more be there. For, they will have the supramental body, which will be immortal. Its cells will be capable of renewing themselves and the body will be flexible and will master itself, so that the old age will never come in. The race of the supermen will definitely be able to master the body and will be able to live long enough so that they can finally transform and supramentalize their body.

The group-mentality or the herd-mentality and the question of thoughtlessly and blindly following the ‘core’ leader will no more be there.

Barindranath Chaki
06-02-2007

Towards the New Horizon

2007-01-30T06:56:00.000-08:00

We are now on the Way towards the Advent of the Supramental Race on earth.

This earth is known to be a field of Evolution. According to Darwin , man is the consequence of an evolution, and evolution is the history of life on earth. But Darwin has stated nothing with reference to evolution after the appearance of Man — Homo Neanderthal or of Homo Sapiens at the latest. He told us nothing about further evolution after the appearance of man on earth, or even about the purpose of the human evolution. And his view was a scientific truth, limited to the epistemology of Science. Science finds the Truth, which is but only a partial aspect of the whole Truth; it does not go beyond the senses, beyond the apparent, even with the help of logic. It’s bases are the experiences of the senses.
Reason and logic are the means of finding Truth, but they are not the only means or the whole of the means. An integral seeker of the complete Truth, a true student of Philosophy, realizes this. There are other means.

Sri Aurobindo has said:

There are two allied powers in man : knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the Truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

OOOO

Science, as well as the human commonsense, has not seen beyond the mortal imperfect Man. However, is man the final word in Evolution, in the entire Manifestation in Nature on earth? Has Nature remained satisfied having reached through Evolution at some entity such as a human being, who is so incomplete, imperfect, ignorant and incapable? How can he be the last thing? Of course, the humankind has many lofty and high aspirations, Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail?

Man has to strive towards Perfection.
Man has to know himself and transcend himself.
Out of man, the superman shall emerge.

That is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother[Mira Alfassa].

That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men will have to evolve further beyond Homo Neanderthal, beyond Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, of life and impulses, and scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Superconscient planes and then the Supramental Consciousness, and realise his Dreams and Hopes, by bringing in the supramental race upon earth!

That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men will have to evolve further beyond Homo Neanderthal, beyond Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, of life and impulses, and scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Superconscient planes and then the Supramental Consciousness, and realise his Dreams and Hopes, by bringing in the supramental race upon earth!

OOOO

The Mother has said in this connection :

There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result ; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will be a man in the external form, and whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

These further steps beyond man, for transcending the limits of ignorance in man, for the advent of the supramental race is the next evolution.

OOOO

The Task before is to change the 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.

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 forms 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 some have tried and failed.

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.

But before taking up the issue, I should clear some misconceptions, which are misleading and aiming to mislead.

The change is not easy. The change I am speaking of is not easy. Had it been so, it would not have been 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 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.

OOOO

Of this change, Sri Aurobindo says:

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.
[ Savitri ]

He says of the end of Death :

Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of ignorance.
[ Savitri ]

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo is Himself the Adventure of Consciousness, as described by Satprem, a disciple. And if one aspires and endeavours to follow the Light and the Words of
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa]and is inspired by Them and walks through the Way trodden by Them, one has to grow up as a sort of adventurer of Consciousness, a seeker of Truth. This is an Understanding, a Light that comes from above and grows within, more and more intuitively and yet satisfying all claims Reason, even surpassing the limits of Reason, the failures and falls of Reason. Following Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is not a religion, not any worship or puja, not a dogma, not a way of creating another group or any group. The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo is a clear and open Truth, universal and worldwide and limitless, accepting and acceptable to all human beings on earth for surpassing all their imperfections and limitations, for surpassing all difficulties and deficiencies and divisions, for surpassing darkness and death. The aim of this Adventure, the journey through the Unknown and the New was and is to reach The New Horizon, The New World, the Eternal Dawn of the Supramental World. We the human beings have to evolve into a New Race, surpassing all our human and animal limitations and imperfections and inconscience and ignorance and incapacities.

Let us aspire for marching, along with others, Towards The New Horizon, The New World. Hence, let us collect all that is luminous and golden in the fruitage of our journey through all the past millennia so far, since the beginning of the human journey, and march towards The New Horizon. It is not that we will leave this world and go elsewhere to find another planet in search of the New World. We are not to retire into some lonely forests or mountains or island. We will change this world. We see that this world, as it is now, is in an extremely bad state of affairs. Falsehood, hatred, selfishness, corruption, greed, deception, violence, cruelty, inhumanity, and greed for power and wealth - these appear to be the ruling forces now. All the noble Ideals or Ideas that sometimes prevailed on earth and inspired many of our noble ancients or our forefathers, are, as it were, lost. Look at history and the present day earth: ideologically, and in consciousness, men seem to have lost their height and depth. The entire human society is sitting on a heap of bombs. In Arts and culture and relationship, vulgarity has almost been ruling in place of beauty and love and fellow feeling. In the name of religion, the people fight each other, taking themselves farther away from the Divine, from spirituality. We may live for a definite purpose, higher than ordinary, which will bring us more fulfilment, more joy. The higher our purpose, the greater is the joy and fulfilment. The higher the Consciousness we aspire for and the wider your consciousness, our life then becomes more purposeful, the greater is then our joy. We may direct our endeavor, our way of life, towards limited personal happiness and satisfaction, or towards a greater and wider Joy and fulfilment, along with and for others, maybe along with the whole of mankind, for the entire mankind, towards the higher values of Truth, Light, Wisdom, Beauty, Creativity, Goodness, Love, Wideness, Harmony and Peace, Total Well-being. Our journey is Towards The New Horizon.

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo is the Pioneer to declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man must evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, towards becoming the supramental beings. That is the Will of the Divine, that is the design of Nature, of what He has termed as Supernature.

Sri Aurobindo has said :

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its checkered 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.

The Mother has said :

A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being. Open yourself to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.

Further, The Mother has also said:

To leap into the new consciousness, the first condition is a mental modesty sufficient to be convinced that all one thinks one knows is nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned. All that one has learned externally must be only a foothold enabling one to rise towards higher knowledge.

Hence, let us aspire for and dream of marching Towards The New Horizon, The New World. My idea is not only to dream or be a visionary, but to spread this dream, this vision, this aspiration, and the bases of this philosophical and spiritual understanding given to us, throughout the people around the world, through my Blogs and Websites, including my website The New Horizon. I hope the Light and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother will inspire the people and change their attitude and approach, so that the Society can grow and march Towards The New Horizon, The New World.

[Simultaneously published by me, in barinchaki.sulekha.com with some adaptation, in the Community Towards the New Horizon in Orkut ]

Barin Chaki

30-1-2007

The Next Evolution

2007-01-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

The Next Evolution 3

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 is The Leader of the next evolution. He is the first Person to know and declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man has to evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, and then towards becoming a supramental being. That is the Will of the Supreme. That is the design of Nature, rightly speaking, of Supernature.

While Matter is apparently Inconscient, evolution from Matter to Man is through Ignorance. Though Man has been evolved with more consciousness and knowledge in him in comparison with the Ape and other living beings, still he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled, with incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, with more or less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has been evolved with Mind, is still being evolved with Mind, but what he carries with him as the Mind, is only a very small and miniature fragment the real principle of Mind. The humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or used or even become conscious of the higher and deeper ranges of Mind, which are 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 half-fulfilled, partial and inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some, 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.

From the scientific viewpoint, now man is at the apex of Evolution. But as we know, Man is not perfect. He lives with ignorance, incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, chaos, disorder, aimlessness, unhappiness, sufferings, diseases and death. We live only in moments, having inherited a ‘brief animal' mind. We do not know our past, our future, or our destiny.

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 stories of our repeated bloodsheds, battles and massacres, including two World Wars. And instead of loving our earth, we have divided and sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions and fought against each other. We live thus backwards towards a regression.

We are not conscious that there is some higher aim and meaning for our life and existence. We live with our narrow egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We do not want to know beyond our nose and most of the time shut up our eyes, outer and inner.

However, that is only an aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for happiness, joy, for light and knowledge. And always with him there is Hope. Without hope, he cannot be. Hope is an eternal companion of man.

A beautiful, joyous, harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for Man as his evolutionary possibility and goal. This is his evolutionary Future. He cannot continue for ever as he is and has been now. He has to proceed ahead from the present square. 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.
Despite all Darkness and Ignorance around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born in on this earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts, education, social activities, spirituality and yoga.

We are not sure whether our present ignorant activities would lead us to an extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the Mesozoic Era.
However, though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. And to all our endeavors for more than last fifty millennia, the inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration of the humankind has been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility, with the New Hope, that Sri Aurobindo has brought for us.

To lead us towards the New Possibility, towards the conquest of Darkness and Ignorance and Death, towards the Advent of the New Light, of the Supramental Consciousness, of the New Race, the Supramental Race, that is the AIM of Sri Aurobindo. 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 Evolution.

This is what The Mother [Mira Alfassa] has said about our choice :
Men, countries, continents!
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss.

We need not forsake our normal life for this journey to the Future, nor should we discard the society and the social and material responsibilities, for reaching this Future. We can start the journey from where we are now, simply by changing our inner attitude and inner aspiration and our approach and activities.

Tena tyaktena bhunjeetha. [Ishopanishad].
By that renounced, thou shouldst enjoy. [Sri Aurobindo].

Sri Aurobindo says further :

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.

Sri Aurobindo has given us a luminous Future ! Mere men will grow into spiritual beings, freed from darkness, ignorance, sufferings and death!!

Barindranath Chaki
15-11-2007

The Next Evolution

2007-01-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

The Next Evolution 2

The progressive march from Man to Superman is the Next Evolution on earth. And that is inevitable.

Mind has reached its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the Supramental Consciousness. We should no longer remain limited within the ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavour to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey on the New Way of the Next Evolution, which has been taken up by the Supermind.

When Man emerged, either as the Homo Neanderthal or the Homo Sapiens, it was a great leap in the earthly evolution, from the dumb thoughtless state of the animal to the constructive, creative and expressive consciousness and state of the human. Man has in him a fire that never gets satisfaction with limits and narrowness and ordinary existence. He always dreams, hopes and aspires for something better, more divine, more perfect. This has now brought him to the Next Evolution. He will have to transcend himself and step towards Supermanhood.

Sri Aurobindo has stated:

The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognize and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.

Thus what is needed on our part is the call from below, the burning Fire of Aspiration in us. The Aspiration should be collective, not in a few individuals here and there. If the humanity does not aspire for the evolutionary progress, Nature will take its own course to surpass Man and bring in the Supramental Race.

The Mother stated:

The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognize it.

[Continued]

Barin

The Next Evolution

2006-12-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Next Evolution 1

As we generally know, this earth is a field of Evolution. Evolution is the history of life on earth, which has been well said by Darwin. According to him, man is the consequence of an evolution. But Darwin has stated nothing with reference to evolution after the appearance of Homo Neanderthal, or of Homo Sapiens at the latest. He told us nothing about any evolution after the appearance of man on earth, or even about the purpose why man was evolved at all. And his view was a scientific truth, limited to the epistemology of Science. Science discovers and finds the Truth, which is but only a partial aspect of the whole Truth; it does not go beyond the senses, beyond the apparent, even with the help of logic. It is based on the experiences of the senses.
Reason and logic are the means of finding Truth, but they cannot be the only means or the whole of the means. An integral seeker of the complete Truth, even a true student of Philosophy, realizes this. There are other methods or means.

Sri Aurobindo has said in 'Thoughts and Aphorisms’:

There are two allied powers in man : knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the Truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping ; Wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.
Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

OOOO

Science, not to speak of the human commonsense, has not seen beyond the mortal imperfect Man. Is man the final word in Evolution, in the entire Manifestation in Nature on earth? Has Nature remained satisfied having reached at something through Evolution which is so incomplete, so imperfect, so ignorant and so incapable such as man? How can he be the last thing? Of course, Mankind has many lofty and high Aspirations and Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail? Man has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and transcend himself. Out of man, the superman has to emerge. That is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men would evolved further beyond the Homo Neanderthal, even beyond the Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Supramental Consciousness, and bring in the Dreams and Hopes! Will they fail? Man has to know himself, strive towards Perfection and transcend himself. Out of man, the superman has to emerge. The advent of the supramental race is THE NEXT EVOLUTION.
The Advent of the Supramental Race on earth is the goal of this Manifestation, as it has been said by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. That is purpose and goal of Evolution, of onward movement of the Supernature. That is the reason why men would evolved further beyond the Homo Neanderthal, even beyond the Homo Sapiens. Man has to go beyond the limits of mind and reason, scale newer and higher heights of Consciousness and ascend the Supramental Consciousness, and bring in the supramental race on earth. This is the Truth Sri Aurobindo has brought for us. We have to live for this Goal, this Truth.

OOOO

The Mother has told :

There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result ; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will be a man in the external form, and whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

These further steps beyond man, for transcending the limits of ignorance in man, for the advent of the supramental race is the next evolution.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
25-12-2006

The Supramental Manifestation

2006-11-25T04:55:00.000-08:00

The Supramental Manifestation 3

From Mind to Supermind II

We have seen that according to Sri Aurobindo, the higher hemisphere of existence begins with Supermind, but one has to go across several mental worlds, which are clearly above the ordinary mind, where we generally dwell and which we believe to be the Mind. These are, as seen earlier, the levels of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind or Intuition, and Overmind, in an ascending order. And the supramental plane is beyond all these planes.
The Higher Mind is the first of the supra-rational levels or grades of existence, the first level of the Spiritual Mind or of the Superconscient. It is a stage of evolution beyond the rational mind, and is also an ascent to a plane above the level of pure thinking mind.
The Higher Mind has its origin in Overmind and, in an ulterior manner, in Supermind. The first decisive step beyond our normal human Intelligence, our ordinary mentality, is an ascent into the Higher Mind, which is not any more a mind of mingled light, obscurity or half-light. It has a large clarity of the Spirit.

About the Higher Mind, Sri Aurobindo has said:
Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind, -- but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin, -- as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness is dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge. [ The Life Divine ]

Because of the original identity of the Higher Mind with Overmind — and also with Supermind — it has an all-awareness, and it also carries the truths held in this identity. The Higher Mind has a capacity of a swift, victorious and multitudinous conception. The Higher Mind is also a greater mind of knowledge, and its Ideas have the self-power of realizing its conceptions.
In Evolution, our ordinary mind had a task to do: raising of the consciousness beyond matter and life, beyond ignorant animal hood. But as it came to enlighten and lead, it became engrossed and involved in darkness and ignorance.

An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
Captured and driven in Life's nescient grasp,
Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,
It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,
The natural privilege of unfallen gods,
Recalling still its old lost sovereignty. [Savitri]

Beyond our ordinary mind, which is fundamentally a principle of Ignorance, the Higher Mind is the first step, the first plane of existence. In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo refers to this plane as the Greater Mind, Thought and the Spirit of Mind.

For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
It is greater than its earthly instrument:
The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
Escapes on every side into some vast
That is a passage to infinity.
It moves eternal in the spirit's field,
A runner towards the far spiritual light,
A child and servant of the spirit's force. [Savitri]

The Higher Mind is the realm of the greater Thought. Here, there is no necessity of arriving at a proposition by logical reasoning (such as the one that must follow from the major and minor premises of a syllogism), a proposition that is a search and also is critical of oneself and one's errors. Here, there are no logical steps towards a conclusion, there is no mechanism of deductions and inferences, no linking together of ideas as in a chain in order to arrive at some knowledge, for the limping action of Reason is a movement of Ignorance in search of knowledge, and it protects its steps against error and erects “a selective mental structure for its temporary shelter” basing it on foundations which are already carefully laid but are never firm, not supported on a soil of innate awareness. The foundations are “imposed on an original soil of nescience.” [Words selected from The Life Divine ]

The Higher Mind is also beyond the mental intuition, “that other way of our mind at its keenest and swiftest, a rapid hazardous divination and insight, a play of the searchlight of intelligence probing into the little known or the unknown.” [Words selected from The Life Divine ]

It is therefore beyond the two conventional ways of reaching and finding Truth : logical reasoning, which is slow and limping, and intuition, which is quick but occurring at irregular intervals; having no pattern or order in time.

The Higher Mind is a Knowledge that formulates itself on a basis of self-existent all-awareness and manifests some part of its integrality, a harmony of its significances being put into thought-form. It can freely express itself in single ideas. Its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view. Here, the relations between ideas, between one truth and another are not established by logic; but they pre-exist and emerge as already seen in the integral whole. Here, there is an initiation into forms of an ever-present knowledge, which is till now inactive. This knowledge is not a system of conclusions from premises or data. But this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired knowledge. There is a great totality of truth known and experienced, but still this totality is capable of infinite enlargement, having no end to the aspects of knowledge.

Besides the aspect of cognition, the Higher Mind has also the aspect of will, of dynamic effectuation of the Truth. Here, this greater and more brilliant Mind works always on the rest of the being, “the mental will, the heart and its feelings, the life, the body, through the power of thought, through the idea-force.” [ The Life Divine ] It tries to purify, deliver and create through knowledge. The idea is put into the heart or the life as a force to be accepted and worked out. Heart and life become conscious of the idea and respond to its dynamisms. Their substance begins to change itself accordingly, and the feelings and actions become the vibrations of this higher wisdom, become informed with it and are filled with the emotion and the sense of it. The will and the life impulses are charged with its power, in a similar way. The idea works even in the body, and as a result, for example, the powerful thought and will of health replaces the faith of the body in illness and its consent to illness, or the idea of strength calls in the substance, power, motion, vibration of strength. The idea generates proper force and form and imposes it on our substance of Mind, Life or Body. In this way its working proceeds and it charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness, laying down a foundation of change, and prepares it for a superior truth of existence.

This distinction between cognition and action, between Idea and Will, between Chit and Tapas (Consciousness and Force), is maintained by Sri Aurobindo in all levels, even up to Supermind.
The presence and influence of the Higher Mind is often found in philosophers and thinkers, and it is less opaque and has more freedom. The background is no longer fully gray or with the gray borders on the blue. And the little bursts of light that descend are less quickly swallowed by the darkness of ignorance. The descending bursts of life are more intense, more abundant and frequent than in the ordinary mind. Joy lasts longer, love becomes wider. We become aware and conscious of true and causeless love and joy — we come to know them properly. The movements are less subject to the endless conditions of the lower levels of consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo speaks of ‘the Spirit of Mind’ and ‘the great stairs of thought,’ while referring to the Higher Mind, the Greater Mind.

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.
A gold supernal sun of timeless
Truth Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray
Through a silence quivering with the word of Light
On an endless ocean of discovery.
Far-off he saw the joining hemispheres.
On meditation's mounting edge of trance
Great stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights
Where Time's last ridges touch eternity's skies
And Nature speaks to the spirit's absolute. [Savitri]

Regarding the influence of the Higher Mind or the Greater Mind on our ordinary world of Death and Ignorance, we find the reference below:

Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
Exposed to omniscient immensities,
It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
Its speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,
Its force that strides invincibly through Time,
Its mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,
Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death. [Savitri]

In the realm of Ignorance, these higher forces of the planes of the Superconscient become limited. When the superior power of these higher planes of Mind is first perceived or experienced on earth, a natural misconception can easily arise regarding their vast possibilities. But in the lower world the situation is not the same as in their own realm.

Sri Aurobindo has said:
It has here to be emphasized that these higher forces are not in their descent immediately all-powerful as they would naturally be in their own plane of action and in their own medium. In the evolution in Matter they have to enter into a foreign and inferior medium and work upon it; they encounter there the incapacities of our mind and life and body, meet with the unreceptiveness or blind refusal of the Ignorance, experience the negation and obstruction of the Inconscience. On their own level they work upon a basis of luminous consciousness and luminous substance of being and are automatically effective; but here they have to encounter an already and strongly formed foundation of Nescience, --- not only the complete nescience of Matter, but the modified nescience of mind and heart and life. [The Life Divine]

When the Higher Mind descends, the ordinary mind, along with the lower nature, puts resistance. The descent of the higher Idea from the Higher Mind is possible only into the developed mental intelligence, but even there it has to overcome the heavy obstruction from a mass or system of formed ideas belonging to the mental plane and also the will to persistence and self-realization of these ideas. For all ideas are forces and have a formative or self-effective faculty greater or less according to the conditions. Thus there is a power of resistance readily formed which opposes or minimizes the effects of the descending Light, a resistance which may turn into a refusal, a rejection of the Light, or become an attempt to impair, subdue, cleverly modify or change or perversely deform the light, so as to make it suitable to the ideas of the Ignorance.

Unless one is very open and receptive to higher truths, one's preconceived ideas will obstruct and ruin everything. Not only any kind of belief that adheres to exact word or letters, but also philosophical and intellectual ideas and conceptions, which may seem to be all right on their own level, may cause resistance to the Higher Light.

Resistance is also put by the lower levels of the being. When the ideas, that are preconceived or already formed, are dismissed and are not allowed to persist any further, they still recur from outside, as they are still in force and currency in the universal Mind, or they may recede downwards into the vital, physical or subconscient parts and from there sweep back or rise again at the least opportunity to reconquer their lost sphere. Evolutionary Nature gives this right of persistence to things that were once established by her for bringing “a sufficient steadiness and solidity to her steps.” [The Life Divine ]

This "right of persistence" is a necessity of Nature for a progressive evolutionary manifestation in the world of "collision and struggle and intermixture of Forces".

There is resistance in the Vital and the Subconscious, in the lower levels of being, in the heart and life and body. The same phenomenon recurs here more intensely. The Higher Light does not meet the ideas here, but meets “emotions, desires, impulses, sensations, vital needs and habits of the lower Nature…” They are less conscious than ideas and, therefore, are blinder in their response and more obstinate and self-assertive.

Sri Aurobindo says :
This power of persistence, recurrence, resistance of established things in Nature is always the great obstacle which the evolutionary Force has to meet, which it has indeed itself created in order to prevent a too rapid transmutation even when that transmutation is its own eventual intention in things. [ The Life Divine ]

We have thus seen that the old nature and the old habits in matter and life and the ordinary mind pose stubborn resistance and obstructions to the Descent of the Higher Light. This has to be overcome, and for this purpose, most of the spiritual teachings prefer the ascetic path of renunciation and transcendence, without bringing any change or transformation to this world. But Sri Aurobindo has shown us the Way which is greater and nobler than renouncing and transcending the world, the Way of transformation of matter and the lower nature, with a view to further the Evolution towards the complete and integral manifestation of the Divine, of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in Matter, on earth, which will not be a Nirvana, a return to the Unmanifest.

The lower nature resists Transformation also. At each level of the Ascent, the resistance and the obstacle may progressively diminish, but they will be there. To enable the descent and working of the Higher Light — from the Higher Mind to the Supermind — without a heavy resistance and obstruction, the seeker has to acquire a deep quietude of the nature, a control and tranquility and even silence in his mind and life and body. Still then, the universal Ignorance and obscurity in the individual make of mind and life and body may create resistance and obstruction.
A psychic tranformation and in a greater degree a spiritual tranformation will reduce the hold of the Ignorance. But these influences do not altogether eliminate the resistance, obstruction and limitation. The original basis of Nescience will still be there, requiring always to be changed, enlightened, and diminished in its extent and action. The power of the spiritual Higher Mind will be modified and diminished at its entrance into our ordinary mind and as a result it will not be sufficient to remove all these obstacles. But it can make a first change, which will enable a higher ascent and a more powerful descent and further prepare the seeker for a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge and action. The Illumined Mind is the next greater Force.

Barindranath Chaki
24-11-2006

References :

The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo
Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness by Satprem
KHEPER — The Kheper Website of M Alan Kazlev

The Supramental Manifestation

2006-11-16T06:04:00.000-08:00

The Supramental Manifestation 2

From Mind to Supermind I

According to Sri Aurobindo, the higher hemisphere of existence begins with Supermind. But before reaching Supermind, one has to pass through several mental worlds, which are distinctly above the ordinary mind — the ordinary mind, where we generally dwell and which we believe to be the Mind. These are, as we have seen earlier, the levels of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind or Intuition, and Overmind, in an ascending order. Obviously, these planes are not the supramental plane, which is beyond them. Sri Aurobindo has given these names to these planes of consciousness and has also described them in distinct terms.

These planes can be experienced by the people who are so capable. According to Sri Aurobindo, these four planes constitute the Superconscient, or the Super-consciousness, but again, these superconscient planes do not constitute the supramental plane: though, they definitely lead, in an ascending order, towards the Supermind.

It may be so that for a few persons, the Higher Mind or even the Illumined Mind does not seem to be super-conscious, as that may be a part of their waking consciousness. As evolution makes progress, the seeker ascends to these peaks of consciousness one after another and makes them part of their normal waking consciousness.

The Superconscient is our evolutionary future, just as the subconsciousness in our mental principle is our evolutionary past.

In this connection, Satprem says:

Each of them is a whole world of existence, vaster and more full of activity than the earth, and our mental language is ill-suited to describe them; we would need the language of the visionary or the poet — “another language,” said Rimbaud. This is what Sri Aurobindo did in Savitri, his epic poem to which we refer the reader.

A million lotuses swaying on our stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs toward some far unseen epiphany.

[Savitri]

OOOO

When we ascend to these planes of mind, our vision of the world gets transformed. We might have observed that the ordinary mind sees things step by step, in succession and in a linear way. It cannot see or understand or comprehend more than one thing at a time. It cannot take any leap, surpassing logic, as in such a situation, things would appear hazy, irrational or incoherent to our ordinary mind. When it accepts something as fact or as truth, then all that is different from that fact or truth is rejected as false. That is the reason of the problem that if we accept one philosophy or one religion, we discard others and there is clash and intolerance. The ordinary mind operates with all limitations, like a closed box. Satprem says: it works like a camera shutter, letting in one and only one image at a time. Anything that is not found on its momentary little screen belongs to the limbo of error, of falsehood and darkness. All things thus fit in an inexorable system of opposites — white or black, truth or error, God or Satan — and it plods along like donkey on a road, seeing one tuft of grass after another.

The ordinary mind relentlessly forms little pieces of time and space. The more there is descent in the levels of consciousness, the pieces of time and space get smaller and smaller. Whatever comes in front of its narrow and limited focus appears to be true, and other things are in error, are wrong and untrue. It has divided time past, present and future. It differentiates between truth and so-called falsehood, good and evil, and sees several opposites. It analyses, but has not ordinarily learned to make a synthesis. We see one colour and speak of black and white, and puzzle and ponder over the problem of various colours of life and reality in an effort to solve or understand it. The ordinary mind is incapable of having a true picture, a true understanding of Truth, of Reality.

But there is the thirst in us, the aspiration in us, for more and more understanding, more and more comprehension, more and more enlightenment. That is the Fire in us, which does not have its source in the ‘ordinary mind’: but it is an inextinguishable flame, an inextinguishable fire, which is burning in our psychic being, in our soul, and which does not depend upon any religion, any intellectual philosophy, any mental construction.

A disciple asked The Mother [Mira Alfassa] :

Each time that I try to rise a little, there is a setback.

The Mother replied :

As for your progress — it is because you are trying mentally and the mental is always a limitation to the consciousness. It is only as the aspiration from the heart and the psychic that can be effective. (And when you stop trying, you let me work in you and I know the proper way!)

[The Words of the Mother: Collected Works Vol. 14]

The Mother further said in another occasion :

It is only love that can understand and get at the secrets of the Divine Working. The mind, the physical mind especially, is incapable of seeing correctly and yet it always wants to judge. It is only a true humility in the mind, allowing the psychic to rule the being, that can save human beings from ignorance and obscurity.

Mind has become a field of errors, of ignorance and doubt and obscurity, of lies and falsehood. Mind wanders all the time. It is like a public square.

The Mother has said :

Some people call it a public square, because everything comes there, goes across, passes, comes back … All ideas go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very well organized, for usually ideas meet and knock into one another, there are accidents of all kinds.

She has further said :

In the human mind there is a morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, argument, skepticism.

And again, She has said :

It is a disease of the ordinary human intellect — which comes, moreover, from separation, division — to make a thing always either this or that. If you choose this, you turn your back on that; if you choose that, you turn your back on this.

It is an impoverishment. One must know how to take up everything, combine everything, synthetise everything. And then one has an integral realization.

OOOO

Sri Aurobindo says : Mind is only a preparatory form of consciousness.

Mind cannot see the whole, it sees the part only. The whole seems to the mind to be only the assemblage of several parts. Sri Aurobindo has said : Mind is a passage, not a culmination.

Sri Aurobindo says:

But first he met a silver-grey expanse
Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
It was a tract of dim and shifting rays
Parting Life's sentient flow from Thought's self-poise.
A coalition of uncertainties
There exercised uneasy government
On a ground reserved for doubt and reasoned guess,
A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.
At its low extremity held difficult sway
A mind that hardly saw and slowly found;
Its nature to our earthly nature close
And kin to our precarious mortal thought
That looks from soil to sky and sky to soil
But knows not the below nor the beyond,
It only sensed itself and outward things.
This was the first means of our slow ascent
From the half-conscience of the animal soul
Living in a crowded press of shape-events
In a realm it cannot understand nor change;
Only it sees and acts in a given scene
And feels and joys and sorrows for a while.
The ideas that drive the obscure embodied spirit
Along the roads of suffering and desire
In a world that struggles to discover Truth,
Found here their power to be and Nature-force.
Here are devised the forms of an ignorant life

[Savitri, Book II, Canto X]

OOOO

However, originally, Mind is a principle of Light. Mind has a purpose and a meaning. Sri Aurobindo again says :

Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
He came into a realm of early Light
And the regency of a half-risen sun.
Out of its rays our mind's full orb was born.
Appointed by the Spirit of the Worlds
To mediate with the unknowing depths,
A prototypal deft Intelligence
Half-poised on equal wings of thought and doubt
Toiled ceaselessly twixt being's hidden ends.

[Savitri, Book II, Canto X]

Whatever may be Mind’s imperfections, it had and has a special purpose in the evolutionary progress. Originally, Mind is a principle of Light amid darkness, an instrument of and from the Supermind, set to work for further evolutionary progress on earth.

Sri Aurobindo says:

Mind is not in its very nature an inventor of errors, a father of lies bound down to a capacity of falsehood, wedded to its own mistakes and the leader of a stumbling life as it too largely is at present, owing to our human shortcomings : it is in its origin, a principle of light, an instrument put forth from the Supermind and though set to work within limits and set to create limits, yet the limits are luminous borders for a special working, voluntary and purposive bounds, a service of the finite ever extending itself under the eye of infinity. It is this character Mind that will reveal itself under the touch of Supermind and make human mentality an adjunct and a minor instrumentation of the supramental knowledge. It will even be possible for the mind no longer limited by the intellect to become capable of a sort of mental gnosis, a luminous representation of the Truth in a diminished working extending the power of light not only to its own but to lower levels of consciousness in their climb towards self transcendence. Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind and what I have called the Higher Mind, these and the other levels of a spiritualised and liberated mentality, will be able to reflect in the uplifted human mind and its purified and exalted feeling and force of life and action something of their powers and prepare the ascent of the soul to their own plateaus and peaks of an ascending existence. This is essentially the change which can be contemplated as a result of the new evolutionary order and it would mean considerable extension over the evolutionary field itself.

But when we ascend in the planes of the Superconscient, from Mind to Supermind, through the four planes of higher consciousness, mentioned earlier, our vision and consciousness then widens, step by step, more and more from the narrow, limited, ignorant, linear consciousness, full of contradictions, to the global consciousness. Supermind is described by Sri Aurobindo as the global consciousness, as the higher hemisphere of consciousness. Hemisphere means half of the terrestrial globe. The higher Truth is not separated or isolated from the earth. The whole Truth is not without the lower half, the higher is not opposed to the lower, rather, it fulfils the lower Truth. The descent of the Supramental is for the fulfilment of the earth. We are to search and find the Infinite in the finite, the Eternal in the temporal, the Whole in the fraction. And that is the promise to be fulfilled by the descent of the Supramental Consciousness.

Satprem further says :

The ascent of consciousness is not only the story of the conquest of time, it is also the conquest of joy, of love, of the vastness of being.

From ordinary mind to the plane of Overmind — and even to the plane of the Supermind — it is the quality of light and the quality of vibrations that differ. And this quality of light and vibrations distinguishes one plane from the other. And if we look at the ordinary mind in its aspect of light from the Seer’s viewpoint, we find that the Light here has a sort of grayness, along with ‘a number of dark little spots’ or some obscure vibratory small nodes or knobs or knots. They move like a swarm of flies, flying from one person to another. Sometimes, there is a descent of a little burst of light, a little joy or a little love, into the grayness of the ordinary mind. According to Sri Aurobindo, this plane of ordinary mind is a ground of neutrality, which is thick and sticky, absorbing, which is subject to a number of conditions, which discolours everything and has an obscure gravitation pulling everything down.

We shall see next about the ascending planes of the Superconscient and our progress in those realms.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
16-11-2006

The Supramental Manifestation

2006-11-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

The Supramental Manifestation 1

We, the human beings, are born in ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, out of ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness, and are bearing and carrying in us the same ignorance and darkness and unconsciousness. Did the first Homo Neanderthal [1] , or rather the first group of Homo Neanderthals, ever had the capacity or the possibility of even dreaming of the present day world, or even the world of the times of the Vedas, or of the age when there was the Buddha on earth, or even when Jesus was traveling and walking on this earth, of dreaming and imagining that some Newton or Einstein or Hawkins, some Shakespeare or Shaw or Tagore, some Sri Ramkrishna or Swami Vivekananda, one Sri Aurobindo or Mira Alfassa would be born in this race?

That was and is the story of the human evolution — from the first group of Homo Neanderthal to the first Persons who realized and touched the Supramental Consciousness : Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa].

It was surely the Divine Intervention on earth that there was the appearance of the first group of Homo Neanderthals. Amid all ignorance and darkness and amid all animal and vital activities, the first group of rebels of the Light appeared. They wanted to break the chains, wanted to surpass the animal limits and habits, the animal way of instinctive but subjugated life. They started to stand erect and started using Mind, though initially in a small, rudimentary and limited degree. They started walking, talking, laughing, thinking though in a crude way. They began the human world — a world of Hope, of Aspiration, of Struggle against darkness and divisions and death, against Inconscience and Ignorance and Incapacity.
Sri Aurobindo said that this race, though “born into a world of ignorance and inconscience,” was “capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and an ascent into the light and power and bliss of a spiritual being and spiritual nature.”
That was a moment, when the first group of Homo Neanderthals appeared — a step towards the Future, at that point of Time, as early as 350,000 years ago.
Now, we have Sri Aurobindo, the Hope of Man, who has promised us of the New World, the New Horizon, and not only that, he has also taken, along with The Mother [Mira Alfassa], the First Steps towards the Next Future, the Illumined Future.

***

The Mother 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.

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.”

The Mother gave us also other messages on Sri Aurobindo at that time, one of which I am quoting below:
“Man is the creation of yesterday.
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being.”

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.”

***

Supermind is not a higher type of Mind. It is not a more perfect mind. Every student of Sri Aurobindo knows it.

According to Sri Aurobindo, Mind is a “half-lit and diminished principle.” Generally, the word ‘Mind’ is used to mean the general and ordinary mental consciousness, including the vital and emotional aspects. The vital and emotional aspects of our consciousness, all our passions, cravings, hungers, sentiments etc belong to the vital being or the principle of Life in us, as per the definition given by Sri Aurobindo. The vital being or Life is different from Mind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo. Even our higher emotions, love, sympathy, patriotism, — all of them — belong to the vital being, but the higher vital being. When we mention of the heart, not the physical one, but the emotional center, we then refer to the inner higher vital. Mind generally refers to the principle of reason and logic, intelligence, memory, will, thinking, understanding etc. This is the “half-lit and diminished principle of mind.” However, Mind is also used in a higher and wider sense. In the wider sense, it refers to the higher ranges starting from the Higher Mind to the Overmind. Of course these ranges exclude Supermind. As I have stated, Supermind is not a higher mind. It is a Higher Consciousness, transcending all the stages and planes of Mind. In between the ordinary Mind and the principle of Supermind, according to Sri Aurobindo , there are four stages of Mind: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then, the Overmind.

To begin with, Overmind is the highest stage where the mental consciousness could reach, till the Manifestation of the Supermind. It is the Plane of the gods and goddesses, wherefrom several Avatars of the Supreme manifested and represented Him on earth. It is the Consciousness which was represented by Sri Krishna on earth, according to Sri Aurobindo. As Sri Aurobindo has stated, the Higher Mind is the first of the supra-rational levels or planes or grades of existence and consciousness, the first level of “Spiritual Mind”. It is an evolutionary stage beyond the rational mind. It is an ascent to a plane above the level of pure thinking mind, and there can be a descent also from this plane. Above the Higher Mind, there is a further and even more powerful and revelatory supra-rational level or plane of existence and consciousness, which is called the Illumined Mind. The Higher Mind prepares an integration of the being into a greater Force of consciousness and knowledge. This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual Light. Here, in place of the clear spiritual intelligence and the tranquil daylight of the Higher Mind, one finds “an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit.” And the characteristic action of ‘the larger conceptual-spiritual principle’ adds a fiery ardour of realization and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge to the consciousness. The Higher Mind has the characteristic of the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace, whereas the Illumined Mind has the feature of a play of lightnings of of spiritual truth and power breaking from above into the consciousness.

About the Intuitive Mind, Sri Aurobindo has said:

“Intuition is above the illumined Mind which is simply the higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration. … The Intuition is the first plane in which there is a real opening to the full possibility of realization - it is through it that one goes farther - first to Overmind and then to Supermind.”

Of course,there are mental, vital, subtle physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined Mind, and even from the Overmind, as stated by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo speaks of seven major planes of existence. He also suggests that between Mind and Supermind, or lower (finite, limited, ignorant) and higher (infinite, divine, perfect) creation, there is an important transitional or intermediate reality, which He calls the Overmind.

“At the source of …Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, – not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.” [The Life Divine, p.278]

The Overmind is the plane of the great Gods, the individualized expression of the unitary Supramental Truth. These powers oversee the phenomenal world. It is the level where multiplicity first appears, and indeed is the principle that originally causes multiplicity.

“Overmind Energy (has the)…capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral…all-comprehending Unity (of the Supermind). It takes each aspect or power and gives it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance…” [The Life Divine, p.279]

Thus multiplicity emerges from Unity; the Archetypes emerge from the Unmanifest Absolute. Here we have the distinction between the Unmanifest and the Manifest Absolute or Godhead.

***

From Overmind, the next Ascension in the spiritual journey, is to Supermind.
It is the Ascent to Supermind and the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth makes the Next Evolution possible.

Sri Aurobindo has said:

“The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above.”

Thus, as we have seen, Supermind is a principle which is out of reach of the common ordinary mind. But when Man reaches the higher regions of mind, namely the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind, and then the Overmind, as defined by Sri Aurobindo, when Man reaches there, he can have the glimpses and the touch of Supermind. It may be very difficult, even appear to be impossible. But when the Supramental Consciousness is present on earth, things will be easier, much easier.
And now the Supermind is on earth, actively present 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 29th February 1956)

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there 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.
Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

***

The Mother has said in this regard:

“The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.”

Thus, we can see that Mind has reached the its last ranges and is on the process of handing over the task of the Evolution to the supramental consciousness. This is the Truth. We should no longer remain limited within the ranges of our ordinary small ranges of the Mind, but should endeavor to transcend our mental selves and begin our inner journey to the New Creation taken up by the supramental consciousness.

[Continued]

Barindranath Chaki
05-11-2006

—————

[1]——>

a. The Neanderthal : An extinct human species (Homo neanderthalensis) or subspecies (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) living during the late Pleistocene Epoch throughout most of Europe and parts of Asia and northern Africa and associated with Middle Paleolithic tools.[The Free Dictionary]
b. The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appear in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago. By 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they did not reach extinction in Asia until 30,000 years ago.[ Collected from Wikipedia ]
c. The most widely accepted view among current anthropologists is that Homo sapiens originated in the African savanna between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago, descending from Homo erectus, and colonized Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 years ago, and finally colonized the Americas by 10,000 years ago. They displaced Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis and other species descended from Homo erectus (which had colonized Eurasia as early as 2 million years ago) through more successful reproduction and competition for resources.[ Collected from Wikipedia ]
d. Homo erectus (upright man) is an extinct species of genus Homo. In 1890s it was first described as Pithecanthropus erectus based on a skullcap and a modern-looking femur (thighbone) found from the bank of the Solo River central Java.
Throughout much of the 20th century, anthropologists have debated the role of H. erectus in human evolution. Early in the century, due to discoveries on Java and at Zhoukoudian in China, it was believed that modern humans first evolved in Asia. This contradicted Charles Darwin's statements of African origins. However, during the 1950s and 1970s, numerous fossil finds from East Africa (Kenya) yielded evidence that the oldest hominins originated there. It is now believed that H. erectus is a descendant of earlier hominins such as Australopithecus and early Homo species (e.g., H. habilis). [Hominini is the tribe of Homininae that only includes humans (Homo), chimpanzees (Pan), and their extinct ancestors. Members of the tribe are called hominins (cf. Hominidae, "hominids") .]
Australopithecus shared several traits with modern apes and humans and were widespread throughout Eastern and Southern Africa from 4.4 million years to 1.7 million years ago. The available hominid footprints are remarkably similar to modern humans and have been positively dated as 3.7 million years old. Until recently, the footprints have generally been classified as Australopithicine because that had been the only form of pre-human known to have existed in that region at that time; however, some scholars have considered reassigning them to a yet unidentified very early species of the genus Homo.
Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus are among the most famous of the extinct hominids. A. africanus used to be regarded as ancestral to the genus Homo (in particular Homo erectus). However, some fossils assigned to the genus Homo have been found that are older than A. africanus. Thus, the genus Homo either split off from the genus Australopithecus at an earlier date or both developed from a yet possibly unknown common ancestor independently.
According to the Chimpanzee Genome Project, both human (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5-6 million years ago, if we assume a constant rate of evolution.
H. erectus originally migrated from Africa around 2.0 million years ago, and dispersed throughout most of the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa), reaching as far as Southeast Asia.
Fossilized remains dating to 1.8 and 1.0 million years old have been found in Africa, Europe, and in Indonesia and China in Asia. H. erectus remains an important hominin since it is believed to be the first to leave Africa. Some scholars believe that H. erectus is an evolutionary lineage, derived to have been the ancestor to modern H. sapiens.
Homo erectus has fairly derived (advanced) morphological features, and a larger cranial capacity than that of the newly found Homo habilis. The forehead (frontal bone) is less sloping and the teeth are smaller. Homo erectus would bear a striking resemblance to modern humans, but had a brain about 75 percent (950 to 1100 cc) of the size of that of a modern human's. These early hominines were tall, on average standing about 1.79 m (5 feet, 10 inches). The sexual dimorphism between males and females was almost the same as seen in modern Homo sapiens with males being slightly larger than females.
Homo erectus used more diverse and sophisticated tools than its predecessors. H. erectus first used tools of the Oldowan style and later progressed to the Acheulean style. The surviving tools from both periods are all made of stone. Oldowan tools are the oldest known formed tools and date as far back as about 2.4 million years ago. The Acheulean era began about 1.2 million years ago and ended about 500,000 years ago. The primary innovation associated with Acheulean handaxes is that the stone was chipped on both sides to form two cutting edges.
Homo erectus were probably the first early humans to fit squarely into the category of a hunter gatherer society and not as prey for larger animals. Anthropologists believe that H. erectus was socially closer to modern humans than the more primitive species before it.
The discovery of Turkana boy in 1984 has shown evidence that despite H. erectus's more human-like anatomy, they were not capable of producing sounds of a complexity comparable to modern speech.
H. erectus migrated all throughout the Great Rift Valley, even up to the Red Sea. Early humans, in the person of Homo erectus, were learning to master their environment for the first time. Attributed to H. erectus, around 1.8 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge, is the oldest known evidence of mammoth consumption. It is suggested that H. erectus may have built rafts and travelled over oceans.
Some dispute that H. erectus was able to control fire. The earliest (least disputed) evidence of controlled fire is around 300,000 years old and comes from a site called Terra Amata, which lies on an ancient beach location on the French Riviera. This site seems to have been occupied by Homo erectus. There are older Homo erectus sites that seem to indicate controlled use of fire, some dating back 500,000 to 1.5 million years ago, in France, China, and other areas. A discovery brought forth in March of 2004 stated that there is evidence for controlled fires in excavations in northern Israel from about 690,000 to 790,000 years ago.
Homo erectus remains one of the most successful and long-lived species of the Homo genus. It is generally considered to have given rise to a number of descendant species and subspecies. The oldest known specimen of the ancient man was found in Africa. Homo neanderthalensis came much later as descndants, followed by Homo sapiens, still later.

Barindranath Chaki
05-11-2006

In the Hour of God

2006-11-02T07:18:00.000-08:00

Sri Aurobindo spoke of The Hour of God.

Not all moments are the Hour of God. There have been the Ages of Darkness on earth, on several places on earth. Men have been left to their ignorance and egoism, to their lack of knowledge and wisdom, to their imperfection and incompleteness, to their mortality.

But some Hours on earth are those of the Divine.

There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are the periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. [ The Hour of God ]

This earth is a field of Evolution : Evolution of the Spirit involved in Matter. All living beings and all humans are the outcome of this Evolution. But Man is not in the final stage of Evolution. He is in the initial stage of the Manifestation of Consciousness. He is in a rudimentary stage. So imperfect, so incomplete he is !

As Sri Aurobindo said, the time has come when evolution must surpass man. Man is not the perfect being, not the complete being. But he aspires and dreams for becoming perfect, for becoming complete. Ultimately, the task of Evolution is to manifest the Divine, the Source of this Manifestation, the Supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss (in Sanskrit and other Indian languages called Sat-Chit-Ananda or Sachchidananda). The Superman is to emerge and manifest out of Man. Man has to prepare and transform himself for the coming of the Superman. He should grow and become the Superman. That is the purpose of Man's appearance — the Advent of the Superman, of the Supramental Consciousness — and the purpose must now be fulfilled, through man's surpassing himself will do that. If Man fails to collaborate with the new phase of evolution, the evolutionary forces will surpass him, push him aside, go beyond him and find out its own means.

During the periods when the Divine is not actively interfering with the Manifestation, and is in distance, Man may call the Divine and the ‘smoke of sacrifice’ that he offers through his work and aspiration and prayer reaches the Divine. The Hour of God is the answer of the Divine, and His Grace!

It is true that the latter [ordinary moments] may prepare the former [the Divine moments], may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God’s bounty. [ The Hour of God ]

The Divine Consciousness descends and becomes ready to answer the Call and the Aspiration of the human being, to lift him up to Light and Force and Joy and Love, but Man fails. The Divine comes and gives us Light, shows us the Way, but we cover the Light with the Shades of Darkness and create hurdles on the Way by creating walls and barricades of Ignorance. We love Darkness and Ignorance and thus we ignore Light and Truth and Wisdom. We are never really prepared.

This is the Time when the field is ready for the human being to grow and become the supramental being. The Hour of God that has descended on earth with the coming of Sri Aurobindo still continues and will continue till the Work is accomplished, till the Supramental Beings emerge on earth.

If the Hour of God recedes back, the Supernature then will definitely have a different Plan, which will never be a welcome situation for Man. Humanity will then have to face warfares and destructions and irrecoverable losses.

Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.
[The Hour of God]

Sri Aurobindo calls us for being prepared, for becoming ready, and never to waste the force or misuse the moment. He calls us to become pure, cleansing all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vanity, in this Hour of God. Any insincerity will bring in ‘the blow’ caused by the wrath of God.

In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph.
[The Hour of God]

Sri Aurobindo has said thus elsewhere on sincerity :

To walk through life armoured against all fear, peril and disaster, only two things are needed, two that go always together - the Grace of the Divine Mother and on your side an inner state made up of faith, sincerity and surrender.
[The Mother]

On sincerity, the Mother [Mira Alfassa] has said :

One must have an absolutely transparent sincerity. Lack of sincerity is the cause of the difficulties we meet at present. Insincerity is in all men. Insincerity is in all men. There are perhaps a hundred men on earth who are totally sincere. Man’s very nature makes him insincere — it is very complicated, he is constantly deceiving himself, hiding the truth himself, making excuses for himself. Yoga is the way to become sincere in all parts of the being.
It is difficult to be sincere, but at least one can be mentally sincere… The force is there, present as never before; men’s insincerity prevents it from descending, from being felt. The world lives in falsehood, all relations between men until now have been based on falsehood and deceit. Diplomatic nations between nations are based on falsehood. They claim to want peace, and meanwhile they are arming themselves. Only a transparent sincerity in man and among nations can usher in a transformed world.

[February 1968 : Words of the Mother]

Insincerity is thus ingrained in human beings. For a transformed world, they will have to become sincere and pure. Let us stand up in the truth of our purpose : a supramental manifestation on earth and a transformed world.

But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return.

Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered. [The Hour of God]

Thus, we must keep our soul clear and stop listening to the clamour of the ego. We may have fall and failure, but if we stand up with our purpose, we shall rise again, we shall return.

Now, in this Hour of God, even a little effort on our part in this direction will produce great results and change the human destiny.

In the Hour of God, let us be sincere, to ourselves, to the humanity, to the Divine.

The Mother has said:

Be honest towards yourself — (no self-deception).
Be sincere towards the Divine — (no bargaining in the surrender).
Be straightforward with humanity — (no pretence and show).

The Mother has further said in this connection:

Before the Eternal Consciousness a drop of sincerity has more value than an ocean of pretension and hypocrisy.

If we, the mankind as a whole and individually, really aspire for progress, for real progress, instead being and remaining stationed with all darkness, division, difficulties, ignorance, incompleteness and imperfection, then the only way is to be sincere.
If we really aspire to march towards the New Horizon, towards the New World, the first principle that is to be adopted by us should be sincerity.

The Mother has again said :

All division in the being is an insincerity.
The greatest insincerity is to dig an abyss between your body and the truth of your being.
When as abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature fills it up immediately with all kinds of adverse suggestions, the most formidable of which is fear, and the most pernicious, doubt.
Allow nothing anywhere to deny the truth of your being —this is sincerity.

Barindranath Chaki
2-11-2006

No Religions

2006-10-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

The Mother has said that the Age of Religions is over. She and Sri Aurobindo repeatedly proclaimed that Their Teaching is not a Religion, that Their intention was never to form or propagate any religion. With reference to Auroville, She has specifically declared that “Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.”

I am quoting below the oft-quoted declaration of the Mother relating to Auroville:

Auroville and the ReligionsWe want the Truth.For most men, it is what they want that they label as truth.The Aurovillians must want the Truth whatever it may be.Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth.No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine.Get experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it.The objective study of religions will be a part of the historical study of the development of human consciousness.Religions make up part of the history of mankind and it is in this guise that they will be studied at Auroville - not as beliefs to which one ought or ought not to adhere, but as part of a process in the development of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realization.PROGRAMMEResearch through experience of theSupreme TruthA life divinebutNO RELIGIONSOur research will not be a search effected by mystic means. It is in life itself that we wish to find the Divine. And it is through this discovery that life can really be transformed.

¯¯¯

I have recently read the posting dated October 6, 2006, in Savitri Era, a Blog published by my friend Tusar Mahapatra, which is placed below for reference :

No confusion over the identity as a religion

That Savitri Era constitutes a religion was adjudicated by Justice O. Chinnappa Reddy in his famous dissenting judgemnet of 8th November, 1982 in the Auroville Case
[We do not desire to enter into any polemics over Sri Aurobindo's teachings as it is not within the judicial province to do so except to the limited extent of finding out whether his teachings have the necessary spiritual content to qualify as religious doctrine and how his followers understood these teachings...
Sri Aurobindo, of course, disclaimed that he was founding a religion. No great religious teacher ever claimed that he was, founding a new religion or a new school of religious thought. The question is not whether Sri Aurobindo refused to claim or denied that he was founding a new religion or a new school of religious thought but whether his disciples and the community thought so. …
If the followers of Sri Aurobindo constitute a religious nomination as, to my mind, they undoubtedly do, the members of Sri Aurobindo Society are certainly a distinct and identifiable section of the ‘religious denomination’] EXTRACTS FROM THE JUDGEMENT BY JUSTICE O. CHINNAPPA REDDY IN AUROVILLE CASE New Delhi, 8th November, 1982. ¶ 9:44 AM

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After reading the posting, I felt I am back to square one.

Even if JUSTICE O. CHINNAPPA REDDY has opined so, by giving such a dissenting note, it raised several questions in my mind. Should we accept finally the adjudications given by the Honorable Justice Reddy ? Should we then declare that we have formed another religion, like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, even Hinduism etc? And many other questions came to my mind, especially about the Future of the Teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

I wanted further details about the Auroville case to answer my questions.

And luckily I found more details in Marketime, another blog published by Tusar.

The completer note given by the Honorable Justice Reddy is given below:

I have the good fortune of having before me the scholarly Judgement of my brother Misra L. I agree with my brother Misra J. t the Writ Petitions must fail. With much that he has said, also, I agree. But with a little, to my own lasting regret, I do not agree. It therefore, proper for me to explain the points of my disagreement. …We do not desire to 'enter into any polemics over Sri Aurobindo's teachings as it is not within the judicial province to do so except to the limited extent of finding out whether his teachings have the necessary spiritual content to qualify as religious doctrine and how his followers understood these teachings... …Sri Aurobindo, of course, disclaimed that he was founding a religion. No great religious teacher ever claimed that he was, founding a new religion or a new school of religious thought. The question is not whether Sri Aurobindo refused to claim or denied that he was founding a new religion or a new school of religious thought but whether his disciples and the community thought so. …
If the followers of Sri Aurobindo constitute a 'religious nomination as, to my mind, they undoubtedly do, the members of Sri Aurobindo Society are certainly a distinct and identifiable section of the ‘religious denomination’… ... But, the question is has the Fundamental Right guaranteed by Art.26 been infringed by the Auroville (Emergency Provisions) Act 1980. We have to notice straightaway that the Act did not take away the management of Sri Aurobindo Society. What it did or purposed to do was "to provide for the taking over, in the public interest, of the management of Auroville for a limited period and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto" . . . ... the question arises whether Auroville is an institution established and maintained for religious and charitable purposes and whether its management of Auroville is 'a matter of religion '.
Auroville is a township and not a place of worship. It is a township dedicated not to the practice and propagation of any religious doctrine but to promote international understanding and world peace, surely, a secular and not a religious activity.... The management of the International, cultural township of Auroville is not, in our opinion, a matter of religion. . . . On the several other questions argued before us I accept the conclusion of Misra J. . The Writ Petitions are accordingly dismissed but in the circumstances there will be no order regarding costs. . J.(0. CHINNAPPA REDDY) New Delhi, 8th November, 1982.

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I will try to understand and analyze the dissenting note given by the Honorable Justice Reddy, with due respects to him.

But his adjudications were not the whole truth. As we know, it was a dissenting note.

The Government of India had set up a probe to enquire into the reports of mismanagement and diversion of govt. funds by Sri Aurobindo Society. Consequently, the society sought minority status from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition, mainly on the ground that The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do not form a religion and the Ashram, the Society and Auroville were not religious institutions. The final order and judgment passed by the Honorable Supreme Court were mainly based on the quotations from of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

I am quoting below the conclusive portions from the judgment passed by the Honorable Supreme Court :

“On the basis of the materials placed before us viz., Memorandum of Association of the Society, the several applications made by the Society claiming exemption under s.35 and s.80 of Income-tax Act, the repeated utterings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that the Society and Auroville were not religious institutions and host of other documents there is no room for doubt that neither the Society nor Auroville constitute a religious denomination and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo only represented his philosophy and not a religion... ...”

In the body of the judgment, there are some quotations from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. I am placing the relevant portions below:

“In Sri Aurobindo's own words (The Teaching and the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo 1934, p . 6): "The Ashram is not a religious association. Those who are here come from all religions and some are of no religion. There is no creed or set of dogmas, no governing religious body; there are only the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and certain psychological practices of concentration and meditation, etc. for the enlarging of the consciousness, receptivity to the Truth, mastery over the desires, the discovery of the divine self and consciousness concealed within each human being, a higher evolution of the nature."
Sri Aurobindo himself said: "I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old."
Sri Aurobindo says again : "We are not a party or a church or religion." Sri Aurobindo exposes: "Churches and creeds have, for example, stood violently in the way of philosophy and science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo, and so generally misconducted themselves in this matter that philosophy and science had in self-defense to turn upon Religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development.”
The Mother said on 19.3.1973: " Here we do not have religion.”
Sri Aurobindo says again: “Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has to scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity. And the two, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiments, a practical analysis and constant results. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes grounded on a fixed truth of nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest."

It is pertinent to quote Mother's answer to a question:
"Q. Sweet Mother, what is the difference between Yoga and religion?
Mother's Answer: Ah! My child. It is as though you were asking me the difference between a dog and cat."
There can be no better proof than what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves thought of their teachings and their institutions to find out whether the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and his Integral Yoga constitute a religion or a philosophy. The above utterings from time to time by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother hardly leave any doubt about the nature of the institution.

[Interested readers may some more relevant portions of the Judgment of the Honorable Supreme Court here.]

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It may be seen that Justice Reddy begins his dissenting note with the following words:

“We do not desire to 'enter into any polemics over Sri Aurobindo's teachings as it is not within the judicial province to do so except to the limited extent of finding out whether his teachings have the necessary spiritual content to qualify as religious doctrine and how his followers understood these teachings.”

Though Justice Reddy had given the Note otherwise, the Judgment of the Honorable Supreme Court was that the Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do not form any religion. From a perusal of the quotations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother made in the Judgment, it becomes crystal clear that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did never mean to propagate or found any religion. Rather, they were fully opposed to the idea. Let me repeat what Sri Aurobindo is quoted to have said: “… philosophy and science had in self-defence to turn upon Religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development.”

Thus, we find that the Honorable Supreme Court has declared the Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother do not form any religion, or any religious denomination.

And I am thankful also to Justice Reddy who says that he does not “… desire to 'enter into any polemics over Sri Aurobindo's teachings as it is not within the judicial province to do so …”

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So, the Truth is that the Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is not a Religion. We, Their followers, need not rejoice and follow the Religion of Sri Aurobindo and Mother very religiously, very devoutly, and begin conflicts with other religions, and remain devoutly stationed and fixed with the new ‘creed’ for another millennium, forgetting the Aim of the Progressive Realisation of the Supramental Transformation, forgetting any real progress as visioned by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

The Mother said on April 29, 1953:

Otherwise [if people sought for the truth], there would be no religion : there would be masters and disciples, people with a higher teaching and an exceptional experience. That would be fine. But as soon as the master is gone, what happens is that the knowledge he gave is turned into a religion. Rigid dogmas are established, religious rules are born, and all you can do is bow before the Table of the Law…. Luckily for all of you [children here], you have no religion. And I hope you will never have any, because that is closing the door on progress.”

Let me quote another note from the Mother on religion :

( A note to a visiting Western woman who wanted to teach in a “religious school.”)

One must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and arrests progress, while spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future. It enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization.

Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a total truth. It teaches us to come into direct contact with the Divine.

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On April 29, 1961, the Mother replied to a disciple who asked whether a religion could be founded on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings. She wrote :

“…. Men are such fools that they can change anything at all into a religion, so great is their need for a fixed framework for their narrow thought and limited action. They do not feel secure unless they can affirm, ‘this is true and that is not’. But such an affirmation becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo wrote. Religion and yoga are not situated on the same plane of the being, and spiritual life can exist in its purity only if it is free from all mental dogma.”

On April 3, 1957, the Mother stated as follows:

“A new religion would be something not only useless, but harmful. It’s a new life that has to be created ; it’s a new consciousness that has to be expressed. It is something that is beyond intellectual limits and mental formulas. It’s a living truth that must manifest.”

Again, the Mother stated on June 9, 1929 :

“It is often said that, if Jesus came back, he would not be able to recognize what he taught in the forms that have been imposed on it, and if Buddha were to come back and see what has been made of his teaching, he would immediately run back discouraged to Nirvana ! All religions have each the same story to tell. The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher of the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a Divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organization out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable. Like the State, it too administers reward to the loyal and assigns punishments for those that revolt or go astray, for the heretic and the renegade….

This attitude is natural to the religious mind ; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life…. When you stop at a religious creed and tie yourself in it, taking it for the only truth in the world, you stop the advance and widening of your inner soul.”

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Let us see what Sri Aurobindo tells us :

“How much stupidity and hatred men succeed in packing up decorously and labeling ‘Religion’ !

The quarrels or religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalizing nectar. Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and attain immortality.”

Sri Aurobindo further tells us in another occasion :

“… Then again, I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious works it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom ― and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere ― or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds and thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to ‘religions’ and is the reason of their failure…”

Founding a new religion means repeating the same mistake that has happened in connection with all religions on earth ― the Truth that was coming down receded into secrecy and silence, leaving the ‘religions’ nowhere.

He says on August 18, 1935 :

“I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.”

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To found a religion basing on the Teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, or to declare Their Teachings and thought and philosophy as a religion is an act of gross disobedience and deception to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a fall, a failure and a frustration of Their Teaching. It is act of rebellion.

Founding a religion will be creating an obstruction between the seeker and the Truth that is descending.

Let us understand it and stop from disobeying and deceiving Them, from stopping the Truth that is still descending for us.
Let us not stop the Progress.

Let us not forget the Aim, the Purpose : the Supramental Manifestation on Earth. Let us not pull back and stop the March towards the New World, towards the New Horizon.

Barindranath Chaki

09-10-2006

All choice

On the Way

2006-09-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

Sri Aurobindo is Himself the Adventure of Consciousness, as described by Satprem, a disciple. And if one aspires and endeavours to follow the Light and the Words of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mira Alfassa] and is inspired by Them and walks through the Way trodden by Them, beginning from adolescence, one has to grow up as a sort of adventurer of Consciousness, a seeker of Truth. And this is not a blind faith. This is an Understanding, a Light that comes from above and grows within, more and more intuitively and yet satisfying all claims Reason, even surpassing the limits of Reason, the failures and falls of Reason.

With all humility, I say that from my adolescence I endeavoured for understanding and following Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, not as a religion, not as any worship or puja, not as a dogma, not as a way of creating another group or any group, but as a clear and open Truth, universal and worldwide and limitless, accepting and acceptable to all human beings on earth for surpassing all their imperfections and limitations, for surpassing all difficulties and deficiencies, all divisions and darkness and death. And on the Way I met some others. And we walked together, often. The aim of the Adventure, the journey through the Unknown and the New was and is to reach The New Horizon, The New World, the Eternal Dawn of the Supramental World. We the human beings have to evolve into a New Race, surpassing all our human and animal limitations and imperfections and inconscience and ignorance and incapacities.

I have a dream, a dream of marching, along with others, towards The New Horizon, The New World. And I request all others to march towards The New Horizon, The New World. Hence, let us collect all that is golden in our harvest so far, since the beginning of the human journey, and march towards The New Horizon. It is not that we will leave this world and go elsewhere to find another planet in search of the New World. Nor should we become recluses. We need not retire into some forests or mountains. We will change this world. We can see that this world, as it is now, is in an extremely bad state of affairs. Falsehood, hatred, selfishness, corruption, greed, deception, violence, cruelty, inhumanity, and hunger for power - these appear to be the ruling forces now. All the noble Ideals or Ideas that prevailed on earth and inspired many of our noble ancients or our forefathers, have, as it were, become obsolete. Look at history and the present day earth: ideologically, and in consciousness, men seem to have become pygmies. The entire human society is sitting on a heap of bombs - atomic or non-atomic. In relationships, we can no more find beauty and love and fellow feeling. In Arts and culture, vulgarity has almost replaced beauty. In the name of religion, the people fight each other, and they are taking themselves farther away from the Divine, from spirituality. You may live for a definite purpose, a purpose higher than ordinary, which will bring you more fulfilments, more joy. The higher your purpose, the greater is the joy and fulfilment. The higher the Consciousness you aspire for, and the wider your consciousness, the more purposeful your life becomes, the greater is your joy. We may orient our endeavor, our way of life, towards limited personal happiness and satisfaction, or towards a greater and wider Joy and fulfilment, along with others, for others, maybe with the whole of mankind, for the entire mankind, for higher values of Truth, Light, Wisdom, Beauty, Creativity, Goodness, Love, Wideness, Harmony and Peace, Total Well-being.

Our journey is towards the next evolution.
And Sri Aurobindo is The Leader of the next evolution.
He was the first Person to know and declare that the humanity must go beyond itself, that Man has to evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, towards becoming supramental beings. That is the Will of the Supreme, that is the design of Nature, of what He has termed as Supernature.

Sri Aurobindo has said :

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its checkered 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.

The Mother has said :

A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being.Open yourself to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.

Further, She has also said:

To leap into the new consciousness, the first condition is a mental modesty sufficient to be convinced that all one thinks one knows is nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned. All that one has learned externally must be only a foothold enabling one to rise towards higher knowledge.

Hence, we aspire for and dream of marching towards The New Horizon, The New World.

With this dream, with these ideas and aspirations and hopes, this website is created, which I name The New Horizon. My idea is not only to dream or be a visionary, but to spread my dream, my vision, my consciousness, my aspiration, along with the bases of my philosophical and spiritual understanding, throughout the people around the world, through my Blogs and Websites. I hope the Light and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother will inspire the people and change their attitude and approach, so that a Society can grow and march towards The New Horizon, The New World.

There is no narrowness here. It is open to all other thinkers and Seers and spiritual Leaders of the Past and the Present and even of the Future who seek to change this world from darkness to Light, from falsehood to Truth, from death to Immortality. Not only the Dream, but also the required Action will be dealt with in these pages.

I will express myself though arts and poetry, through philosophical, intellectual and spiritual deliberations. You are invited and welcome to join or visit this place as a valuable and valued member or guest, in order to walk along towards The New Horizon.

Barin

24-09-2006

[This posting is published in my new Blog Barin Chaki and also simultaneously published by me in All choice. Barin ]

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

2006-09-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

A few days back, I read in Auroramirabilis, a blog published by Tusar N Mohapatra, some quotations from some authors like Makarand Paranjape, Peter Heeh, and Mukul Kesavan. As I was traveling in various parts of West Bengal, I could not immediately find time and scope to write down the reply thereof. But I felt that I should reply at once. I had to wait till my return to Bhubaneswar.

As stated by Tusar N Mohapatra, irreverence to great men is seen as a short route to glory. He is justified. But I find that the situation attracts another truth, which is inherent in the story of the elephant and the dogs.
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were and are great human beings. No doubt. But they are the most unique and the most incomparable ones among the hundreds and thousands of great men and women. They are the tallest monuments. They are indeed much more than great human beings. They seem to me to be like the sky. If one spits at the Sky, it is well known what happens.
The Past and the Present of the humankind may fail to recognize Them, may only accept Them as great people, great saints and remain pleased and satisfied, but to the Seer, to the Visionary, They are the Leaders of the next future.

Let us begin with Paranjape. He has written: “In time, a whole set of beliefs and rituals began to be built up around Sri Aurobindo and more so, around The Mother.” This is sheer ignorance! There were no rituals around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Never. The Mother has rather broken all rituals. There was / is no puja, no worship, no ritual, no self-deceit. And regarding beliefs, it can be said that people from all over the world gathered around Them, not due to any set of beliefs, but they were attracted towards Them due to Their Presence and Their Personality, due to the Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the spiritual experimentations done by both of Them. And among the people around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we find Nalini Kanta Gupta, K D Sethna, Dr. Nirodbaran, Indra Sen, Haridas Chowdhury, TV Kapali Shastry, M P Pandit, K M Mushi, R R Diwakar, A B Purani, K R Srinivasa Iyenger, Huta, Navajata, Udar, Karan Singh, Dr. Malcolm Adiseshia and many others. And among the people from outside India, we find Satprem, Datta, Judith Tyberg, Morwenna Donnelly, Roger Anger, Sir Robert Bristow, Frederic Spielberg and many others. I have no time and no space to introduce each of them to Paranjape. Each of them was personalities of worth, with sufficient philosophical and intellectual depth. To know each of them, Paranjape should have read them. He would have then known they were not the people who would have been swayed by wrong beliefs and meaningless rituals. How and why they were convinced of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother can be known by a person, if he or she is sincere enough in his or her quest. Millions of people are there on earth today who understand and know the contents in Their Teaching and are inspired by the same.
I am quoting Professor Jean Herbert, previously of the University of Geneva, who has written:
“Even those most allergic to anything that smells of mysticism … must acknowledge Sri Aurobindo as one of the greatest men, not only of our age, but of all ages. His all-embracing, crystal clear and profound philosophy is assuredly a contribution to human thought, vision and progress which ranks that of Plato, Kant, Bergson or Goethe … the findings of Sri Aurobindo which we have no means of verifying at our level of experience actually supply all the consistency which strikes us in the explanation given by Sri Aurobindo for facts which we do know, an all-embracing consistency, the equivalent of which does not seem to have attain even by any other known thinker…
“Now thousands who had Sri Aurobindo’s darsan could not help believing that they were face to face with a great saint and sage…His look very clearly had in it something superhuman, which might be said to put it as far above the human look as the latter is above the look of a dog or a cat…” [Pioneer of the Supramental Age]

Also I wish to quote Prof Frederic Spigelberg, previously of the Stanford University, California, USA :
“…I have never known a philosopher so embracing in his metaphysical structure as Sri Aurobindo, none before him had the same vision…
“I can foresee the day when the teachings which are already making headway of the greatest spiritual voice in India, Sri Aurobindo, will be known all over America and be a vast power of illumination…”

I may go on quoting, but to make the presentation short and limited and to the point, I must say that following Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is not any blind faith or belief, as Paranjape has imagined because of his ignorance and lack of depth in the matter.

Paranjape has further said : “The death of each of them caused dismay and disappointment among large sections of the faithful.” Sorry, again ignorance and unintelligent imagination and belief on the part of Paranjape. There was never any dismay or disappointment, though there was sadness and sorrow and grief, which is but natural. Had there been any dismay and disappointment, now the following Sri Aurobindo and The Mother would have come to insignificance, which is not the case. Still, the following is growing larger and larger.
In this connection let me quote Dara [Aga Syed Ibrahim], a disciple :
I found myself in Sri Aurobindo’s own room by the side of his cot. He seemed so peaceful and happy, and the flesh shone with a new luster which I had failed to seat the darsan time on 24th November. Why could I not see it before?... I could not take my eyes off his face and arms. It seemed to me he was alive. It was certain that he was in a condition of deep and upward soaring trance just then." [My Last Darshan of Sri Aurobindo]

Sri Aurobindo’s life was an experiment. What he taught was not a matter of ‘belief ‘ about which Paranjape is speaking, a sort of belief which is built up of distrust and disbelief, which is fragile and which is of no value, as it is likely to be broken at the slightest excuse. The children of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother throughout the world do not have such belief, furthermore because Their Teaching is based on a Science, a Science of Existence, a Philosophy about which the greatest scholars, thinkers and even scientists of worldwide fame have spoken. He has been accepted as the greatest of Philosophers and Teachers, by many great men, not by a bunch of believers whose belief is no belief, as imagined and spoken of by Paranjape. Paranjape has referred to the Ashram community. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are not and never limited to the Ashram. They are followed by millions throughout the world. And does Paranjape know about the ashramites? About the Ashram? It is not an Ashram of the inactive recluses. It is one of the most visited Ashram in the world. On the 6th December 1950, more than 60000 persons visited Sri Aurobindo. Is it possible that 60000 people were befooled on the Day, when the Master passed away?

The passing away of the Master and of the Mother cannot be understood by the persons who live in a surface depthless mentality and believe in fragile beliefs. And to explain these phenomena, I do not have the space here, I may repeat again. But later on soon, I will write about Their departure surely, at least for casting away the darkness brought about by the disrespect and calumny and blasphemy by someone who has no knowledge of Them or Their Teaching.

Paranjape again says: “Besides, a whole theology began to be developed, especially because of the extensive records of what Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had said…This theology not only asserts the Avatarhood or Divine Incarnation of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, but builds around them a special cult of worship and devotion…”
There is no theology about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. There is a clear-cut philosophy, about which Herbert said : “the findings of Sri Aurobindo which we have no means of verifying at our level of experience actually supply all the consistency which strikes us in the explanation given by Sri Aurobindo for facts which we do know, an all-embracing consistency, the equivalent of which does not seem to have attain even by any other known thinker…” I am repeating this quotation, only to emphasize the point. Herbert states that Sri Aurobindo was / is the most consistent thinker.
I am repeating Spigelberg, who has said :
“I have never known a philosopher so embracing in his metaphysical structure as Sri Aurobindo, none before him had the same vision.”
And there is no cult of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, no religion. According to the Mother, the Integral Yogi who seeks supramental transformation has no religion, no cult. Let us see what the Mother said in this matter.

I am placing below what the Mother [Mira Alfassa] wrote on the subject :

Auroville and the Religions

We want the Truth.
For most men, it is what they want that they label as truth.
The Aurovillians must want the Truth whatever it may be.
Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.
It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth.
No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine.
Get experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it.
The objective study of religions will be a part of the historical study of the development of human consciousness.
Religions make up part of the history of mankind and it is in this guise that they will be studied at Auroville - not as beliefs to which one ought or ought not to adhere, but as part of a process in the development of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realization.

PROGRAMME

Research through experience of the
Supreme Truth
A life divine
but
NO RELIGIONS
Our research will not be a search effected by mystic means. It is in life itself that we wish to find the Divine. And it is through this discovery that life can really be transformed. 2 May 1970

So where do you find the theology and cult and fragile baseless so-called belief of which Paranjape has the nightmare?

Again Paranjape says:
“It needs to be acknowledged that though both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother repeatedly warned against the creation of a cult around them, they themselves encouraged it in several ways. Sri Aurobindo himself deified The Mother and vice versa.”

What a blasphemy! Can Paranjape prove by quoting any sayings or writings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother that they encouraged creation of a cult? Can he prove that They encouraged it? This is a challenge to him.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother told the Truth about each other. They had to open other’s eyes. They told the Truth. Should they have spoken otherwise or suppressed Truth to please the people like Paranjape? Can Paranjape deify himself or any other person?

Falsehood cannot convince millions for decades after decades.

[Continued]

Barin

03-09-2006

Because Thou Art

2006-07-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Because Thou Art: Unbound Verdant Cover

There should be many more paintings and even poems by Rimina and Silika. Creative arts do also make a Way to the Realisation, to the Divine.

Barin
30-07-2006

The New Vision

2006-07-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

The New Vision

I have a successful blog at Zaadz , and I post my writings also in The Visionland, my Pod at Zaadz. Further, also I write in my Website The New Horizon. However, I was inspired to join and write in a larger and wider blogging community.

Hence, this new Blog. I have named my blog The New Vision, as it will be about the Vision of the New Light, the New Horizon, the New World that is now under formation in a subtle but sure way, especially after the First Supramental Manifestation on the 29th day of February 1956, as declared by Mira Alfassa [The Mother]. This Advent of the New World, this fulfilmemt of the Vision thereof, is the most important thing I am interested in. Obviously, I am interested in the Supramental Manifestation as visioned and promised by Sri Aurobindo.

And for this Advent of the Supramental Consciousness, Sri Aurobindo says that Man has to ascend from Mind to various higher levels of Mind, and then to the Supermind. Man has to go through the ways of Transformation. And when the human aspiration rises to a height, then only Supermind can be approached. The Mother [Mira Alfassa] was the Person who caused the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth on the 29th February 1956. The purpose of this Supramental Descent was to make possible the ascending journey of the human being to the Supramental Being . I seek to place below the oft-quoted statement from the Mother: FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION (During the common meditation on Wednesday The 29th February 1956) This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there 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. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow. This was, and is, the purpose of the coming of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on earth : the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness here on earth, so that Man can progressively change and transform himself into the Supramental Being. By the half-lit and diminished principle of Mind, Man can rise from the animalhood to a great extent, but cannot attain Perfection, nor can he become the Supramental Being and cause an end to his miseries and his ignorance, inconscience, incapacities and death.
This transformation will be integral and involve the physical, mental, emotional and vital aspects of Man, and will have three stages, psychic, spiritual, and supramental; it will concern both the individual and collective.

Thus, this Blog will be concerned with discussions and presentations relating to the Supramental Manifestation and the Integral Way and connected ideas and thoughts and other matters. Though the writings will be mostly centred around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there may be references to other thinkers and philosophers and spiritual people.Recently I am writing and posting a book on Sri Aurobindo, named Sri Aurobindo in Zaadz, both in my Blog and in my Pod The Visionland in zaadz. If interested, the Reader may visit Barin’s Blog in Zaadz. My website may also be viewed, if interested.

Barindranath Chaki
Friday, July 21, 2006