Monday, July 30, 2007

The New Way



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.

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

Barindranath Chaki
21-07-2007