THE GREAT SECRET
SHRIMATI
PREMA NANDAKUMAR, M.A., Ph. D.
Sri
Aurobindo writes in Heraclitus:
“Science
takes possession of the measures and utilities of Force; rational philosophy
pursues reason to its last subtleties; but inspired philosophy and religion can
seize hold of the highest secret, Uttamam rahasyam.”
That
is, only a great visionary can seize ‘the heart of the matter’ and map out the
Secret of Secrets. The power of his vision is so overwhelming that others hold
on to it by force of sheer faith. Thus are great movements born.
Today
the world is struggling for a greater birth. The present uncertainties and
tribulations cannot be dismissed as an illusion. They are a fact. But
they are the necessary evils that prelude a great birth. If indications prove
anything, it seems to be a certainty that the Aurobindonian
movement has already achieved part of its quiet spiritual revolution.
Years
ago Rabindranath Tagore
said to Sri Aurobindo:
“You
have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you.
Prophetic
Words! Sri Aurobindo has chosen to withdraw after giving us the Word in terms
of his writings, the institutions shaped by his philosophy and the visible
symbol of the Mother.
“Immortal,
treading the earth with mortal feet
All
heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence,
girdle with the power of God
Movements
and moments of a mortal will.
Pack
with the eternal might one human hour
And
with one gesture change all future time.
Let
a great word be spoken from the heights
And
one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”
What
is this “great word”? How is it going to prelude the “great act” to “unlock the
doors of Fate”? Encircled by gloom –political, economic, moral, spiritual–and challenged by the blandishments of the modern
age, how can the mere mortal believe in a change of “all future time”? Is it
all verbal jugglery and no more?
The
Aurobindonian movement cannot be probed
intellectually since our aim is not argument but achievement. For,
what is desired here is not the kind of secular socialism and universal health
and peace, smelling as it were of hospital anti-septic. We do not seek simply a
change for the better but a total change that would lead humanity to the Life
Divine. To a pointed question–“Is the yoga for the sake of humanity”?–the
Mother answered:
“No,
it is for the sake of Divinity. It is not the welfare of the humanity that we
seek but the manifestation of the Divine. We are here to work out the Divine
Will, more truly, to be worked upon by the Divine Will so that we may be its
instruments for the progressive incorporation of the Supreme and the
establishment of His reign upon earth. Only that portion of humanity which will
respond to the Divine Call shall receive its Grace.
Whether
humanity as a whole will be benefited, if not directly, at least in an indirect
way, will depend upon the condition of humanity itself. If one is to judge from
the present conditions, there is not much hope...Humanity will have to change
before it can hope to gain anything by the advent of the Divine.”
Savitri
is not satisfied with Satyavan’s release from Death.
The real struggle is to take place after Savitri and Satyavan return to the earth to work out the Divine Will here
and now. Before this can happen the attitude of humanity has to
change totally. This total change will be possible only if we cultivate an
“integral faith”. In the Mother’s words,
“Mental
faith is not sufficient; it must be completed and enforced by a vital and even
a physical faith, a faith of the body. If you can create in yourself an
integral force of this kind in all your being, then nothing can resist it; but
you must reach down to the most subconscious, you must fix the faith in the
very cells of the body.”
A
person who achieves such integral faith will be the ideal worker in the Aurobindonian movement. Their tribe has been increasing in
recent years. Hence the “great act” will be to “change all future time.”
Sri
Aurobindo, the great visionary, saw the whole course of future time.
That was how he could write with such certainty about the future. References to
the next step that man is going to take towards perfection are abundant in his
works. In Heraclitus he refers to the
perfect man as “a divine child.”
“He
is the soul which awakens to the divine play, accepts it without fear or
reserve, gives itself up in a spiritual purity to the Divine, allows the
careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and become
the joyous play of the divine will.”
If
“integral faith” is the starting point, Sri Aurobindo’s
integral yoga is the means of acting out the Divine Will on earth. This yoga
aims at the destruction of ignorance, which is the reason for the ills of body,
mind and heart. Only people who are divine children can make this ascension. As
Sri Aurobindo explains,
“It
is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the
divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental
power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and
body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life
in Matter.”
This
is the idea behind the great scenes in the Eleventh Book of Savitri.
Savitri is shown as the forerunner who acts to
make on earth the life divine. She and Satyavan will
be the transformers of terrestrial conditions.
‘ O Savitri, thou
art my spirit’s Power.
The
revealing voice of my immortal Word,
The
face of Truth upon the roads of Time
Pointing to the souls of men the routes to God.
You
shall be born into man’s dubious hours
In
forms that hide the soul’s divinity.
And
show through veils of the earth’s doubting air
My
glory breaking as through clouds a sun,
Or
burning like a rare and inward fire,
And
with my nameless influence fill men’s lives.”
The
Divine exists. Part of its glory is seen in this world and its
movements. Our aim is to manifest the totality of the Divine Presence
here on earth, and make of it a perfect sphere. The Rose of God must be made to
bloom on this earth. This prayer of the human for the flowering of perfection
on earth finds mantric chant in Sri Aurobindo’s Rose of God:
“Rose
of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire,
Rose
of Life, crowded with petals colour’s lyre!
Transform
the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme;
Bridge
our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless
the children of Time.
Rose
of God like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face
Rose
of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!
Arise
from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s abyss!
Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude’s
kiss.”
This
poem is a clear explanation of the Aurobindonian
ideal the descent of a Supramental consciousness on
earth, symbolised by the Rose representing “the
higher reality.”
In short, not simply a change but a new birth and a new
growth. An attempt to rise higher in
the ladder of evolutionary perfection. At present it is very obvious
that man’s mind or intellect is the reason behind the ills of mankind. It is
this mind that drives him to greed of money and power resulting in vast
destruction. Every gift from the Divine is used to bring suffering on his
fellow men. Hence man’s mind has to be perfected and led away from its faith in
‘the law of the jungle.’ To do this, to bring into birth a mental consciousness
that would eschew untruth and insincerity, the demoniac urge and destructive
inventions, the Divine has to manifest on earth.
“Here
where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
On
the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
Here
where one knows not even the step in front
And
Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On
this anguished and precarious field of toil
Outspread
beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial
witness to our joy and bale,”
the
new birth has to take place.
But
are we capable of a sudden baptism into truth consciousness? Centuries of asat refuse to fall
away in a trice, need a help, a visible help, to pull us out of this
quagmire and instill in us a faith in the future. A Presence is required to
whom we, already beckoned by the ‘urge within’ can say:
“Because
thou art, men yield not to their doom,
But
ask for happiness and strive with fate;
Because
thou art in him, man hopes and dares;
Because
thou art, men’s souls can climb the heavens
And
walk like Gods in the presence of the Supreme.
Because
thou art, the soul draws near to God.”
The
whole epic of Savitri is about the
manifestation of such a Presence containing wisdom, power and love, that alone can lead mankind towards its new birth and
sustain it in its new growth.
“Near
to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven,
Exalted
and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging
through worlds of splendour and of calm
Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
A
deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her
inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love
in her was wider than the universe,
The
whole world could take refuge in her single heart.
At
once she was the stillness and the word,
A
continent of self-diffusing peace,
An
ocean of untrembling virgin fire:
The
strength, the silence of the gods were hers.”
Is
not such a presence right before us even now? A Supreme Radiance that queries
in human accents,
“The
world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?”
A
voice that beckons:
“We
are for a new creation, entirely new, carrying in it all the unforeseen, all
risks, all hazards,–a true adventure of which the goal is sure victory,
but of which the way is unknown and has to be traced out step by step in the
unexplored.”
But
where is the fear for us when She has chosen to lead
us? To conclude in the words of Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar:
“She
is not for miraculism and shortcuts, for she knows
that the yoga of self-transformation and world-transformation is long and
arduous. But by her words and writings and actions, by her aspirations and
strivings and realisations, even by the mere fact of
her sovereign presence in our midst, the Mother has awakened us to the truth
that there is indeed a divinity that shapes our ends, and that India has a
noble role yet to play to save herself by her own exertions and the world by
her example.