Aswapati recognizes that it is the
dynamic Truth-conscient Power, the divine Shakti herself who must enter into
the present evolutionary process. She must come and lead it in its unfolding
integrality. Indeed, how else is this going to materialise, is going to take
shape, how is it going to become operationally real? and who is going to make
her do it? persuade or compel her to attend to it? There is the great
adversary, the might and incorrigible Being of Inconscience, and he can make
the path contorted and crooked; he can cover it up or even terminate it,
swallow it, destroy it. Therefore it is a grave perilous imperative that the
Person embodying the Negation of the Absolute, this Shadow figure of the Void
be first vanquished by direct action. Nothing further can happen without its
disappearance. But this direct action can ensue wholly from the executive Might
of the Supreme alone. The one who in her love for this evolutionary earth can
do it is the Divine Mother and she must take it upon herself. But, for that to
happen, certain preparatory conditions also have to be met with.
The one whom the Siddha-Yogi saw
behind the World-Soul must therefore be invoked. She is the tremendous builder
of the worlds and her managerial-governing assent is absolutely necessary. Then
only can the new consciousness be operative. This is the deep occult truth
behind this creation and Aswapati approaches her. Her coming to pave the way
for the descent of Supermind as a new evolutionary principle is the one
assuring condition which has to be detailed out and fulfilled. The earth-soul
would grow in the luminous possibilities of Sachchidananda only when this would
be accomplished. Behind it is the necessity of the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati.
The Adya Shakti, the original
supreme Might, always stays in the Transcendent. That is her home, and her
office is there, and it is from there that she supports all the executive
actions, supports in her own way from there even in the lower hemisphere. She
does this through her powers and personalities and her thousand emanations
which the evolutionary earth would be in a position to bear.
But for the decisive change to take
place she will have to project herself as the supramental Mahashakti. Indeed,
it is in that form that she will come down and do the work. Thus, while the
Adya Shakti will always remain in the Transcendent, it is the Supermind with
that transformative power which will come down and take charge of the earthly
progress and growth. In this way will the Supermind belong to the evolutionary
line. However, its descent will not mean the descent of the Transcendent. The
evolutionary line will have in the triple aspect of the manifest Unknowable its
own splendid evolutionary supramental play. When Aswapati will have achieved
this by his yoga-tapasya, it will be his trailokya
siddhi, the Siddhi of the Three Worlds, the Siddhi of the great
Yoga-Purusha who had carried with him the “world’s desire” to the Adya Shakti
herself. Indeed, we already witness it so in him: (Savitri, p. 297)
A light was round him wide and
absolute,
A diamond purity of eternal sight;
A consciousness lay still, devoid
of forms,
Free, wordless, uncoerced by sign
or rule,
For ever content with only being
and bliss;
A sheer existence lived in its own
peace
On the single spirit’s bare and
infinite ground.
Out of the sphere of Mind he had
arisen,
He had left the reign of Nature’s
hues and shades;
He dwelt in his self’s colourless
purity.
This “self’s colourless purity” is
the wonderful Nirvana of the Manomaya Purusha and Aswapati has presently
entered into it. It is with it that the Siddha-Bhakta can now get into luminous
relationship with the Divine Mother. In this Bhakti-Nirvana no trace of Nature
or of the ignorant created things is left, and the condition of selflessness is
such that it can hold that unalloyed and faultless absolute consciousness, of
the most Pure and the Immune. Whatsoever that supreme Power is going to do in
him, that will no more be affected, no
more contaminated, degraded or distorted by the dishonest and dark agents of
the lower existence. In that great and marvellous assent even the body is to be
delivered to the flawlessness of his soul. Aswapati is in possession of
supersenses and, luminous as these are, they can respond to the Reality in its
multifold objectivity. He is on the verge of taking the “supernal birth”. In
fact, his happy supreme birth has already occurred in the Transcendent; the yoga
he did in the earth consciousness has already given him this new and convincing
siddhi.
Now the question is about his
second birth, birth in the evolution. By it he has to be reborn, become a
Brahmin, dwija, and become fit to do
holy sacrifices in the rites of the supreme Knowledge for begetting the world.
However, in spite of all these great and shining siddhis in his possession,
this birth of Aswapati can occur only when the World-Force will have made
corresponding progress in the evolutionary process. Which means that, while the
supernal birth has already become a consummated fact on the earth-plane, it is
the Executrix who has now to execute its
grand accomplishments. She has to open it out, make it available to the
collectivity that shall be in a state of preparedness to receive it. The march
from the individual to the broad and ready communal aggregate has to get
started. The divine focus is on the Many breathing in the world-possibility.
Collective is a much tougher proposition than the individual.
The groundwork is now completed,
the path paved. It shall henceforth be the task of the Divine Mother to give
shape and finality to what has been prepared and kept ready. Her birth as the
creative-expressive Word can alone bring about God’s full birth in the Universe,
God’s second birth has to occur. The key for supernal birth here, in the
earth-consciousness is with her. Therefore Aswapati must approach her and
invoke her to incarnate herself here. She has already fulfilled herself as far
as his high birth is concerned and in it she has also fulfilled the birth of
the individual. The Tapasya of the Purusha has thus lifted him to this Birth,
the Birth that was born here by the Grace of the Benign. What was claimed was
granted.
But now not only the Yoga of the
Individual but also the Yoga of the Cosmic Being has to move on, on to the Yoga
of the Supreme Shakti. If this is to succeed, then it will be necessary that
the “world’s desire” and “God’s desire” join and take up the double Yoga in the
divinity’s earthly greatness.
First with the psychic-individual
and then with the greater spiritual transformation the mighty Yogi-Seer, the
dauntless adventurer on the long Paths of Time moves, moves up the ladder and
climbs all the way to the very Unknowable.
About Aswapati’s Yoga comprising of
these three parts Sri Aurobindo explains it in a letter to Amal Kiran as
follows: (Letters on Savitri, pp.
773-74, 1946)
... First, he is achieving his own
spiritual self-fulfilment as the individual and this is described as the Yoga
of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race
to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of
consciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but this too is as yet
an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all,
for a universal realisation and new creation. This is described in the Book of
the Divine Mother.
There is the last Unknowable, the
supreme Asat, the luminous Non-manifest to which the Explorer must go; there he
must discover, and know, the parameters by which this vast creation has come
into being, its existence and its raison
d’être. That is the great Mystery which shall unravel all the little
mysteries of this manifestation. He must go to the Paratpara about which
nothing can be gainfully said or talked, the sheer Ineffable. It is from there,
from that infinite Potency, the rich Womb of All, that the new creation can
emerge. In it shall be the universal realisation.
But this will be possible only with
the consent of the Paratpara's Shakti. She must wish it so, both in her wisdom
and in her pragmatism. Her wishing so is the bright and spontaneous consent,
and it is that which comes from her as the noblest boon to Aswapati. He already
finds the Siddhi of the Individual as the fulfilment of this boon, and the
great merit of it is that it is not only for himself but is universally
available for any ready aspirant soul. In a certain sense, we may as well say
that Aswapati now retires after this attainment, after having attempted all and
achieving all. He now lets the Boon work itself out in the evolutionary process
with the full dynamism of the Truth-Consciousness Force that it bears.
The Unknowable is undoubtedly far
richer and vaster than the Unknown, with all that is creatively patent in it.
The Unknown can become known but it is not possible to know the Unknowable,—precisely
for the reason that it holds in itself all the concealed possibilities, the
possibilities that have not yet been thrown into manifestation. The Unknown is
a part of the Manifest whereas the Unknowable is the Unmanifest or the
Non-manifest with all creative urges, all potentialities and prospects from
which can stream out countless manifestations. It is actually with this connotation
that we should see Yogi Aswapati’s pursuing the Unknowable,—to bring out a new
creation from the Unmanifest. What a great thing he envisioned! What a great
thing he achieved!
If it is a new creation upon the
earth which Aswapati is proposing, then for that possibility to get established
here it should first be present in the Transcendent. His yogic effort is
therefore directed towards creating it there. He has set for himself a great
task no doubt; but then it is only by fulfilling that great task can the full sense
and scope of its getting realised be meaningful. In it alone is the chance of
achieving success. Aswapati is standing at the entrance of the Sanctum
Sanctorum and there is the Upanishadic Veil of Unrevelation drawn over his
vision. Behind that Veil everything seems to collapse, not only the nescient
worlds but also the higher teeming worlds,— and the Spirit too.
Aswapati now makes a great yogic
bid, as if of withdrawing himself from himself. He dissolves his entire
personality and in that experience witnesses only the formless Form of the
Self. The last bit of individuality as well as cosmicity is lost. He has won
luminous Silence, Silence of the Featureless enveloping him and everything: (p.
307)
Alone and fronting an intangible
Force
Which offered nothing to the grasp
of Thought,
His spirit faced the adventure of
the Inane.
Abandoned by the worlds of form he
strove. ...
All glory of outline, sweetness of
harmony,
Rejected like a grace of trivial
notes,
Expunged from Being’s silence nude,
austere,
Died into a fine and blissful
Nothingness. ...
The universe removed its coloured
veil,
And at the unimaginable end
Of the huge riddle of created
things
Appeared the far-seen Godhead of
the whole,
His feet firm-based on Life’s
stupendous wings,
Omnipotent, a lonely seer of Time,
Inward, inscrutable, with diamond
gaze.
The wide luminous Silence he has
presently won; but then there is the other lap, the last lap of the journey
which is the most arduous one and is full of peril. It could mean a new creation,
it could also mean dissolution in the white blank of the Absolute, laya. But then if the creation is to
survive, what is in the Silence it is that which ought to become dynamic. If
one is the support for an active world-play, the other is the delight in its
multifold mood of expression founded on it. Out of this interminable Secrecy
has to step out the mute Force. That mute Force until now lay in the
“featureless and formless hush”, but time has come for her to emerge and kindle
her fire in the heart of men upon the earth. She must new-shape the creation in
the beauty and wonder of her own greatness. The one whom Aswapati met behind
the World-Soul has to take possession of all that is and all that shall be in
the rich Possibility. On the gleaming edge of this Transcendent bordering the
mortal world, in the prayer of his innermost soul he awaits the arrival that
shall change the mortal's fate. (pp. 314-15)
Towards her our knowledge climbs,
our passion gropes,
In her miraculous rapture we shall
dwell,
Her clasp will turn to ecstasy our
pain.
Our self shall be one self with all
through her.
In her confirmed because
transformed in her,
Our life shall find in its
fulfilled response
Above, the boundless hushed
beatitudes,
Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.
This known as in a thunder-flash of
God,
The rapture of things eternal
filled his limbs;
Amazement fell upon his ravished
sense;
His spirit was caught in her
intolerant flame.
How marvellous to be caught so in
her intolerant flame! “He yielded to her and his heart was glad.” That indeed
is the finest moment in his yoga-tapasya in the mood and mode of bhakti. In the
knowledge of the Spirit arose the deep adoration of the Divine, Jnana became
Bhakti. It is the most assuring terminus of this long and enthralling Odyssey
composed at the feet of the wise and grey-eyed glowing Athena who shall gift
him back his dear and devout loving city of happiness, the golden Athena of
superconscient Wisdom and Strength, the Daughter who sprang up straight from
the Head of the Supreme.