Mortality
bears ill the eternal's touch:
It
fears the pure divine intolerance
Of
that assault of ether and of fire;
It
murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost
with hate repels the light it brings;
It
trembles at its naked power of Truth
And
the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.
Inflicting
on the heights the abysm's law,
It
sullies with its mire heaven's messengers:
Its
thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It
turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It
meets the sons of God with death and pain.
A
glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,
Their
sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
Their
work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The
cross their payment for the crown they gave,
Only
they leave behind a splendid Name.
A
fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone;
A
few have caught flame and risen to greater life.
Too
unlike the world she came to help and save,
Her
greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast
And
from its dim chasms welled a dire return,
A
portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.
To
live with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The
mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.
Thus
trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
Awaiting
her ordeal's hour abode,
Outcast
from her inborn felicity,
Accepting
life's obscure terrestrial robe,
Hiding
herself even from those she loved,
The
godhead greater by a human fate.
A
dark foreknowledge separated her
From
all of whom she was the star and stay;
Too
great to impart the peril and the pain,
In
her torn depths she kept the grief to come.
As
one who watching over men left blind
Takes
up the load of an unwitting race,
Harbouring
a foe whom with her heart she must feed,
Unknown
her act, unknown the doom she faced,
Unhelped
she must foresee and dread and dare.
(Savitri, pp. 7-8)
Hard is it
to persuade earth-nature’s change. Harder is it also to impose change on the
working of the nature of the earth. The issue is constitutional. The habits are
pathological, related to body and health, of various kinds. The last habit is
the habit of death. But, before that, there are the habits of suffering, error,
falsehood, ignorance, gloom, pain, inertia, tamas,
depression, fear, bhaya; there are
suggestions of sadness, despair, of suicide, suggestions from what the Mother
calls “the thieves of the vital world”. All these are parts of or consequences
of our physical and sometimes psychological makeup and hard they are to
eliminate. That is what we are presently composed of. Savitri’s task is
connected with it, and she has to pay a heavy price, by accepting this world’s
ignominy and its stubbornness, stubbornness of the mortal life. Its entire past
stands against all progress.
Rishi Agastya was engaged in a long and arduous tapasya. But then he felt that
he was not making progress. He was told to get up from the thick grass seat on
which he was sitting and meditating. The moment he got up, flames rose up from
it. He realised that, all along, his past samskaras, the old habits were
getting consumed in the fire of the tapasya. Agni Pavaka, Fire the Purifier has
to be kindled if such a change is to come about. Only such tapasya can perhaps
persuade earth-nature’s change. The Avatars do it for us, for the entire earth.
There are a thousand things that happen in the subconscient, or in the occult,
or else in half-dark half-bright subtle domains. And there are yet hungry lusty
swallowing abysses below them. Here we are, we who laugh and weep, a la
Binyon’s pilgrim; we suffer the stroke, exult in victory, struggle for the
crown, bleed with the Fate’s whips. But change we do not strive for. Our nature
remains crooked, like the famous dog’s tail Vivekananda spoke of.
In a letter Sri Aurobindo writes: “The interpenetration of the planes is indeed
for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which
yoga as I practise it and its aim could not exist. For that aim is to manifest,
reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away from
earth into a higher world or some supreme Absolute. The old yogas (not quite
all of them) tended the other way—but that was, I think, because they found the
earth as it is a rather impossible place for any spiritual being and the resistance
to change too obstinate to be borne; earth-nature looked to them in
Vivekananda's simile like the dog's tail which, every time you straighten it,
goes back to its original curl. But the fundamental proposition in this matter
was proclaimed very definitely in the Upanishads which went so far as to say
that Earth is the foundation and all the worlds are on the earth and to imagine
a clean-cut or irreconcilable difference between them is ignorance: here and
not elsewhere, not by going to some other world, the divine realisation must
come. This statement was used to justify a purely individual realisation, but
it can equally be the basis of a wider endeavour.” (Letters on Yoga, pp.
177-78)
Earth was an impossible place for some of the old yogas. Sri Aurobindo was
concerned with it, and this is what he states in Savitri. As far as the
collective life is concerned it is infinitely more difficult to bring about a
change. Easy it was for the creator to make heaven than the earth.
But the redeeming feature comes as follows: “But what we are on the surface is
being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of
the general Nature coming in on us either directly or else indirectly through
others, through circumstances, through various agencies or channels. Some of
this flows straight into the conscious parts and acts there, but our mind
ignores its source, appropriates it and regards all that as its own; a part
comes secretly into the subconscient or sinks into it and waits for an opportunity
of rising up into the conscious surface; a good deal goes into the subliminal
and may at any time come out—or may not, may rather rest there as unused
matter. Part passes through and is rejected, thrown back or thrown out or spilt
into the universal sea. Our nature is a constant activity of forces supplied to
us out of which (or rather out of a small amount of it) we make what we will or
can. What we make seems fixed and formed for good, but in reality it is all a
play of forces, a flux, nothing fixed or stable; the appearance of stability is
given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and
formations. That is why our nature can be changed in spite of Vivekananda's
saying and Horace's adage and in spite of the conservative resistance of the
subconscient, but it is a difficult job because the master mode of Nature is
this obstinate repetition and recurrence.” (Letters on Yoga, pp. 358-59)
We have no idea what the Avatars strive for, strive to change the earth-nature.
On one occasion the Mother told: “There is no disease from which I have not
suffered. I have taken all the diseases upon my body to see their course and to
have their knowledge by experience in the physical, so that I may be able to
work upon them. But as my physical has no fear and it responds to the higher
pressure, it is easier for me to get rid of them.” She never had any fear, not
even in the physical. This can be so only when it is open to the higher light
and force. Her physical was. It had the identity with the divine and it is that
which made her fearless. On one occasion Max Theon had become wild and wanted
to strangulate her; but she had no fear. It is that which gave her always the
divine protection.
In the face of this, just imagine what too confident a blogger says: “The
problem is, anyone can claim experiences that are not found in second hand
sources, but just because they aren’t, there is no way of validating the
experiences. I have had many experiences that I am quite sure are authentic,
but I don’t ask anyone to believe me just because I say so. One difference
between mine and Aurobindo’s is that I can give very specific descriptions of
experiences that occur on the way to realization. I don’t see a lot of this in
Aurobindo’s writings. Most of his writings seem to be couched in very broad and
abstract generalizations. As I have said before, the devil is in the details.
Show me someone who can provide details of experiences, no matter how much
limited by language, and I will listen. But even then, most such descriptions
have been recorded by individuals in extreme isolation, who didn’t seem to
understand that awakening is an external as well as internal process. Your very
use of ‘intermediate zone gurus’ suggests to me that you are a priori buying into
Aurobindo’s scheme, and then using it to invalidate anyone whom, according to
that scheme, is not enlightened. I could always claim that I have found a
scheme in which the highest state described by Aurobindo is just another
intermediate way station.”
To refute such assertions doesn’t take much time, but perhaps it is not worth
one’s while also doing that. Instead, let us read what the Mother said in
another beautiful context. In a letter to her ‘little smile’, the Mother writes
about the ‘little smile’s’ experience: (11 July 1934)
The
rocks represent the material nature, hard and inflexible yet concealing in
itself the stream of life. Because of the resistance of matter, this stream of
life is freed only with difficulty and can hardly emerge into the light. But
with a little concentration and insistence, the resistance of matter lessens and
the life-forces are freed.
Do we
strive to do that? Only such an effort can cause a new stream to flow in spite
of the obstinacy of the earth-nature.