An absolute supernatural darkness
falls
On man sometimes when he draws near
to God:
An hour comes when fail all
Nature's means;
Forced out from the protecting
Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal
need,
He at length must cast from him his
surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity
within:
That hour had fallen now on
Savitri.
A point she had reached where life
must be in vain
Or, in her unborn element awake,
Her will must cancel her body's destiny.
For only the unborn spirit's
timeless power
Can lift the yoke imposed by birth
in time.
Only the Self that builds this
figure of self
Can rase the fixed interminable
line
That joins these changing names,
these numberless lives,
These new oblivious personalities
And keeps still lurking in our
conscious acts
The trail of old forgotten thoughts
and deeds,
Disown the legacy of our buried
selves,
The burdensome heirship to our
vanished forms
Accepted blindly by the body and
soul.
(Savitri, pp. 11-12)
“An hour comes when fail all
Nature's means.” This is true in the case of the Avatars and great Vibhutis.
Christ had to accept the Cross to complete his work. Nothing could be done when
Sita fell under the sway of a phantom deer. The only way to make Arjuna pick up
the mighty bow of conquest was by revealing to him the Time-Spirit as the
Destroyer of the Worlds. That hour had fallen now on Savitri, the hour of the
proclaimed death of her lover and husband Satyavan. In that hour her will must
cancel deathful destiny. The fate of the creation is locked in that momentous
moment of Eternity.
Sri Aurobindo was an under-trial
prisoner in Alipore Jail. In his Uttarpara speech, dated 30 May 1909, he tells
us:
When I was arrested and hurried to
the Lal Bazar Hazat I was shaken in faith for a while, for I could not look
into the heart of His intention. Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried
out in my heart to Him, "What is this that has happened to me ? I believed
that I had a mission to work for the people of my country and until that work
was done, I should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a
charge?" A day passed and a second day and a third, when a voice came to
me from within, "Wait and see." Then I grew calm and waited, I was
taken from Lal Bazar to Alipore and was placed for one month in a solitary cell
apart from men. There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to
know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the
earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a
month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all
activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter
into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My
work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I
was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave
it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, "The bonds you had
not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor
was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing
for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you
could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work." Then He placed
the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the
sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise
what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to
do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without
the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful
instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and
opponent, success and failure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised
what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the
Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other
religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the
Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be
believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was
cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this
religion that
Sri Aurobindo continues:
When the case opened in the lower
court and we were brought before the Magistrate I was followed by the same
insight. He said to me, "When you were cast into jail, did not your heart
fail and did you not cry out to me, where is Thy protection? Look now at the
Magistrate, look now at the Prosecuting Counsel." I looked and it was not
the Magistrate whom I saw, it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting
there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the
Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it
was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled. "Now do you fear?"
He said, "I am in all men and I overrule their actions and their words. My
protection is still with you and you shall not fear. This case which is brought
against you, leave it in my hand. It is not for you. It was not for the trial
that I brought you here but for something else. The case itself is only a means
for my work and nothing more." Afterwards when the trial opened in the
Sessions Court, I began to write many instructions for my Counsel as to what
was false in the evidence against me and on what points the witnesses might be
cross-examined. Then something happened which I had not expected. The
arrangements which had been made for my defence were suddenly changed and
another Counsel stood there to defend me. He came unexpectedly,—a friend of
mine, but I did not know he was coming. You have all heard the name of the man
who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice, who
sat up half the night day after day for months and broke his health to save me,—Srijut
Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was satisfied, but I still thought it
necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put away from me and I had
the message from within, "This is the man who will save you from the
snares put around your feet. Put aside those papers. It is not you who will instruct
him. I will instruct him." From that time I did not of myself speak a word
to my Counsel about the case or give a single instruction, and if ever I was
asked a question, I always found that my answer did not help the case. I had
left it to him and he took it entirely into his hands, with what result you
know. I knew all along what He meant for me, for I heard it again and again,
always I listened to the voice within; "I am guiding, therefore fear not.
Turn to your own work for which I have brought you to jail and when you come
out, remember never to fear, never to hesitate. Remember that it is I who am
doing this, not you nor any other. Therefore whatever clouds may come, whatever
dangers and sufferings, whatever difficulties, whatever impossibilities, there is
nothing impossible, nothing difficult. I am in the nation and its uprising and
I am Vasudeva, I am Narayana, and what I will, shall be, not what others will.
What I choose to bring about, no human power can stay."
And here is the Mother in some of
her prayers:
18 April 1914
Yesterday morning the last veil was
almost rent, the last stronghold of the blind and ignorant personality seemed
to be on the point of yielding; for the first time I thought I had understood
what true impersonal service was, and the obstacle separating me from the
integral realisation seemed very fragile to me, and on the point of
disappearing definitively. But the necessity of my outer duties tore me away
from this beneficent and happy contemplation, and when I was obliged to return
to the outer consciousness the veil closed again and now seems to me darker
than ever. Why this fall into the inconscience of night after so great a light?
… O Lord, Lord, wilt Thou not then let me escape at last from ignorance and
become one with Thee? Now that I have known and seen so well what the work upon
the earth must be, could I not realise it? Am I then riveted to ignorance and
illusion? … Why, why this night after so great and pure a light? All my being
is tense in a call of anguish!
O Lord, take pity on me!
21 December 1916
Lord, Thou didst speak to me
through the lips of one of those who have known Thee best—most probably to make
me understand Thy lesson better (was I then deaf to Thy direct suggestion?).
And still I do not understand at the moment what to do. Thou knowest what
happiness would be mine if by Thy grace I could be integrally transformed into
a hearth of divine love—that love which is the first and highest manifestation
of Thy eternal Truth, that love which is at once the completest expression in
this world of Thy Truth and the most direct road to lead to it the human
consciousness that has gone astray. In the days when I used to aspire, desire
and ask, how many times have I asked of Thee the grace of this state as the one
most in conformity with my present ideal of action! And at that time it seemed
to me that the day I should be purified of all egoistic preference, Thou
wouldst choose this individual terrestrial being as an instrument of Thy
manifestation of love upon earth. And now that Thou askest it of me, more than
ever before do I feel my helplessness. For such a long time I thought I knew
what love was, and now that I no longer see anything that cannot be called
love, I also no longer see anything that may specially be called love. And how
can I be that which I can no longer define, that state which I can no longer
distinguish? And yet Thou didst show me yesterday that I was holding enclosed
in a dark sheath one of Thy most precious and powerful gifts… Lord, all my being
aspires to obey Thy voice, to conform to Thy Law; but it does not know in its
outer consciousness, does not understand what Thou expectest of it. It feels
indeed that at present its love is a passive state and that Thou wouldst awaken
it to an active state; but how to pass from one to the other is what escapes
it. It knows that this active state of love should be constant and impersonal,
that is, absolutely independent of circumstances and persons, since it cannot
and must not be concentrated upon any one thing in particular; and in this it
will resemble the present passive state of love which is pure, unchanging and
impersonal. But what it still does not know is how, even while retaining its
purity, unchangeability and impersonality, qualities now inherent in its being,
it can resume its activity. That is why this evening I implored Lord Mitra who
so perfectly symbolises Thy truth of love, asking him to come to my help and
enlighten my ignorance, dissolve my doubts, vanquish my hesitations, break down
the last obstacles and take possession of this physical instrument so that it
may become what Thou expectest it to be. But my speech is timid and my voice
faltering and I do not know if Lord Mitra heard my prayer.
Tokio: 24 September 1917
Thou hast subjected me to a hard
discipline; rung after rung, I have climbed the ladder which leads to Thee and,
at the summit of the ascent, Thou hast made me taste the perfect joy of
identity with Thee. Then, obedient to Thy command, rung after rung, I have
descended to outer activities and external states of consciousness, re-entering
into contact with these worlds that I left to discover Thee. And now that I
have come back to the bottom of the ladder, all is so dull, so mediocre, so
neutral, in me and around me, that I understand no more… What is it then that
Thou awaitest from me, and to what use that slow long preparation, if all is to
end in a result to which the majority of human beings attain without being
subjected to any discipline? How is it possible that having seen all that I
have seen, experienced all that I have experienced, after I have been led up
even to the most sacred sanctuary of Thy knowledge and communion with Thee,
Thou hast made of me so utterly common an instrument in such ordinary
circumstances? In truth, O Lord, Thy ends are unfathomable and pass my
understanding… Why, when Thou hast placed in my heart the pure diamond of Thy
perfect Felicity, sufferest Thou its surface to reflect the shadows which come
from outside and so leave unsuspected and, it would seem, ineffective the
treasure of Peace Thou hast granted me? Truly all this is a mystery and
confounds my understanding. Why, when Thou hast given me this great inner
silence, sufferest Thou the tongue to be so active and the thought to be
occupied with things so futile? Why? … I could go on questioning indefinitely
and, to all likelihood, always in vain… I have only to bow to Thy decree and
accept my condition without uttering a word.
I am now only a spectator who
watches the dragon of the world unrolling its coils without end.
Lord, how many times, giving way before Thy decree, I have prayed to Thee:
“Spare me this
Oiwak´e: 3 September 1919
Since the man refused the meal I
had prepared with so much love and care, I invoked the God to take it. My God,
Thou hast accepted my invitation, Thou hast come to sit at my table, and in
exchange for my poor and humble offering Thou hast granted to me the last
liberation. My heart, even this morning so heavy with anguish and care, my head
surcharged with responsibility, are delivered of their burden. Now are they
light and joyful as my inner being has been for a long time past. My body
smiles to Thee with happiness as before my soul smiled to Thee. And surely
hereafter Thou wilt withdraw no more from me this joy, O my God! for this time,
I think, the lesson has been sufficient, I have mounted the