In one of the footnotes to the Agni-hymns, Sri
Aurobindo makes the following comment: “The supramental world has to be formed
or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and
self-perfecting.” Both the terms are fixed in it, expansion and
self-perfecting. Could this not have been the method of Aswapati in creating
the new world in the supramental? He had become vast by his largeness,
extending all the way up to the Unknowable and enveloping every bit of this immense
manifestation, including those of the dark abysses; he had achieved
self-perfection in such completeness that no trace of the Inconscient and the
Subconscient was present in it; it was a oneness that could embrace all the
positives and the negatives, rejecting nothing, that it is all God’s creation,
that there is nothing but the Divine who exists in each and every aspect of
this freedom and extensiveness.
The rendering of the corresponding Rik is as follows: (The Secret of the Veda)
O knower of the births, the man perfect in his works
for whom thou createst that other blissful world, reaches a felicity that is
peopled happily with his life’s swiftnesses, his herds of Light, the children
of his soul, the armies of his energies.
In the context of Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya, we see that he has already done his
part of the job and now he has to wait for the other term of the process to
come into operation. In his Sachchidananda consciousness he has already formed
or created this new world, the supramental world, and now he wills in the
Divine Will that it enter into the terrestrial process play.
The Mother makes the point more explicit:
...to hope to receive, use and form in oneself a
supramental being, and consequently a supramental world, there must first of
all be an expansion of consciousness and constant personal progress... the
constant idea of the being... the constant will of the being, the constant
preoccupation of the being... there must be enough aspiration and adhesion in
the being to make the expansion of the being, the expansion of consciousness
possible… There must be great widening to make room for the movements of the
Supermind.
The question put to the Mother was: “How is the Supermind going to act? What
should be done to receive it? In what form will it manifest?” She is quite
categorical in her statement that, it is the Divine Will who is going to do all
that. What is expected of us is to have a constant aspiration for progress; we
should make our consciousness wide and receptive, open our being more and more
to the descending force and light and happiness, strive for self-perfection in
every respect, every aspect of our personality, the soul-personality. Agni is
the knower of the births, jātavedas,
and it is based on our perfection in works that he will give new birth, create
for us a new world of blessedness and felicity.
The Mother was the first to pick up this Sri Aurobindo’s very pregnant footnote
to the Rik and significantly reveal that, though in reality everything is done
by the Divine Will, the urge to progress is the necessary part that has to
combine with it in the creation of the supramental world. That is how Aswapati,
by his “constant” idea and will and preoccupation succeeded in building the
“godhead of the race”, the supramental race. That is how the real human
potential identified with the spiritual will will be fulfilled. That should be
the authentic human effort, the human input needed for the process. Now,
coupled with this effort must come the sanction of the Supreme, the “fiat of
the Word”, the most important executive pronouncement of Gayatri, the mighty
voice of the operative Logos.
We should note that the Veda speaks of the Divine Fire, Agni, as one who is amuram, one who is not perplexed or
bewildered, who is free from ignorance. (Rig Veda, III.19.1) At the same time,
he is wide-seeing, and is the knower of the births, and the bringer of the
bright issues of the Eternal, brahma-prajā.
He is therefore a supramental Godhead and in his will and action there is that
supramental infallibility. The Word that he brings is the Word, brahma, whose light shines in Heaven.
But, then, will that light shine at all in the cave of this darkness also, in
the terrestrial darkness as well, down below in the recesses of the
Inconscience? Will it? Perhaps not in its most occult connotation,—if at all,
it will shine only occasionally. The Vedic Word is still the Word for an
individual aspirant, for the Rishi to be reborn in the Riches of the Divine. It
is not yet the transformative Word, a Word that can usher in the divine
experience in this collectivity. For that to happen, that it becomes an aspect
of the universal working, the evolutionary depths of Inconscience will have to
be first filled up with the light of the Supreme; it is it that that shall then
give us the Truth, illumine us with it. The original creative Power, the
supreme Shakti herself will have to do it. This is the new task which needs a
certain urgency of attention, and Aswapati is alert to it. She must come down
and do it; she and none else can do it. Aswapati’s concern therefore is to
bring her down to carry out this divine work here.