Vol. VII, Issue 8-9
Author: Shantha Rajan
Editor’s Note: Shantha Rajan joins Renaissance authors’ team with this issue. She reminds us all of true meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s call, an invitation to join him in the grand adventure of consciousness as sh reflects on the Master’s poem titled Invitation.
With the wind and weather beating round me
Up to the hill and the moorland I go.
Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?
Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?~ Sri Aurobindo, Invitation, CWSA, 2: 201
Through this poem, Sri Aurobindo gives a clarion call to those who wish to herald a divine life on this very earth. Presently he may be a loner (“I sport with solitude here in my regions,”), but he says with certitude that man will “evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of the evolution” (CWSA, 22: 857).
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Where is the Evolution Leading To?
The New Race that would emerge will be only the natural culmination of evolutionary process that has led so far to the present human. Sri Aurobindo saw an inner meaning and a profound pattern in the evolutionary march of consciousness. The process of evolution involves not only an evolution of form; there also has been an evolution of consciousness. Nature has been actively participating in the evolution of Life from Matter and of Mind from Life.
Evolution is possible because there has been an involution of Spirit into the Matter. In other words, the Divine descended into Inconscient in the beginning of creation. This consciousness is rudimentary (almost to the extent of an absence of consciousness) in the material things; developing slowly from animal and climaxing at the level of the man. The Man thinks, emotes, ideates, reasons out and intellectually elevates himself over and above the category of animals. But still, the development is not complete.
Man is the “thinking animal who develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body” (Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, 22: 857). Nature will not be satisfied with this creation; Man is only a transitional being. He has to evolve from Ignorance to Knowledge, pain to joy, suffering to bliss, animality to Divinity; from Falsehood to Truth, death to immortality.
The present-day man has been described by Sri Aurobindo in a sonnet ‘Man, the Thinking Animal’ thus:
A creature of his own grey ignorance,
A mind half shadow and half gleam, a breath
That wrestles, captive in a world of death,
To live some lame brief years. Yet his advance,Attempt of a divinity within,
A consciousness in the inconscient Night,
To realise its own supernal Light,
Confronts the ruthless forces of the Unseen.Aspiring to godhead from insensible clay
He travels slow-footed towards the eternal day.
The task seems enormous and mammoth. The possibility seems remote. But neither it is improbable nor is it impossible. This is because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have given us the sunlit path to follow their modus operandi after years of rigorous tapasyā and experimentation on themselves. Having come up to the mind level it is imperative on the mankind to surge forward to the Supermind level which would open up the passage towards the Gnostic society. That would involve the spiritualisation of man and mankind.
That man can evolve is borne out of the fact that he aspires for the aforesaid higher states of consciousness. His aspiration to exceed himself has resulted in the multifarious activities in which modern man indulges. His aspiration, his urge and his capacity to conquer the nature have already been proven beyond doubt. There is no reason why there should not be a transition from manhood to supermanhood, by transforming and evolving in the consciousness. But the moot question is when, how and at what pace he would evolve.
Individual and Collective
There is another aspect to this evolution. As long as the evolution progressed up to the animal kingdom, there was no problem. But with the advent of the thinking animal called man, a new equation has been brought about, that is, man vis-à-vis the society. Man is often called a gregarious animal. But his gregariousness has become the cause of the long drawn out strife and stress that we have been witnessing throughout the ages. History has been a mute spectator of the struggle for survival driven by the egoistic tendencies, distrust between man and man, and greed leading to encroachment of one over the other.
After going into details of the evolution of man, society, nation, and the humanity as a whole, Sri Aurobindo has extensively dwelt on the problems of the present-day world. He concluded that the reasoning man with his reasoning faculty alone cannot arrive at any final truth.
The limitations of the reason become very strikingly, very characteristically, very nakedly apparent when it is confronted with that great order of psychological truths and experiences which we have hitherto kept in the background — the religious being of man and his religious life.
Carefully differentiating between outer and narrower view of religion and the wider, all-inclusive spirituality that is at the core of all true religion, Sri Aurobindo speaks of that spirituality as the cure for the present day ills. For him God, Freedom and Unity are intertwined. One of the three cannot be realised unless the other two are realised. He beautifully explains:
God is only waiting to be known, while man seeks for him everywhere and creates images of the Divine, but all the while truly finds, effectively erects and worships images only of his own mind-ego and life-ego.
This could be rectified only through spiritualisation of, first, the individual and then the whole society. Sri Aurobindo dreamed of a world order: “in which many elements, racial, national, cultural, spiritual can exist side by side and form a multiple unity; in such an order all these antipathies, hostilities, distrusts would die from lack of nourishment. That would be a true state of perfectly developed human civilisation, a true basis for the higher progress of the race.” (CWSA, 25: 685)
The Pioneers
But this complex Idea cannot be understood by the population at once. The Idea has to be germinated, initially, amongst a few and then taken to the large. For this to happen, Sri Aurobindo wants two conditions to be fulfilled:
- The individuals, he calls them affectionately as pioneers who will be able to see, develop and recreate themselves in the image of spirit. Through them, the Idea and its power should be communicated to the masses.
- It is to these pioneers or the mind-born that the Master extends an ‘Invitation’ with which we started this essay. We can recall a close resemblance of these pioneers to the Mind-born sons of Lord Brahma — Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanat Kumara and Sanat Sujata. They were the young yogis, ever sixteen, illumined spiritually and always dwelling in the Bliss of Truth-Consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo’s pioneers would be the forerunners of the spiritual age and exemplars in the conversion of the whole life of the human beings as it is now, to a life that is led by the spirit. They would be torch-bearers of the coming of Spiritual Age, carrying the ‘magic word’ and the ‘mystic fire’ in order to rescue the earth from its suffering.
Their role in such a transformation of society is significant because it is not that easy to mould a society which is not plastic enough to subjectivity of the soul. Our mind is only too comfortable with what is objective in nature. One has to go deeper and deeper into the inner being. This has to be understood and put into practice by our pioneers. The pioneers will not be satisfied with the mere ascent of men into heaven; rather they will have to work for immortality of men here on earth.
The pioneers will not attach themselves to any belief or form; neither will they coerce others into various faiths, dogmas and rituals. They will ensure total freedom for the individual soul to blossom towards attaining the Divinity. They will not attempt to change the society by any machinery or outward institutions. And they will try to bridge the Eastern philosophy of man’s destiny and liberation within and the Western attitude of making the quality of life better and more meaningful.
Also, they will not attempt to make the people blindly follow a few ‘luminous spiritual figures’. These pioneers, who are at work, would teach that this ‘little ego’ must be abandoned and only then man will have the first glimpse of true spirituality. They will instruct the society that a criminal be not treated as a social hindrance but as one having a spark of divinity in him and help him to evolve.
Simultaneously they will treat a saint not as an idol to be worshipped but as an individual with evolved soul whose services to the fellow human beings are to be dedicated.The transformation may be tardy or quicker. These pioneers will have to confront with different stages of evolution of consciousness. All humanity will not rise to the same level at once. There may be some who are already spiritualised, others who are only able to live in the light that descends and the vast majority who are not yet ready.
Sri Aurobindo calls upon these pioneers to work for such a race of human beings which would have a mind that is able to receive Truth; the mind will be a Mind of Light. Such a task would be enormous. In Sri Aurobindo’s words:
The thing to be done is as large as human life, and therefore the individuals who lead the way will take all human life for their province.
Are we ready to be these pioneers? In his poem Invitation, Sri Aurobindo asks us:
Who would live largely? Who would live freely?
Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend……
Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side
The pertinent question is, if we really want to serve the Divine, can we become the:
Forerunners of a divine multitude
Out of the paths of the morning star they came…
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,…
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
The architects of immortality….
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,…
Lips chanting the unknown anthem of the soul,
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,…
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth….~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, CWSA 33: 343-344
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The Sun-eyed Children of a Marvellous Dawn (Poem)
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
