Editor’s Note: The author skillfully summarizes Sri Aurobindo’s stupendous Avataric work. The theme of Sri Aurobindo’s immense, deep Divine Love for the earth and all Life on earth keeps shining through this moving account. We present it in two parts.
PART 1
“Here is one on earth whom one can love all one’s life and in whom one can lose oneself”.
~ Nistha (Margaret Wilson, quoted in Life in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, p. 236)
I often find the aforementioned quote as an apt beginning to talk about the eventful yet inexplicable life of Sri Aurobindo. ‘Love Sri Aurobindo’ is another powerful suggestion by the Divine Mother to all those who sincerely wish to ‘understand’ and appreciate him. But a question naturally arises: why should one love Sri Aurobindo and what makes Sri Aurobindo lovable? What makes him an embodiment of Love and compassionate Grace? What makes his message and, more significantly, his Action ubiquitous and unique?
The world and the world of the Word is still fumbling to find the exact answers to these questions. In Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas ji writes: सोई जानइ जेहि देहु जना (only he understands God who is made understood by God himself!) You cannot understand God without his will and without his Grace.
There are some who are enthused by the intellectual brilliance of Sri Aurobindo; some are dazzled by his poetic sublimity and the seed-like vision of his Rishi-words. Still others are fascinated by the audacity and tenacity of the political perspicacity of revolutionary in Sri Aurobindo, the policies and programs formulated and advocated by him in his brief stint as one of the foremast leaders of the Nationalists. A good number of people across the world are hypnotized by his achievements in the field of Yoga and spirituality. And scholars and thinkers of the world are fumbling to gauge the intellectual profundity of his philosophy of the superman.
But I feel that Sri Aurobindo is beyond all these introductions and appreciations.
He is the promise of the new man, the herald of the new earth and a harbinger of the new sublime humanity. Sri Aurobindo is, as the Mother calls him, ‘a mighty action of God’ upon earth. He is the Avatar of Superhumanity who has descended on earth to intervene in world conditions, to touch and transform things, to fondle the grieving and grimacing humanity.
He has embraced earth in the season of autumn in order to sing the spring song of love and bliss, hope and humour, beauty and beatitude, of truth and immortality. His is a God’s Labour, silent, effective, strong and irresistible. He has come to bring down heaven here and to bridge the gap between earth and heaven by creating a rainbow bridge here:
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
~ CWSA, Vol. 2, p. 534
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of Infinity.
From our archives:
“A God’s Labour”: Sri Aurobindo’s Work Divine
Sri Aurobindo must be loved because he is the lover of humanity, because every word and gesture of his is full of kindness and catholicity, because he cares and caresses the wounded body of earth trampled upon by the rage and ruse of human hubris and his ‘incurable littleness’.
The spiritual aura of Sri Aurobindo has influenced a significant chunk of humanity and people who matter have expressed their views, observation, ideas and experiences of his influence on their life and minds. He has been revered by luminaries across the world.
Thinkers and critics, poets and connoisseurs of literature who have expressed great admiration for Sri Aurobindo are present in every country. When asked what his views are on the life and legacy of Sri Aurobindo, Romand Rolland said, “I know as yet too little of Sri Aurobindo, but from what little I know about him I am persuaded that there is in him one of the greatest spiritual forces in the world” (quoted by Dilip Kumar Roy in Among The Great, p. 39).
Read:
Sri Aurobindo on Who is an Avatar
Sri Aurobindo came to unburden the ailing, trailing and agonizing humankind, besotted with its own smallness and blind to the Call Beyond. He came to open before us new dawns and dramas of life, to unfold new possibilities and puissances inherent in existence. He came to tell the untold saga of human glory and greatness. Revealing for us the majestic meaning of life, of Yoga, of Bharat Bhumi, the blessed land of India, he spoke of the eventual and inevitable efflorescence of divine humanity upon earth.
Sri Aurobindo is an exegete and apostle, a herald and hierophant. He is an Avatar who arranged and witnessed the marriage of Matter and Spirit, a golden link between earth and heaven. And in this process of metamorphosis, of tremendous osmosis of spirit, he suffered silently, agonized heavily, bore the brunt of the brute part of humanity alone without a sigh, a word or a whimper. Gods simply don’t cry!
But at times, he shared his mission with receptive souls around, anticipating that they will be more conscious and joyfully collaborate in the supreme yajña. The world of wise men, as always, remained deaf to the symphony celestial. But those who have taken the responsibility for earth’s upliftment from dross to Divinity, seldom wait for her consent or collaboration. They know that they have to work alone, walk alone, suffer and succeed alone, not because of but in spite of man and his mind.
Sri Aurobindo is no exception. He says,
It is only divine love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 35, p. 46
So the purpose of Sri Aurobindo’s visit to earth is clear. He came here, like Krishna, Christ and Buddha, to fight with the Darkness, to grapple with Death and Dolour and to transform earth into a perpetual field of Life, Love and Light. He didn’t come to merely talk about heaven and her glory, but to bring down heaven in the mind and material consciousness of the Earth. Sri Aurobindo came to carve god out of man. Unconditional love and unbound compassion are the only causes of his arrival on earth. His selection of earth was deliberate.
Sri Aurobindo is of the earth and for the earth. Any attempt to delimit his work and force to a particular creed, ideological colour, spiritual tinge and religious flavour is but a disservice to the Master.
Also read:
Sri Aurobindo on the Work of an Avatar
In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo describes very poignantly the Avatar’s work of taking the onus of the world on his shoulders:
He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
~ Savitri, p. 446
Its sin weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his:
Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul…
He journeys sleepless through an unending night;
Antagonist forces crowd across his path;
A siege, a combat is his inner life.
Sri Aurobindo’s Avataric Action: Inviting the Souls of the Strong
With wind and weather beating around me
~ Sri Aurobindo, Invitation, CWSA Vol. 2, p. 201
Up to the hill and moorland I go.
Who will come with me ? Who will climb with me ?
Walk through the brook and tramp through the snow ?
The aforementioned lines are a part of Sri Aurobindo’s majestic invitation, extended from the ramparts of Alipure Ashram in 1908 to the souls of the world thirsty for divine adventure. For the earthy fulfillment of his life and Lila, the Avatar always comes with his cohorts. After his realization in Alipure jail, Sri Aurobindo received a clear command to fulfill a particular purpose on earth. When his own inner preparations are over, he invites others to participate in the Lila.
It is impossible for a serious seeker of Sri Aurobindo’s path to miss the invoking style of Sri Aurobindo’s words.
Sri Aurobindo’s words, like his Presence, leave a tangible impression on the readers’ consciousness. They are a force in action and infuse the samurai spirit, the yodha bhav, back in souls doomed in stupor and inertia.
Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
~ Savitri, CWSA, Vol. 33, p. 440
Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast.
No more can earthly limits pen thy force;
Equal thy work with long unending Time’s.
Read in this issue:
Being in the Ashram and Reading Sri Aurobindo’s Books
Sri Aurobindo never wanted emotional children but rather, strong men with iron and steel resolutions and unquenchable thirst for Life’s victories, implacable in ardour and spectacular in exuberance. He didn’t come for arid teaching or defunct preaching but for lively, forceful, fiery, fiesty and formidable Divine Action. His books are also part of this divine action and must be taken in that spirit. The immense focus on Work in Sri Aurobindo Ashram is also a reflection of this core motive of the Mahayogi and the Mother.
Long back in 1920’s when a disciple expressed his urge to open an ‘Aurobindo math’, the Master cautioned him and categorically explained what is and what isn’t his mission on earth:
You must understand that my mission is not to create maths, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali… my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater and more divine is another… You cannot take away the best souls from life and yet leave life stronger and greater.
~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA Vol. 36, p. 222
CONTINUED IN PART 2
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
