The Ideal we must keep before Us— A Talk by the Mother

This has a reference to the Mother’s Talk dated 29 May 1957 discussing a passage from The Supramental Manifestation. A divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that is envisaged. But it is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of transformation. It might be also that it would take place by stages, that in practice it may be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation; they could bring down to the mind only a partial divinity or raise the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into the complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness. Still these levels might become stages of the ascent which some would reach and pause there while others went higher and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine existence.

The Mother explains: There is a higher state than this, in which the consciousness, though it still remains principally mental or partially mental in its functioning, is already open to higher regions in an aspiration for the spiritual life, and open to the supramental influence. As soon as this opening occurs, one passes beyond the state in which life is purely physical; I am speaking of a physical which is the summit of human capacities, of an earthly and material life in which man can express values of a higher order from the mental and intellectual point of view—one can go beyond that state, open oneself to the supramental force which is now acting on earth and enter a transitional zone where the two influences meet and interpenetrate, where the consciousness is still mental and intellectual in its functioning, but sufficiently imbued with the supramental strength and force to become the instrument of a higher truth. At present this state can be realised on earth by those who have prepared themselves to receive the supramental force which is manifesting. And in that state, in that state of consciousness, the body can benefit from a much better condition than the one it was in before. It can be put into direct contact with the essential truth of its being, to the extent that, spontaneously, at every moment it knows instinctively, or intuitively, what is to be done and that it can do it. Of course, there is a higher state than this, the state Sri Aurobindo speaks of as the ideal to be fulfilled: the divine life in a divine body. But he himself tells us that this will take time; it is an integral transformation which cannot be achieved in a moment. This is the ideal, she continues, we must keep before us, for the realisation of which we must strive. And already one can not only foresee but feel the moment when the body will be able to repeat integrally the experience of the most spiritual part of the being.

In Savitri we have the perfect description of human destinies and the fulfilment that come to them. It occurs in the Book of Love with Satyavan making advances towards Savitri. They have met on the chance road of time, the well-designed chance, and instantly fallen in love with each other. The God saw that it did happen in the Shalwa wilderness where would also occur the Death of Satyavan exactly one year hence, that post-human destinies would start arriving.

Satyavan speaks first to Savitri and recounts that the mystery of Time remains unknown to man. However, in their case somehow something happened and there she stood in front of him. What was all along asleep in him had suddenly awoken. He was always alert to the deep promptings of the earth, and nothing remained hid from his sight, a state in which human destinies were active in him. But now here is she who speaks to him far more significantly than all he was used to hear. The message of the future and the realisation of its prospects start guiding him now. The possibilities of the earth are going to be extended by her, she coming on the scene, and there is the loving and joyous recognition of it. The one who was standing in front of him seemed to him to be a damsel coming from heaven, radiant and beautiful. Yet there was also a mortal sweetness she was scattering all around. Satyavan introduces himself to Savitri and tells her that, during all these youthful years, he was ever happy, happy with things, and that he lived contented in those lonely but emerald and rich surroundings. Yet there was a perception of something missing in life. But she has come and, very paradoxically, that contentment has disappeared. A prince though, he was an exile in the forest; but great Nature gave him everything. There he enjoyed the intimacy of infant God, of the early life. That huge forest-hermitage was his palace, and the birds and beasts and trees and the rivers and the mountains were his youthful and enthusiastic companions and educators. He says:

In the wide embrace of heaven
I lay in the wide bare embrace of heaven…
The moonbeams’ silver ecstasy at night
Kissed my dim lids to sleep. Earth’s morns were mine;
Lured by faint murmurings with the green-robed hours
I wandered lost in woods, prone to the voice
Of winds and waters, partner of the sun’s joy,
A listener to the universal speech:
My spirit satisfied within me knew
Godlike our birthright, luxuried our life
Whose close belongings are the earth and skies.
A visioned spell pursued my boyhood’s hours,
All things the eye had caught in coloured lines
Were seen anew through the interpreting mind
And in the shape it sought to seize the soul.

Satyavan becomes ecstatic and tells about the kind of things he learnt in the forest.

Neighing pride of life
The neighing pride of rapid life that roams
Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood
Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer
Against the vesper sky became a song
Of evening to the silence of my soul…
I caught for some eternal eye the sudden
King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool;
A slow swan silvering the azure lake,
A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;
Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind,
Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,
And wandering wings in blue infinity
Lived on the tablets of my inner sight;
Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.

Hears the eternal Voice
I carved my vision out of wood and stone;
I caught the echoes of a word supreme
And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity
And listened through music for the eternal Voice.
I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,
But could not clasp the body of my God
Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet.

In men met portions of the Self
In men I met strange portions of a Self
That sought for fragments and in fragments lived:
Each lived in himself and for himself alone
And with the rest joined only fleeting ties;
Each passioned over his surface joy and grief,
Nor saw the Eternal in his secret house.

Sees the ray of the Eternal’s sun
I conversed with Nature, mused with the changeless stars,
God’s watch-fires burning in the ignorant Night,
And saw upon her mighty visage fall
A ray prophetic of the Eternal’s sun.

Sits with the sages
I sat with the forest sages in their trance:
There poured awakening streams of diamond light,
I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.

Yet something is missing
But still there lacked the last transcendent power
And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.

The Spirit-Matter dichotomy remains unresolved
The Spirit was saved, the body lost and mute
Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;
The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.

In Savitri’s coming is the hope
But thou hast come and all will surely change:
I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs
And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.
The child of the Void shall be reborn in God,
My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.
My body like my spirit shall be free.
It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.

The magic of her presence
Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.
For now I know that all I lived and was
Moved towards this moment of my heart’s rebirth;
I look back on the meaning of myself,
A soul made ready on earth’s soil for thee.

Although all these days it was just a common life, and although there were glimpses of the deeper self, and even thought was perceptive to truth, there was the secret groping for the Mystery of this existence. He could not live the truth the word spoke and thought.

Lantern of Thought
Its glimmerings lighted with the abstract word
A half-visible ground and travelling yard by yard
It mapped a system of the Self and God.

Structure of world-law
I turned to seize its form in visible things,
Hoping to fix its rule by mortal mind,
Imposed a narrow structure of world-law
Upon the freedom of the Infinite,
A hard firm skeleton of outward Truth,
A mental scheme of a mechanic Power.

More darkness with the light
This light showed more the darknesses unsearched;
It made the original Secrecy more occult;
It could not analyse its cosmic Veil
Or glimpse the Wonder-worker’s hidden hand
And trace the pattern of his magic plans.

Inner mind also fails
I plunged into an inner seeing Mind
And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind’s bewildered slave:
The mystery was not solved but deepened more.

Search for truth and beauty but no success
I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,
But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;
Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.
It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign
Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:
I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.

Found the self but lost the world
I looked upon the world and missed the Self,
And when I found the Self, I lost the world,
My other selves I lost and the body of God,
The link of the finite with the Infinite,
The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,
The mystic aim for which the world was made,
The human sense of Immortality.

Savitri brings fulfilment to post-human destinies
But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet
And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
For now another realm draws near with thee
And now diviner voices fill my ear,
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;
A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song
Of flaming gods. I draw a wealthier breath
And in a fierier march of moments move.
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.
A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss
Has changed my heart and changed the earth around.

Satyavan is the evolving soul of the earth and his destinies are the human destinies; but they remain incomplete, as if there is something intrinsically lacking in them, and the higher power alone can bring perfection to them, the perfection of post-human destinies through the work of the incarnate Savitri.