Never was such a reckoning of matter made

The Physical Transformation—a Marvellous Attempt
by RY Deshpande on Fri 15 Feb 2008 06:47 AM PST Permanent Link

Never was in the spiritual history such a reckoning of matter made, such a significant place given to the likelihood of a superconscient manifestation based on the physical. It appears that the “secret aim of evolution” had remained altogether unrecognized in the scheme of past things.

But the process is not a single-stranded process, of conventional or linear growth, running from lower stadia to higher stadia, from one unseen end to the other far-off invisible end. There is in fact a problem, a problem that has arisen in a most unexpected way, a peculiar problem that had no roots in life proper. It has arisen because of the higher entering into the formidable lower, life making matter its field of expression. Life accepts this material circumstance but pays price for it...

On the soul of man is laid the gloom of discomforting humiliation and sadness and despair, of incapacity and transience, of helpless mortality. Such is the legacy handed over to the physical body, perishable, full of darkness, that darkness getting renewed only by gloomier and denser darkness, the body bound to the chain of Fate and Time. Does not this leaden norm then mean that there has to be a more responsive spiritual solution, that there has to be a greater action?

When the yogi probes deep into these aspects, he discovers that the solution lies only in seeing the basic rationale buried in the cavernous Inconscience. Meaningful and blissful glorious life in matter could become possible only if the cause of decay, disintegration and death can be eliminated. Sri Aurobindo in his epic Savitri describes how the divine Shakti took birth here in the mortal world, condescended to pass through its portals to vanquish the destroyer of the soul of the suffering creature. She accomplished the task, paved the path to make earthly life charged with the splendour of consciousness that is always in the awareness of the Truth. Her own divine birth was in response to the “world’s desire” which was lifted to the bright pinnacle of this creation and from where, like the answering grace, she consented to come into this mortality.

Sri Aurobindo’s own determined yoga-tapasya was to invoke that perfect, that surefire power by which the physical nature could be handled victoriously. This was one mission of the Avatarhood which he by first establishing the supramental light and force in his own person splendidly and successfully carried through. At the time of his passing away he gave to the Mother, as a parting gift, what he called the Mind of Light, the physical’s mind receiving the Supramental, something that had never happened in the long and zigzagging spiritual history of the world. From this point onward, with the Mind of Light operating in the evolutionary process, a new beginning was made. It marked the beginning of the Shakti Yoga and it is that which the Mother carried forward...

The difficulties of the physical are not only disquieting and daunting; they are insurmountable when the clue is absent. In ancient times Rishi Agastya suffered the horror of Inconscience and abandoned the attempt to spiritualise the body-consciousness proper. The right clue was not available. A slow preparatory evolution taking care of every aspect and every detail was needed. But now, on the rapid wings, the spirit can majestically go ahead to give a divine dimension, a divine amplitude to the attempt.

That is not to say that the process is facile, that the flight is effortless and unconstrained, without obstacles. Actually, the fight against the ancient Adversary is grim and strenuous of which we have the least idea. Sri Aurobindo mentions of the silent desperate brink on which the Mother would have to stand without help, stand alone while dealing with Death and Night, with the Spirit of Negation opposing God’s entry into this world... Keywords: Transformation, SriAurobindo, Spirituality, Mother, Mantra, IntegralYoga Science, Culture and Integral Yoga