Jitendra Sharma pays homage to Sri Aurobindo by sharing his (and the Mother’s) vision of an evolving consciousness in man
and how it can provide an answer to the present global turmoil that we are facing
This year, the world is commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. He is known as a great yogi, philosopher, poet, literary critic, and revolutionary.
Background
Born as Aurobindo Ghose in Kolkata on August 15, 1872, he went to England for his studies. He appeared for the Indian Civil Services examination in Cambridge but absented himself in the last part of the horse-riding test. After coming to India, he joined the service of the Maharaja of Baroda. Soon, he joined national politics. His articles in Bande Mataram, Karmayogin, and other revolutionary journals enthused the youth everywhere. In May 1908, he was arrested in the Alipore Conspiracy Case. In prison, he had many spiritual experiences. He was acquitted on May 6, 1909. On April 4, 1910, he went to Pondicherry and stayed there for four decades.
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Current crisis
At present, the entire world is in a state of tur moil. Global warming, wars, the Ukraine cri sis, diseases, and fear have infiltrated man’s psyche. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic gripped humans in all parts of the world. The coronavirus continues to take lives everywhere. Man is desperately searching for solutions to these unforeseen problems. The present world crisis concerns the entire humanity the world over. But we all know that the night is darkest before dawn. A new world is about to be born.
Change of consciousness
According to the integral vision of Sri Au robindo, the divine consciousness has descend ed to the lowest levels of Matter to release the dormant Spirit in the core of Matter. There is a lot of resistance from below, resulting in a lot of dirt, wickedness, and illness. All these are the signs of the resistance that is coming up violently. The more the pressure of the divine force from above increases, the more the wild resistance from the inconscient below increas es. This reaction and process are quite natural because the lowest planes of existence have to be transformed completely by the divine con sciousness. At present, there is a lot of disorder and chaos on all levels of man’s heart, mind, and body. It is because we have a deep-rooted reluctance in us to open ourselves to the divine light. The only solution is to offer ourselves in all sincerity to the Divine. We should not open ourselves to harmful beings and dark forces which ever seek to use us as their mediums. The Mother says: “The future of the Earth de pends on a change of consciousness. The only hope for the future is in a change of man’s con sciousness, and the change is bound to come. But it is left to men to decide if they will col laborate for this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crashing circumstances.” When the Supramental Force
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will become effective on earth, men will act as docile instruments of the Divine Will. Sri Au robindo expresses his future vision in Savitri thus:
Escape, however high, redeems not life, Life that is left behind on a fallen earth. Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race Or bring to it victory and the reign of God. A greater power must come, a larger light. Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes,
Yet till the evil is slain in its own home
And Light invades the world’s inconscient base And perished has the adversary Force,
He still must labour on, his work half done.
Now begins the expedition to stop thoughts. We want no mind. Freedom from thoughts. Now we become serious seekers. We meditate, chant, heal, regress, affirm, undergo therapies, and do all kinds of practices to become a better version of ourself. And we do.
But we do not experience Silence because we are always in a state of becoming. And becom ing is never-ending. Because the person that wants to become is kept alive by the desire to become. These people remain seekers for life, not realising that they are Life.
Internal yoga
Sri Aurobindo’s mystic profundities are illu minating. He does not believe in any dichot omy between the material world and the Spir it. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, “We speak
of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolu tion of Mind in Life; but ‘evolution’ is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. . . . Yoga means a change of con sciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind.” According to the Ve
dantic view also, the Spirit is already involved in the Matter. In the tenth Mandala of the Rig Veda too, we have the concept of evolution and involution. Only what is involved, can evolve. Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga aims at the total transformation of man. “The sadhana of this yoga,” says Sri Aurobindo, “does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, Mantras, or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration, and surrender that this self-opening can come.”
In the future stage of evolution, man will ex ceed the mind and attain Supermind, through which the whole world will be transformed. The supramental force will help man to be come more and more conscious and to con quer death. Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri prophesies thus:
A blind god is not destiny’s architect . . . The Supermind shall claim the world for light And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart …
Nature shall live to manifest secret God.
Emergence of the Superman
The Superman will naturally have God, light, freedom, bliss, and immortality. Through his own spiritual practice, Sri Aurobindo has made it possible for mankind to transcend mental consciousness for the process of
complete transformation. Sri Aurobindo says, “The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living lab
oratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the super man, the god.” Again, he assures: “Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man, the Superman emerges.”
Man is a transitional being with an inherent impulse to evolve towards divine conscious ness. Sri Aurobindo explored prodigiously through his body’s cellular consciousness the secrets of evolution which the asphyxiating earth needs badly at present. Only a spiritual consciousness can help man to transcend the present terrestrial crisis and move towards an era of love, peace, harmony, and universal bon
homie.
Dr Jitendra Sharma is a professor of French in Calicut. He is an ex-student of the Ashram School and has a PhD in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry. He is the author of the book, Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry.
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