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Avatar and Grace The word ‘Avatar’ appears only twice in The Life Divine. In either case the context is different—it is not vis-à-vis Avatar as an Incarnation of the Divine. This absence of the concept of Divine Incarnation in Sri Aurobindo's very major work cannot be taken as he not recognising the necessity of Avatarhood in the evolutionary process. We have also another interesting situation: the word ‘Grace’ does not appear even once in The Life Divine. But in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga the fruit of realization without the Divine Grace is inconceivable. In this connection, let us first read a couple of passages from his little masterpiece, The Mother: There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavor,—a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and—a supreme Grace from above that answers. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible. The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.
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Avatar and Grace
The birth of the Avatar
Savitri—a Video Clipping
The divine birth from the fire of sacrifice
The call and the sanction
A strange comparison
Aswapati’s Savitri-Yajna
Her Mortal Birth
The birth of the new world
A victory for God in man
Her spirit saw the world as living God
The Question of Destiny
A work she had to do
Divine Savitri poised for mortal birth
Savitri is writing the unfinished story of her soul
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Re: Re: The divine birth from the fire of sacrifice by RY Deshpande
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Re: The birth of the new world by RY Deshpande
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Mr. Deshpande is a scientist by profession no doubt acutely trained in the art of empirical observation and reductionist logic. But when this kind of scientific logic is applied to what may or may not be implied in Sri Aurobindo’s major works it falls flat. Let me simply remind Mr. Deshpande of what Sri Aurobindo DID include in his works vis-à-vis Science and the limitations of its method:
ReplyDelete"Science has missed something essential; it has seen and scrutinised what has happened and in a way how it has happened, but it has shut its eyes to something that made this impossible possible, something it is there to express. There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyze but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true organisation, significance and circles of the Lila." The Valley of the False Glimmer
This describes to perfection the limitations of Deshpande’s view and why he is unable to rise above a surface crust of appearances in Sri Aurobindo’s work. It also explains why he chooses to hide behind a wall of impenetrable dogma refusing to discuss the deeper issues that are indispensible to and provide access to the Supramental revelation. Orthodoxy, whether scientific or metaphysical is a dead thing. It cannot EXPLAIN and it cannot APPLY. It can only ASSERT and make arrogant unsupported declarations the likes of which we find in the postings of Despande and his colleague Paulette. When, for example, a point was made in one of my recent postings about the sacred architecture of the Mother’s temple plan, there was no willingness to entertain even the slightest discussion. Deshpande’s response was:
“If by “the sacred architecture of the Mother’s original temple design” you mean Matrimandir at Auroville, then it looks you are bringing your pet issues by a sleight of hand and the Mirror will not entertain them. Any further comment related with the matter will be deleted. “ RYD
Having read Mr. Deshpande’s blog I find that he is a knowledgeable man. I would expect that he may even be aware of Stella Kramrisch's classic study on the Hindu Temple and the Shastras on Sacred Architecture that have preserved the Vedic knowledge even through the darkest periods of India’s history. What he condescendingly refers to as my ‘pet issue’ is simply an insistence that we respect that tradition and what Sri Aurobindo wrote about the restoration of the Vedic truths and the ancient architectural forms that contained them. But instead of discussing this important knowledge with the openness and good will that the Mother demanded of anyone who would rightly call themselves a true devotee of Sri Aurobindo, we see an arrogant and dogmatic dismissal. He is simply above accountability and clearly agrees with one of his supporters who wrote, ‘how dare you design a ‘test’ for the scholarship of RYD!’
What can one say to this kind of righteous indignation but remind you of Sri Aurobindo’s warning about the keeping of scholars:
“…As the Veda had passed from the sage to the priest, so now it began to pass from the hands of the priest into the hands of the scholar. And in that keeping it suffered the last mutilation of its sense and the last diminution of its true sense and dignity.”
In response to what Mr. Deshpande wrote about imposing one’s view on another, it is most certainly NOT a question of different perceptions for different contexts and individuals. This is simply more of the nonsensical relativism of the old religious consciousness that Sri Aurobindo came to correct. The Supramental Realization is free from doubt, self-evident and absolute. It is a ‘Future Realization’ based on a knowledge and precision which can be verified through an act of seeing otherwise what would be the point?