RY Deshpande Mon 15 Jan 2007 02:58 AM PST
To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.
If the gods wish to rise to higher worlds they must come down and take a human birth. Progress is here and this beautiful birth, though downhearted and full of misfortune and affliction, is god’s wonderful boon given to heighten the soul in the glory of possibilities of the manifestation. This is what the Vishnu Purana says: come here to make progress. This is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said a number of times. But most of the gods are happy with their lot. Perhaps they can afford to be so, but not we; in fact we will not be allowed to remain where we are.
“The gods,” says the Mother, “do not have within them the divine spark which is the core of the psychic, because only on earth—I am not even speaking of the material universe—only on earth did this descent of divine Love took place, which was the origin of the divine Presence in the core of Matter. And naturally, since they have no psychic being, they do not know the psychic being. Some of these beings have even wanted to take a physical body so as to have experience of the psychic being—but not many of them. As a rule, they did it not only partially, through an ‘emanation’, not a total descent. For example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation—a Vibhuti—of Shiva; but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life, he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest—they are waiting for that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity… None of these gods has a psychic being. It is only by coming down and uniting with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they have none themselves.” (12 January 1965)
Is Shiva going to miss something by opting to come down on earth only with the supramental world and not in the present process? Possibly so, for the simple reason that the Mother had at all made such a suggestion to him.
And then, in contrast to this, the Mother says something interesting about her experience with Durga: “…I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and… (how to put it?) I made her participate in the concept of surrender. What an experience she had! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, ‘From now on I am bhakta of the Lord.’ It was beautiful. Truly… truly, it was beautiful. I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There’s a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit—Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them—the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didn’t have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concept—each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship, and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had the sense of only their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation. Except for Krishna…” (2 August 1961)
And for Savitri, who accepted to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death. She came here to do the Lord’s work. When the Mother was asked (on 19 February 1969) if the gods can help the work of transformation, she replied: “It is too soon to put such a question.” What chance then for technocapitalism and our ideas of post-human destinies? Savitri came to live with grief; she came to confront death; she bore the mortal’s lot. Gods and Goddesses don’t do that; they wish also not to do that; they “do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity”. It is only Savitri who can do it and she does it—because such is the command of the Lord to her. She has with her the unfailing Mantra of Surrender to the Lord and it is that alone which can accomplish the great miracle of transformation. She has found it. Gods and Goddesses perhaps do not even have the knowledge of it. In the process, to redeem the creation, Savitri is willing to undergo all the misery and suffering. She has faith and she has utter confidence that things here will change.
The Mother’s prayer is such a happy splendid assurance: “What are these powerful gods whose hour of manifestation upon earth has come, if not the varied and perfected modes of Thy infinite activity, O Thou Master of all things, Being and Non-Being and What is beyond, Marvellous Unknowable One, our sovereign Lord?... What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities, these countless sunbeams illumining, conceiving and fashioning all forms, if not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will, one of the means of Thy manifestation, O Thou Master of our destinies, sole unthinkable Reality, sovereign Lord of all that is and all that is not yet… And all these mental powers, all these vital energies, and all these material elements, what are they if not Thyself in Thy outermost form, Thy ultimate modes of expression, of realisation, O Thou whom we adore devotedly and who escapest us on every side even while penetrating, animating and guiding us, Thou whom we cannot understand or define or name, Thou whom we cannot seize or embrace or conceive, and who art yet realised in our smallest acts… And all this enormous universe is only an atom of Thy eternal Will. In the immensity of Thy effective Presence all things blossom!” (August 2, 1914)
What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities… if not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will? In it is the place for our thought, for our philosophy, for our sciences and arts, for all the thousand human occupations that make a wider and brighter and nobler place for the Lord’s habitation. If human endeavour has a justification in shaping the destinies, it is here. The mortal’s lot then becomes the Immortal’s glad acceptable share. That is the joy of participation which is, indeed, such a marvellous gift given to us. Should we not be thankful for it? RYD
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