RY Deshpande Sun 14 Jan 2007 08:08 AM PST
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change. Harder is it also to impose change on the working of the nature of the earth. The issue is constitutional. The habits are pathological, related to body and health, of various kinds. The last habit is the habit of death. But before that there are the habits of suffering, error, falsehood, ignorance, gloom, pain, inertia or tamas, depression, fear; there are suggestions of sadness, despair and suicide, suggestions from what the Mother calls “the thieves of the vital world”. All these are parts of, or consequences of our physical and sometimes psychological makeup and hard they are to eliminate. That is what we are presently composed of. Savitri’s task is connected with it, and she has to pay a heavy price, by accepting this world’s ignominy and its stubbornness, stubbornness of the mortal life. Its entire past stands against all progress. Rishi Agastya was engaged in a long and arduous tapasya. But then he felt that he was not making progress. He was told to get up from the thick grass seat on which he was sitting and meditating. The moment he got up, flames rose up from it. He realised that, all along, his past samskaras, the old habits were getting consumed in the fire of his tapasya. Agni Pavaka, Fire the Purifier has to be kindled if such a change is to come. Only such tapasya can perhaps persuade earth-nature’s change. The Avatars do it for us, for the entire earth. There are a thousand things that happen in the subconscient, or in the occult, or else in half-dark half-bright subtle domains. And there are yet swallowing abysses below them. Here we are, we who laugh and weep, a la Binyon’s pilgrim; we suffer the stroke, exult in victory, struggle for the crown, bleed with the Fate’s whips. But change we do not strive for. Our nature remains crooked, like the famous dog’s tail Vivekananda spoke of...Earth was an impossible place for some of the old yogas. Sri Aurobindo was concerned with it, and this is what he states in Savitri. As far as the collective life was concerned it was infinitely more difficult to bring about the change. Easy it was for the creator to make heaven than the earth. But the redeeming feature comes as follows... We have no idea what the Avatars strive for to change the earth-nature. On one occasion the Mother tells: “There is no disease from which I have not suffered. I have taken all the diseases upon my body to see their course and to have their knowledge by experience in the physical, so that I may be able to work upon them. But as my physical has no fear and it responds to the higher pressure, it is easier for me to get rid of them.” RYD
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