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Incarnation and Evolution
Many years ago, the Mother wrote regarding life in the Asram: “In our daily practices we are endeavouring to express the great mystery of the Divine Incarnation.”1 I pray that this message may be explained to me —and that I be enabled to understand its meaning fully and clearly. It means that we act as we do because we take it as a fact that the Divine can manifest and is manifested in a human body. Is this a message which can be circulated to all the members of the Asram? Yes, they ought to know it. To outsiders? Not unless they are interested and seek the meaning of what we do. I am also eager to know whether in my occupations at Madras, professionally and otherwise, I can pursue the life outlined in the message? Whether this message has any relation to such a life as mine? Yes, of course, it applies to everybody who accepts the fundamental truth on which Mother based what she wrote. 29 December 1933
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1 The Mother, Words of the Mother III (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2004), Collected Works of the Mother (second edition), vol. 15, p. 32.
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What is the utility of making an effort for other realisations & once we have known the supreme secret (uttamam rahasyam) that you are the Divine Incarnate and the Mother is the ParaShakti? That is the highest realisation, I think, and all others —the realisation of the cosmic consciousness, of the presence of the immanent Divine, even of the silent immutable Brahman —are secondary in comparison with it. Whatever is to be done in the world will be done by you and the Mother. Yes, but for that to be a constant realisation in its fullness the same effort has to be made and if made will bring the other realisations with it as parts of the main realisation. 30 October 1936 The Reason for Their Embodiment
The supramental creation, since it is to be a creation upon earth, must be not only an inner change but a physical and external manifestation also. And it is precisely for this part of the work, the most difficult of all, that surrender is most needful; for this reason, that it is the actual descent of the supramental Divine into Matter and the working of the Divine Presence and Power there that can alone make the physical and external change possible. Even the most powerful self —assertion of human will and endeavour is impotent to bring it about; as for egoistic insistence and vital revolt, they are, so long as they last, insuperable obstacles to the descent. Only a calm, pure and surrendered physical consciousness, full of the psychic aspiration, can be its field; this alone can make an effective opening of the material being to the Light and Power and the supramental change a thing actual and practicable. It is for this that we are here in the body, and it is for this that you and other sadhaks are in the Asram near us. But it is not by insistence on petty demands and satisfactions in the external field or on an outer nearness pleasing to the vital nature and its pride or desire that you can get the true relation with the Divine in this province. If you want the realisation there, it is the true nearness that you must seek, the descent and presence of the Mother in your physical consciousness, her constant inner touch
Page – 86 in the physical being and its activities, her will and knowledge behind all its work and thought and movement and the ever present Ananda of that presence expelling all vital and physical separateness, craving and desire. If you have that, then you have all the nearness you can ask for and the rest you will gladly leave to the Mother’s knowledge and will to decide. For with this in you there can be no feeling of being kept away, no sense of “gulf” and “distance”, no complaint of a unity that is lacking or an empty dryness and denial of nearness. 6 December 1930
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You have written in a letter, “A surrender by any means is good, but obviously the Impersonal is not enough, for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer being.”2 I do not understand. It is rather surprising that you should be unable to understand such a simple and familiar statement; for that has been always the whole reason of this Yoga that to follow after the Impersonal only brings inner experience or at the most mukti. Without the action of the integral Divine there is no change of the whole nature. If it were not so the Mother would not be here and I would not be here —if a realisation of the Impersonal were sufficient. 15 September 1936
By what punya of ours has the Grace granted to us, mere . humans, this rare privilege of coming here at the Divine’s Feet? It is the call of your soul that brought you here and also some aspiration or connection with the Mother and myself in past lives. 6 May 1933
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2 Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1970), Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 23, p. 613.
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What sort of bhakti in my past lives has brought me to the Mother’s feet? The aspiration for union with the Divine and perhaps also for the descent of the Divine on the earth. 8 May 1933
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People make all sorts of effort to have God’s darshan; some even weep and weep, yet they fail to obtain it. We in the Asram don’t seem to have done very much, and yet we are here with you. What has brought this about? There are many things that have brought it about —a connection in past lives with the Mother and myself, the development of your nature in former births which made it possible for you to seek the Divine, bhakti in those lives bearing its fruit now —finally, the Divine Grace. October 1935
It is said that you and the Mother have been on the earth since its creation. But what have you been doing for so many millions of years in disguise? I say “disguise” because it is only now that you are showing yourselves to the world in your real nature. Carrying on the evolution. 25 September 1935
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I fail to understand what you mean by “Carrying on the evolution.” Could you explain this more fully? That would mean writing the whole of human history. I can only say that as there are special descents to carry on the evolution to a farther stage, so also something of the Divine is always there to help through each stage itself in one direction or another. 26 September 1935
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Page – 88 I can understand how ordinary people in the past may not have recognised your presence, especially when you lived outwardly like human beings. But how is it that even Sri Krishna, Buddha or Christ could not recognise your presence in this world? Presence where and in whom? If they did not meet, they would not recognise, and even if they met there is no reason why the Mother and I should cast off the veil which hung over these personalities and reveal the Divine behind them. Those lives were not meant for any such purpose. 27 September 1935
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If you and the Mother were on earth all the time, it would mean that you were here when those great beings descended. Then whatever your external cloak, how could you hide your inner self —the true divinity —from them? But why cannot the inner self be hidden from all in such lives? Your reasoning would only have some force if the presence on earth then were as the Avatar, but not if it was only as a Vibhuti. So, in answer to the question, “Presence where and in whom?” I would say, “Presence in this world and in Thyself and the Mother.” “Presence in Thyself” means nothing. It is “presence” in or behind some body and behind some outer personality. Also “presence” in what part of the world? If Mother were in Rome at the time of Buddha, how could Buddha know as he did not even know the existence of Rome? I did not mean that you or the Mother needed to cast off your veil. It is those great men who should have recognised you in spite of the veil. One can be a great man without knowing such things as that. Great men or even great Vibhutis need not be omniscient or know things which it was not useful for them to know. 27 September 1935
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You write: “But why cannot the inner self be hidden from all in such lives?” I fail to understand how anyone could hide one’s inner self from Avatars and Vibhutis. An Avatar or Vibhuti have the knowledge that is necessary for their work; they need not have more. There was absolutely no reason why Buddha should know what was going on in Rome. An Avatar even does not manifest all the Divine omniscience and omnipotence; he has not come for any such unnecessary display; all that is behind him but not in the front of his consciousness. As for the Vibhuti, the Vibhuti need not even know that he is a power of the Divine. Some Vibhutis, like Julius Caesar for instance, have been atheists. Buddha himself did not believe in a personal God, only in some impersonal and indescribable Permanent. Still I can’t understand one thing: even though you did not cast off your veil, how could Krishna, Buddha and Christ not help casting off their veil in order to recognise you? Why should they? The veil was there necessary for their work. Why should it be thrown off? So if the Mother was present in the life of Christ, she was there not as the Divine Manifestation but as one altogether human. For her to be recognised as the Divine would have created a tremendous disorder and frustrated the work Christ came to do by breaking its proper limits. Moreover, you must have heard that just before Christ was born some Rishis from India knew of the divine Descent and set out for Jerusalem merely by their inspiration, though they had not known what and where Jerusalem was. I never heard of Rishis from India going there. There is a legend of some Mages getting an intimation that a divine Birth was there on earth and following a star that led them to the stable in which Christ was born. But this is a legend, not history. 29 September 1935
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Page – 90 Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avataras coming down here one after another? We were not on earth as Avataras. 15 December 1935
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You say that you both were not on earth as Avatars and yet you were carrying on the evolution. Since the Divine Himself was on the earth carrying on the evolution, what was the necessity for the coming down of the Avatars who are portions of Himself? The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti. 18 December 1935 The Guru, the Divine and the Truth
Is there really any difference between the Guru, the Divine and the Truth in our Yoga? I have been considering that the Mother and yourself are not only the Gurus but also the Divine, and that whatever either of you say is the law of the Truth. Why then are you using these three different words?3 I wrote the general law of spiritual life and obedience. You have to know that as well as its special application here. Moreover many here are satisfied with saying “The Mother is divine,” but they do not follow her commands. Others do not really regard her as Divine —they treat her as if she were an ordinary Guru. 13 June 1933
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Yesterday you spoke about the Mother’s commands. What are they? I want to try to follow them.
3 See letter of 12 June 1933, published on page 672 of Letters on Himself and the Ashram, volume 35 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. —Ed.
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They are supposed to be known. You have to do the right thing and follow the Yoga sincerely. 14 June 1933 The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Overmind
Even the Overmind is for all but the Mother and myself either unrealised or only an influence, mostly subjective. 24 March 1934 The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Supramental Descent
X has made the following remark: “The present preparation is going on to bring down the Supermind into the physical of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.” Is it correct? [Sri Aurobindo bracketed “The present preparation is going on to bring down the Supermind into the physical”, and wrote:] Not quite correct in all points. The things to be brought down were in us no doubt —but not all outwardly manifested, from the beginning. Of course X‘s statement is altogether true only as far as the bracket goes. 14 September 1935
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When you wrote “as far as the bracket goes”, did you not notice that you cut off the last part of X‘s answer? Yes, of course. What is being done is meant to prepare the manifestation of the supermind in the earth —consciousness down to Matter itself, so it can’t be for the physical of myself or the Mother alone. 15 September 1935
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It seems to me that if the Supermind has not descended into Mother’s body —consciousness, it is not because she is not ready for it, but because she has first to prepare the physical of the sadhaks and of the earth to a certain extent. But some people here take it in the wrong way; they think that the Supermind has not yet descended into her body because she has not yet reached perfection. Am I right?
Page – 92 Certainly. If we had lived physically in the Supermind from the beginning, nobody would have been able to approach us nor could the sadhana have been done. There could have been no hope of contact between ourselves and the earth and men. Even as it is, Mother has to come down towards the lower consciousness of the sadhaks instead of keeping always in her own, otherwise they begin to say, “How far away, how severe you were; you do not love me, I get no help from you etc. etc.” The Divine has to veil himself in order to meet the human. 18 October 1935 The Triple Transformation and Control over Death
There are three stages of the sadhana, psychic change, transition to the higher levels of consciousness —with a descent of their powers, conscious forces —the supramental. In the last even the control over death is a later, not an initial stage. Each of these stages demands a great length of time and a high and long endeavour. The legend related to you comes partly from a false idea that Mother and Sri Aurobindo will bring down everything and the sadhaks have only to wait and receive, a misconception responsible for much inner indolence and inertia, and the fact that for a long time a certain protection was over the Asram so that there was no death of any sadhak and little illness —the legend survives, though the circumstances are not now the same. 26 July 1937
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