Aurobindo stood by the earth and humanity

Aurobindo stood by the earth and humanity

Aurobindo had chosen to sacrifice spiritual retreats in higher realms to be able to live for and concentrate on the earth’s evolution to a higher level of consciousness. The Divine had tempted him to withdraw into Anandaloka by bestowing on him, almost unasked for, realisations of the silent mind, nirguna Brahmn, saguna Brahmn in the form of Vasudeva’s darshan in Alipore jail, by the vision of the living Kali on the banks of the Narmada and by the surprise-gift of the contact with his own Atman.

Realisations ranging from the transcendental to the individual were bestowed on him to wean him away from earth but he stuck to the earth, to humanity, wanting to bring to it peace, oneness, harmony and love. He did not want to leave the earth half-baked by religious dogmas and creeds and attractions of other worldly self-losing experiences. He wanted the earth and humanity to be fully manifesting Divinity so that human life is transformed into divine life: “Suffice it to say that I want to invoke on earth the light of a higher world, to manifest a new power which will continue to exist as a new influence in the physical world and will be a direct manifestation of the Divine in our entire being and daily life.”

It may seem utopian to think or dream of a divine life in the midst of the pandemic and other troubles we have at present. But, Aurobindo had foreseen this trend of human consciousness way back in 1917. In his book The Human Cycle he wrote that human society would pass through five stages: symbolic, typal, conventional, individual and subjective. We at present seem to be in the phase of subject age, though at the acme of false subjectivity which is dominated by falsehood and ego-centricism. Because of some awakened individuals across the globe who are pioneering search for the inner subject, the real spiritual person, the spiritual age is not an impossibility, however long it may take to realise itself.

Spirituality “will aim at establishing in society the true inner theocracy, not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that of the inner Priest, Prophet and King. It will reveal to man the divinity in himself as the light, strength, beauty, good, delight and immortality that dwells within and builds up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us.”

“Spirituality is India’s only politics, the fulfilment of Sanatan Dharma its only swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through our parliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of national yoga.

“Socialistic democracy is the only true democracy, for without it we cannot get the equalised and harmonised distribution of functions, each part of the community existing for the good of all and not struggling for its own separate interests, which will give humanity as a whole the necessary conditions in which it can turn its best energies to its higher development,” wrote Aurobindo.