The Winds of Wonder

“One does not progress outside terrestrial life“

[A comment by Y Vladimir on an old post, dated 21 November 2006; the web journal where it appeared does not exist now]

Dear Deshpande,

it seems to me, from what I have gathered from reading, that it is nearly impossible to be born on earth without taking on oneself this particular obligation for progress and evolution: the psychic presence. The earth was created for this purpose of Redemption, the Sacrifice.

“One does not progress outside terrestrial life. The earthly, material life is essentially the life of progress, it is here that one makes progress.” – says the Mother. And those who want to escape it will be “compelled to progress whether they want it or not. The psychic being itself progresses in them and they are not conscious of it. But they themselves are compelled to progress. That is to say, they follow a curve. They follow an ascent in life. It is the same progress as that of the growing child;…”

“…even the Divine, when incarnate on earth, is subject to the same law of progress. His instrument of manifestation, the physical being he has assumed, should be in a constant state of progress, and the law of his personal self-expression is in a way linked to the general law of earthly progress. Thus, even the embodied god cannot be perfect on earth until men are ready to understand and accept perfection.”

Explaining the story of creation to the children of the Ashram, the Mother says about the gods, that they “were manifested later, a formation, a greater and greater materialisation in the domain which Sri Aurobindo has termed the Overmind. And from there they presided over the creation of the material universe and the earth. And one of the proceedings was the formation of the earth as a symbolic creation representative of the whole universe, in order to condense and concentrate the problem so that it might be solved more easily. … because the earth is the symbol of the universe. This was the procedure adopted by the gods. And the place that’s the seat of existence of these gods Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind.”

“This means that if there were no psychic in Matter, it (the body) would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine. And it is happily due to this psychic presence in Matter that the contact between Matter and the Divine can be direct and all human beings can be told, “You carry the Divine within you, and you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him.” It is something very particular to the human being or rather to the inhabitants of the earth. In the human being the psychic becomes more conscious, more formed, more conscious and more independent also. It is individualised in human beings. But it is a speciality of the earth. It is a direct infusion, special and redeeming, in the most inconscient and obscure Matter, so that it might once again awake through stages to the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence and finally to the Divine Himself.”

It is this which makes the body on earth so special.

The Mother says that the vital beings try to possess man through their influence, without taking a trouble to be born in the body, they try to possess it from outside, as it were, (also in Sri Aurobindo’s letter) which may finally result in psychic being withdrawing from the body. But to be born on earth without taking on oneself the psychic presence, seem to be impossible. Even when she describes the incarnation of Stalin as seemingly pure vital formation, she still mentions the psychic presence in the terrestrial matter itself:

“Stalin? I am not quite sure that he was a human being… in the sense that I don’t think he had a psychic being. Or perhaps he did have one—in all matter, in every atom there is a divine centre —but I mean a conscious psychic being, formed, individualised. I don’t think so. I believe it was a direct incarnation of a being of the vital world. And that was the great difference between him and Hitler. Hitler was simply a man,…”

Mother explains the phenomenon of Vibhuti descending into the earthly life of man as the collaboration of the higher being with the psychic being:

“What prepares it is this: you see, it has been called by all kinds of names: a divine spark, a Presence, etc., which is infused in the darkness of matter in order to start the evolution.

But there is something else: there is a descent and identification of beings, of conscious beings, individualities, in the forms produced by the evolution—and so there is a union which takes place between beings of higher regions and the forms evolved by this divine Presence. And the identification takes place between this immanent godhead and this being which comes down. You see, it is when the psychic being, for instance, identifies itself with a personality of a higher order, a divine emanation, a vibhuti who comes to get identified with a psychic being—that is it, this is the thing. But it is not just this one or the other. One does a work of this kind, as I say, a work of development from within outwards; and the other is something which comes down and takes possession of what the first has prepared.”

She says that Rishis used the terrestrial human bodies, perfected enough in the process of evolution to embody higher kind consciousness:

“This is it, what I said the other day, you know, that what has changed the course of terrestrial and human development totally is bodies becoming perfected enough to be able to serve as instruments for beings of higher regions who have come to incarnate in them in order to use them. And it seems obvious that the Rishis were of these—if not all at least those who were the leaders, those who were at the head. But very probably they formed a group which must have had its own realisation, very independent of the surroundings.”