The Winds of Wonder

“Three minutes of splendour for twelve hours of misery” — The Mother

…  everything is a problem — but then it gets done, one doesn’t know how: things fall into place. And then without knowing the why or the how, suddenly the difficulties are back.

Three minutes of splendour for twelve hours of misery. That’s the ratio. And for a body that truly, sincerely thinks only of the Divine, wants only the Divine. But it is utterly conscious of its incapacity. It’s like a live demonstration of the existence of the Divine and what the Divine existence is.

https://incarnateword.in/agenda/12/july-3-1971

This only shows the terrifying grimness and intensity of the problem of the dense gross physical not opening to the light and force of the supramental. There were here and there attempts for this to happen during the Rigvedic pursuits. But they found the body to be an unbaked vessel, that in which no tapas had been done, atapt tanu. It is absolutely for the first time since then that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were yogically looking into the matter, into matter. The inconscient will of the atom had to be kindled for this transformative wonder.

Sri Aurobindo saw that it is the Mind of Night that was standing across the path of the divine Event, the supramental manifestation. In an intense pursuit this Mind of Night in late 1930s had started becoming the Mind of Light, the physical’s mind, the mind of the deep physical, opening to the supramental Light and Force. It began to happen in him on 8 August 1938, as revealed by him in his sonnet The Golden Light. It became firmer and firmer during the last five years of his physical presence here, after 1945. His whole body inescapably housed that golden Light for it to become universal, for the evolutionary process to get going. He decreed it and he achieved it.

When after 1945 he writes “Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame” [||Savitri Book One Canto Three; 7.8||] we have that “must hold” not just a theoretical statement or assertion; it has the fieriness of the yogic affirmation, that it has been done. He had done his job, he “attempted all, achieved all”. “must hold” means it is holding, an accomplished individual realisation.

For it to manifest collectively-universally the work was to be carried out by the Mother. He wills, she executes. Her first glory was the supramental manifestation on 29 February 1956, not just descent but manifestation in the subtle-physical of the earth.

Yet the road was long, and there were miles to go and miles to go. Tirelessly she pursued it, till the body itself started realising the Divine in it, the very presence of the Divine operative in it.

However, there were formidable challenges and predicaments, complications and difficulties. This was to the extent that she had to tell “Three minutes of splendour for twelve hours of misery”. But her absolute certainty was in “what Thou willest, Lord, what Thou willest”. Can there be anything more triumphant than that? She had that victory and triumph.

“The Eternal suffers in a human form.”

The featured image is a painting by Huta.

Savitri Book 6 Canto 2 – The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain