The Winds of Wonder

Seen from the European angle, Sri Aurobindo represents an immense spiritual revolution, redeeming Matter and the creation, which to the Christian religion is fundamentally a fall—it’s really unclear how what has come from God could become so bad, the creation is a fall. Richard, whose education was entirely in European philosophy, with Christian and positivist influences, immediately explained, in his Wherefore of the Worlds, that the world is the fruit of Desire—God’s desire. Yet Sri Aurobindo says (in simple terms), ‘God created the world for the Joy of the creation,’ or rather, ‘He brought forth the world from Himself for the Joy of living an objective life.’ This was Théon’s thesis too, that the world is the Divine in an objective form, but for him the origin of this objective form was the desire to be. All this is playing with words.

Here, just to give you an example, in several of visions I saw Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified; that is, the same man I would see on my first visit, almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue and rather sharp profile, an unruly beard and long hair, dressed in a dhoti with one end of it thrown over his shoulder, arms and chest bare, and bare feet. At the time I thought it was ‘vision attire’! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way.

Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him in the Hindu manner. All this without any comprehension in the little brain.

I wrote the vision down. But my impression was that it was premonitory, that one day something like it would happen. And it remained in the background of the consciousness, not active, but constantly present.

As for Théon, he was European and wore a long purple robe that wasn’t at all like the one in my vision. When I saw him I recognized him as a being of great power. And he bore a certain likeness to Sri Aurobindo. But when I met Theon I saw (or rather I felt) that he was not the man I saw in my vision because… he didn’t have that vibration. Yet it was he who first taught me things, and I went and worked at Tlemcen for two years in a row.

When Richard came here he met Sri Aurobindo. Richard returned with a photograph. It was one of those early photos, with nothing in it. It was empty. But still, I was curious to meet him.

I came here…. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house that’s now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House. I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs…. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me… and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion—the decisive shock.

But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiences did the END of the vision occur…. I was standing just beside him. We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, ‘Now the Realisation will be accomplished.’ That the seal was set and the Realisation would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say—no words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.

One day I was alone in meditation; and I was seeing…. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard], and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. I had a vision of the Supreme… more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme. And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered me—and there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was… I felt it physically. I saw, saw—my eyes were closed but I saw … ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that. Then everything vanished.

The next day we began preparing to return to India.

It was after this vision, when I returned from Japan, that this meeting with Sri Aurobindo took place, along with the certainty that the Mission would be accomplished.

Once, during those last difficult years, Sri Aurobindo told me that this was precisely what gave me my advantage and why there were greater possibilities that I would go right to the end.

There are many things like that in Sri Aurobindo’s book, On Himself, many things.

Featured Image: Sri Aurobindo waiting to receive the Mother, in the afternoon of 29 March 1914

Théon Vibhuti of Asura of Death