India

and

Her Mission

A Compilation from the Works of

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

India

and

Her Mission

© All writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

are copyright of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

and have been reproduced here with their kind permission.

©2021 AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry

www.aurosociety.org

Year of Publication 2022

We Aspire like a flame of a lamp or a candle to the Divine that the process of India achieving its mission be hastened up.

Compilation done by Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Proof-reading:

Archana Udaykumar,

Neha Nandini Parrat,

Jayeeta Sen,

Bijal Gala and

Gayatri Majumdar

Cover Design: Kavita Dutta

E-book: Uttam Mondal

Foreword

All over the world, there is a growing interest in Spirituality and Yoga.  There is a search for the true meaning and purpose of life, for deeper solutions to the problems which confront us all, and how we can contribute to the evolutionary change and progress.

In this search, more and more persons are turning to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for guidance and enlightenment.  But in their voluminous literature, they do not know where to find the answers they are looking for.

In this regard the Mother has said:

“It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied but by subjects—what he has said on the Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on education, on self-perfection, on supermind, etc., etc.” (CWM 12: 206)

On another occasion she said:

“If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all he has written on that subject. You will then see that he seems to have said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything and understood a little, one sees that all the contradictions complement one another and are organised and unified in an integral synthesis.” (CWM 16: 309-310)

While there are several compilations which are now available, many sincere spiritual seekers have felt the need of Comprehensive Compilations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on specific subjects, where the contents are further organised into sub-topics, so that one can get all that one is looking for at one place.

These books are an effort to fulfill this need and thus help spiritual seekers in their journey and sadhana.  We hope these compilations will help us to get a greater mental clarity about a subject so that we can channel our efforts in the right direction. For Sri Aurobindo has written:

“It is always better to make an effort in the right direction; even if one fails the effort bears some result and is never lost.” (CWSA 29: 87)

We will be glad to get suggestions and feedback from the readers.

Vijay

Preface

Our entire country is celebrating the auspicious occasion of the 150th Birth Anniversary of Sri Aurobindo and the 75th Anniversary of India’s Independence on 15 August 2022. This year, we at Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Sri Aurobindo Society present a series of compilations on “India” from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s works.

We present the first e-book of the series on India – India and Her Mission. Once all the e-books are released, we hope the readers will recognize that the subtle theme of this series is “How India Can Achieve Its Mission”.

The effort in this series of compilations is to be as comprehensive as possible. All that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said on India, and all that is directly or indirectly related to India, are included in these compilations.

The quotations in this compilation are from “THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO” (CWSA); “COLLECTED WORKS OF THE MOTHER” Second edition; Shri K. D. Sethna’s book India and the World Scene; Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo recorded by A. B. Purani FIRST EDITION; Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran and from Sri Aurobindo’s Archives and Research Magazines. Few quotations are also from Conversations of the Mother with a Sadhak.

In the introduction of the book, India and the World Scene, K. D. Sethna writes, “Not only were my editorials written under his [Sri Aurobindo’s] inner inspiration: they were also sent to him for approval. Only when his ‘Yes’ was wired to us did we plunge into publication.” So these Quotations can be taken as Sri Aurobindo’s opinion or his approval. In Purani and Nirodbaran’s books, Sri Aurobindo while talking to sadhaks gave his opinion on many subjects.

After each quotation the following abbreviations are used representing the book from which it is taken.

CWSA: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO

CWM: COLLECTED WORKS OF THE MOTHER Second Edition

IWSKDS: India and the World Scene by Shri K. D. Sethna First Edition

ISWFKDS: The Indian Spirit and the World’s Future by Shri K. D. Sethna

CTMS: Conversations of the Mother with a Sadhak

ETABP: Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo; recorded by A. B. Purani First Edition

TWSAN: Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran

While the passages from Sri Aurobindo are in the original English, most of the passages from the Mother (selections from her talks and writings) are translations from the original French. We must also bear in mind that the excerpts have been taken out of their original context and that a compilation, in its very nature, is likely to have a personal and subjective approach. A sincere attempt, however, has been made to be faithful to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Those who would like to go through the fuller text are advised to go through the original books.

The section headings and sub-headings have been provided by the compiler to bring clarity on the selected topic. The reader needs to remember that the original quotations were not written with the intention of the sub-heading given by the compiler and so one may find that the passage has few other aspects included in the quotation. All the words that are bold faced are done by the compiler so that the reader may not miss the important point in the passage. One more reason for highlighting is that Sri Aurobindo’s writings are integral and cover a range of ideas in one sentence.

The idea of taking up this comprehensive compilation on India was suggested to me by Vijaybhai [Sri Vijay Poddar] somewhere in 2003. The hard copy of this compilation remained with him for many years. It was in May 2022 he wrote to me – “I was looking again at your compilation on India. It is extremely comprehensive and very well done. I feel we should go ahead immediately to publish it as an e-book on our website.” With the help of few proof-readers, we are able to bring out the series of e-books.

Compiler Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Why a Compilation on “India” from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother?

Sri Aurobindo says in one of his article says,

“I am impelled to this labour by the necessity of turning the mind of young India to our true riches, our real source of power, purification and hope for the future and of safeguarding it in the course of its search both from false lights and from the raucous challenges and confident discouragements cast at us by the frail modern spirit of denial. I write, not for the orthodox, nor for those who have discovered a new orthodoxy, Samaj or Panth, nor for the unbeliever; I write for those who acknowledge reason but do not identify reason with Western materialism; who are sceptics but not unbelievers; who, admitting the claims of modern thought, still believe in India, her mission and her gospel, her immortal life and her eternal rebirth.”  (CWSA 12: 62–63)

So this compilation contains all the labour of Sri Aurobindo, so that the youth in India may believe in the mission of India and her gospel and the hopes for the future are fulfilled.

But a question may arise why Sri Aurobindo on India? The part of the answer is in the letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife.

“I know I have the strength to deliver this fallen race. It is not physical strength,—I am not going to fight with sword or gun,—but the strength of knowledge. The power of the Kshatriya is not the only one; there is also the power of the Brahmin, the power that is founded on knowledge. This feeling is not new in me, it is not of today. I was born with it, it is in my very marrow. God sent me to earth to accomplish this great mission. The seed began to sprout when I was fourteen; by the time I was eighteen the roots of the resolution had grown firm and unshakable.” August 30, 1905. (Letter written by Sri Aurobindo to his wife Mrinalini)

Besides the strength of knowledge which Sri Aurobindo had, his collaborator the Mother further adds.

“What must be done to pull the country out of its difficulty? Sri Aurobindo has foreseen all the troubles and he has given the solution. Just now we are approaching his Centenary; [1972] … this would be a wonderful occasion to spread his teaching all over the country: ... his teaching about India, how to organise India, the mission of India. ...

About all that has happened and all that is happening now, he has said clearly that to go back to it is useless. We must give the country its true position, that is, the position of relying on the Divine. Naturally, this is at the other end of what people try to believe now. But Sri Aurobindo explains it in such a way that even those who are against it can agree. You understand? He has found a way of saying it which can be understood by everybody. That’s the only solution, as far as I can see; it is the only solution. All the rest will mean complication, contradiction and fighting.

... And this is above politics, you see. ... It is to organise the country beyond politics. And it is the only way. In politics it is always fight and ugly fight—ugly. And it has become so bad. He was telling me always that things would become worse and worse, because it is the end of this age. We are entering into an age where things must be organized differently. It is a difficult time because of that.

Because we know what will come, we can help to make it come sooner and with less turmoil. There is no hope in going backwards; it would make things last endlessly. We must go forward, absolutely, and go beyond, beyond party. And nobody can explain that better than Sri Aurobindo, because he was so much, so much beyond party; he saw the advantages and disadvantages of all parties and he stated them exactly.

If you read carefully what he has written—so much—you will find the answer to all these questions. And at the same time you will know that you will have the full support of the Divine Power. The Power that was behind him is behind this transformation. It is time for transformation. We can’t cling to the past.

The best way to go beyond politics is to spread the message of Sri Aurobindo. Because he is no more a political element wanting to take power; there are only his ideas and ideals. And, of course, if people could understand and realise his programme, the country could be very strong, very strong.” (CWM 15: 405–406)

This compilation has also quotations from the Mother’s Collected Works. The Mother though born in France always felt that India was her true country, the country of her soul and spirit. She has declared herself Indian by choice and predilection.

“I want to mark this day by the expression of a long cherished wish; that of becoming an Indian citizen. From the first time I came to India—in 1914—I felt that India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit. I had decided to realise this wish as soon as India would be free. But I had to wait still longer because of my heavy responsibilities for the Ashram here in Pondicherry. Now the time has come when I can declare myself.

But, in accordance with Sri Aurobindo’s ideal, my purpose is to show that truth lies in union rather than in division. To reject one nationality in order to obtain another is not an ideal solution. So I hope I shall be allowed to adopt a double nationality, that is to say, to remain French while I become an Indian.

I am French by birth and early education, I am Indian by choice and predilection. In my consciousness there is no antagonism between the two, on the contrary, they combine very well and complete one another. I know also that I can be of service to both equally, for my only aim in life is to give a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s great teaching and in his teaching he reveals that all the nations are essentially one and meant to express the Divine Unity upon earth through an organised and harmonious diversity.” 15 August 1954 (CWM 13: 43)

The reason why the Mother took birth in France is explained in this quotation.

“It is true that this body was born in Paris and that its soul has declared that it is Indian, but I belong to no nation in particular.” (CWM 13: 44)

She further adds that

“It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France. She will play a big part in spite of her present bad condition. It is through France that the spiritual message will reach Europe. That is why I chose France for my birth, although I am not French.” (CWM 13: 379–380)

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cannot be narrowly called Indian for they worked to uplift the humanity and move towards the next step in evolution so that all the problems of humanity can be solved. But their love for India was intense. The Mother says,

“Sri Aurobindo always loved deeply his Motherland. But he wished her to be great, noble, pure and worthy of her big mission in the world. He refused to let her sink to the sordid and vulgar level of blind self-interests and ignorant prejudices. This is why, in full conformity to his will, we lift high the standard of truth, progress and transformation of mankind, without caring for those who, through ignorance, stupidity, envy or bad will, seek to soil it and drag it down into the mud. We carry it very high so that all who have a soul may see it and gather round it.” (CWM 13: 123)

The quotations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are a few decades old, so one may wonder how it will be relevant today. When a Yogi or a realised person talks, even in worldly matters, there will be Truth in it. This Truth will help one much more than what he would do by his own thinking. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had the highest spiritual realisations. Their vision and guidance can only lift India out of the present challenges she faces and help her achieve her mission. If one reads the mission that India has to achieve and the present day condition of our country then one will realise that Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s quotations are as valid that time as today. Reading the compilations, one will feel that it is relevant in today’s condition.

One caution needs to be taken while reading Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s quotations which is that one need not be too dogmatic about them. One really needs to live in the spirit behind these quotations.

This work is presented with a hope and an aspiration that the people of India may be inspired by the vision of India and the process of achieving India’s Mission may be hastened.

Compiler: Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Contents

SECTION ONE: WHAT IS INDIA?

I—What Is India?

II—India Is a Mother Goddess, a Bharata Shakti

III—Unless We Realise India as Mother, We Can Never Achieve Greatness

IV—Our Too Intellectual Turn Should Not Dismiss This Awareness

V—Taking Objection to Mother India Robs India of all Genuine Cultural Value

SECTION TWO: THE TYPICAL GENIUS OF INDIAN NATION

I—Indian Genius Is Dynamic World-Transforming Spirituality

II—A Power of Self-Renewal Resides

III—We Are Held together by a Supra-individual Being

IV—India Is a Well-defined Collective Personality which Helped to Create a Political Nation

V—National Shakti Has a Part to Play in Shaping the Future

SECTION THREE: INDIA’S TRUE DESTINY

I— India’s True Destiny Is to Be the Guru of the World

II—Why India Is the Chosen Country to Be the Guru of the World?

SECTION FOUR: INDIA'S SPIRITUAL MISSION

I—India’s Mission Is to Give the Example of Spirituality

II—India’s Mission: Building India for Sake of Humanity

III—India’s Mission: Human Brotherhood

IV—Why Only India Can Bring Human Brotherhood in Humanity?

V—India’s Mission: Role in Asia

VI—How India Is Suited for the Role To Be the Leader of the Asiatic Countries?

VII—India’s Mission: Unification of Humankind

VIII—India’s Mission: Initiative in the Next Step of Evolution

IX—India’s Mission: Task of the Creation of a Nucleus of Super-humanity

SECTION FIVE: WARNING

I—Whatever Country Seizes on the Lines of New Evolution Will Be the Leader of Humanity

II—Whatever Nation Is First to Solve the Internal Problems Will Lead the World

SECTION SIX: INDIA AT PRESENT IS FAR FROM THE TRUTH

I—At Present Much Needs to Be Done in India

II—Servitude Under the British Left India Rotten

III—We Begin One Thing To-day and Abandon It Tomorrow

IV—Tremendous Tamas

V—Sri Aurobindo Took a Sterner Tone When Addressing Indians

VI—Blindly Imitating the West Neglecting Her Soul

VII—Indian Government Had Gone Completely Crazy

VIII—Violent Agitation Is Out-rightly Stupid

IX—Corruption

X—The Fundamental Mistake for India’s Degradation

XI—The Cause of Ruin

XII—The Mother Did Not Find One Good Instrument

XIII—Adopt Sri Aurobindo’s Ideal

SECTION SEVEN: AUGUST 15 THE BIRTHDAY OF SRI AUROBINDO AND FREE INDIA

I—As a Mystic, Sri Aurobindo Considers This as a Sanction and Seal of the Divine Power for His Work

II—Spiritual Land India Celebrates Her Independence on the Birthday of the Greatest Living Master of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo

III—Other Important Events in World History on AUGUST 15

IV—Date August 15 in Modern History Shows Ultimate World-Significance

V—India Can Obtain the Light from Sri Aurobindo That Shall Lead to Authentic Greatness

VI—If Men Could Consciously Establish Rapport with Sri Aurobindo, They Would Lift Themselves and India to Sterling Greatness

SECTION EIGHT: WHEN WILL INDIA DISCHARGE ITS MISSION

I—Not Until the Sweep of the Spiritual Evolution Comes, that India Can Discharge Its Mission

II—Through the Instinct of the Divine, India Shall Emerge as a Leader of the Nations

III—When India Becomes a Messenger of the Divine Life

IV—Allow the Higher Will to Work

V—When India Renounces Falsehood and Lives in the Truth

Section One: What Is India?

I—What Is India?

“India, shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and the ocean, has always been the home of a peculiar people with characteristics of its own recognisably distinct from all others, with its own distinct civilization, way of life, way of spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of society.” (CWSA 36: 499)

“Just as each individual has a psychic being [soul] which is his true self and which governs his destiny more or less overtly, so too each nation has a psychic being which is its true being and moulds its destiny from behind the veil: it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people, the centre of national aspiration, the fountainhead of all that is beautiful, noble, great and generous in the life of the country. True patriots feel its presence as a tangible reality. In India it has been made into an almost divine entity, and all who truly love their country call it ‘Mother India’ (Bharat Mata) and offer her a daily prayer for the welfare of their country. It is she who symbolises and embodies the true ideal of the country, its true mission in the world.

The thinking ‘elite in India even identifies her with one of the aspects of the universal Mother, as the … extract from the Hymn to Durga [will] illustrates. …

One would like to see in all countries the same veneration for the national soul, the same aspiration to become fit instruments for the manifestation of its highest ideal, the same ardour for progress and self-perfection enabling each people to identify itself with its national soul and thus find its true nature and role, which makes each one a living and immortal entity regardless of all the accidents of history.” (CWM 12: 42-44)

II—India Is a Mother Goddess, a Bharata Shakti

“What is India?

India is not the earth, rivers and mountains of this land, neither is it a collective name for the inhabitants of this country. India is a living being, as much living as, say, Shiva. India is a goddess as Shiva is a god. If she likes, she can manifest in human form.” (CWM 13: 372)

“Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence. For by its virtue alone she has been one of the immortal nations; this alone has been the secret of her amazing persistence and perpetual force of survival and revival.” (CWSA 20: 57)

“Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting their separate existence and keeping it in being. Such beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence, but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise their influence.” (CWSA 28: 482)

“My third madness is that while others look upon their country as an inert piece of matter—a few meadows and fields, forests and hills and rivers—I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore Her, I worship Her as the Mother.” August 30, 1905 (Letter of Sri Aurobindo to his wife Mrinalani)

“But behind the conscious thought of individuals there is the working of that invisible yet potent being which is the national soul or genius. Every country has such a soul and every true patriot feels directly or indirectly its presence. In terms of the wide yet demarcated body of land in which one takes birth and grows and dies, in terms of the large mass of people who are bound together by geographical limits, in terms of a long history behind that mass, in terms of a culture subtly single in the midst of all variety of province and language—in diverse terms separate or combined is felt the national soul. And always a personification is made of it, a great presiding spirit is envisaged, a Mother-being that is the true secret life of the country's collectivity as well as physical expanse. No matter how rationalistic we may be, the moment we are patriots the heart in us intuits this Mother-being and with the dream of its more-than-human loveliness and on the supporting breath of its super-animation we move to the exertions and the heroisms that ordinarily lie far beyond our powers.” (IWSKDS: 315-316)

“Our national Being, the Mother-Power whose children we are, must itself be visioned and voiced as ultimately the Supreme and the Eternal standing here in the evolving cosmos and in the process of time and with the face and figure of our country's soul but with all the glories of the Infinite Mystery suffusing them and spreading from them to the ends of the earth.” (IWSKDS: 24)

“The Godhead secret within man is the truth of man and most keenly the truth of the Indian nation, the truth that has to be lived out as much as possible.” (IWSKDS: 5)

(About ‘the Mother’s [spiritual] map of India’, which includes Pakistan, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka. …’)

“The map was made after the partition.

It is the map of the true India in spite of all passing appearances, and it will always remain the map of the true India, whatever people may think about it.” 29 July 1964 (CWM 13: 360)

III—Unless We Realise India as Mother, We Can Never Achieve Greatness

“There is a tendency among us to regard India as just a collection of human beings with certain common racial and cultural characteristics. But India is more than a collection of human beings. India is a living entity, a presiding genius [the prevalent character or spirit of a nation], the one self of all these human beings and the one consciousness that is at work in them. You cannot make a nation with a mere aggregate of individuals. A nation is a single being.

It is this single being, the life of our life that we have to serve. It is the one Mother of whom we are the myriad children. Until we realise this, we shall never achieve greatness. Our first requirement is to live for and look up to a presiding genius which animates us, which unites us, which alone has made our culture and civilisation persist through thousands of years and which alone can make us fulfil our destiny.

The sense of India as the living Mother is what we are aiming to kindle everywhere in this country. But to kindle this sense is not to answer the whole need of the times. Every country has a presiding genius, whether openly acknowledged or not. But every country has predominant qualities, a typical nature, a central function. We must realise what exactly are the face and form of our presiding genius.” (IWSKDS: 3)

“What is Mother India?

Mother India is manifold. Art, philosophy, science, politics, industry—all these she has been known for through the ages. Yet brighter than her fame for these has been her fame for seeking the Godhead secret within earth’s life. Her art, philosophy, science, politics and industry have been inspired directly or indirectly by this seeking. And unless we realise that Mother India is a spiritual light we shall either fumble in the dark or run after delusive gleams. We cannot fulfil our destiny without following the instinct of divinity in us.” (IWSKDS: 3–5)

IV—Our Too Intellectual Turn Should Not Dismiss This Awareness

“But a nation can never be an aggregate of individuals any more than a country is just a large piece of land. When we speak of India we are alive to the presence and power of a single being whose outermost shell is the territorial expanse indicated on our maps and whose more subtle and plastic body is the collection of human beings living in that expanse and sharing and expressing certain cultural characteristics. But our too intellectual turn leads us to dismiss this awareness as a figurative mode of feeling: we declare that we are only practising patriotic personification and that there is no actual entity beyond the individuals inhabiting the land. But this is a patent self-deception. No patriot has ever fought and died for anything except a vast, moving and mighty supra-individual personality—a hidden Goddess, a gigantic Beloved, a great Mother. Especially as a great Mother this personality inspires him, for a country is felt as either fatherland or motherland and the latter aspect is the more intimately alive and commanding.

Not in the cold dissecting rational mind but in the heart with its mysteries and profundities, its intuitions of the beyond, its inexplicable visions of the superhuman and the divine, that the essence of patriotism, as of every other individual-transcending passion, lies. A patriot who does not stir to the call of the great Mother that is his country and that is the unifying force of the millions inhabiting it is an impotent imposter. Or else if one feels the tremendous Presence and yet intellectually denies it, one is effective for various ends but the schism within him will always impair his effectivity and his very triumphs will be unrounded and carry a proclivity to defeat.” (IWSKDS: 19-20)

V—Taking Objection to Mother India Robs India of all Genuine Cultural Value

“The Godhead hailed must bring the light and colour and configuration of what the descendants of the Rishis have felt and seen. … if anyone takes objection to them because of their non-Islamic, non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Zoroastrian, non-Sikh, non-Jain and even non-Buddhist suggestion, then he fails to understand what ultimate India is and he is trying to rob her of all genuine cultural value and to suppress a national genius that is, from the mystical and metaphysical viewpoint, the most wonderful in existence and, from the worldly and pragmatic viewpoint, no less wonderful by its wealth of varied creativeness and its capacity of almost unlimited organic assimilation.” (IWSKDS: 23)

“Over-touchiness with regard to the minorities is a blunder no less serious than riding roughshod over them. As settled dwellers in this subcontinent they are to be granted equal civic and individual rights with the majority that is called Hindu; but for their sake the majority must never diminish the marvellous potentialities of cultural Indianness.” (IWSKDS: 23–24)

Section Two: The Typical Genius of Indian Nation

[The genius here means the prevalent character or spirit of a nation]

I—Indian Genius Is Dynamic World-Transforming Spirituality

“If we Indians are to march in the van of the world and fulfil a mission which no other people can accomplish, we must feel that our genius is a dynamic world-transforming spirituality which lives in a concrete contact and communion with a Perfect Being, Consciousness, Power and Bliss. All events and movements must be evaluated by reference to one standard: Do they, however remotely, tend towards the increase of such spirituality? …

… We must develop insight enough to mark the Divine at general play in any one of the poises or in a combination of more than one or in all at once, and according to the strength in which there is the play or according to the measure in which the threefold integrality is approached we must pass judgment. Of course, things are never to be taken at their surface value, many an undesirable force masquerades under attractive guises.  Also, nothing should be studied in disparate sections— a whole view must be taken so that all the sections fall into their proper places and the complete nature of a force emerges. The labour of discovering whether there is or there is not a point of contact, however subtle, with the spiritual goal of mankind calls for intellectual no less than intuitive examination.” (IWSKDS: 15-16)

“When we say ‘national’, we must not mean merely a vague image of the country's consciousness. There must be a powerful suggestion of the precise colour and shape of the country's culture. … What must be articulated is the typical genius of a nation. Thus, England's genius is a practical dynamic expansive life-instinct, with a background of vague poetic idealism. France's genius is an ordering brilliant clarity of intellect allied with a warm and often tempestuous enthusiasm for personal rights. The genius of India is in the first place an intense mysticism deriving from an ineradicable intuition of the Godhead that is the All and even more than the All, a creatively emanating and manifesting Consciousness and Delight, and in the second place a richness of varied, complex, adventurous, even fantastic-seeming forms of existence which yet carries a certain stability and self-balance by being rooted in a spontaneous organic energy.” (IWSKDS: 21–22)

“The genius of India can never be satisfied with a sort of agnostic spirituality and negative mysticism; nor with an endeavour at dissolving the variety and diversity of her mental and physical existence; nor, again, with setting at a discount the urge to realise a dynamic divinity, a spiritual and mystical light turned towards the flowering of noble and beautiful world-values. Non-violence and humanitarianism are also not the last word of the Indian ethical mind: a manifestation of God in humanity is the main ideal. Humanity is not a supreme value in itself, and non-violence and compassionate fellow-feeling are fine virtues but they are not the utter goal of the ethical life, the utter goal being nothing else than a general avatar-hood, so to speak, which acts according to a spiritual and mystical truth within and which can even appear at times to be violent and ruthless, just as Sri Krishna appeared on the battlefield of Kurukshetra where humanity stood divided into an army of the Divine and an army of the Diabolic. Further, the Indian genius is not democratic in the superficial modern manner. The whole world is indeed to be embraced by the individual's consciousness and the good of mankind at large has indeed to be worked for by every member of organised society; but the foundation of this democracy is in realising the God who is the One Superhuman in all that is human, and ever to this high, rare, extraordinary realisation the common mind is to be called, and each altruistic action must spring from that luminously aristocratic experience. The true Indian democracy, therefore, must lay stress not on the mere common man, not on mankind as it is in the majority: it must lay stress on the man of God, the Saint and the Seer, mankind as it is in the finest few and as in the majority it ought to be.” (ISWFKDS: 35)

“Disciple : What about India’s independence? Is it developing along your lines?

Sri Aurobindo: Surely not, India is now going towards European Socialism which is dangerous for her; while we were trying to evolve true genius of the race along Indian lines and all working for independence.

Take the Bengal movement. The whole race was awakened within a short time. People who were such cowards and trembled before the sight of a revolver were in a short period so much changed that police officials used to say ‘Insolent Barisal’. It was the soul of the race that woke up throwing up very fine personalities. The leaders of the movement were either Yogis or disciples of Yogis e.g.  Monoranjan Guha Thakurate disciple of B. Goswami.

Disciple: Was he a nationalist?

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord. He was my fellow-worker. He also took part in secret society. Then Brahmo Bandhava Upadhayay etc. Ramkrishna and Vivekananda’s influence worked from behind. The movement with the secret society became so formidable that in any other country with a political past it would have led to something like the French Revolution. The sympathy of the whole race was on our side. Even shopkeepers were reading Yugantar [A revolutionary Bengali weekly journal]. I will tell you an instance; while a young man was running away after killing a police officer in Shambazar, he forgot to throw away his revolver. It remained in his hand. One shop-keeper cried out: ‘Hide your revolver, hide your revolver.’ Then you have heard of Jatin Mukerjee’s exploit.

Disciple: Yes Sir.

Sri Aurobindo: A wonderful man. He was a man who would belong to the front rank of humanity. Such beauty and strength together I have not seen, and his stature was like that of a warrior.” 14-12-1938 (ETABP: 577)

“When we speak of Indian spiritual culture expressing itself harmoniously with a varied vitality we mean the culture whose initial significances and original splendours are to be found in the Rig Veda and whose wide and luminous developments are in the Upanishads and the Gita and the Tantra and whose culmination and complete outburst of light we find today in the poetry and prose of Sri Aurobindo.” (IWSKDS: 22)

II—A Power of Self-Renewal Resides

“We must regard every nation, every large and distinguishable human collectivity, as a super-organism with a common body and mind. This super-organism, like the individual, passes through a cycle of birth, growth, adolescence, ripeness and decline. The decline generally ends in death. But there resides in the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form. … For, the inner life-idea itself of a super-organism is only a projection of the authentic soul-principle behind, which is meant to serve as a vehicle of the eternal Spirit whose manifestation in time is the whole universe. The cosmic Self or Virat, as the Rishis called it, acting through its particularised representative, the soul-principle, is the true source and support of the inner life-idea of the collective being, as it is of the individual. And if this source and support is not sufficiently contacted in consciousness, the eternal is never brought into the temporal and ultimately comes dissolution or a fusion into other races.

But when there is a constant look into the Inmost, a persistent pressure upon the deepest and widest Self, a people acquires the secret of perpetual life-renewal and never ages, no matter how many millenniums pass, what foreign invasions interfere with its physical expression and what defects and decadences set in as a result of its own folly. Even death may threaten again and again, but every time a renascence occurs and the wrinkles straighten out, the stiff limbs recover healthy resilient tissue, the crust of dull habit and stifling conservative restraint breaks to reveal an enterprising and creative consciousness that was never moribund within. A people living not only with a keen and independent psychological stress rather than with a merely refined and superficially mentalised animal urge, a people living also in the experience of its profound soul-principle and thereby in the presence of Virat, the infinite Self of the cosmos seeking its own highest manifestation through human history, such a people never dies and is everlastingly young.

India is the one outstanding instance of a never-dying ever-resurgent collectivity. And the sooner she throws off the cloud of scepticism put by her recent intercourse with the West upon so many of her intelligentsia, and quickens to her own profundities and sees as the Soul of her soul the supreme Godhead, the Divine World-Mother, the more apt will she be to use her acutely felt youthfulness today for genuine growth in greatness: then she will carry to a still more glorious height than in the past the wonder of her perpetually young civilisation.” (IWSKDS: 9–10)

“Of course, the Indian genius is not confined to spirituality pure and simple, not even to a many-sided spirituality to the exclusion of all other modes of being. The very fact that Ramakrishna's chosen instrument for world-work was Vivekananda, a complex passionate analytic mind, a highly cultured master of system and organisation, a richly endowed physical nature, shows that India moves instinctively to grip earth no less than heaven. At least the intention of Ramakrishna was to reshape through Vivekananda the whole of the country's life in the light of God-realisation. But by embodying in his own figure a stark spirituality, as it were, he performed the catharsis that was most needed in the country's consciousness if accretions and superfluities, illusions and delusions, waste matter and foreign matter were to be swept off and prevented from obscuring and obstructing the growth of Indian Nationalism.” (IWSKDS: 56)

III—We Are Held together by a Supra-individual Being

“The Truth we have sought to serve is the presence of the Divine in the human, the presence that India throughout her history has regarded as the master-key to human progress and fulfilment.

And because India, more than any other nation, has been afire with a sense of the Divine and because there has been down the ages a persistent cultural consciousness with this sense as its centre, we Indians in our collectivity should feel that through space and time we are held together by a supra-individual being which is not only our nationhood, the one self of our myriad Indianness, but also a dynamic delegate of the Divine. An emanation of the Supreme Creative Force, instinct with a special mission of the Infinite and the Eternal to raise mankind to the highest and harmonise all life: this is how we must intuit the reality we have so often spoken of in our patriotic moods as Hind Mata. Unless we are aware of living within such a national being, unless we stir to such a presiding genius, we shall never give our culture its full power and our dream of a fairer world will never tend completely to materialise. To be scattered individuals with great aims and capacities will be all our lot: we shall lack the inner cohesion without which no collectivity can come to total fruition and make its most effective cultural mark on the world.” (IWSKDS: 11)

IV—India Is a Well-defined Collective Personality which Helped to Create a Political Nation

“Disciple: Has the collective personality of India been always there?

Sri  Aurobindo: Yes, as far as history goes. I don’t know what must have been in the Simian period.

Disciple : What is the nature of this collective, or if I may say so, Super-personality?

Sri Aurobindo: You have to look to the characteristics of the Indian people to understand that super-personality must be something that corresponds to them. When you are on the other side of mind you can look at it from beyond and see how this works below here; but so long as we are here, in the mind, we have to proceed from the law of our present nature.

Disciple: I wanted to ask whether the nation that would emerge in India today would have the same characteristics as the nations in Europe or would it have something different?

Sri Aurobindo: It can’t be the same. Evidently it would be something more.

Disciple: I had a discussion with X; he argued that we had no such national consciousness as in Europe and I maintained that we had something more.

Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps Europe has no such well-defined collective personality as India has. In Europe you have several clearly defined national personalities. For instance, England has a definite national personality; so also has France. They are trying to create some sort of collective personality. They have not yet succeeded in giving form to it.

While in India it is quite different. It is a well-defined collective personality which is already there and all these various personalities and types of the Indian nation are its formations, so to say. It is that which expresses itself in them.

Disciple: The differences between different parts of India are variations of the same collective personality?

Sri Aurobindo: It is the same as with the Welsh, the Scots and the English, or the Bavarian and the Prussian, in the same nationality.  If there were not this clear collective personality it would have been difficult to create a political nation in India.  But take the case of Asia. There is an attempt at the formation of a collective Asiatic personality. But if anyone made just now an effort to unite them under a political unity the result would be a disaster, a ghastly failure.

Disciple: Is it not a fact that the national consciousness evolves in the face of common danger, and so there is an idea that Asia would unite when it has to fight against Europe, and humanity would unite when mankind will have to fight against the people of another planet!  (Laughter).

Sri Aurobindo: That is a vital way of creating unity. Even in Europe, though there is no collective personality, yet there is a common mentality, a common culture and a common attitude against Asiatics and Africans.” (ETABP: 511–512)

“Sri Aurobindo: The collective being is non-evolutionary. …

…

Disciple: Have the nations a soul?

Sri Aurobindo: You can speak of it as a collective or nations being or entity. But it is not in evolution. It is not subject to the law of Karma.

Disciple: Can it be said that the law governing it is suprarational?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Each collective being is a projection of the Cosmic Spirit for a particular purpose. You can speak of it as a particular Shakti.

Disciple: How does the collective being or Shakti work?

Sri Aurobindo: It identifies itself with a particular form—here of a group of individual. There is a mutual action: it acts on the individual and the individual acts on it by manifesting it.” (ETABP: 721–722)

V—National Shakti Has a Part to Play in Shaping the Future

“Disciple: There is a being or a Spirit behind every place, I believe; for instance, is there no conscious being behind Pondicherry?

Sri Aurobindo: Do you mean nagar devatā, the presiding deity of the town?

Disciple : Something like that.

Sri Aurobindo: It is true that there are beings behind collective units, like the nations. There is what you may call the national devata or National Shakti.

Disciple: Is there such a being behind India?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

Disciple: Is it possible to know it, to come in contact with it ?

Disciple: Is it possible to know the future of the nation by coming in contact with this being?

Sri Aurobindo: I think so. But I don’t think the future is known that way.

Disciple: Does it shape the future of the nation?

Sri Aurobindo: It has a part to play in it. It controls some of the forces that act.

Disciple: Is this being something more than the aggregate consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo: It has the aggregate consciousness and it has an individualised consciousness of its own. It is not the determining deity or the adhisthāta devatā in the sense that it entirely shapes the future, but it, in a way, represents the racial—the national-soul.

Disciple: Is there any such thing as the evil genius of a nation?

Sri Aurobindo: This idea is akin to the Christian conception of good and evil always counterbalancing each other and it corresponds to the old idea of good and evil Spirits. But there is no such rule that wherever there is a good Spirit there must be the evil Spirit.” (ETABP: 403-404)

Section Three: India’s True Destiny

I— India’s True Destiny Is to Be the Guru of the World

“The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly.” February 1954  (CWM 13: 353)

“1. If you were asked to sum up, just in one sentence, your vision of India, what would be your answer?

India’s true destiny is to be the Guru of the world.

2. Similarly, if you were asked to comment on the reality as you see it, how would you do so in one sentence?

The present reality is a big falsehood—hiding an eternal truth.

3. What, according to you, are the three main barriers that stand between the vision and the reality?

(a) Ignorance; (b) fear; (c) falsehood.

4. Are you satisfied with the over-all progress India has made since Independence?

No.

5. What is our most outstanding achievement in recent times? Why do you consider it so important?

Waking up of the yearning for Truth. Because without Truth there is no reality.

6. Likewise, can you name our saddest failure? On what grounds do you regard it as so tragic?

Insincerity. Because insincerity leads to ruin.” (CWM 13: 358–359)

“India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to new-mould the life of the world and restore the peace of the human spirit.” Bande Matram March 5, 1908 (CWSA 7: 906).

“I have been asked for a message on this great occasion, [15th August 1947] but I am perhaps hardly in a position to give one. All I can do is to make a personal declaration of the aims and ideals conceived in my childhood and youth and now watched in their beginning of fulfilment, because they are relevant to the freedom of India, since they are part of what I believe to be India’s future work, something in which she cannot but take a leading position. For I have always held and said that India was arising, not to serve her own material interests only, to achieve expansion, greatness, power and prosperity,—though these too she must not neglect,—and certainly not like others to acquire domination of other peoples, but to live also for God and the world as a helper and leader of the whole human race. Those aims and ideals were in their natural order these: a revolution which would achieve India’s freedom and her unity; the resurgence and liberation of Asia and her return to the great role which she had played in the progress of human civilisation; the rise of a new, a greater, brighter and nobler life for mankind which for its entire realisation would rest outwardly on an international unification … but drawing them together into an overriding and consummating oneness; the gift by Indian of her spiritual knowledge and her means for the spiritualisation of life to the whole race; finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the many problems of existence which have perplexed and vexed humanity, since men began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society.” The Fifteenth of August 1947 Message (CWSA 36: 474-475)

“Mother, I have heard that in 1967 India will become ‘the spiritual Guru of the world’. But how? When we consider the present condition...

India ought to be the spiritual leader of the world. Inside she has the capacity, but outside... for the moment there is still much to do for her to become actually the spiritual leader of the world.

There is such a wonderful opportunity just now! but...” 8 June 1967   (CWM 13: 367)

II—Why India Is the Chosen Country to Be the Guru of the World?

“God always keeps for himself a chosen country in which the higher knowledge is through all chances and dangers, by the few or the many, continually preserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyuga at least, that country is India. Whenever he chooses to take the full pleasure of ignorance, of the dualities, of strife and wrath and tears and weakness and selfishness, the tamasic and rajasic pleasures, of the play of the Kali in short, he dims the knowledge in India and puts her down into weakness and degradation so that she may retire into herself and not interfere with this movement of his Lila. When he wants to rise up from the mud and Narayana in man to become once again mighty and wise and blissful, then he once more pours out the knowledge on India and raises her up so that she may give the knowledge with its necessary consequences of might, wisdom and bliss to the whole world. When there is the contracted movement of knowledge, the yogins in India withdraw from the world and practise yoga for their own liberation and delight or for the liberation of a few disciples; but when the movement of knowledge again expands and the soul of India expands with it, they come forth once more and work in the world and for the world. Yogins like Janaka, Ajatashatru and Kartavirya once more sit on the thrones of the world and govern the nations.” (CWSA 13: 71–72)

“In the whole creation the earth has a place of distinction, because unlike any other planet it is evolutionary with a psychic entity at its centre. In it, India, in particular, is a divinely chosen country.” (CWM 13: 368)

“So with India rests the future of the world. Whenever she is aroused from her sleep, she gives forth some wonderful shining ray of light to the world which is enough to illuminate the nations. Others live for centuries on what is to her the thought of a moment. God gave her the book of Ancient Wisdom and bade her keep it sealed in her heart, until the time should come for it to be opened. Sometimes a page or a chapter is revealed, sometimes only a single sentence. Such sentences have been the inspiration of ages and fed humanity for many hundreds of years. So too when India sleeps, materialism grows apace and the light is covered up in darkness. But when materialism thinks herself about to triumph, lo and behold! a light rushes out from the East and where is Materialism? Returned to her native night.”  Bande Mataram, February 21, 1908. (CWSA 7: 890)

“India has the key to the knowledge and conscious application of the ideal; what was dark to her before in its application, she can now, with a new light, illumine; what was wrong and wry in her old methods she can now rectify; the fences which she created to protect the outer growth of the spiritual ideal and which afterwards became barriers to its expansion and farther application, she can now break down and give her spirit a freer field and an ampler flight: she can, if she will, give a new and decisive turn to the problems over which all mankind is labouring and stumbling, for the clue to their solutions is there in her ancient knowledge. Whether she will rise or not to the height of her opportunity in the renaissance which is coming upon her, is the question of her destiny.” (CWSA 20: 39–40)

June 28, 1969

“Sweet Mother,

What is the idea behind this sentence from the ‘Adventure’: ‘Unfortunately, the West has too much intelligence to have much clear vision to translate outwardly, while India, too full within, is not demanding enough to match what she lives with what she sees’?

(Mother smiles and

dictates straight off)

It means that in the West (especially in France), the intellectual development has prevailed over the spiritual development and the contact with higher regions, while in India, the inner knowledge has remained more developed than the intellectual field.

We could put the sentence thus:

The West expresses more than it really knows.

India knows more than it really can express.” (CTMS: June 28, 1969)

“Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.” Uttarpara Speech (CWSA 8: 6)

“Mankind have a natural inclination to hero-worship and the great men who have done wonders for human civilisation will always be the inspiration of future ages. We are Hindus and naturally spiritual in our temperament, because the work which we have to do for humanity is a work which no other nation can accomplish, the spiritualisation of the race; so the men whom we worship are those who have helped the spiritual progress of mankind. Without being sceptical no spiritual progress is possible, for blind adoration is only the first stage in the spiritual development of the soul. We are wont to be spiritually sceptical, to hesitate to acknowledge to ourselves anything we have not actually experienced by the process of silent communion with God, so that the great sages of antiquity were as sceptical as any modern rationalist. They did away with all preconceived notions drawn from the religion of the Vedas, plunged into the void of absolute scepticism and tried to find there the Truth. They doubted everything, the evidence of the senses, the reality of the world, the reality of their own existence, and even the reality of God. This scepticism reached its culmination in the teachings of Buddha, who would admit nothing, presuppose nothing, declare nothing dogmatically, and insisted only on selfdiscipline, self-communion, self-realisation as the only way to escape from the entanglement of the intellect and the senses. When scepticism had reached its height, the time had come for spirituality to assert itself and establish the reality of the world as a manifestation of the spirit, the secret of the confusion created by the senses, the magnificent possibilities of man and the ineffable beatitude of God. This is the work whose consummation Sri Ramakrishna came to begin and all the development of the previous two thousand years and more since Buddha appeared has been a preparation for the harmonization of spiritual teaching and experience by the avatar of Dakshineshwar.

The long ages of discipline which India underwent, are now drawing to an end. A great light is dawning on the East, a light whose first heralding glimpses are already seen on the horizon; a new day is about to break, so glorious that even the last of the avatars cannot be sufficient to explain it, although without him it would not have come. The perfect expression of Hindu spirituality was the signal for the resurgence of the East. Mankind has long been experimenting with various kinds of thought, different principles of ethics, strange dreams of a perfection to be gained by material means, impossible millenniums and humanitarian hopes. Nowhere has it succeeded in realising the ultimate secret of life. Nowhere has it found satisfaction. No scheme of society or politics has helped it to escape from the necessity of sorrow, poverty, strife, dissatisfaction from which it strives for an outlet; for whoever is trying to find one by material means must inevitably fail. The East alone has some knowledge of the truth, the East alone can teach the West, the East alone can save mankind. Through all these ages Asia has been seeking for a light within, and whenever she has been blessed with a glimpse of what she seeks a great religion has been born, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Mahomedanism with all their countless sects. But the grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul has been India, where thousands of great spirits have been born in every generation who were content to work quietly in their own souls, perfect their knowledge, hand down the results of their experiments to a few disciples and leave the rest to others to complete. They did not hasten to proselytise, were in no way eager to proclaim themselves, but merely added their quota of experience and returned to the source from which they had come. The immense reservoir of spiritual energy stored up by the self-repression was the condition of this birth of avatars, of men so full of God that they could not be satisfied with silent bliss, but poured it out on the world, not with the idea of proselytising [preaching] but because they wished to communicate their own ecstasy of realisation to others who were fit to receive it either by previous tapasya or by the purity of their desires. Of all these souls Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in His illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual experiences of the millions of saints who had gone before were renewed and united. Sri Ramakrishna gave to India the final message of Hinduism to the world. A new era dates from his birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become the dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet unripe, what Buddhism half-accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life of Sri Ramakrishna has to attempt for all the world. This is the reason of India’s resurgence, this is why God has breathed life into her once more, why great souls are at work to bring about her salvation, why a sudden change is coming over the hearts of her sons. The movement of which the first outbreak was political, will end in a spiritual consummation.” (CWSA 7: 977–978)

Section Four: India's Spiritual Mission

I—India’s Mission Is to Give the Example of Spirituality

“From a spiritual point of view, India is the foremost country in the world. Its mission is to give the example of spirituality. Sri Aurobindo came on earth to teach this to the world.

This fact is so obvious, that even a simple, ignorant farmer here is in his heart closer to the Divine than all the intellectuals of Europe.” (CTMS: February 8, 1972)

“Spirituality is not equivalent to merely good intentions, good preachments, good actions. A humanitarian or philanthropic turn of life is not spiritual in the profoundest sense. When we speak of spirituality, the obvious distinction we make is that it is not sensuality and greed. The second distinction is that it is not the temper and outlook we have come to know as Marxism. The third and more subtle distinction is that it is not identical with moralism and humanism, though both can serve as a help to the growth of the spiritual consciousness. Direct mystical vision and experience are the essentials. When we speak of spirituality we think of a St. Francis or a St. Teresa, a Mirabai or a Tukaram or a Kabir, and on the top level a Zoroaster, a Christ, a Krishna, a Sri Aurobindo. Unless India takes up her work in the world with a proper realisation of the spiritual mission that is hers, she will fail to achieve much, and sooner or later the forces against which she sets herself will frustrate her.” (IWSKDS: 86)

“There aren't two like this one; it is true that there aren't two countries alike, but the others are all sorts of different things on the same plane, while this is found only here.

It's something you breathe in with the country's atmosphere.

I had this experience very, very strongly. When I left here [in 1915], as I got farther away, I felt as if emptied of something, and once in the Mediterranean, I wasn't able to bear it any longer: I fell ill. And even in Japan, which outwardly is a marvelous country—marvelously beautiful and harmonious (it WAS, I don't know what it is nowadays), and outwardly it was a joy every minute, a breathtaking joy, so strong was the expression of beauty—yet I felt empty, empty, empty, I absolutely lacked ... (Mother opens her mouth as though suffocating) ... I lacked the important Thing. And I found it again only when I came back here.” (CTMS: September 29, 1965)

“For … for years, even from the time Sri Aurobindo was here, there had been the vision—an inner vision—that India is the place where the fate of the earth will be decided. So the two opposite possibilities are there. As if it were said that if there were war, it would be over India; that the world conflict… (how can I put it?), the ISSUE would be played out over India. But will the Force of Peace be sufficient to prevent war? There's the whole question. But the whirl of forces is here, over India.

And since this Consciousness came, things have been accelerating.” (CTMS: April 19, 1969)

Disciple: Do you think that it is more easy to get the spiritual life in India than in any other country?

Sri Aurobindo: It is not a question of my thinking, it is a fact.  Because we have been doing that work for the last four to five thousand years the whole past is living in a remarkable way, so that the slightest touch can open a man to it if he has anything in him which supplies the necessary material.

Disciple: Why is it that the spiritual life is more difficult in Europe than in India.

Sri Aurobindo: Firstly, because the Europeans never had it in such a degree as the Indians ; and secondly what they had is far away from their mental and vital life, and so it has receded behind.  Perhaps it is coming back now there also. That is why Europeans who have got a spiritual aspiration turn to India. It does not mean that they turn to Indians but to the accumulated spiritual force that is here. At any rate it is easy to make a start in India.

Disciple : Is it not also easier to fight the obstacles that come in the spiritual life in India than outside?

Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily,—and not all. There are some obstacles which you can easily overcome here but there are others which you can overcome more easily in Europe. For instance, Mayavada is more difficult to get rid of in India than in Europe.

Disciple: Are Indians more spiritual than other people?

Sri Aurobindo: No, it is not so. No nation is entirely spiritual.

But behind the Indian race there is a past spiritual influence.” (ETABP: 434–435)

II—India’s Mission: Building India for Sake of Humanity

(Message for broadcast by All India Radio, Pondicherry, on its inauguration day)

“O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony.” (CWM 13: 367)

“In the message for the radio You substituted the word ‘union’ for the word ‘unity’. May I know, Sweet Mother, why this change was made?

Because most people, when they hear the word ‘unity’, understand uniformity and nothing can be further from the truth.” (CWM 16: 368)

“Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity—this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, ‘The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, ... by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, ... and by conquering from within external Nature.” (CWSA 13: 6–7)

“... [India] which has a great part to play in determining the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.” (CWSA 36: 474)

“… [India] is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity…. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle.” Karmayogin (CWSA 13: 3–4)

“In spite of all drawbacks and in spite of downfall the spirit of Indian culture, its central ideas, its best ideals have still their message for humanity and not for India alone. And we in India hold that they are capable of developing out of themselves by contact with new need and idea as good and better solutions of the problems before us than those which are offered to us second hand from Western sources.” (CWSA 20: 80)

“India must be saved for the good of the world since India alone can lead the world to peace and a new world order.” (CWM 13: 353)

III—India’s Mission: Human Brotherhood

“Her [India’s] mission is to point back humanity to the true source of human liberty, human equality, human brotherhood. When man is free in spirit, all other freedom is at his command; for the Free is the Lord who cannot be bound. When he is liberated from delusion, he perceives the divine equality of the world which fulfils itself through love and justice, and this perception transfuses itself into the law of government and society. When he has perceived this divine equality, he is brother to the whole world, and in whatever position he is placed he serves all men as his brothers by the laws of love, by the law of justice. When this perception becomes the basis of religion, of philosophy, of social speculation and political aspiration, then will liberty, equality and fraternity take their place in the structure of society and the Satya Yuga return.” (CWSA 07: 931-932)

“Not individual selfishness and mutually consuming struggle but love and the binding of individuals into a single inseperable life is the national impulse. It sought to fulfil itself in the past by the bond of blood in the joint family, by the bond of a partial communism in the village system, by the bond of birth and a corporate sense of honour in the caste. it may seek a more perfect and spiritual bond in the future.” (CWSA 08: 65)

IV—Why Only India Can Bring Human Brotherhood in Humanity?

“God's Lila in man moves always in a circle, from Satyayuga to Kali and through Kali to the Satya, from the Age of Gold to the Age of Iron and back again through the Iron to the Gold. In modern language the Satyayuga is a period of the world in which a harmony, stable and sufficient, is created and man realises for a time, under certain conditions and limitations, the perfection of his being. The harmony exists in its nature, by the force of a settled purity; but afterwards it begins to break down and man upholds it, in the Treta, by force of will, individual and collective; it breaks down further and he attempts to uphold it in the Dwapara by intellectual regulation and common consent and rule; then in the Kali it finally collapses and is destroyed. But the Kali is not merely evil; in it the necessary conditions are progressively built up for a new Satya, another harmony, a more advanced perfection. In the period of the Kali which has passed, still endures in its effects, but is now at an end, there has been a general destruction of the ancient knowledge and culture. Only a few fragments remain to us in the Vedas, Upanishads and other sacred works and in the world's confused traditions. But the time is at hand for a first movement upward, the first attempt to build up a new harmony and perfection. That is the reason why so many ideas are abroad for the perfection of human society, knowledge, religion and morals. But the true harmony has not yet been found.

It is only India that can discover the harmony, because it is only by a change—not a mere readjustment—of man's present nature that it can be developed, and such a change is not possible except by yoga. The nature of man and of things is at present a discord, a harmony that has got out of tune. The whole heart and action and mind of man must be changed, but from within, not from without, not by political and social institutions, not even by creeds and philosophies, but by realisation of God in ourselves and the world and a remoulding of life by that realisation. This can only be effected by Purnayoga, a yoga not devoted to a particular purpose, even though that purpose be Mukti or Ananda, but to the fulfilment of the divine humanity in ourselves and others.” (CWSA 13: 72–73)

“The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.” (CWSA 23: 15)

“… if the greatness of a people and a civilisation is to be reckoned by its military aggressiveness, its scale of foreign conquest, its success in warfare against other nations and the triumph of its organized acquisitive and predatory instincts, its irresistible push towards annexation and exploitation, it must be confessed that India ranks perhaps the lowest in the list of the world's great peoples. At no time does India seem to have been moved towards an aggressive military and political expansion beyond her own borders; no epic of world dominion, no great tale of far-borne invasion or expanding colonial empire has ever been written in the tale of Indian achievement. The sole great endeavour of expansion, of conquest, of invasion she attempted was the expansion of her culture, the invasion and conquest of the Eastern world by the Buddhistic idea and the penetration of her spirituality, art and thought-forces. And this was an invasion of peace and not of war, for to spread a spiritual civilisation by force and physical conquest, the vaunt or the excuse of modern imperialism, would have been uncongenial to the ancient cast of her mind and temperament and the idea underlying her Dharma. A series of colonising expeditions carried indeed Indian blood and Indian culture to the islands of the archipelago, but the ships that set out from both the eastern and western coast were not fleets of invaders missioned to annex those outlying countries to an Indian empire but of exiles or adventurers carrying with them to yet uncultured peoples Indian religion, architecture, art, poetry, thought, life, manners. The idea of empire and even of world-empire was not absent from the Indian mind, but its world was the Indian world and the object the founding of the imperial unity of its peoples.” (CWSA 20: 426–427)

V—India’s Mission: Role in Asia

“Another dream was for the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia and her [Indis’s] return to her great role in the progress of human civilisation. Asia has arisen; large parts are now quite free or are at this moment being liberated; … There India has her part to play and has begun to play it with an energy and ability which already indicate the measure of her possibilities and the place she can take in the council of the nations.” The Fifteenth of August 1947 Message. (CWSA 36: 479).

“All Asia has always had the spiritual tendency in more or less intensity, with more or less clearness; but in this essential matter India is the quintessence [perfect example] of the Asiatic way of being.” (CWSA 20: 57–58)

“The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim.” (CWSA 13: 6–7)

“... that great events in Europe, even when they are outwardly spiritual, have usually an intellectual or social trend & significance, but great events in Asia have even when they are outwardly intellectual, social or political a spiritual significance. Therefore when Asia once more becomes the theatre of the world's chief events, it is a sure sign that some great spiritual revolution, perhaps a great age of spirituality is preparing for humanity.” (CWSA 12: 394)

“When he [man] has perceived this divine equality, he is brother to the whole world, ... When this perception becomes the basis of religion, of philosophy, of social speculation and political aspiration, then will liberty, equality and fraternity take their place in the structure of society ... This is the Asiatic reading of democracy which India must rediscover for herself before she can give it to the world. It is the dharma of every man to be free in soul, bound to service not by compulsion but by love; to be equal in spirit, apportioned his place in society by his capacity to serve society, not by the interested selfishness of others; to be in harmonious relations with his brother men, linked to them by mutual love and service, not by shackles of servitude, … It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action, and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe. Through dharma the Asiatic evolution fulfils itself; this is her secret.”  (CWSA 07: 931-932)

The concept of Dharma.

“Dharma in the spiritual sense is not morality or ethics. Dharma, says the Gita elsewhere, is action governed by the swabhava, the essential law of one's nature. And this swabhava is at its core the pure quality of the spirit in its inherent power of conscious will and in its characteristic force of action.” (CWSA 19: 275)

“Dharma in the language of the Gita means the innate law of the being and its works and an action proceeding from and determined by the inner nature, svabhāva-niyataṁ karma. In the lower ignorant consciousness of mind, life and body there are many dharmas, many rules, many standards and laws because there are many varying determinations and types of the mental, vital and physical nature. The immortal Dharma is one; it is that of the highest spiritual divine consciousness and its powers, parā prakṛtiḥ. It is beyond the three gunas, and to reach it all these lower dharmas have to be abandoned, sarva-dharmân parityajya.” (CWSA 19: 405–406)

“... must have the firm faith that India must rise and be great and that everything that happened, every difficulty, every reverse must help and further their end. The trend was upward and the time of decline was over, The morning was at hand and once the light had shown itself, it could never be night again. The dawn would soon be complete and the sun rise over the horizon. The sun of India’s destiny would rise and fill all India with its light and overflow India and overflow Asia and overflow the world. Every hour, every moment could only bring them nearer to the brightness of the day that God had decreed.” (CWSA 08: 17)

VI—How India Is Suited for the Role To Be the Leader of the Asiatic Countries?

“It is perfectly true that India wants to be the leader of the Asiatic countries. She is eminently fitted for the role because in all Asia hers is the most balanced and profound vision of values. … Japan … the strength of the fine aesthetic cultural sense in her deeper consciousness … Today, she is in an ambiguous condition: although the Tojo-mentality is not active any more, the deep self of her is not given unrestrained play, partly because it was trodden too much underfoot by that mentality and partly because MacArthur's Americanism, admirable in its own way, is yet out of tune with the native genius of the country. Japan is neither physically nor psychologically in a position to lead Asia. China is too torn with civil strife to be at present anything except a most difficult problem. And, if in the near future she gets completely communised on the Soviet pattern, there will be a marked loss of that wide and calm and humble wisdom which, in spite of all the banditry for which the country has been notorious, pervaded the national consciousness. Even otherwise, China would be too sprawling and shapeless, too unintegrated to make her great patient soul manifest and active in the van of Asiatic life. India easily takes her place in the van both by being most luminously aware of her typically Eastern spiritual self and by having a fairly organised and modernised national existence.

But to be Asia's leader does not necessarily mean a development of imperialism. ... We have ample resources, immense manpower, brilliant gifts, and we can easily stand on a high technological and military level. Yet technological and military supremacy can never be our end and goal if we are true to ourselves. Material might, for India, can only be a natural expression of spiritual might, an outflow from her depths on to the surface, an outflow which brings even to the surface the light and beauty of the depths. We who have won our freedom with no mere patriotic slogan but with the soul's cry of worship to the Godhead within us—vande mataram, ‘I bow to Thee, O Mother’—we can never find self-fulfilment in any imperialistic ambition.

Imperialism on our part may seem instrumental in carrying far and wide the benefits of our spiritual civilisation, but in the very act of being imperialistic we shall lose of that civilisation's significance a most important shade: Swabhava, Swadharma, Swaraj—the being's own nature, own law, own rule. What India, in consonance with her broad synthetising multi-mooded spirituality, can rightly do is to kindle everywhere in Asia the flame of the soul's aspiration and make this flame find its own colour and form according to the type and characteristic of each nation. Not by imposing her culture by material might and establishing a sort of benevolent and educative imperialism but by intensely inspiring her neighbours with the splendid ideal that is hers and by awakening in their individualities a new and natural force of a broad synthetising multi-mooded spirituality, can India accomplish the mission of leadership that has come to be hers in Asia today.

And if she guards against imperialistic ambition, if she aspires to tower above the peoples around her as the great Mother of Wisdom and Harmony she will be supreme not merely in Asia today but in the whole world tomorrow.” (IWSKDS: 6–7)

VII—India’s Mission: Unification of Humankind

“The unification of mankind is under way, though only in an imperfect initiative, organised but struggling against tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there and, if the experience of history can be taken as a guide, it must inevitably increase until it conquers. Here too India has begun to play a prominent part and, if she can develop that larger statesmanship which is not limited by the present facts and immediate possibilities but looks into the future and brings it nearer, her presence may make all the difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development. A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being done, but even then the final result is sure. For in any case the unification is a necessity in the course of Nature, an inevitable movement and its achievement can be safely foretold. Its necessity for the nations also is clear, for without it the freedom of the small peoples can never be safe hereafter and even large and powerful nations cannot really be secure. India, if she remains divided, will not herself be sure of her safety. It is therefore to the interest of all that union should take place. Only human imbecility and stupid selfishness could prevent it. Against that, it has been said, even the gods strive in vain; but it cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. Nationalism will then have fulfilled itself; an international spirit and outlook must grow up and international forms and institutions; even it may be such developments as dual or multilateral citizenship and a voluntary fusion of cultures may appear in the process of the change and the spirit of nationalism losing its militancy may find these things perfectly compatible with the integrity of its own outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.” The Fifteenth of August 1947 Message. (CWSA 36: 476–477)

“No nation or community can any longer remain psychologically cloistered and apart in the unity of the modern world. It may even be said that the future of humanity depends most upon the answer that will be given to the modern riddle of the Sphinx by the East and especially by India, the hoary guardian of the Asiatic idea and its profound spiritual secrets. For the most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge. The West never really succeeded in spiritualising itself and latterly it has been habituated almost exclusively to an action in the external governed by political and economic ideals and necessities; in spite of the reawakening of the religious mind and the growth of a widespread but not yet profound or luminous spiritual and psychical curiosity and seeking, it has to act solely in the things of this world and to solve its problems by mechanical methods and as the thinking political and economic animal, simply because it knows no other standpoint and is accustomed to no other method. On the other hand the East, though it has allowed its spirituality to slumber too much in dead forms, has always been open to profound awakenings and preserves its spiritual capacity intact, even when it is actually inert and uncreative. Therefore the hope of the world lies in the re-arousing in the East of the old spiritual practicality and large and profound vision and power of organisation under the insistent contact of the West and in the flooding out of the light of Asia on the Occident, no longer in forms that are now static, effete, unadaptive, but in new forms stirred, dynamic and effective.

India, the heart of the Orient, has to change as the whole West and the whole East are changing, and it cannot avoid changing in the sense of the problems forced upon it by Europe. The new Orient must necessarily be the result either of some balance and fusion or of some ardent struggle between progressive and conservative ideals and tendencies. If therefore the conservative mind in this country opens itself sufficiently to the necessity of transformation, the resulting culture born of a resurgent India may well bring about a profound modification in the future civilisation of the world.

But if it remains shut up in dead fictions, or tries to meet the new needs with the mind of the schoolman and the sophist dealing with words and ideas in the air rather than actual fact and truth and potentiality, or struggles merely to avoid all but a scanty minimum of change, then, since the new ideas cannot fail to realise themselves, the future India will be formed in the crude mould of the Westernised social and political reformer whose mind, barren of original thought and unenlightened by vital experience, can do nothing but reproduce the forms and ideas of Europe and will turn us all into halting apes of the West. Or else, and that perhaps is the best thing that can happen, a new spiritual awakening must arise from the depths of this vast life that shall this time more successfully include in its scope the great problems of earthly life as well as those of the soul and its transmundane destinies, an awakening that shall ally itself closely with the renascent spiritual seeking of the West and with its yearning for the perfection of the human race. This third and as yet unknown quantity is indeed the force needed throughout the East. For at present we have only two extremes of a conservative immobility and incompetence imprisoned in the shell of past conventions and a progressive force hardly less blind and ineffectual because secondhand and merely imitative of nineteenth-century Europe, with a vague floating mass of uncertainty between. The result is a continual fiasco and inability to evolve anything large, powerful, sure and vital, a drifting in the stream of circumstance, a constant grasping at details and unessentials and failure to reach the heart of the great problems of life which the age is bringing to our doors. Something is needed which tries to be born; but as yet, in the phrase of the Veda, the Mother holds herself compressed in smallness, keeps the Birth concealed within her being and will not give it forth to the Father. When she becomes great in impulse and conception, then we shall see it born.” (CWSA 13: 137–139)

State of Pondicherry; a meeting place of all cultures of the world

(Description of a model by an Ashram artist which symbolised the significance of the State of Pondicherry)

“The new State of Pondicherry is here represented by a small country craft carrying a pavilion. The four principal pillars of this pavilion are the four Continents of Asia, Europe, Africa and America. Asia is represented by the Buddha, Europe by Pallas, Athene, Africa by Isis and America by the Statue of Liberty. The spiritual supports upbear the globe of the world on which the Dove of Peace descends from on high. On either side of the globe stand an Indian lady with a welcoming leaf of palm and a French lady with an auspicious olive branch. This amity between the Orient and the Occident augurs well for an enduring peace and concord among nations.

The open spaces between the four pillars of the pavilion are covered by entwining creepers with alternating red and white lotuses. The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution.

At the four corners of the pavilion stand four guarding lions symbolising spiritual Powers.

It is hoped that the State of Pondicherry will materialise this spiritual vision and become a meeting place of all the cultures of the world with the full consciousness of the fundamental Unity that binds the peoples of the world together.” (CWM 13: 374)

Unity of Human Race

“The most important idea is that the unity of the human race can be achieved neither by uniformity nor by domination and subjection. Only a synthetic organisation of all nations, each one occupying its true place according to its own genius and the part it has to play in the whole, can bring about a comprehensive and progressive unification which has any chance of enduring. And if this synthesis is to be a living one, the grouping should be effectuated around a central idea that is as wide and as high as possible, in which all tendencies, even the most contradictory, may find their respective places. This higher idea is to give men the conditions of life they need in order to be able to prepare themselves to manifest the new force that will create the race of tomorrow.

All impulsions of rivalry, all struggle for precedence and domination must disappear and give way to a will for harmonious organisation, for clear-sighted and effective collaboration” (CWM 12: 40).

“The first aim will therefore be to help individuals to become aware of the fundamental genius of the nation to which they belong and at the same time to bring them into contact with the ways of life of other nations, so that they learn to know and respect equally the true spirit of all the countries of the world. For, in order to be real and workable, any world-organisation must be based on this mutual respect and understanding between nation and nation as well as between individual and individual.

Only in order and collective organisation, in collaboration based on mutual goodwill, is there any possibility of lifting man out of the painful chaos in which he finds himself now.”  (CWM 12: 41–42)

“All countries are equal and essentially ‘one’.

Each of them represents an aspect of the One Supreme.

In the terrestrial manifestation they all have the same right to a free expression of themselves.

From the spiritual point of view, the importance of a country does not depend on its size or its power or its authority over other countries, but on its response to Truth and on the degree of Truth it is capable of manifesting.” (CWM 13: 383)

“Nature secures variation by division into groups and insists on liberty by the force of individuality in the members of the group. Therefore the unity of the human race to be entirely sound and in consonance with the deepest laws of life must be founded on free groupings, and the groupings again must be the natural association of free individuals. This is an ideal which it is certainly impossible to realise under present conditions or perhaps in any near future of the human race; but it is an ideal which ought to be kept in view, for the more we can approximate to it, the more we can be sure of being on the right road.” (CWSA 25: 513–514)

“The first principle of human unity, groupings being necessary, should be a system of free and natural groupings which would leave no room for internal discords, mutual incompatibilities and repression and revolt as between race and race or people and people.” (CWSA 25: 429)

“The unity of humanity is an underlying and existing fact.

But the external union of mankind depends on man’s goodwill and sincerity.” (CWM 15: 66)

“We conclude then that in the conditions of the world at present, even taking into consideration its most disparaging features and dangerous possibilities, there is nothing that need alter the view we have taken of the necessity and inevitability of some kind of world-union; the drive of Nature, the compulsion of circumstances and the present and future need of mankind make it inevitable. The general conclusions we have arrived at will stand and the consideration of the modalities and possible forms or lines of alternative or successive development it may take. The ultimate result must be the formation of a World-State and the most desirable form of it would be a federation of free nationalities in which all subjection or forced inequality and subordination of one to another would have disappeared and, though some might preserve a greater natural influence, all would have an equal status. A confederacy would give the greatest freedom to the nations constituting the World-State, but this might give too much room for fissiparous or centrifugal tendencies to operate; a federal order would then be the most desirable. All else would be determined by the course of events and by general agreement or the shape given by the ideas and necessities that may grow up in the future. A world-union of this kind would have the greatest chances of long survival or permanent existence. This is a mutable world and uncertainties and dangers might assail or trouble for a time; the formed structure might be subjected to revolutionary tendencies as new ideas and forces emerged and produced their effect on the general mind of humanity, but the essential step would have been taken and the future of the race assured or at least the present era overpassed in which it is threatened and disturbed by unsolved needs and difficulties, precarious conditions, immense upheavals, huge and sanguinary world-wide conflicts and the threat of others to come. The ideal of human unity would be no longer an unfulfilled ideal but an accomplished fact and its preservation given into the charge of the united human peoples. Its future destiny would lie on the knees of the gods and, if the gods have a use for the continued existence of the race, may be left to lie there safe.” (CWSA 25: 594–595)

(World Union, founded in November 1958, is a charitable society primarily working for human unity and world peace on a spiritual foundation and is inspired in its work by Sri Aurobindo’s book The Ideal of Human Unity.)

“The World is a unity—it has always been, and it is always so, even now it is so—it is not that it has not got the unity and the unity has to be brought in from outside and imposed upon it.

Only the world is not conscious of its unity. It has to be made conscious.

We consider now is the time most propitious for the endeavour.

For, a new Force or Consciousness or Light—whatever you call the new element—has manifested into the world and the world has now the capacity to become conscious of its own unity.” 25 March 1960 (CWM 15: 62)

(Message for the First World Conference of the Sri Aurobindo Society)

The future of the earth depends on a change of consciousness.

The only hope for the future is in a change of man’s consciousness and the change is bound to come.

But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate for this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crashing circumstances.

So, wake up and collaborate!

Blessings.” August 1964; (CWM 15: 60)

VIII—India’s Mission: Initiative in the Next Step of Evolution

“The spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India’s spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice.

… if this evolution is to take place, since it must come through a growth of the spirit and the inner consciousness, the initiative can come from India and although the scope must be universal, the central movement may be hers.” The Fifteenth of August 1947 Message (CWSA 36: 477)

“There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts.  Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it.

You have the immense privilege of having come quite young to the Ashram, that is to say, still plastic and capable of being moulded according to this new ideal and thus become the representatives of the new race. Here, in the Ashram, you are in the most favourable conditions with regard to the environment, the influence, the teaching and the example, to awaken in you this supramental consciousness and to grow according to its law.” (CWM 12: 116)

“Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood.

The step from man towards superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence—inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.

The appearance of a human possibility in a material and animal world was the first glint of a coming divine Light,—the first far-off intimation of a godhead to be born out of Matter. The appearance of the superman in the human world will be the fulfilment of that distant shining promise.

The difference between man and superman will be the difference between mind and a consciousness as far beyond it as thinking mind is beyond the consciousness of plant and animal; the differentiating essence of man is mind, the differentiating essence of superman will be supermind or a divine gnosis.” (CWSA 12: 157)

“Man is a transitional being; he is not final. As it did not begin with him, neither does it end with him. He is not its evident crown, not its highest issue, not the last clear sum of Nature. Nature has not brought out in man her highest possibilities; she has not reached in him the supreme heights of consciousness and being; as there was before him the infrahuman, the insect and animal, so there shall be after him the superhuman, the superman.

Man may himself become the superman, he may become all that he is not now; but for that he must exceed himself. It is not by clinging to his present imperfect consciousness that he can take the next step in the evolution. He must discover and release the spiritual godhead within him, realise his divine possibilities, be himself the giant potential something, the divine someone who has been struggling into emergence out of the original plasm that imprisoned it since began the mystery of terrestrial Nature.” (CWSA 12: 265)

“Man is a transitional being, he is not final. He is too imperfect for that, too imperfect in capacity for knowledge, too imperfect in will and action, too imperfect in his turn towards joy and beauty, too imperfect in his will for freedom and his instinct for order. Even if he could perfect himself in his own type, his type is too low and small to satisfy the need of the universe. Something larger, higher, more capable of a rich all embracing universality is needed, a greater being, a greater consciousness summing up in itself all that the world set out to be. He has, … to exceed himself; man must evolve out of himself the divine superman: he was born for transcendence. Humanity is not enough, it is only a strong stepping stone; the need of the world is a superhuman perfection of what the world can be, the goal of consciousness is divinity. The inmost need of man is not to perfect his humanity, but to be greater than himself, to be more than man, to be divine, even to be the Divine.

To rest in humanity is to rest in imperfection; the perfect man would be a self-contented finality of incompleteness. His nature is transitional and there is therefore in it an innate tendency to strive towards something more.

— Unless indeed he turned aside from his destiny, became a two-legged termite content with a perfectly arranged or sufficiently comfortable material order. He would […] exist, deteriorate or become stable like the ant or the dung-beetle or after attaining complete efficiency, disappear like the sloth, the mammoth, the pterodactyl or the dinosaur. His innate reason for existence would have ceased and with it his necessity for being.

But this cannot be; there is something in him that forbids it. But this most—that humanity cannot realise itself except by passing into supermanhood.

The saint, the sage, the seer, the inspired man of action, the creator,—these are his summits of being. Beyond him is the supramental being, the spiritual superman.” (CWSA 12: 230–231)

“I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always … that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual, that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading until he has raised himself on to the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilized, organized, turned upon life?  How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fullness and complete imperative presence — therefore I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action,—not to build except on a perfect foundation.” (CWSA 36: 260–261)

“We see that each progress of Nature, each manifestation of a new capacity and principle upon earth is marked by the appearance of a new species. In the same way, the progressive forms of the life of races, of peoples, of individuals, follow each other through the human cycles, ceaselessly inspired, fecundated, renewed by the efforts of the guides of humanity. And all these forms aim at the same goal, the mysterious, the glorious goal of Nature. …

First of all we must be careful, in our attempt to conceive the future man or superman, not to adopt an actual type of man, perfecting or aggrandising him. To avoid as much as possible this mistake we should study the teachings of life’s evolution.

We have already seen that the appearance of a new species always announces the manifestation on earth of a new principle, a new plane of consciousness, a new force or power. But, at the same time while the new species acquires this formerly unmanifested power or consciousness, it may lose one or many of the perfections which were the characteristics of the immediately preceding species. …

It is true that some men, very few, have lived in that world beyond, which we may call the spiritual; ... But that which was the privilege of a few beings scattered through time and space, shall become the central characteristic of the new type which is to appear.

At present, man governs his life through reason; all the activities of the mind are of common use for him; his means of knowledge are observation and deduction; it is by and through reasoning that he takes his decision and chooses his way—or believes he does—in life.

The new race shall be governed by intuition, that is to say, direct perception of the divine law within. Some human beings actually know and experience intuition—as, undoubtedly, certain big gorillas of the forests have glimpses of reasoning.” (CWM 2: 161–163)

“... the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age, will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being, an evolution or conversion of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity.

They will be comparatively indifferent to particular belief and form of religion, and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They will only hold as essential the faith in the spiritual conversion. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality.” (CWM 2: 165–166)

"Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each one to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of the new species. For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no raison d'être." (CTMS: September 21, 1966)

“An American wrote to say how sad it was to see all this disorder in India (a very nice letter), and at the end he said, "If all of India could be a large Sri Aurobindo Ashram, then she would go on and on progressing." It was very nice.

There is clearly a great movement.... Yesterday again I saw a man who was governor of Madras for a while. He came here (he was passing through Pondicherry but wanted to stop here), and the man asked me, ‘Is there a solution?’ And he added, ‘We are all praying that you may give it.’ I answered ... (Mother smiles) that I had nothing to do with politics. But he represents a whole category of people in India who now think that there is indeed only one solution, which is precisely an attempt to realize a higher life.

There is a great movement.

Yesterday there came a letter from S.M.  in which he said that Indira Gandhi is really relying on him in the hope of finding a way out and that things will improve a little. And he said that he hoped he would make the true spirit and knowledge triumph.... Only, his health isn't good, otherwise he would have there a wonderful opportunity to do something, because she calls him every day to ask him his advice on what should be done, and he is present at all the ministers' meetings. Which means that the two things are really going together: the new movement and the apparent disorder.” (CTMS: November 30, 1966)

“One needs to have an absolutely transparent sincerity. Lack of sincerity is at present the cause of difficulties.

Insincerity is in all men. There are perhaps a hundred totally sincere men on earth. Man's very nature is what makes him insincere. It's very complicated, for he is constantly cheating with himself, hiding the truth from himself, finding excuses for himself. Yoga is the way to become sincere in all the parts of one's being.

It is difficult to be sincere, but one can at least be mentally sincere - this is what one can demand from Aurovilians.

The Force is there, present as never before; what prevents it from descending and being felt is men's insincerity. The world is steeped in falsehood, all relationships between men have so far been based only on falsehood and deceit. Diplomacy between nations is based on falsehood. They claim they want peace and on the other hand arm themselves. A transparent sincerity in man and between nations will alone permit the coming of a transformed world.

Auroville is the first attempt in the experiment. A new world will be born if men consent to strive for transformation and the search for sincerity - it can be done. It took millennia to evolve from animal to man; today man, thanks to his mind, can accelerate things and will a transformation towards a man who will be God.

This transformation with the help of the mind, through self-analysis, is a first stage; afterwards, vital impulses must be transformed - which is far more difficult; then, most of all, the physical: each cell of our body will have to become conscious. It is the work I am doing here. It will allow the conquest of death. It's another story; that will be future mankind, perhaps in centuries, perhaps sooner. It will depend on men, on peoples.

Auroville is the first step towards this goal.” (CTMS: February 28, 1968)

“Then the question about building a greater India founded upon the Truth was put to Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo: I have no such ambition. My ambition is to bring down this Truth [super mind] into the world and I don’t think its sphere would be confined to India. India may be the starting-point but it would act on the whole of humanity.

As to the nature of the work to be done for the world, I don’t want to speak now. It is best to leave it to be done at the proper time. But it is the Truth that has to come down and show the form that the work must take. Whatever form it may take, ours is only to be fit instruments for the manifestation of the Truth.” (ETABP: 411–412)

IX—India’s Mission: Task of the Creation of a Nucleus of Super-humanity

“A far greater task will be hers: the creation of a nucleus of super-humanity which will be the dissolvent of whatever in the two blocs resists not merely each other but the deep soul of the world that moves upwards as well as onwards -- a nucleus of super-humanity which will transform the animal in us to a divine potency, the luminous lion of Durga or the inspired eagle of Vishnu.” (IWSKDS: 87)

Section Five: Warning

I—Whatever Country Seizes on the Lines of New Evolution Will Be the Leader of Humanity

“My present teaching is that the world is preparing for a new progress, a new evolution. Whatever race, whatever country seizes on the lines of that new evolution and fulfils it, will be the leader of humanity. In the Arya I state the thought upon which this new evolution will be based as I see it, and the method of Yoga by which it can be accomplished. Of course, I cannot speak plainly yet my whole message, for obvious reasons; I have to put it in a severe, colorless fashion which cannot be pleasing to the emotional and excitement-seeking Bengali mind. But the message is there, for those who care to understand. It has really three parts: (1) for each man as an individual to change himself into the future type of divine humanity, the men of the new Satyayuga which is striving to be born; (2) to evolve a race of such men to lead humanity and (3) to call all humanity to the path under the lead of these pioneers and this chosen race. India and especially Bengal have the best chance and the best right to create that race and become the leaders of the future,—to do in the right way what Germany thought of doing in the wrong way. But first they must learn to think, to cast away old ideas, and turn their faces resolutely to the future. But they cannot do this, if they merely copy European politics or go on eternally reproducing Buddhist asceticism. I am afraid the Ramakrishna Mission with all its good intention is only going to give us Shankaracharya and Buddhistic humanitarianism. But that is not the goal to which the world is moving. Meanwhile remember that these are very difficult times and careful walking is necessary.” (CWSA 36: 225)

II—Whatever Nation Is First to Solve the Internal Problems Will Lead the World

“But in Europe and India alike we seem to stand on the threshold of a vast revolution, political, social and religious. Whatever nation now is the first to solve the problems which are threatening to hammer Governments, creeds, societies into pieces all the world over, will lead the world in the age that is coming. It is our ambition that India should be that nation. But in order that she should be what we wish, it is necessary that she should be capable of unsparing revolution. She must have the courage of her past knowledge and the immensity of soul that will measure itself with her future. This is impossible to England, it is not impossible to India.” (CWSA 08: 457)

“When India, emerging victorious from a deadly combat, regains her territorial integrity; when, emerging triumphant from a moral crisis that is more deadly still—since instead of killing the body it destroys the soul-contact, a much greater tragedy—India resumes her true place and mission in the world, these petty quarrels over governmental and political rivalries, which consist entirely of personal interests and ambitions, will be automatically resolved in a just and enlightened accord.”  17 April 1954 (CWM 13: 353–354)

“I pray to you to save India from the Indians.

Yes, it seems rather necessary.”  (CWM 17: 250)

“The country feels much concerned about national unity. What is the Mother’s vision of things? How will India do her duty by herself and by the world?

The unity of all the nations is the compelling future of the world. But for the unity of all nations to be possible, each nation must first realise its own unity.”  (CWM 12: 250–251)

Section Six: India at Present Is Far From the Truth

I—At Present Much Needs to Be Done in India

“India is supposed to be the Guru of the world in order to establish the spiritual life on earth. But, Mother, in order to occupy this high position she must be worthy politically, morally and physically, mustn’t she?

Without any doubt—and just now, there is much to be done!” (CWM 13: 366)

“The future of India is luminous in spite of its present gloom.” (CWM 13:363)

“India has a role to fulfil in the world. But this is something ideal and one that requires a conversion which... in any case, it has not yet taken place, as far as I know. From the superficial, external point of view she could play her part if she were sincere.” (CWM 7: 303)

“Let me tell you what happened. We had here an American, a very nice boy who, before he came here, was a paratroop instructor in Israel's army. I don't think he is an Israeli, I think he's American; I am sure his nationality is American, I saw his passport. But he was a paratroop instructor in Israel's army. When those two started quarreling, he wrote me a letter in which he explained that, and also paid great compliments to the Israeli nation, saying they had achieved a really remarkable sense of brotherhood and cooperation. That was his impression of the country. And he said that if war broke out, he would like to go back there to help them as much as he could. So as soon as they started bombing each other, he decided to go. He left yesterday evening. And I saw him in the afternoon, before he left.

He is a sincere man. While he was here, Sri Aurobindo... (how can I explain?), the impression is that Sri Aurobindo ‘concretizes’ (he is always here, but at certain times he seems to concretise, as though... [Mother makes a gesture of gathering or condensing]. That's really the impression: he concretises and starts speaking). So then, first Sri Aurobindo said to him (but there was a whole WORLD in it), ‘My blessings are with you.’

The man was very touched (I didn't tell him it was Sri Aurobindo; I spoke, you understand, it was my mouth that spoke then, but it was Sri Aurobindo who spoke). Then I concentrated, and Sri Aurobindo said with great force:

‘All the countries live in falsehood. If only one country stood courageously for truth, the world might be saved.’

(silence)

Towards the end of the day, when I was alone, I began asking Sri Aurobindo precisely what he meant.... Naturally, his hope is that the country that stood for Truth would be India—for the moment, she is very far from it.” (CTMS: June 7, 1967)

“As long as they are not determined to follow the Truth I can do nothing for them outwardly.

Not the truth as they see it but the Truth as it is.

To be able to know the Truth you must be without preferences and without desires, and when you aspire for the Truth your mind must be silent.” (CWM 13: 371)

“This is because the whole world is steeped in falsehood—so all actions that arise will be false, and this situation may continue for a long time and will bring much suffering to the people and the country.

The only thing to do is to pray—from the heart—for the Divine intervention as that is the only thing that can save us. And all people who can become conscious of this must decide very firmly to stand only on the Truth and to act only in the Truth. There should be no compromise. This is very essential. It is the only way.

Even if things seem to go wrong and badly for us, as indeed they will, because of the present prevailing falsehood—we should not be deterred from our own determination to stand on the Truth.

This is the only way.” (CWM 13: 372)

II—Servitude Under the British Left India Rotten

“It is only what is obtained by one’s own exertion, which is a right, the gift of others does not constitute a right. Hence these rights are not real rights, we have no permanent lien on them; … Childishness is a main symptom of our present political life. Another symptom is the practice of servitude.  We are slaves even if we get high posts; the Civilian, the Judge, the Municipal Commissioners, the Chairman of the District Board, the Syndicate of the University, the Member of the Legislative Council wear chains, all of them are playing on the stage wearing chains (of servitude). But then we have become so low-minded that we do not feel ashamed to boast of those chains being made of gold or silver. Slavery has like a thick fog enveloped our entire life. It is a happy thing that (though) we had been dreaming so long, we have now, opening our eyes, been able to realise our low position. The idea, that this all-pervading subjugation cannot be borne any longer, (and that) independence in education, commerce and political life must be earned by any means whatever, is being diffused all over the country. This is what constitutes hope for the future. From this, we have understood that we have to awaken, we will not listen to that lullaby any more, we will not mind any obstacle or anybody’s prohibition, rise we must.” (Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research; Vol.15, December 1991, No.2; Pg.239)

“Now they want to force me into politics… and it's an unspeakable mud pit! I've never seen it as I now do, because now I SEE: I see people, things, reactions, what goes on …. It's so disgusting! … Sri Aurobindo had always told me, ‘We must keep out of politics,’ and I kept out of it.

From every side they're asking me for blessings … and I give blessings to everyone!' (Mother laughs) But I warn them, I tell them, blessings TO DO THE WORK. Each of them is asking for himself to be victorious, but ‘that’ doesn't budge. (Mother is referring to the candidates in the ongoing presidential elections. The strange and amusing part is that Mother gave her blessings to two candidates: V.V. Giri and Sanjiva Reddy; by some quirk of communications, Sanjiva Reddy was to receive them only … eight years later on 13 July 1977, the very day on which he was elected president, after V. V. Giri's successor.) (See The Hindu of July 14, 1977.) All that I've done (because I have been dragged into it) is to ask for what happens to be the best for the country's future—it has already had enough difficulties! I mean, there were two centuries of servitude under the British: that has left them com-plete-ly rotten. So it's enough. They would need to pull through. Oh… unimaginable, it's unimaginable. The chief of the police here says, ‘I can't intervene anymore, because now I'll be told that 'democratic rights' allow you to do anything …. If people enter your house’ (he says this personally), ‘if rebellious servants enter your house and I intervene, I'll be reprimanded, I'll be told, 'You have interfered in their democratic rights.’—They have a democratic right to invade a house! That's what they've turned ideas into! … Which means we're in complete madness.

It was C. who was told that, and C. replied, ‘All right, but if you no longer have a right to protect people, they have the right to defend themselves; as long as you have the power and the right to protect them, they don't have the right to defend themselves, but if you no longer have the right to protect people, they have the right to defend themselves.’ Then (laughing) the police chief said, ‘In that case it would be better if it's not the Ashram boys who defend, (Because since the 1965 attack on the Ashram, the Ashram boys have a reputation for being ‘solid.’)  because … And he said, ‘All right, all right, I'll see to it’! (Mother laughs)

In complete insanity!

In Delhi too, it's complete insanity.

Oh! … Oh … they're voting just now, and from every side everyone has asked me for help …. They're now voting … and what candidates!

One candidate is a respectable man, a fine man,' but he has been put there just to cut into the others' power! … Openly. There's no intention to nominate him at all.

No, it's unbelievable … unbelievably rotten.

But what's really at stake isn't the presidency, it's a contest to know whether Indira will be overthrown or not.

Yes, that's right.

And they're powerful, those who want to overthrow her.

Between the two candidates, it's the better one who has taken the stand of wanting to overthrow Indira.' He's a man of integrity and goodwill, but he doesn't understand, he doesn't know—they don't understand, they don't know, none of them! But I had him told that I was behind Indira (because he asked me for my help), that I was behind Indira, and he should beware—behind Indira AND WHAT SHE IS DOING. Because what she's doing, she does after asking me if she should do it, and I said yes.

It's this whole business with banks' and the swindlers who're there.

I don't know …

I think democracy … Already at the age of ten, I found democracy to be idiotic (there, in France), but anyway … It's idiotic there, in France (but that doesn't matter), but at any rate I don't think democracy is AT ALL, at all an organization in accord with India's spirit—not in the least. And the proof is that it's not at all the collectivity of people that controls things, it's a few scoundrels who push themselves forward, saying, ‘I represent this, I represent that ….” (CTMS: August 16, 1969)

(C. D. Deshmukh, who will withdraw.)

(Sanjiva Reddy, who will be elected president in 1977.)

(The nationalization of the banks decreed by Indira has caused the Congress to split into two opposing camps the "old Congress" and the "new Congress"), each one fielding its own presidential candidate.)

(In an undated note, Mother once wrote, ‘Democracy was necessary and useful a hundred years ago, but now we must go beyond it if we want to take a step forward towards a new creation’.” (CTMS: August 16, 1969)

“The nation which has passed through a century of such a misgovernment must necessarily have degenerated. The bureaucracy has taken care to destroy every centre of strength not subservient to itself. A nation politically disorganised, a nation morally corrupted, intellectually pauperised, physically broken and stunted is the result of a hundred years of British rule, … But for us the people who have suffered, the victims of the miserable misuse … Pain is a terrible disillusioner and the pangs which had come upon us were those of approaching dissolution. ... but strong poisons are the only starvation in desperate diseases and we fear that without these poisons India will not easily or ever recover from the fatal and consuming disease which has overtaken her.

What will support her under the stress of the agony she will have to undergo? What strength will help her to shake off the weaknesses which have crowded in on her? How will she raise herself from the dust whom a thousand shackles bind down? Only the strength of a superhuman ideal, only the gigantic force of a superhuman will, only the vehemence of an effort which transcends all that man has done and approaches divinity. Where will she find that strength, that force, that vehemence? In herself. … India must undergo an ordeal of passive endurance far more terrible without relaxing a single fibre of her frame. … India must work a … deliverance for herself by the … inner force. India has in herself a faith of super-human virtue to accomplish miracles, to deliver herself out of irrefragable bondage, to bring God down upon earth. She has a secret of will power which no other nation possesses. All she needs to rouse in her that faith, that will, is an ideal which will induce her to make the effort.” (CWSA 7: 1015–1017)

“Things are very bad. But in reality ... in reality that's very good, because it awakens them to the need to do something. There's no longer any security anywhere, people who left from Calcutta to come here for the 15th have been stopped on the way, their train had to be diverted because there were, I don't know, bandits somewhere.

Q: No, they weren't bandits at all! That's what's more serious: it's not bandits, it's students who stopped the trains! And to cap it all, the Chief Minister of Bengal has declared their ‘grievances’ to be ‘legitimate.’

They may be legitimate, but their action isn't.

Q: And he said their action should be regarded ‘sympathetically.’ I read that in this morning's papers, it's astounding!

(Mother laughs) Charming!

Q: They're not bandits at all!

In any case, those who were expected here are forty-eight hours late.... No, there's no longer any security: someone we know was sitting at his window in Calcutta—sitting at his table and writing—and from the street they threw a bowlful of acid at him!... Why? Nobody knows.

Q: They've lost all their values. Yesterday I met the vice-chancellor of Bangalore University; can you guess what they teach in psychology at the university? They teach Freud and Jung! European psychoanalysis! In this country where there is THE knowledge, where there is everything, they go after...

They're mad. No, the English made them thoroughly rotten. Those two hundred years of British rule left them completely rotten. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they don't know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything—they've lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by Britain, which means an absolutely corrupt business. So they don't know anything, they don't even know how to make a decision.

But still, they are beginning to think that they should ask for help from those who know.... So that opens the door.

We'll see.

If things had gone quite well ... Now the country is ruined, people are completely ruined, there are only a few bandits (I know them) who, on the contrary, are bursting at the seams, but all the others are ruined because ... because the government doesn't know how to do things, it governs with ideas, and what ideas! Ideas they picked up in the West again, which they don't understand and are already bad enough for the West, but here they become pestilential.

But now they're beginning to think that perhaps that's not the way! (Mother laughs) And that perhaps they should try another way.... In a month I have already seen four ministers. One is from here, the Chief Minister; it seems I saw him when he was a child (I don't remember, but he remembers that I had caressed him), and when he came the other day he told me (I gave him a flower and a ‘blessings packet’), he said, ‘There, I will wear it on me, and with it I will do your work in the government.’ And quite resolute. A young man, about forty, I think, and rather strong.

Q: From Madras?

No, no, from here, Pondicherry.

But I saw others, from the central government. And they don't come out of curiosity or casually, they really come because they feel the need for something.

So perhaps we'll be able to do something.... We'll see.” (CTMS: August 12, 1967)

“Even in India.

And I am beginning to believe....

That's what I observe when I am put in contact with the outside world, Europe.

… But anyway, the Old World is an OLD world in the true sense of the word. India is much, much older, but more alive. Yet now it strikes me as so very rotten! They went rotten. You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; it's difficult to heal. Otherwise, what's not rotten is truly good.” (CTMS: July 14, 1962)

III—We Begin One Thing To-day and Abandon It Tomorrow

“The talk turned to an organisation in Bengal in which the organiser made a declaration that it would use hand-made yarn for its looms without really intending to do so, or with a view to set up one or two such looms and take monetary help from the Khadi-board, keeping the rest of the looms running with machine-made yarn.

Sri Aurobindo: We, in India, lack character; it will take us long to have character.

Disciple: Then, where is the hope for India? The other day you said that India was suffering from vital depression and was afraid of new thought.

Sri Aurobindo: I did not say we have no minds or brains. I said we have no character; character has nothing to do with- the intellect.

Disciple: But then these nations that are free, have they all got the best virtues in them ?

Sri Aurobindo: I did not say that. But they work, they act, we can’t; we begin one thing to-day and leave it tomorrow.

Disciple: Then where is any hope?” (ETABP: 300)

“Sri Aurobindo: … That is why we Indians cannot win. We always think that if you are defeated you have to give up. It is not like that. The greatness lies in not giving up the struggle and refusing to accept the defeat as final. You can defeat me any number of times but I am not going to give up.

…

… No nation can be great on the principle of maintaining its existence, unless it stands for some great cause or idealism or something else great.” (ETABP: 761)

IV—Tremendous Tamas

“Sri Aurobindo: … I find it always difficult to work in Indian politics. The difficulty is that the vessels don't hold the Power, they are so weak. If the amount of force that is spent on India were spent on a European nation you would find it full of creative activities of various kinds. But here, in India, it is like sending a current of electricity through a sleeping man. He suddenly starts up, begins jerking and throwing his arms and feet about and drops down again.  He is not fully awake.

Disciple: What is it due to?

Sri Aurobindo: Due to tremendous Tamas. Don't you feel it all around, that Tamas? It is that which frustrates efforts.

Disciple: What has brought it about?

Sri Aurobindo: It is the result of various causes. It was already settling—I mean, the forces of disintegration and inertia—before the British came. And after their coming the whole Tamas has settled like a solid block. There must be some awakening before something substantial can be done. Otherwise, India has got very good men; you had Tilak, Das, Vivekananda—none of them an ordinary man and yet you see the Tamas there.” (ETAPB: 162 - 163)

V—Sri Aurobindo Took a Sterner Tone When Addressing Indians

“The other day, speaking of Europe, you said that the ‘Old World is truly old....’

Ah, look at this—yesterday someone read me a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Barin in April 1920, a few days before I returned from Japan. It was written in Bengali—tremendously interesting! He speaks of the state of the world, particularly India, and of how he envisaged a certain part of his action after completing his yoga. It's extremely interesting. And there's some very high praise for Europe. Sri Aurobindo says something like this: ‘You all think Europe is over and done with, but that's not true, it's not finished yet.’ In other words, its power is still alive.

This was in 1920.

But it was before the war....

It's very interesting.

Yet you get the feeling that with the kind of sincerity Westerners have, they would progress very quickly once they understood.

That's more or less what Sri Aurobindo was saying.

Because they're sincere.

Yes, they have a sincerity, on one level, which is not the same as spiritual sincerity. They have a material sincerity, a material HONESTY, and with that, once they understood, they would progress very quickly.

But I think it will be primarily a question of individuals, not something general.

Read this; it shows a slightly new side of Sri Aurobindo's thought. I mean, he took a sterner tone when addressing Indians, and he gave a fuller account of his experience of the West.” (CTMS: July 21, 1962)

VI—Blindly Imitating the West Neglecting Her Soul

“One sees that the world in general is at present in a sort of disequilibrium and chaos. Does this mean that it is preparing itself for the manifestation of a new force, for the descent of the Truth? Or is this the result of the action of hostile forces in revolt against this descent? And what place does India occupy in all this?

It is both at the same time. It is a chaotic means of preparation.

India should be the spiritual guide explaining what is happening and helping to shorten the movement. But, unfortunately, in her blind ambition to imitate the West, she has become materialistic and neglectful of her soul.” (CWM 13: 365 - 366)

“Disciple: Nowadays ‘spiritual’ is a word of which the meaning is known to very few people.

Sri Aurobindo: In ancient India they knew the meaning. But now obviously the Indians have got the European idea of spirituality. It is not a very deep idea. If you have strong emotion, or strong passion, or a particular type of thoughts—that is what they call spirituality. Or it is something bound up with ethics, morality and philanthrophy.                          ,

In Europe they use the word ‘spirit’ in contrast to ‘matter’. Whatever is not matter is spirit; and so if any man has high mental ideals and an aesthetic turn of mind or some ideas of social service they call him ‘spiritual’.” (ETABP: 297–298)

VII—Indian Government Had Gone Completely Crazy

“I wanted the book [The Adventure of Consciousness] to come out for February 21, 1964. That doesn't leave too much time, because... That's another marvel, it must have been one of the things Sri Aurobindo was showing me: at the [Ashram] Press, they're behind schedule for everything—and they work night and day! They have never worked so hard! Very clearly, seen from above, it's a lack of organization; for something requiring an ounce of force they have to put in ten pounds, and still it doesn't work.

It grinds and grates.

Lack of organization. But all, all of life—all of life is that way!

EVERYTHING.

To make some decision or organize something (I am referring to practical examples – I have four, five, ten of them every day), all it would take is a few minutes of clear and quiet, but TOTAL vision, and things would work out perfectly well. But then there are four or five of them to make a decision. Each one brings in his own idea, his own viewpoint, his own little angle. They throw it all together, jabber away for two hours... and nothing gets done.

So the conclusion is that I shall have to start again.... I had stopped long ago taking care of everything—long before I came upstairs, I told people, ‘See to your business yourselves.’ And what chaos it has become!... That, too, made worse by the fact that they stopped seeing me physically. The physical presence was simply keeping a rein on them.

It's unthinkable now.

But I must say it isn't confined to the Ashram: it's the same all over the world—especially in India... the government has gone completely crazy. They bombard people with papers and forms and regulations and prohibitions....

A third of my letters are either censored or lost.

Yes, exactly. More than half of my correspondence doesn't arrive. But do you know why? It's not at all that they find it suspicious or anything, it's that they are snowed under with work, tired, on edge: so instead of opening a letter carefully and making it possible to close it again, they tear it open in such a way that they can't decently pass it on! It's nothing but that. It's the same with parcels, you can't imagine! The way they open parcels... a child would do it better! It's disgusting. They break things, spoil everything, spill bottles.... Then, of course, what can they do about it? Sometimes they can't even forward the parcel, it's too damaged.” (CTMS: February 19, 1963)

“At any rate, they are conscious.... A considerable number of ministers, generals, governors (even ministers of the Central Government) are writing, not positively to ask for advice, but to ask for Help. They're not asking for advice yet (and on the external level you can't give detailed advice, you can only give general ideas). But there are some things they SHOULD NOT be doing.

How to get out of it? They have tied themselves up in knots....

Yes, it’s general—everything is rotten.

But everything is rotten because they've made regulations everywhere! Everywhere, everywhere, for everything. And appalling complications, incredibly stupid. It's unthinkable, you can't believe they're true. Regulations far more restrictive than parents give their children! Children have a greater freedom of movement than people here. There is a WILL to control which is so stupid! It's unthinkable.

And it's done almost openly. For instance, they have millions and millions to spend, given them by the Americans—they've forbidden the Americans to give A SINGLE CENT without their permission! And they will give their permission only if they have complete control over the spending. Here, at the Ashram, the Americans have expressed several times not only a will, but a very great desire to give a large amount, several million rupees, for the work—opposition from the government. So we're trying to find a way, but they give answers of this kind: ‘So long as the Mother has absolute authority, we cannot allow you to receive money, because we cannot give advice to the Mother’! In an official letter, mon petit! ... That's how it is, that's where we are—an official letter. It's unbelievable.

Anyway ... it means the Moment is going to come, and then ...

One thing is obvious, it's that if everything had gone very well, with good results, the need for a higher Help would never have occurred to them; they would have become puffed up with statistics and with satisfaction with their capacities.” (CTMS: August 14, 1964)

“Here, people are ruined.... There's an industrialist who had a magnificent industry (it seems it was marvellous), and with that income tax the government has succeeded in ruining him—he closed down. Then he partially reopened and filled in new papers for his new company and new industries; now, he had a dog, he had given a name to his dog, and he signed the papers with the dog's name! And he put the dog's photograph.... (Laughing) So, naturally, he got letters asking him if he thought people were idiots. He answered, ‘No, only a dog would accept your conditions.’ Not bad, eh?

Yes, they think people are idiots.

They are ruining the country.

There was only one place where things were still easy: it was Africa—now it's finished; now the Africans (laughing) are worse than anyone! You know how many friends we had there, how many things we used to receive from there—it's completely finished. And they are ruined. So they come here and meet with all these difficulties.

Human beings really make everything complicated!

Yes, but of course!

You'd think they enjoyed it.

I wrote a few lines, you remember, about the government. Where did I put that? (Mother looks for her note) I've added something (it will be for later, it will be the beginning of my ‘political series’):

You leave free hands to the bandits and take insulting measures against the honest people.

It will be like that so long as the country is not governed by the wisest people.

The wisest people are those who can freely and correctly read the hearts and the minds of men.

It was in the form of a conversation. I tell those who govern:

‘You leave free hands to the bandits and take insulting measures against the honest people.’

So the reply:

‘But how can we tell the bandits from the honest people until we see them at work?"

I said:

‘Yes, it will always be like that, you will always commit the same sort of blunder ... until the country is governed by the wisest people.’

‘Ah, but how can one know if they are the wisest people?’

‘The wisest people are those who can freely and correctly read the hearts and the minds of men’.” (CTMS: June 23, 1965)

“The astrologers have predicted that the next few months, March and April, and perhaps May, are going to be months of horrible confusion, battle, rebellion; and so, in their mind (a sort of subconscious mind), people feel the need to be in agreement with the astrologers! That's how it is, it's as silly as that. A spirit of imitation: ‘Oh, the astrologers said so, therefore it has to be so.’ There you are.

And it's ugly everywhere.

It is true that up till now, the government has multiplied blunders of such stupidity!... It seems a child with common sense wouldn't have committed such blunders. And naturally, even in those who have no bad will or vengeful feelings, it creates an unpleasant tension: you can't do anything anymore, you're bound on all sides! Whatever you do, there are oppositions and prohibitions everywhere. So people no longer know what to do, nobody can do anything anymore.

They have ruined the country, starved it.

But then, even on that (I don't know who is responsible for it), they have launched a campaign abroad, a campaign for ‘the poor devil starving and crying famine,’ in such a mean, oh, such a mean way! ... We get letters from everywhere, from every country (lots of letters from France), and especially from schools, centers of education, people who write, ‘We hear that you are starving, we are so appalled, what can we do to help?’ We are obliged to answer them, ‘No, we're not starving at all!’

It's pitiable.

(silence)

But up above, ‘one’ really isn't in favor of havoc.

Q:One isn't in favor of havoc?

(Mother makes a gesture of vigorous denial) It's a waste of time. All the more so as men have perfected such means of destruction that it could mean centuries lost, not just a few years. Entire civilizations to rebuild.

No, ‘one’ isn't in favour of that.

It's a seething of something very dark, very dark.

It reminds me of the words of the ‘Lord of Nations,’ the great Asura, when he told me, ‘I know that my power is drawing to its close, but you may be sure that before disappearing I will destroy everything I can.’

That's it, that's exactly it.

And unfortunately, people give him the opportunity to do so: it's stupidity, ignorance, a sort of blindness.

What's lamentable above all is the way men confuse power with violence. That sort of ignorant feeling that thinks power must manifest as violence.  Violence is an asuric deformation. True power acts in peace—a peace like this (gesture of massive descent), which nothing can disturb.” (CTMS: March 19, 1966)

“But you know, I make a point of reading an Indian newspaper every day.... You get a sense of a great decomposition.

The country? Oh, but it's rotten, mon petit! Oh, it's in an appalling condition.

But what's extraordinary is that there's nobody! There's no opposition, there's nothing.

(After a long silence) It's a subject I don't talk about, first because it's understood that we do not concern ourselves with politics; I made the decision not to concern myself with politics until WE do it, that is, until we are in power. But in spite of this, since the day of liberation (already seventeen years ago to the day—seventeen years!), I have ceaselessly repeated, ‘These people are going to ruin the country. They have neither consciousness nor knowledge nor will, and they are going to ruin the country.’ Every time, whenever they made a blunder, I repeated the same thing.

Now the country is ruined.

The famine is much worse than it was when it was supposedly ‘tragic.’ Now it's terrible. There's not enough to eat; the country is so large, there's so much uncultivated land, there are so many people without work ... and there's not enough food for everyone! And they've closed the borders: they stop the food from coming from outside, and there's not enough for everyone to eat.

But then, the number of stupid ideas these people have tried out to mend the situation - it's unbelievable! And each blunder has made the situation worse. Now it's extremely serious.

Sri Aurobindo said (he said it to me in an absolute way) that nothing could be done as long as WE weren't the government—not that we were going to start governing in person (!), but that those who govern should be people who ‘receive’ and obey. He also said that he expected that in '67, not only in India, but in the whole world, governments would begin to receive the supramental Influence. And obviously, he expected things to become EXTREMELY bad before that.... They're bad enough in the world: people are fighting everywhere, people are being killed everywhere—in Indonesia hosts of people have been murdered, in Cyprus hosts of people have been murdered. Anyway, it's an undeclared war, but it's everywhere.

…

People no longer grow crops because it's too complicated and with all those taxes (they've scores of taxes to pay), it costs them much more than they can earn. And as there isn't enough food, there are naturally individuals who try and hoard as much as they can to sell it for as high a price as possible.

The situation in which we ourselves are [at the Ashram], this difficulty, doesn't come from anything else: the government's interference in everything, its meddling in other people's affairs and putting spokes in the wheels of everything, but everything. I've got a pile of examples, of proof for every minute—all the proof.

So there are two possibilities: violence, or Transformation. Violence means invasion or revolution—it's hanging in the air, it could break out any moment.” (CTMS: August 14, 1964)

“Why this chaotic condition in our present government? Is it the sign of the change for the good, for the reign of Truth?

It is the pressure upon the entire earth of the force of Truth which causes disorder, confusion and falsehood to spring up everywhere in a refusal to be transformed.

The way of the Truth is certain, but it is difficult to say when and how it will come about.” (CWM 13: 366–367)

VIII—Violent Agitation Is Out-rightly Stupid

(Regarding the violent agitation in South India against the imposition of Hindi, the language of the North, as the official language. This is the same agitation that had in 1965 led to an attack against the Ashram in which disciples had been injured and buildings burned down. At the time the Pondicherry lieutenant governor had not intervened to stop the rioters from attacking the Ashram. It may be recalled that the majority of the disciples come from North India. In the last few days, trains, buses, post offices have been set on fire....)

Did you notice the police at the gate?... It's the minister (a minister who came here) who sent an order to the lieutenant governor to guard the Ashram.

(silence)

If there were a way (that's what I have been working on for some time), a way to make all this youth understand that to destroy doesn't build—they can't give birth to anything whatsoever with this means. They want to change the state of things, agreed—they may not see very clearly the direction in which we should go, but that things must change is agreed—but still, this method is downright stupid.... They've thrown one more bomb at that poor Indira! She was at a university, at Santiniketan where she had gone to make a speech for a prize distribution (or something of the sort), and they threw a bomb at her. But this time, she was unscathed.

You see, that was the method of the adverse forces to prove that the creation was bad: they weren't satisfied with the creation and set about doing that—that's what they have been doing on a big scale. But it doesn't prove anything! They have established death, established destruction and all the forms of violence and hatred, anyway they turned everything topsy-turvy with the thought that, that way, the world would become a superior world—which is stupid.

And all these people now follow one another in single file, not even aware of what they're doing or why or how or anything! ... They act in the name of freedom and, yes, free progress, because an attempt is made to impose an arbitrary law [Hindi] on them - the arbitrary law is stupid, but what they are doing is still more silly.

Q: Yes, but in this case, all the politicians are the ones responsible.

Oh, yes.

Q: The students follow directives.

I have news from behind the scenes. I know some young people who are part of these movements of agitation, intelligent young people who don't want violence—but they want things to change. And there are all kinds of very interesting things: one of them (they are young people who live with their families, I know some from different places and different types), quite recently the father of one of them, from Calcutta or thereabouts, became worried (I know the father quite well), he was worried; he called a friend of his, a high official in the police, and the friend questioned his son; then he told the father, ‘Your son is remarkable, highly intelligent, highly remarkable....’ But then, it revealed something, that there are spies in the police, and those spies tell lies on people to get themselves noticed, so that lots of reports are false—I'd known that for a long time, but in this instance it became perfectly clear and obvious. For example, there had been reports that this boy had been involved in acts of violence—he's never had anything to do with that! The man who questioned him was entirely convinced of it, because he's a boy who can't do such things, and he said, ‘I totally disapprove of that.’ But the police reports had asserted his involvement. So, of course, this falsehood everywhere, mingled with everything, complicates things.

It's perfectly obvious that the higher-ups are the ones responsible, because they're not genuine people: they have neither the knowledge nor the vision nor the wisdom necessary to govern.... For instance, Indira, it seems, was complaining; one of her friends (her close friends), who is a very good disciple of mine, told her one day when she was complaining (she said the people and the government were in a dreadful state), she told her, ‘But why don't you go and consult Mother? She will give you wisdom.’ Then Indira replied, ‘I dare not.’

You understand, all this confusion, all this disorder seems to be intended to prepare people for one thing, which, obviously, has not so far even been imagined as being possible - the recourse to a disinterested wisdom in order to govern. They're all caught up in ‘If I do this, these people will be against me; if I do that, those people ...’

(silence)

At the very bottom of the thing, two tendencies or two conceptions are confronting each other. The first says, ‘It's badly done: let's destroy it and we'll begin again,’ from top to bottom. The other says, ‘It's not the way it should be: let's transform it.’ These are the two things opposing each other: the effort for progress and transformation, or the brutal and stupid method of smashing everything and starting all over again, so that it goes on endlessly.

It boils down to the fight between Death and Life; progressive life, more and more divine, and Death, which systematically abolishes all that isn't divine. Because only what is divine escapes it.

But the process is ... endless.

The power of progressive transformation is what must be infused into Matter.” (CTMS: December 27, 1967)

IX—Corruption

“And here, there's TOTAL corruption—total, to such a point that... I'll give you an example. The government meddles in everything, you can't move a finger without its permission: you can't leave the country, you can't enter the country, you can't send money out, you can't open a shop, you can't... nothing, nothing, nothing, not even plow your field without its permission. They meddle in everything, which in itself is pretty stupid. And then they make regulations—the more regulations you make, the more disobedience it creates, naturally.” (CTMS: August 14, 1964)

“Sri Aurobindo: When I see Pondicherry and Calcutta Corporation I begin to wonder why I was so eager for democracy. They are two object-lessons which can take away all enthusiasm for self-government.

Disciple: Was the Calcutta Corporation so bad before the Congress came there?

Sri Aurobindo: No. There was not so much scope for corruption—at least we didn’t know of such scandals. It is the same thing with other municipal administrations. In New York and Chicago the whole machinery is corrupt. Sometimes the head of the institution is like that. Sometimes a mayor comes up with the intention of cleaning out the whole, but one does not know after the cleansing which one was better. One of the mayors of Chicago was a great criminal but all judges and police-officers were in his pay. In France also it is the same thing. It is not surprising that people get disgusted with Democracy.” (ETABP: 600 - 601)

“Sri Aurobindo: Yes. It is the High Command and Gandhi’s dictatorship that has kept the country together. This sort of corruption may be found in America and even in France, but you will not find it in England. The public life there is honest and sincere. They may tell lies and may break their promises, but bribery or appropriation of money hardly exists in their public or political administration. As they say, ‘These things are not done.’ If a political leader does that sort of thing he is finished for life. Thomas, you know, is wiped out, nobody hears of him now. The judges make no distinction between a rich criminal and a poor one.” (ETABP: 712)

X—The Fundamental Mistake for India’s Degradation

“(Mother's answer in English to the School's teachers when she was told that the new special afternoon classes at the library had chosen as a first research theme ‘India's spiritual History.’)

No! It won't do. It is not to be done that way. You should begin with a big ‘BANG'!

You were trying to show the continuity of History, with Sri Aurobindo as the outcome, the culmination—it is false, entirely.

Sri Aurobindo does not belong to History; he is outside and beyond History.

Till the birth of Sri Aurobindo, religions and spiritualities were always centered on past figures, and they were showing as ‘the goal’ the negation of life upon earth. So, you had a choice between two alternatives: either a life in this world with its round of petty pleasures and pains, joys and sufferings, threatened by hell if you were not behaving properly; or an escape into another world, heaven, nirvana, moksha [liberation]....

Between these two there is nothing much to choose, they are equally bad.

Sri Aurobindo has told us that this was a fundamental mistake which accounts for the weakness and degradation of India. Buddhism, Jainism, Illusionism were sufficient to sap all energy out of the country.

True, India is the only place in the world which is still aware that something else than matter exists. The other countries have quite forgotten it: Europe, America and elsewhere.... That is why she still has a message to preserve and deliver to the world. But at present she is splashing and floundering in the muddle.

Sri Aurobindo has shown that the truth does not lie in running away from earthly life but in remaining in it, to transform it, divinize it, so that the Divine can manifest HERE, in this PHYSICAL WORLD.

You should tell all this at the first sitting. You should be square and frank.

Then, when this is told, strongly, squarely, and there is no doubt about it—and then only—you can go on and amuse them with the history of religions and religious or spiritual leaders.

Then—and then only—you will be able to show the seed of weakness and falsehood that they have harbored and proclaimed.

Then—and then only—you will be able to discern, from time to time, from place to place, an ‘intuition’ that something else is possible: in the Vedas, for instance (the injunction to descend deep into the cave of the Panis); in the Tantras also... a little light burning.

I may add that you could adopt as motto for your first project this quotation of Sri Aurobindo:

‘We do not belong to the past dawns,

but to the noons of the future.’ (Essays on the Gita)

(CTMS: April 5, 1967)

XI—The Cause of Ruin

“But all those participating in the experience would have to be absolutely convinced that the highest consciousness is the best judge of the MOST MATERIAL THINGS. You see, what has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness has to do with ‘higher’ things, while it's not interested in lower things and knows nothing about them! That's what has caused the ruin of India. Well, this error must be completely abolished. It's the highest consciousness that sees the most clearly—the most clearly and the most truly—what the needs of the most material thing should be.

With this, we could try out a new kind of government.” (CTMS: April 10, 1968)

XII—The Mother Did Not Find One Good Instrument

“Here, in Pondicherry, it's the same muddle.

But you get the feeling that in a country like this one, which in spite of everything is receptive, if one great man (I mean, of  great spiritual value) arose, everyone would follow.

Exactly! They send me delegates, they send me people to ask me, ‘What should we do?’

I told them, ‘I lack a man.’

If I had one man, I would see to everything. But I can't do everything myself.

But that's just the question: how is it that in this country one man hasn't arisen, a man you would support from behind?

I think it's the result of having been under the domination of another country for such a long time. People lost interest in politics (people of value, those who weren't after personal gains). I think that's why.

Because I feel very clearly that if one man with a bit of sincerity arose, it would be enough...

Yes, yes!

... for everyone to follow.

Exactly! I tell you, if I had one man and I told people who asked me, ‘Here he is, follow him,’ the work would be done.

(silence)

There are two places where it's like this: here and in Africa. In Africa, if there were one man, oh! ... And he need not be a Negro: he could in fact be an Indian, for instance (there are many of them there, they're the ones who have enriched the country). But it's not impossible—it's not impossible. There, I am not losing hope.

But not here, either.

But the situation might have to get even worse, until they are quite desperate.

All I would need is one man who had an absolute trust and was receptive, with a power of execution.

Those I have are too old.

But, you know, when it's necessary, the man turns up.

Among the young.

It's not impossible.

We'll see.” (CTMS: January 31, 1964)

“There is a group in the new Indian parliament, a group of people dissatisfied with the position taken by India, who have declared their wish to act according to Sri Aurobindo's ideal and instructions. And they've asked if we could send someone from here to hold conferences in Delhi.... It's a ‘group’—naturally not the whole parliament.

It's something to be envisaged.

But the difficulty is to find the ‘someone,’ because it should be a man who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly to begin with, who is capable of receiving his inspirations directly (a very difficult condition), and has at the same time a very strong character with a power—a contagious power—and a force that can arouse the inert masses.... For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.

There was a man who would have done—not fully well, not with enough breadth of mind to fully understand Sri Aurobindo, but very straight and strong—he was assassinated in Kashmir.

Q: Assassinated?

He is the one who came here when we wanted to have a conference for the opening of the University, he presided over it.  A rather tall man, and strong. I forget his name. But it was in Kashmir that he was assassinated (not officially, of course: he ‘fell ill.’)  (Shyamaprasad Mukherji)

It wasn't perfect, it was a stopgap, but anyway he would have done. But now ... Among the young people whom I don't know?... What is needed is power combined with that breadth of mind capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo's inspiration and transmitting it; and along with that, vital power. The two things together.

And it's not something for tomorrow: it's for right now, that's the problem, because the danger is now.” (CTMS: June 7, 1967)

“But I am referring to the system all the way down, socialistic or communistic, which represents material needs.... Basically, it corresponds to a sort of absence of government, because they don’t have the power to govern others: they are forced to transfer their power to someone who exercises it, like a Lenin, for instance, because he was a brain. But all that... all that has been tried out and has given proof of its incompetence. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth–Consciousness choosing instruments and expressing itself through a certain number of instruments, if one can’t be found (just one isn’t enough, either, that one would necessarily need to choose a whole collectivity). Those possessing this consciousness may belong to any class of society: it’s not a privilege arising from birth, but the result of personal effort and development. In fact, that would be an external sign, an evident sign of change on the political level: no question anymore of classes or categories or birth (all that is outdated), but those individualities that have reached a higher consciousness would have the right to govern, whatever class they belong to—and no others.

That would be the true vision.” (CTMS: April 10, 1968)

XIII—Adopt Sri Aurobindo’s Ideal

“The country seems to be falling apart, so there [in Delhi] they asked me what should be done. I told them that this Centenary [of Sri Aurobindo, in 1972] has come ON PURPOSE. It’s certainly something that’s coming now because the ONLY salvation for the country, the ONLY thing that can unify it, is for it to adopt Sri Aurobindo’s ideal for the country—he had a plan, he very clearly saw how the country should be organized, he said it to me. It’s there, if one reads his books seriously, one can see it. So I said that things should be so organised that THROUGHOUT India there should be study groups, libraries, lectures, anything whatever, so the whole country should know Sri Aurobindo’s thought and will. And the Centenary is an excellent opportunity. They asked me, ‘What’s the way out of this chaos?...’ On my advice, Indira has been trying to surround herself with people of value. (She had me told that she had forgotten questions of party and wants to surround herself with capable people....) The difficulty is to find upright people. So they need to be educated—they don’t even have a NOTION of how they can be! So I said, ‘This Centenary should be organized right now, at once, like something covering the whole country on the occasion of the Centenary....” And in what Sri Aurobindo wrote, they will find all they need to organize the country, and much better, I tell them, infinitely better than what I may say, because he knew the country infinitely better than I do, and the mental formation and everything.

People need occasions to do things. But this seems to have been wonderfully prepared ON PURPOSE.” (CTMS: May 23, 1970)

“What must be done to pull the country out of its difficulty? Sri Aurobindo has foreseen all the troubles and he has given the solution. Just now we are approaching his Centenary; it seems arranged, you know, divinely arranged, because this would be a wonderful occasion to spread his teaching all over the country: the teaching, the practical teaching, his teaching about India, how to organise India, the mission of India. It seems to me that taking the Centenary as an occasion, his teaching could be spread all over the country with a little more organizing—so that his ideas get spread. Those people who are interested can take it up and teach it, hold meetings and give the light and the knowledge to the people. It is a wonderful occasion. And it is only this that gives a clue to all these difficulties.

About all that has happened and all that is happening now, he has said clearly that to go back to it is useless. We must give the country its true position, that is, the position of relying on the Divine. Naturally, this is at the other end of what people try to believe now. But Sri Aurobindo explains it in such a way that even those who are against it can agree. You understand? He has found a way of saying it which can be understood by everybody. That’s the only solution, as far as I can see; it is the only solution. All the rest will mean complication, contradiction and fighting.

… It is above all politics. It is to organise the country beyond politics. And it is the only way. In politics it is always fight and ugly fight—ugly. And it has become so bad. He was telling me always that things would become worse and worse, because it is the end of this age. We are entering into an age where things must be organised differently. It is a difficult time because of that.

Because we know what will come, we can help to make it come sooner and with less turmoil. There is no hope in going backwards; it would make things last endlessly. We must go forward, absolutely, and go beyond, beyond party. And nobody can explain that better than Sri Aurobindo, because he was so much, so much beyond party; he saw the advantages and disadvantages of all parties and he stated them exactly.

If you read carefully what he has written—so much—you will find the answer to all these questions. And at the same time you will know that you will have the full support of the Divine Power. The Power that was behind him is behind this transformation. It is time for transformation. We can’t cling to the past.

The best way to go beyond politics is to spread the message of Sri Aurobindo. Because he is no more a political element wanting to take power; there are only his ideas and ideals. And, of course, if people could understand and realise his programme, the country could be very strong, very strong.

Those who understand the teaching can take up the work of organising and spreading it.” (CWM 15: 405–406)

Section Seven: August 15 the Birthday of Sri Aurobindo and Free India

I—As a Mystic, Sri Aurobindo Considers This as a Sanction and Seal of the Divine Power for His Work

“August 15th is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. … To me personally it must naturally be gratifying that this date which was notable only for me because it was my own birthday celebrated annually by those who have accepted my gospel of life, should have acquired this vast significance. As a mystic, I take this identification, not as a coincidence or fortuitous accident, but as a sanction and seal of the Divine Power which guides my steps on the work with which I began life.” (CWSA 36: 474)

II—Spiritual Land India Celebrates Her Independence on the Birthday of the Greatest Living Master of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo

“It is a symbolic act of fate that India, the land known through the ages for her spirituality, is celebrating her Independence on the very date on which falls the birthday of her greatest living Master of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo … stands for that deepest and highest Independence, the freedom of the soul from the shackles of mortal ignorance, the liberation of the human into the Divine Consciousness. But it is worth remembering that he was once in the van of political life … he shaped the nationalist mind of India at a critical period and the stamp he put upon it is still visible in spite of various changes that have taken place. Not once only, but three times during his political career he was charged with sedition by the British Government. Undaunted by the repressive governmental machinery, he stood in the forefront of the nationalist fight, until the call came to him for a greater and more revolutionary service.

Side by side with his political activity he had been practising Yoga for several years. A stage of development was reached when he felt that his mission was to strike out a new path of spiritual growth that would not only lead the mortal's consciousness to the Infinite and the Eternal but also bring a dynamic divinity to the world for completely transforming the world's life. He is no ascetic of the lonely Beyond: his aim is to effect a top-to-toe change in human nature, so that man the mental being may be henceforth a supramental one. The Ashram in Pondicherry that has sprung up around him is a scene of multifarious activity, a field for a hundred talents and aptitudes—people of diverse types developing by a series of inner Yogic experiences and by the expression of those experiences in outer life. The Ashram is a glowing focus of India's innate spirituality, fraught with immense possibilities of irradiating the entire life of the nation.” (IWSKDS: 307)

“… the sense kindled up that in the strange fact of the birthday of Sri Aurobindo coinciding with the day of India's liberation there lay the clear pointer to Sri Aurobindo's being by his spiritual tapasya not only the secret force behind our freedom but also the one personality with whom our free future is bound up and who alone can be the architect of our true greatness.” (IWSKDS: 308)

“None, in the political field, before or after Sri Aurobindo can be put on a par with him in fusion of spiritual energy with patriotic fervour. Is it not, therefore, in the fitness of things that the Independence Day of a country whose chief glory has been God-realisation should coincide, in spite of all the predominantly political character of this day, with the occasion of Sri Aurobindo's birth? And would it not be purblind on our part to miss a signal so pregnant with meaning and fail to see our future bound up with his presence in our midst—our future of true self-growth political as well as cultural and of leadership among the nations on the path of human evolution towards Godhead?

We cannot yet declare that the scales have been shed from our eyes. But increasingly the darkness thins and more and more are there openings and through them the country is yearning to come into contact with the Wisdom and Power round which an Ashram of spiritual aspirants has grown to many-sided creative activity in Pondicherry. Every year the many hundreds who from all quarters of India and even from abroad join the seven hundred residents of the Ashram to have darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother congregate in greater numbers. The name of the Master is on the lips of seekers in Europe and America no less than India and the time is not far off when the whole modern mind will gravitate to the Aurobindonian philosophy of Supermanhood.” (IWSKDS: 321)

“Surely a date of momentous implications for the values of civilisation has been chosen by India to celebrate her independence. Why did she select this particular date? There seems to have been no conscious assessment of whatever import it bore by the year 1947 in which the last British soldier left Indian soil. But behind the conscious thought of individuals there is the working of that invisible yet potent being which is the national soul or genius.” (IWSKDS: 315–316)

“In the instance of a country like India the outwardly unconscious choice of a date like August 15 for the Independence Day must be traced to no fortuitous concourse of atoms in the brains of her Ministers but to the deep design of her national soul.

How shall we state this design? On the date already mentioned, we should say that India is meant to be the arch-representative of the ideals with which the modern age broke on the world. Liberty, equality, fraternity—these are intended to be embodied most vividly by India. They have never been materialised in the full sense because either their true order has not been understood or else, if it has been understood, the ultimate connotation of them has been elusive.” (IWSKDS: 316–317)

“Her hitting upon August 15 as her Independence Day is a sign from beyond the outer surface of her life, a pointer from her national soul, that her place is in the vanguard of democracy and that her mission is to fulfil what the democratic peoples of the West are still fumbling after.” (IWSKDS: 318)

“The way to fulfilment is by stressing neither liberty nor equality but fraternity. Given genuine fraternity, liberty and equality follow. More than any other country India is equipped for building the democratic order on a fraternal basis. For, above all countries it is she who has lived for the only fraternal basis which can last and carry a superstructure of authentic freedom and justice: God-realisation. And as soon as we speak of God-realisation being India's master quest no less than being the one means of fulfilling the ideals of democracy we come to be on the look-out for a yet profounder reason for our national soul's predilection for August 15. What we expect to find is the identity of this date with some occasion closely linked to not only our own struggle for independence and for the triumph of the democratic ideals but also the sense of a presiding Goddess with which our nationalism is so powerfully charged and the direct concrete experience of the one yet multiple Divine Reality that has been the lodestar of the Indian consciousness down the centuries. If we could discover the identity we should know with redoubled certitude that the date of our Independence Day was due to no accident nor dictated by mere convenience but decided by the national soul. And by exploring the precise historical circumstances of the identity we should be able to learn where to seek correct guidance for the future and how to rise to the height of our destiny.” (IWSKDS: 318–319)

“There is no traditional festival from the past on this date. With none of our political leaders in the forefront at present is it particularly connected. But on August 15 falls the birthday of Sri Aurobindo. Our Cabinet had not noticed it at all when they fixed the Day of Independence. … All the more remarkable, therefore, is their striking upon just this date for the happiest and most meaningful political event for us in modern times. And all the more clinching as well as heartening is the evidence that the national soul, the great Mother with whose dear and majestic name we launched the struggle for freedom, was not slumbering but from the forgotten depths of our being was still pointing a luminous finger. For Sri Aurobindo answers to all the expectations we have enumerated: his life singles him out for association with the coming into its own by a country like India.” (IWSKDS: 319)

III—Other Important Events in World History on AUGUST 15

“AUGUST 15, India's Independence Day, has in modern history associations both spectacular and profound. We may say that this date marks the very birth of the power by which international politics was gigantically rocked into the manifold commotion that gave shape to our modern world. For, though it is the French Revolution that brought modern history into being, the forces that exploded in 1789 could never have found a firm organised life if there had not arisen the military colossus we call Napoleon Bonaparte, gathering up the new France into a scourge of God and lashing out at the Europe united to crush her and shattering the entire balance of the old world to the sound of the mighty mantra plucked from the heart of the Revolution—La Marseillaise [the national anthem of France]. Through the personality of Napoleon revolutionary France let loose the spirit of modern times—Napoleon who was born on August 15 in 1769.” (IWSKDS: 314)

[La Marseillaise is the great example of courage and solidarity when facing danger.]

“… [Hitler] fixed in 1940 the 15th of August as the day on which he would complete his conquest of Western Europe by broadcasting from Buckingham Palace the collapse of Britain. The fall of Britain would have signed the death-warrant of the whole world outside America. August 15 was meant to be the end of World War II, with a decisive victory of the forces intent on putting the clock back and establishing on earth the reign of the Asura, the Titan, over the evolving God in humanity. But instead of a resounding triumph, August 15 found Britain still full of fight and on that day the largest toll so far was taken of the Luftwaffe—180 German planes shot down in British skies! We might indeed designate it as the turning-point in the Battle of Britain.

August 15 can also be considered the beginning of peace after World War II, though not the peace Hitler had intended to initiate on that day; for Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945. Now that the peace has at last been broken by North Korea's invasion of the South and what is in appearance a civil war but is really the first violent stroke by Communism in its plan of world-conquest has burst on us and America undaunted by terrible disadvantages has rushed into the carnage in order to save civilisation, we are led to ask whether again this date has a meaning. To get the answer we do not have to search long. The present hostilities were preluded in early June by a propaganda campaign by the North Korean radio, relayed by Moscow, demanding the unification of Korea on the Communists' terms. The word ‘peaceful’ was thrown about, but the suggestion was everywhere that peace hung on unconditional kowtowing by the Southern Government to the dictat of Communism. On June 21 the same radio station spoke further of unification, ostensibly peaceful yet proceeding according to such a plan that within a certain fixed period the goal would inevitably be attained. There was an ominous ring here— and four days later the Communists were on the march across the 38th Parallel. As usual, Communism had talked peace while intending war. But what attaches a peculiarly significant interest to the talk is the time-limit announced for the disappearance of the America-sponsored South Korean regime which, for all its imperfection, was yet democratic in essence. The exact words of the broadcast were: ‘All measures connected with the peaceful unification of our country shall be completely carried out by August 15 of this year.’ Yes, once more the day expected to be the beginning of the end of the democratic spirit on earth by armed might was August 15!” (IWSKDS: 314–315)

“However dimly, this truth was seized by the Allied nations. Churchill gave it the most dynamic push possible, short of the directly occult and spiritual. When France lay prostrate and Hitler announced that on the fifteenth of August that year he would address the world from Buckingham Palace and the endless Luftwaffe over Britain seemed a goddess of winged victory for him, Churchill knew that there could be neither turning back nor knuckling under. Whatever his defects in colonial policy, he was magnificent under that day-to-day rain of high-explosive, and his instinct of the superhuman truth at stake marked him out as an instrument par excellence of the Divine in the war. In far-away India was raised a voice guided not by instinct but by a shining insight. Strangely enough, the voice was of one whose day of birth was the fifteenth of August, the exact day on which Hitler hoped to celebrate the death of all that mankind valued. It was the sole clear and clarion-like voice amidst a chaos of political quarrels that was confusing India's mind vis-à-vis the occult conflict which had made our world its stage. India, who had known God as no other country in the past, was weak, fumbling and hesitant, obsessed by her political animosity against Britain and oblivious of the wider and deeper call to which Churchillian Britain had responded. Sri Aurobindo stood alone in his sun-bright seeing of the war's inner significance. He declared his unrestricted sympathy, his unconditional support—‘whatever may happen,’ as his own words had it in his message to the Governor of Madras in connection with the Viceroy's fund. At the back of those words was the whole mystical puissance of an Integral Yoga, a puissance that worked secretly like a dynamo sending out world-currents, driving a vast invisible inspired strength into the armies and navies and air-forces ranged against Hitler.” (IWSKDS: 222–223)

“IN KOREA the corner has perhaps not been definitely turned yet by the U.N. forces. The fight around Pusan is bitter and the North Koreans are still pressing upon the Americans in various sectors with a view to throwing them into the sea or boxing them up on the south coast. But General MacArthur's army has put a brake on the Communist advance in several places and is even actually piercing the North Korean lines at certain important points. At least the avowed Communist plan to liquidate the South Korean democracy by August 15 has failed and we may reasonably predict that the G.I.s will slowly roll back the aggressors.” (IWSKDS: 262)

IV—Date August 15 in Modern History Shows Ultimate World-Significance

“When the procession of disciples and pilgrims will offer garlands to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on August 15, it is to the vision and power of supramental creation at work amidst us that the offering will be done and in that gesture will lie the seed of man's birth into integral Godhead. Hence the birthday of Sri Aurobindo is the supreme festival of progressive humanity, the portent which the Asura dreads most and would strive most to nullify. It gives to the occasion of India's celebration of her Independence and to the strange occurrence of this date at more than one critical juncture of modern history their ultimate world-significance.” (IWSKDS: 326)

V—India Can Obtain the Light from Sri Aurobindo That Shall Lead to Authentic Greatness

“Thus no problem facing mankind falls outside the sovereign scope of the Aurobindonian God-realisation. We cannot circumscribe such a realisation's possibilities and relevances. … only the practice of the presence of God to Sri Aurobindo. Here is a universal insight and a thousand-handed capacity. Here is the enlightening idea, the effectuating energy for whatever concerns us as individuals, as a nation, as a part of humanity. And here is all this not only in the manner of a versatile genius but in the immeasurable way of one who has caught the world's whole being at its primal divine source. That is the uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo, the Master of what he calls the Integral Yoga.

On many levels he stands as the world's helper and guide. At the sheer top he is the Guru of those who aspire to be transformed utterly into a divine manhood, a total reorientation of the being, which shall mark a decisive new step in evolution and establish on earth a nucleus of divine life. But those who do not feel the drive towards so radical a change can yet find in Sri Aurobindo the intimate help for answering more luminously and more fruitfully the challenge of a complex existence. Our country, passing today through difficulties and perplexities, can obtain from him the light that shall lead it to authentic greatness, for his is the wisdom born of a direct union with a Truth-Consciousness and a Truth-Will pressing for manifestation in the strange interplay, the many-mooded lila, of matter and life-force and mind.” (IWSKDS: 339–340)

VI—If Men Could Consciously Establish Rapport with Sri Aurobindo, They Would Lift Themselves and India to Sterling Greatness

“It may not be possible for all of us to be Aurobindonian Yogis and share with him to whatever degree his integral Rishihood. But we can surely keep in contact with his harmonious being, draw to us the revealing vision that he commands, feel the direction of his fatherly hand in our day-to-day gropings, whether in private or national existence, for the right gesture, the right deed. Even without this Integral Yoga he would stand forth amongst men, a versatile genius with a mighty record as poet and thinker, politician and nation-builder, a living synthesis of the cultures of the East and West. With this unique Yoga he raises to the nth degree of inspiration all his creative powers and if men could consciously establish rapport with him they would lift themselves and their country to sterling greatness.

Broad and bright as the sun the message for India is written in the twofold momentousness that marks August 15.” (IWSKDS: 313)

“… the sense kindled up that in the strange fact of the birthday of Sri Aurobindo coinciding with the day of India's liberation there lay the clear pointer to Sri Aurobindo's being by his spiritual tapasya not only the secret force behind our freedom but also the one personality with whom our free future is bound up and who alone can be the architect of our true greatness.” (IWSKDS: 308)

Section Eight: When Will India Discharge Its Mission

I—Not Until the Sweep of the Spiritual Evolution Comes, that India Can Discharge Its Mission

“I have suggested that the formal turn, the rhythmic lines of effort of this culture must be regarded as having passed through two complete external stages; while a third has taken its initial steps and is the destiny of her future. The early Vedic was the first stage: then religion took its outward formal stand on the natural approach of the physical mind of man to the Godhead in the universe, but the initiates guarded the sacrificial fire of a greater spiritual truth behind the form. The Purano-Tantric was the second stage: then religion took its outward formal stand on the first deeper approaches of man's inner mind and life to the Divine in the universe, but a greater initiation opened the way to a far more intimate truth and pushed towards an inner living of the spiritual life in all its profundity and in all the infinite possibilities of an uttermost sublime experience. There has been long in preparation a third stage which belongs to the future. Its inspiring idea has been often cast out in limited or large, veiled and quiet or bold and striking spiritual movements and potent new disciplines and religions, but it has not yet been successful in finding its way or imposing new lines on human life. The circumstances were adverse, the hour not yet come. This greatest movement of the Indian spiritual mind has a double impulse. Its will is to call the community of men and all men each according to his power to live in the greatest light of all and found their whole life on some fully revealed power and grand uplifting truth of the Spirit. But it has had too at times a highest vision which sees the possibility not only of an ascent towards the Eternal but of a descent of the Divine Consciousness and a change of human into divine nature. A perception of the divinity hidden in man has been its crowning force. This is a turn that cannot be rightly understood in the ideas or language of the European religious reformer or his imitators. It is not what the purist of the reason or the purist of the spirit imagines it to be and by that too hasty imagination falls short in his endeavour. Its index vision is pointed to a truth that exceeds the human mind and, if at all realised in his members, would turn human life into a divine superlife. And not until this third largest sweep of the spiritual evolution has come into its own, can Indian civilisation be said to have discharged its mission, to have spoken its last word and be functus officio, crowned and complete in its office of mediation between the life of man and the spirit.”  (CWSA 20: 215-216)

II—Through the Instinct of the Divine, India Shall Emerge as a Leader of the Nations

“It is spiritual India that has attained greatness in times gone by and that has fought for freedom against the alien rulers. All the best that has happened to us or been created by us was born of our instinct of the Divine. And that is why this best has been so extraordinary a phenomenon, with a quality unique in the earth's annals. Through that instinct we shall emerge in the world's future as a leader of the nations towards unity and harmony and manifold fulfilment. Also, our miseries and eclipses have been due to unfaithfulness to that instinct or else to a turning of it in the direction of other-worldliness instead of in the direction of God's manifestation here and now. If we are true to our characteristic genius we shall never decline and all seeming declines will only be temporary phases.” (IWSKDS: 62–63)

III—When India Becomes a Messenger of the Divine Life

“India shall take her true place in the world only when she will become integrally the messenger of the Divine Life.” (CWM 13: 372)

IV—Allow the Higher Will to Work

“Whoever believes in God, rises above his lower self; for God is the true Self of the Universe and of everything within the Universe. When we rely upon our lower self, we are left to that lower self, and succeed or fail according to our strength of body or intellect under the law of our past life and actions. There is one law for the lower self and another for the higher. The lower self is in bondage to its past; the higher is lord of the past, the present and the future. So the will of the lower self is born of ahankara and limited by ahankara, but the will of the higher self is beyond ahankara and cannot be limited by it. It is omnipotent. But so long as it works through the body, it works under the laws of time, space and causality and we have to wait for its fulfilment till the time is ready, the environment prepared, the immediate causes brought about. The will once at work infallibly brings about the necessary conditions; all we have to do is to allow it to work.” (CWSA 7: 937–938)

V—When India Renounces Falsehood and Lives in the Truth

“Sweet Mother, Why is India, which has such a rich past and the promise of such a brilliant future, in such a miserable condition at present? When will she emerge from this pitiful condition and reaffirm her greatness?

When she renounces falsehood and lives in the Truth.” (CWM 16: 317–318)

“Disciple: Is it we who would make the greater India?

Sri Aurobindo: It is quite wrong to say that it is we. If India wants to make itself it is its own business. No one can make a whole nation.

It may be that when the forces are quite in readiness a man may appear who may have to embody the Spirit of the times in himself and so one may feel that he has made the nation. But really speaking it is the nation that has to make itself. It is not like X making the cake; you can’t make a nation that way. Nations and such other living entities must grow—they have to grow just as any other living thing grows. No one makes them.

If a greater India is to arise it means, for us at least, that it should be in the image of the Truth we are trying to bring down. In that case, if it succeeds the Truth itself will create its own forms and then it would not be correct to say that we have created the form, because in any case the Truth that we are trying to bring down is greater than ourselves.” (ETABP: 412)

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