Mother's Withdrawal and the Future of the Spiritual Evolution

MOTHER’S WITHDRAWAL AND THE FUTURE OF THE
SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION

Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

To those who are well acquainted with the writings of Sri Aurobindo, especially with his Mother, Savitri and the numerous letters to his disciples, the Mother was the physical embodiment of the Divine Consciousness and Force and her mission on earth was to bring the Supramental Truth down to the inconscient matter so that there might be a new creation on earth free from death, disease, infirmity and old age, thus ushering a new era of knowledge, power, peace, unity and bliss in the terrestrial life of ignorance, incapacity, discord, division, sorrow and various other limitations and imperfections with which all of us are only too familiar.

“Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death
Or hew the ways of Immortality
To win or lose the godlike game for man.
Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice”, and again
“A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and her,
Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge….
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.”

If Sri Aurobindo’s writings are an index to truth and prophecy of what is to come, then these quotations from Savitri show only too clearly how in her death, “all is lost for man”, immediately for the present at least though surely not in the long run of the course of spiritual evolution. For we have been assured a hundred times from competent quarters, from men of authentic spiritual vision and realisation like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda down to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that India’s future is glorious and that she is destined to be the Guru, the spiritual guide of the nations of the world now groping and fumbling in ignorance and dark for a ray of Light. It will be idle and futile to deny the truth of the prophecy of spiritual giants endowed with authentic vision of the future by our ignorant and speculative reasoning intellect. But the vision of India’s future greatness that they have foreseen may take long, long years to manifest in view of the present anarchical conditions of the world with its wars, conflicts, chaos and uncertainties and the all-round hypocrisy, depravity, deterioration of moral standards and ethical values, corruptions and degradations of our own national life, evils which are all too evident for those who look reality sternly in the face and do not take refuge in any subterfuge or camouflage to hide our own weaknesses and shortcomings.

The conditions of the Mother’s stay in the earth atmosphere were clearly laid down by Sri Aurobindo in his Mother. The relevant extracts are quoted below:

“...Where there is concord and unity and glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide...Where love and beauty are not or are...mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches. If she finds herself in men’s hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws,....or veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil’s stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence.”

All the same we have Sri Aurobindo’s categorical assurance that “The Supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit.” After the withdrawal of the Mother from the earth scene, the when and how and how long of the change are left in doubt and uncertainty and it is no use speculating about them by the erring and ignorant mind. All that is needed of us in this hour of trial and distress is to stand firm in our faith and aspiration and remain true, sincere and faithful to the Divine call once we have responded to it in our heart, and mind and soul.