Golden Day thoughts

Great breakthroughs are often little understood or take many years to be absorbed into the collective consciousness. In 1905, Einstein formulated his Special Theory of Relativity and in 1916 his General Theory of Relativity. They postulated an entirely new way of perceiving the universe yet, beyond the scientific community, it is doubtful how many people comprehend this even today. Similar breakthroughs in western art and music, also representing new ways of perceiving, in the early years of the 20th century have still not filtered through to the general public.

What happened on 29th February, 1956 was a breakthrough moment in the spiritual history of humanity, yet even in the so-called Aurobindonian community it is doubtful how well its significance is understood. Mother explained that a “new world” had been born, and that all the old determinations – including that of death itself – were no longer absolute. However, She warned, the old world remained powerful and we would continually need to choose which ‘reality’ we wished to inhabit: the new one that promised, ultimately, the divinisation of life on Earth, or the old one dominated by the forces of death and falsehood.

In Auroville, She gave us plenty of guidance about how to make the right choice. Beyond the key requirement to abolish the ego, she gave very specific advice about the proper use of money, and about the forms of governance, education and collaboration we should be pursuing to call in that new world.

However, we have not always managed to follow it, often because we argue that we are not yet ready. But if we continually act as if we are not yet ready, we achieve a self-fulfilling prophecy: by continuing to embrace the old ways, we exclude ourselves from the new forces at work in the world, and so guarantee that we will remain in the old.

And getting into contact with that new world may not be as difficult as we believe. In The Agenda of October 7th, 1964, Mother talks about a turning point in her work on the cells. She had asked them why they wanted to preserve the present aggregate in her body, and they replied that they favoured the present combination because it allowed them to remain in conscious contact with the higher force, which was the only thing they cared about.

Speaking more generally about the crucial need to make that contact, she observes, “The best one can do is not to have any prejudices or preconceived ideas or principles…If one can be like this, open – truly open in a simplicity…you know, the simplicity of ignorance that knows it’s ignorant…like this (gesture, hands open), ready to receive all that comes…then, perhaps, something will happen. Naturally, the thirst for progress, the thirst to know, the thirst to transform yourself, and above all the thirst for Love and Truth – if you can keep that, then you go faster. Really a thirst, a need, you know, a need…All the rest doesn’t matter, what you need is THAT…”

And she warns, “To cling to what you think you know, to cling to what you feel, to cling to what you like, to cling to your so-called needs, to cling to the world as it is, that’s what binds you hand and foot. You must undo all that, one thing after the other.… No more bonds – free, free, free, free! Always ready to change everything, except ONE thing: to aspire. That thirst.”

At the end of Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory, the renegade ‘whisky-priest’ sits in a cell awaiting his execution. In the hours remaining to him, he looks back over his life and makes an important discovery.

“What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless…. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage.”

It is an immense privilege to be part of this unique experiment. Mother provides the ideal conditions and gives us all the help we need to make the right choices. Do we want to miss inhabiting that New World because we, like that whisky-priest, never had quite enough courage to be That which our souls brought us here for?