Between the Gold and the Blue

The title of this talk Between the Gold and the Blue is taken from Sri Aurobindo’s poem A God’s Labour.

I have gathered my dreams in a silver air

Between the gold and the blue

And wrapped them softly and left them there,

My jewelled dreams of you.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had these wonderful dreams. If we’re here it’s because of their dreams for this material world we inhabit, this earth: Auroville exists because they dared to dream these extraordinary, impossible dreams that no one before them dreamed….

In India, you find the idea of the Avatar, one who is a sort of ‘living mould for the supreme descent’, a Being who pushes evolution forward to a new stage. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have remarked that the Avatar, that is the One who comes to ‘open the way’, is bound to realise that which has to be realised regardless of material conditions. But if the Avatar’s intention is nothing less than the transformation of the Earth Consciousness, then necessarily a collectivity – a critical mass of people who come together and aspire collectively to create a broad enough receiving and holding environment – is needed to manifest this change.

This idea of a conscious collectivity is something that occurs repeatedly in Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s writings. In terms of the Integral Yoga, The Ashram was the first such collectivity, and the work done on the consciousnesses of the sadhaks was exacting and minuscule.

In 1956, however, there was the great consummation of their work and an entirely new consciousness manifested upon Earth. The birth of Auroville appears linked to this.

What does ‘manifestation’ mean in terms of the yoga? It is when there is a kind of flooding out into external life, into the dharma of the Earth consciousness, of something that was there before, but in essence, as a potential. This is what happened on 29th February, 1956, when Mother saw herself in a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, before a huge door that separated our world of mind, life and body from this world of Gold, the Supermind, the next plane beyond the mind, a plane of Truth Consciousness. She struck a blow that shattered it to pieces. And then, she reported, “the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow”.

The golden light is now here, pervading matter. As The Mother said, “a new world is born”. While the old world may still appear to be all-powerful, fundamentally the laws that have governed it till now, have changed.

Rapidly thereafter, The Mother describes a series of developing experiences.

In 1958, Mother speaks of a powerful experience that brings about a change in the relationship with Material Nature. Nature, she says, understands and accepts that this new consciousness is not a threat to Her. So this eternal and universal executive force, who dominates the plane of matter, agrees to collaborate wholeheartedly with the new creation. It would follow, therefore, when we see how this desertified plateau was greened, not taking anything away from the work of Aurovilians, that perhaps we must acknowledge the collaboration we have received from this Force.

Then, in 1962, Mother has a fabulous experience where she talks about ‘pulsations of divine Love’ flooding the earth consciousness. We gather from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that Divine Love is the one aspect of the divine consciousness that had not been active on Earth before. It had been kept back because Love does not permit that which is not love to exist. Yet now Mother experiences these pulsations of Divine Love flooding the earth, changing something fundamental in the Earth consciousness. (Sri Aurobindo has described this power of supreme divine love as the Mother of Ananda, a supramental power that has been till now unmanifest in the earth consciousness).

In 1966, 2 years before its physical birth, Mother remarks that Auroville is going very well – that she sees it already formed, organised, on a certain plane of consciousness. If we recall, this is a period in the world where there is a generalised fear of a Third World War. Countries are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in response to their pervasive sense of insecurity. But, she remarks, people do not understand that when you build something, you give it the power of self-realisation. It is in this regard that Mother is given a revelation: it is precisely to counterbalance this great error that she has been made to create Auroville. In Auroville, the energies of people will be brought together on a different basis, one of working with each other to build unity. An amusing definition comes to her: Auroville is a “Tower of Babel in reverse”. Consequently, in the messages she gives about Auroville at this time, it is the aspiration towards human unity that is in the forefront.

In 1968 she has another revelation. Looking at its present condition, she observes that India, the land of spiritual light and knowledge, has become so much the contrary of what she should be. And then Sri Aurobindo ‘dictates’ something to her. “India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind. India will be the land of its resurrection, the resurrection to a higher and truer life. And that is why you made Auroville.”

So Auroville is now also tied up with the condition of India. It is meant to give a living form to the spiritual truths of India and perhaps also to experiment upon possible solutions to the problems she confronts. This is a great part of Auroville’s work, its responsibility, not only locally but also nationally. We should be doing everything we can to bring change within ourselves and in all we touch around us.

On the 28th of February, 1968, Auroville was born. On that day, Mother gave Auroville its Charter. It is a wonderful mantric document that touches almost every aspect of human endeavour, starting from willing service to the divine consciousness and ending in an effective human unity. The Charter is the primary guiding force she has gifted Auroville. Her approach in the next years will be to offer this experiment very little else in terms of prescriptive guidance. Her response to questionings is that she is applying what she calls the ‘pressure of Consciousness’. It would appear that because the New Consciousness is here, holding the space, things can be allowed to naturally emerge.

In early 1969 she has her third revelation. She speaks about something that becomes an insistent presence, something that seems to be a universal being, but personified. She describes how this being, whom she calls the “surhomme”, the intermediate being between the human consciousness and the supramental, insists she write something down. And what she is made to writes is, “We will strive to make Auroville the cradle of the Superman.”

But why “we” she asks. The Consciousness replies, “because the attempt will be to get those who will live in Auroville to collaborate”.

So this appears to be Auroville’s most profound work: to collaborate in making Auroville the cradle of the next step in spiritual evolution. There is a tendency in Auroville not to recognise this, to say, for instance, that we are here for an ecological experiment. But, however laudable and necessary this is, it’s limiting ourselves. Auroville is the ground upon which there is the possibility to manifest collectively this new consciousness.

After this experience, Mother repeatedly gives messages to Auroville that are very strong. In particular, she talks squarely about the need for the Aurovilians to get rid of the ego. Later she also formulates the 6 points that constitute what she calls the ‘aspiration of Auroville’ – ‘To be a True Aurovilian’ – the last two points of which speak again about Auroville wanting to ‘hasten the advent of the new species’

It has always seemed to me that Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, in contrast to traditional Indian yogic paths, is, from one point of view so light and easy. It can be a sunlit path because all you have to do is awake, aspire and will. You must light the mystic fire of the psychic in your heart; then open yourself like a flower and offer yourself to the Divine. The yoga will be done in you. For the key point of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, the yoga of transformation, is that it cannot be done by a limited, egoistic, human consciousness. We have first to become apt receiving instruments by abolishing the ego, annulling ourselves, for this change to be brought about in us.

In one of his last writings, Sri Aurobindo describes one of the consequences of the action of the Supermind. “Whatever group of human beings aspire as united in an endeavour at a perfect individual and collective living or aspire to the divine life, would be assisted towards the attainment of its aspiration: that at least the Supermind would make its minimum consequence....”

In other words, we have help but we have to play our part. We have to become the ground upon which this new consciousness manifests; we have to keep polishing ourselves, perfecting our instruments. We are very ordinary human beings, but if we can do our work not for ourselves but for something higher and truer and deeper, if we can offer our work to That, Auroville will happen regardless.

In fact, it is inevitable, this is the guarantee that has been given us by The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and it is a wonderful thing to be collectively working for this.

And the promise?

I will end with the concluding words of the Supreme to Savitri in Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem.

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of speech and breath and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill.

Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come

Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;

A sudden bliss shall run through every limb

And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.

Then shall the earth open to divinity

And common natures feel the wide uplift,

Illumine common acts with the Spirit’s ray

And meet the deity in common things.

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.