Up till now, that is before the advent of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, only the highest power of the spiritual mind was operative in the earth consciousness. Sri Aurobindo calls it the Overmind.
It is the highest spiritual mind. It had only a great liberating influence on the consciousness. That is why up till now spirituality was mainly an inner experience powerless against the inherent human ignorance and animal instincts, diseases, unhappiness, death and decomposition. There was an inhibition, a control over the movements of ignorance but no fundamental transformation. That is why the world has remained practically unchanged in character since the appearance of man on earth. Man is a mental being and as long as he remains so, he cannot get away from the human limitations. Sri Aurobindo says that there is a supreme consciousness of Truth beyond the highest reaches of mind; only its direct intervention can transform man into a divine being with a divine consciousness in the inner as well as the outer life. Man is the result of the descent of the mind power in the apes. So too the descent of the Truth Consciousness in the human beings will create the divine race, the next step in the evolution. In the beginning a minority will respond to the pressure of the incoming New Light. These beings will feel a natural urge to go beyond their own humanity and rise into a more luminous state of being. To them nothing human however sublime would mean much. It is not that they have a contempt for humanity or that they want to be superhuman in a megalomaniac way. Impelled by a profound aspiration to change our life of mortality, ignorance and suffering, they will respond to the call of the World Mother and her transmuting Force. Unless they are absolutely convinced of their high spiritual destiny, unless they are willing to give up their humanity, willing to do anything and everything in an attitude of total surrender to the Divine, their claim to a higher life is vain and pretentious, full of extreme dangers. Yet once one is convinced of one’s irrevocable destiny, then no difficulties however great can stand in the way. Man’s God, his experience of God in mind is incapable of transforming this world. We must discover the new Godhead of the supramental consciousness and put ourselves entirely exclusively under his transforming power. Then the miracle will work. But the difficulties on the way are enormous and they cannot be minimised. Our nature clings to our humanity and the human ways. Each touch of the divine Liberator is an excrutiating torment. But once one has tasted the delight of the divine consciousness, one cannot remain any longer satisfied even with the greatest treasures of human life. Our measure of readiness for a divine life can be judged easily by observing our attachment to the human life and its gilted ideals. As long as we remain human and prize our humanity we will remain bogged in the mire of ignorance, obscurity and suffering. This is the question the evolutionary Power puts to every human being. Do you want to remain human or do you want to rise to a luminous transforming consciousness? As long as we justify our human ignorant movements we are ourselves putting immense obstacles in the way. The Divine can do all, if we approach Him with simple, honest sincerity. As we call Him, He will shape and arrange the events and circumstances of our life with love and wisdom, for our spiritual progress. We must give up the habit of telling Him what to do for us. This habit is so ingrained in us that we take this as a sign of surrender.
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have brought down the eternal divine consciousness in the earth atmosphere and the divine race will be born on earth, the same as man was born when the mind descended on earth. It is an extraordinary period of transition. Whatever is false is bound to disappear though time is required on the evolutionary scale.
Let us sacrifice our humanity in the transforming Fire of divine consciousness. A humble true beginning is now possible. Let us call Her into our life.
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Niranjan Guha Roy 1983