A Power greater than that of Evil (HH 164)

We begin this year study with the Mother’s New Year Message of 1957, the first new year message given after the Supramental Manifestation of the 29^th Feb 1956. The message, powerful and profound gives us the clue to the path we must take for the Divine Truth to establish within and around us.

Words of the Mother

Mother will you explain the New Year Message? What is the meaning of: “It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world?”

“A Power greater than that of Evil can alone win the Victory. It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world.”

 One day, I don’t know when exactly, I suddenly remembered that I had to give a message for the year. Usually these messages reveal what is going to happen during the year, and as I had nothing to say, for certain reasons, I asked myself, or rather I asked whether I might receive a clear indication of what was to be said. I asked exactly this: what was the best state in the world, and the thing which could help these people or this state of consciousness to draw a little closer to the truth? What was the best state?

A few hours later I had a booklet in my hands which had come from America and had been published as a kind of account of a photographic exhibition entitled “The Family of Man”. There were quotations in this booklet and the reproduction of a number of photographs, classified according to the subject, and all for the purpose of trying to awaken the true sense of fraternity in men. The whole thing represented a sort of effort—immense, pathetic—to prevent a possible war. The quotations had been chosen by a woman-reporter who had come here and whom I had seen. And so, all this came expressing in a really touching way, the best human will which can manifest on earth at present, from the collective point of view. I am not saying that some individuals have not risen much higher and understand much better, but they are individual cases and not a collective attempt to do something for humanity. I was moved.

And then I came to the end of their booklet and to the remedy they in their ignorant goodwill suggested to prevent men from killing one another…. It was so poor, so weak, so ignorant, so ineffective, that I was truly moved and—I had a dream, that this exhibition would come here, to Pondicherry, that we could show it and add a concluding fascicle to their booklet in which the true remedy would be revealed to them. And all that took shape very concretely, with the kind of photographs which would be necessary, the quotations that should be put, and then, quite decisively, like something welling up from the depths of consciousness, came this sentence. I wrote it down, and as soon as it was written I said to myself: “Why, this is my message.” And it was decided it would be this. So there it is.

This means that it is just the thing which can make the goodwill of mankind, the best being expressed on earth today, progress. It has taken a rather special form because this goodwill came from a Christian country and naturally there was quite a special Christian influence, but this is an attitude which is found everywhere in the world, differently expressed according to the country and the religion, and it was as a reaction against the ignorance of this attitude that I wrote this. Naturally, there is the same idea in India, this idea of the complete renunciation of all physical reality, the profound contempt for the material world which is considered an illusion and a falsehood, that leaves, as Sri Aurobindo used to say, the field free to the sovereign sway of the adverse forces. If you escape from the concrete reality to seek a distant and abstract one, you leave the whole field of concrete realisation at the full disposal of the adverse forces —which have taken hold of it and more or less govern it now —in order to go away yourself to realise what Sri Aurobindo calls here a zero or a void unit—to become the sovereign of a nought. It is the return into Nirvana. This idea is everywhere in the world but expresses itself in different forms. Because until now evil has been opposed by weakness, by a spiritual force without any power for transformation in the material world, this tremendous effort of goodwill has ended only in deplorable failure and left the world in the same state of misery and corruption and falsehood. It is on the same plane as the one where the adverse forces are ruling that one must have a greater power than theirs, a power which can conquer them totally in that very domain. To put it otherwise, a spiritual force which would be capable of transforming both the consciousness and the material world. This force is the supramental force. What is necessary is to be receptive to its action on the physical plane, and not to run away into a distant Nirvana leaving the enemy with full power over what one abandons.

It is neither sacrifice nor renunciation nor weakness which can bring the victory. It is only Delight, a delight which is strength, endurance, supreme courage. The delight brought by the supramental force. It is much more difficult than giving everything up and running away, it demands an infinitely greater heroism—but that is the only way to conquer.

[CWM 8: 5]

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Words of Sri Aurobindo

Hymn to Dawn

Lo, dawn, the Beloved, appears in her gleaming young body. She impels all Life on the path towards the goal. Fire, the Divine Force, is born to be kindled in man. Dawn drives away all Darkness and fulfils herself in creating Light.

She, the Goddess, rises lifting her forward gaze towards the Vast, the Universal. She has put on the robe of Light and displays the white brilliance of her subtle norms of Truth. Heaven-gold is her hue, her vision is all-round seeing: verily, she is the mother of the herd of brilliances of knowledge, a leader of our bright days; her luminous body is disclosed.

The Goddess, All-Enjoyment she is: she comes carrying the Sun, the Eye of the Gods, bringing here the white Life-steeds that have the perfect vision, she comes, the Goddess wholly revealing herself in the rays of the Sun.

Behold her in her multiple divine riches, behold her manifest everywhere, in all things, behold her the Mother of Radiance.

All delight is within, all that is hostile to man is afar: so let it be in thy dawning. Build our pasture of infinity, illumined with truth, build our home of delight freed from fear.

Drive away all that divides and antagonises, bring to us all the wealth of the human soul, O Mother of Plenty, send forth into life all the plenitude of delight.

Goddess Dawn, manifest thyself in our hearts in the play of thy supreme Effulgence, widen the life of this embodied being. O Mother of Delight, give us stable impulsion.

Give us that plenty whose wealth is the luminous herd of Truth, where range the chariots and horses of Life moving towards Infinity.

We are rich in those riches, we the steadfast aspirants, O Goddess, born in perfection, Daughter of Heaven! We foster Thee with our thought-streams and Thou too holdest in our bosom the knowledge won and the Vast and the

Seas of Delight.

Sri Aurobindo: Bengali Writings: pp. 6 – 7

Jan 12, 2016