A perfect and harmonious marriage between matter and soul is precisely what the Adversary force of old does not want. Earth is their chosen field and kingdom. It does not matter whether their human representatives who vehemently oppose the possibility of divine life upon earth are slain again and again. They still continue to rule subtly in the thoughts and feelings and will and impulses of a humanity tied to the physical body. They are not against all spirituality. Many Asuras have practiced various forms of ascetic austerities to gain powers. But these powers were invariably put to use for the expansion of the ego and not for the creation of divinity here. That is why they collapse in the end under the weight of their own over-inflated egos. As long as man is pursuing a spiritual quest to find some door of escape into nirvana they do not mind. Not that they do not create problems there since any kind of light is hurtful to them. But it is relatively easier to tackle them since the attack is never with full vengeance and vehemence. But the moment there is an attempt to create beauty and goodness, love and light, harmony and peace here, upon earth they attack with all their might to delay or destroy the work.
And yet someday this had to be done. Someday this battle had to be taken to its logical conclusion. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo had come for establishing the Divine Life upon earth and hence they were fully aware of the tremendous opposition that was bound to arise from the Adversary powers. But they had come armed with the Knowledge and the Power. They knew that if only the doors of the highest Power could be opened and human beings begin to respond to the supreme Grace incarnated in Mirra, the Divine Mother, then this work may be done here and now. If it was for themselves alone then it would have been easily done. But they wanted the victory for earth and to clear the passage for man to ascend beyond his animal humanity to a divine humanity, Life after life they had strived together for this victory. To speak of that would be to write the whole history of the earth from new vantage point. But always the work was half done. Had the hour arrived, this was the question before them.
Their first meeting in 1914 had already started the process, and the first dawn of the New Creation began to break upon the eastern sky through the luminous pages of the Arya. Watching over this first glimmer of hope, the Adversary swooped down and attacked the earth with full might. Thick clouds of war started to appear as fear and suspicion, ambition and murderous instincts gripped man’s world and pulled at his heart strings to play the music of titan’s war cry. Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother took the challenge and entered the war arena in their own way. Sri Aurobindo worked in the occult worlds to prepare the earth and men for the New Light that was dawning. His seat of tapasya was Pondicherry. The Mother travelled to war zones in France and Japan to drink the poison fume of hate and anguish that were emerging from the dark flames of the Asura’s sacrifice. Identifying with the body of the Earth she offered her own body in a holocaust to the Supreme so that the Earth may be saved. Many things happened during this period, some of which have been documented in her diary notes.
August 4, 1914
O LORD, O eternal Master!
Men, driven by the conflict of forces, are performing a sublime sacrifice, they are offering their lives in a bloodstained holocaust. . . .
O Lord, O eternal Master, grant that all this may not be in vain, grant that the inexhaustible torrents of Thy divine Force may spread over the earth and penetrate its troubled atmosphere, the struggling energies, the violent chaos of battling elements; grant that the pure light of Thy Knowledge and the inexhaustible love of Thy Benediction may fill men’s hearts, penetrate their souls, illumine their consciousness and, out of this obscurity, out of this sombre, terrible and potent darkness, bring forth the splendour of Thy majestic Presence!
My being is laid before Thee in a holocaust conscious and complete, that their unconscious holocaust may by it be made effective.
Accept the offering, answer our call: Come!
[CWM 1:216]
August 31, 1914
IN this formidable disorder and terrible destruction can be seen a great working, a necessary toil preparing the earth for a new sowing which will rise in marvelous spikes of grain and give to the world the shining harvest of a new race. . . . The vision is clear and precise, the plan of Thy divine law so plainly traced that peace has come back and installed itself in the hearts of the workers.
There are no more doubts and hesitations, no longer any anguish or impatience. There is only the grand straight line of the work eternally accomplishing itself in spite of all, against all, despite all contrary appearances and illusory detours. These physical personalities, moments unseizable in the infinite Becoming, know that they will have made humanity take one farther step, infallibly and without care for the inevitable results, whatever be the apparent momentary consequences: they unite themselves with Thee, O Master eternal, they unite themselves with Thee, O Mother universal, and in this double identity with That which is beyond and That which is all the manifestation they taste the infinite joy of the perfect certitude.
Peace, peace in all the world. . . .
War is an appearance,
Turmoil is an illusion,
Peace is there, immutable peace.
Mother, sweet Mother who I am, Thou art at once the destroyer and the builder.
The whole universe lives in Thy breast with all its life innumerable and Thou livest in Thy immensity in the least of its atoms. And the aspiration of Thy infinitude turns towards That which is not manifested to cry to it for a manifestation ever more complete and more perfect.
All is, in one time, in a triple and clairvoyant total Consciousness, the Individual, the Universal, the Infinite.
[CWM1:236-237]
