The Sacrifice (2/3): The Significance of 5th December

Such being the case perhaps we can best describe the significance of this day in somewhat similar terms as the Mother gave for Sri Aurobindo’s Birth. In 1957, She gave a message as below:

[the disciple] You spoke of Sri Aurobindo’s birth as “eternal” in the history of the universe. What exactly was meant by “eternal”?

The sentence can be understood in four different ways on four ascending planes of consciousness:

1. 1. Physically, the consequence of the birth will be of eternal importance to the world.
   2. Mentally, it is a birth that will be eternally remembered in the universal history.
   3. Psychically, a birth that recurs for ever from age to age upon earth.
   4. Spiritually, the birth of the Eternal upon earth.

1957

In a similar vein we could describe the significance of 5th December as follows:

It is the sacrifice of the Eternal in our transient world so that this transit suffering world can wake up to the touch of the Eternal, to the beauty and splendour and the perfection that comes through that marvellous touch.

Physically, the consequence of this sacrifice would be the certainty of physical transformation in times to come. Sri Aurobindo chose to merge his cells charged with the immortal Divine Flame with the ordinary matter of the world. This mingling surely prepared matter to receive the supramental influx and for the Supramental Consciousness to stay and be fixed upon earth, in matter and eventually in physical bodies of receptive individuals. His sacrifice paved the way for all.

Mentally, this Divine Sacrifice will be imprinted forever and remembered forever by the earth and give her hope and the will to change towards a luminous future by the sheer strength of this memory. This memory will keep the aspiration for the transformation alive since earth would now contain at least a few transformed elements from Sri Aurobindo’s body received into its soil as seeds of Light for the future.

Psychically, it adds up to the pressure towards divinization of the clay that every Avatar has inevitably come to do. The Avatar is the taking up of a mortal body by the Divine Himself. By such an act, the human body receives the Divine Touch and a way is opened for it to evolve further, much after the Avatar is gone. Sri Aurobindo is the last in the series of Avatars, that is to say, of God assuming a physical body with the idea of awakening matter to some new divine possibility. When the Avatar leaves the body, the stamp of his consciousness remains and works in an occult way through the ages. Sri Aurobindo has brought with him the stamp of the Supramental consciousness and with his leaving the most material envelope that stamp remains upon earth as the seal of the Supreme, His touch of benediction upon matter, the kiss of God upon earth.

Spiritually, it is the sacrifice of the Eternal upon Earth. It means that something of the Divine Personality of Sri Aurobindo will always remain upon earth and continue to act till His work is fully done and the divine life in a divine body is definitively established upon earth.

It means that the 5th December is not only a reminder of the sacrifice made by Sri Aurobindo but a day when Nature would certainly be receiving a spur towards realizing the goal of terrestrial transformation and a progressive divinization of the body. It is not a loss, though one can feel it this way, but a supreme gain for which he sacrificed himself. Or to put it this way, it is a personal loss for him and the devotees who love him yet it is great gain for the earth. Such is the mystery of the dread mysterious sacrifice that brought down the rain of supramental sunshine upon earth and remained in his body for nearly 111 hours. It is this event the made the supramental manifestation of the 29th February possible.

IN THE BATTLE
Often, in the slow ages’ wide retreat
On Life’s long bridge through Time’s enormous sea,
I have accepted death and borne defeat
If by my fall some gain were clutched for Thee.

To this world’s inconscient Power Thou hast given the right
To oppose the shining passage of my soul:
She levies on each step the tax of Night.
Doom, her unjust accountant, keeps the roll.

Around my way the Titan forces press;
This earth is theirs, they hold the days in fee,
I am full of wounds and the fight merciless:
Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?

Even as Thou wilt! What still to Fate Thou owest,
O Ancient of the worlds, Thou knowest, Thou knowest.

[Collected Poems, CWSA 2: 614]

The bringer of the Light had become the pilgrim of the Night to pave the way for man:

THE PILGRIM OF THE NIGHT
I made an assignation with the Night;
In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:
In my breast carrying God’s deathless light
I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo.

I left the glory of the illumined Mind
And the calm rapture of the divinised soul
And travelled through a vastness dim and blind
To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll.

I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no voice of the celestial Friend.

And yet I know my footprints’ track shall be
A pathway towards Immortality.

[Collected Poems, CWSA 2: 603]