From Chaos to Synthesis: At the gateway of new Civilisation, Culture and Ideals of the Aquarian Age

 Only awhile at first these heavenlier states, These large wide-poised upliftings could endure. The high and luminous tension breaks too soon, The body’s stone stillness and the life’s hushed trance, The breathless might and calm of silent mind; Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day. The restless nether members tire of peace; A nostalgia of old little works and joys, A need to call back small familiar selves, To tread the accustomed and inferior way, The need to rest in a natural pose of fall, As a child who learns to walk can walk not long, Replace the titan will for ever to climb, On the heart’s altar dim the sacred fire. An old pull of subconscious cords renews; It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights, Or a dull gravitation drags us down To the blind driven inertia of our base. This too the supreme Diplomat can use, He makes our fall a means for greater rise. Ashwapati's heavenly uplifted states on the higher planes of consciousness could not persist in the beginning.

 There unity is too close for search and clasp And love is a yearning of the One for the One, And beauty is a sweet difference of the Same And oneness is the soul of multitude. There all the truths unite in a single Truth, And all ideas rejoin Reality. There knowing herself by her own termless self, Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm, All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone. Here are a few lines of overmind poetry capturing the experience of synthesis as Ashwapati passes into the higher planes of consciousness (especially the intuitive and overmind planes of consciousness). He says: On these planes, unity is so close that there is no need for Ashwapati to go out to hunt for it or even grasp it. In the lower planes of the contemporary world, we are all struggling for human unity, and it is so rare that if we are fortunate enough to find it, it's worth embracing and holding very close to our hearts, never to lose it again. This is due to the

 All was revealed there none can here express; Vision and dream were fables spoken by truth Or symbols more veridical than fact, Or were truths enforced by supernatural seals. Immortal eyes approached and looked in his, And beings of many kingdoms neared and spoke: The ever-living whom we name as dead Could leave their glory beyond death and birth To utter the wisdom which exceeds all phrase: The kings of evil and the kings of good, Appellants at the reason’s judgment seat, Proclaimed the gospel of their opposites, And all believed themselves spokesmen of God: The gods of light and titans of the dark Battled for his soul as for a costly prize. In the hidden worlds on the inner subtle planes, everything that cannot be fully expressed in this outer material world was disclosed or made known as if the veil of matter had been lifted. Ashwapati saw incidents in his vision and dream indicating allegories and tales of truth, symbolically more genuine than the facts of the outer world. The sym

 For those who have not yet experienced it (the white of synthesis), the masters speak in symbols, analogies and parables. One of these is the analogy of the reversal of a prism. Hold it in a certain poistion and the light is white, but turn it and light is broken up and reveals the whole color spectrum. This according to the Mother is exactly what happens in the change of consciousness: 'You restore the white'. In our normal consciousness the pure, original light has been broken up, and we function on one or more wavelengths of green, purple, blue or yellow. When the reversal of consciousness occues, the white is restored. And this is precisley what the Matrimandir does: it restores the white. - To restore the White P. 69, Essays on Matrimandir, Ruud Lohman. Those lines are from a man who practiced the "Yoga of Synthesis" as he fully devoted himself to the physical labour and construction of the Matrimandir. We need to thank Gerard Jak and B from Auroville for introd

 The 'Inner Chamber of the Matrimandir Auroville' as seen by 'The Mother' in her inner visions and manifested at Auroville today is illustrated using a real concrete ashram of Vicente Beltran Anglada. First, we have to thank my friend Robert Badia, who introduced me to the precious teachings of Vicente Beltran Anglada. The apparent simplicity of many initiates and disciples deprives the overly intellectualised mind of this natural recognition. They are too humble and never boast about their inner association with ashrams. A few, such as 'B', even begged VBA not to mention his details in the writings since he is very well known socially and did not want any indication to identify him from near or far. The composition of a second-ray sub-ashram was disclosed: 1 B. Relatively young; he is an excellent writer North American 2 C. Catholic missionary, mentioned in the South American “Knowledge” magazine from March 1970. Because he died after the festival of Wesak 1971

 In the Witness’s occult rooms with mind-built walls On hidden interiors, lurking passages Opened the windows of the inner sight. He owned the house of undivided Time. Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched, And peered into gleaming endless corridors, Silent and listening in the silent heart For the coming of the new and the unknown. He gazed across the empty stillnesses And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea In the far avenues of the Beyond. He heard the secret Voice, the Word that knows, And saw the secret face that is our own. The inner planes uncovered their crystal doors; Strange powers and influences touched his life. From the mystic spaces where Ashwapati resided, he now took the role of a Witness. The mysterious rooms of Ashwapati's experiences as a witness were built by mind. The windows of inner sight opened and he could see the inner paths actively hiding from a normal sight. His inner eyes could see the past, present and

 He sat in secret chambers looking out Into the luminous countries of the unborn Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true And all that the life longs for is drawn close. He saw the Perfect in their starry homes Wearing the glory of a deathless form, Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace, Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy. He lived in the mystic space where thought is born And will is nursed by an ethereal Power And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths Till it grows into the likeness of a god. In these lines, Sri Aurobindo is penning Ashwapati's experience of his deeper sheaths (bodies) and visions as they appear in the secluded silent spaces of his soul. As Ashwapati sat in the secret chambers of the deeper cave of his soul, looking out with his subtle eyes, he saw dazzling lands of the future where all the perfection aspired by the mind was found. These lands dismissed as simply illusions by material-minded were true and real for the soul. All the

For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above. In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault; The conscious ends of being went rolling back: The landmarks of the little person fell, The island ego joined its continent. Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms: Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown. In earlier lines we read Aswapati being transformed into a Seer, by the Divine 'Presence' at work. In next lines here Sri Aurobindo is describing few qualities of Aswapati as a Seer. He says: Aswapati overcame the limiting states of a conventional mind. He was no longer stuck in those limited and fixed states from which a conventional man is unable to go beyond. 'Griffin' is a dual combination of lion and eagle who are symbolic of the powers on the land and sky. A griffin is at the forefront of duality of Night and Day, and with his powers dragging a conventional man through those powers of duality of a material word. How

 A Presence wrought behind the ambiguous screen: It beat his soil to bear a Titan’s weight, Refining half-hewn blocks of natural strength It built his soul into a statued god. The Craftsman of the magic stuff of self Who labours at his high and difficult plan In the wide workshop of the wonderful world, Modelled in inward Time his rhythmic parts. Then came the abrupt transcendent miracle: The masked immaculate Grandeur could outline, At travail in the occult womb of life, His dreamed magnificence of things to be. A crown of the architecture of the worlds, A mystery of married Earth and Heaven Annexed divinity to the mortal scheme. A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time. A Divine 'Presence' that dwells within the entire manifestation and 'In which we live, move and have our being' was at work behind the ambiguous screen of material world. It was laboring behind the screen on Aswapati. It battered the soil of his physical self to make it strong and bear a gigantic super

 After an introduction in the first two cantos, the entire Part One of the Epic, including remaining three cantos of the first book and books two and three are on King Ashwapati. A WORLD’S desire compelled her mortal birth. One in the front of the immemorial quest, Protagonist of the mysterious play In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms And limits his eternity by the hours And the blind Void struggles to live and see, A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air, Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power. Savitri is an emanation of "The Divine Mother". She has been forced to take a birth in a human body due to the Tapasya, intense spiritual endeavour of King Aswapati. Aswapati is a single individual who embodies in himself the entire World's blind desire. He is a leader of the age-old quest of self-realization and divine fulfilment. As the leader moves forward so do all the rest of humanity following him. He is in-fact the main character in the mysteriou

 The great World-Mother now in her arose: A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn, Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance, Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel And stopped the mute march of Necessity. A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks Empowered to force the door denied and closed Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time. In earlier lines we read that Savitri held a lever that moves 'the veiled Ineffable's timeless will'. Now, a giant power of the Divine-Mother arose in her. A 'living choice' of Savitri was never to accept the destined fate of Satyavan: to die. She affirmed her choice: 'Satyavan must live'. She overthrew the 'cold dead turn' of fate. Her spirit crushed the Circumstance underneath it's feet. It halted the senseless dire revolving Wheel of Samsara going round and round without truly moving forward. And ended the mute march of Necessity. A fighter on fire

 Across the awful march no eye can see, Barring its dreadful route no will can change, She faced the engines of the universe; A heart stood in the way of the driving wheels: Its giant workings paused in front of a mind, Its stark conventions met the flame of a soul. A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will: A prayer, a master act, a king idea Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule, One mighty deed can change the course of things; A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. Savitri faced the 'engines of the universe': the mechanical laws of material physics that are propelling the universe unendingly. Like the engines of a gigantic locomotive that keep it marching onwards on its predetermined route, these Laws of Nature are carrying us frightfully forward on a journey whose destination we cannot see with our naked yet we cannot say 'no' to them. Savitri's stood confronting these drivin

 A bond is put on the high-climbing mind, A seal on the too large wide-open heart; Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass And the Animal browses in the sacred fence And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more. A mind that is too eager or impatient to advance and progress higher is chained and tied down. A heart that attempts to open too deeply and spontaneously is prevented by a  mark or a seal. Life that is on a tour of discovering new possibilities, is halted by Death. Therefore the power and authority of the Inconscient continues to rule subconsciously. We often feel trapped by those 'dual tables and karmic norms' set by the Laws of Nature. The phrase 'tardy coilings of the aeons' indicates extremely slow passing of manvantara or a long period of evolutionary activity in a cylic or spiral manner. The vast stretches of evolutionary movement often frustrates a soul that is eag

Some Excerpts from Vicente Beltran Anglada : "There is, then, from this angle of view, a potential Artist in every spirit soul in Nature, from the tiny soul that informs the delicately perfumed flower to the resplendent Angel who cares for the preservation of the pristine forms which from the most hidden levels attempt to substantiate or materialise. Beauty, the innate sense of approach to the hidden Archetypes which are constantly seeking to manifest themselves, is the peculiar and characteristic Note of Nature, being Man, the being endowed with reason and sensibility and therefore with the greatest capacity for fulfilment, the only being within this magnificent Nature who alters the innate sense of Beauty and fills the vast field of his individual and communal realisations with hideous ugliness. Its work is thus desired, but at the same time feared, by the familiar Angels who watch over the evolution of the social environments of Humanity and whose special mission is to introduc

 Jail of Material World: A gaol is this immense material world: Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. A grey tribunal of the Ignorance, An Inquisition of the priests of Night In judgment sit on the adventurer soul, And the dual tables and the Karmic norm Restrain the Titan in us and the God: Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility. Page 18, Savitri (A Legend, Symbol, the Mantric Epic of Sri Aurobindo), The Issue. In these lines Sri Aurobindo portrays a huge material world being like a jail. Every road of escape here, is armed with a cold emotionless Law of Nature. Every gate is patrolled by massive guards and there seems to be no chance to get past them. The word 'Inquisition' means a court to question people about their beliefs with intolerance and cruelty where gloomy council of ignorant judges and dark ministers of religion sit cross-examining and judging a soul. A soul that is o

 The intense fire and Flame of Savitri: A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force. In this enigma of the dusk of God, This slow and strange uneasy compromise Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul, Where all must move between an ordered Chance And an uncaring blind Necessity, Too high the fire spiritual dare not blaze. If once it met the intense original Flame, An answering touch might shatter all measures made And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite. Page 18, Savitri (A Legend, Symbol, the Mantric Epic of Sri Aurobindo), The Issue. How is Savitri different from an ordinary earthbound human ? She is a Force, a power in touch with higher planes of consciousness. Her mold is fully conscious and active. An ordinary earth life is mysterious puzzle difficult to solve. We are in a twilight of God, where the light of truth and darkness of ignorance are almost equally balanced. At our current stage in evolution, the material world is restricting to a limitless soul such as Sa