Humanity at a Crossroad
YOGA, THE ACCELERATING FACTOR OF EVOLUTION
Can evolution stop at man, the thinking animal?
Man is a transitional being, a middle term of evolution. A pygmy and a dwarf, man is an infrarational animal whose evolution has just begun. The evolution from man to divine man is an even more momentous event than the evolution
from animal to thinking animal. And the moment is NOW.
Civilisations, nations, societies, socio-political organisations, clashing socio-economic patterns are undermined by a global crisis which is the transition to a new era. Humanity is facing the shattering of all traditional values, all conventions. Established patterns of behaviour, family and non- family structures, alternative modes of communal living, multifarious creeds and traditional paths have reached a dead end. There are no longer any dogmas to hold onto, no compromises, no surrogates of any sort. All our certainties, all our “isms” — religions, ideologies, the myriad neuroses we have been clinging to, in the vain attempt to escape the crossroads — disintegrate. Even scientific beliefs that have been dominant for centuries, and which have moulded an entire civilisation, are being blown away. We have entered a no-man’s land, with all the features leading towards the emergence of a new species. Impending danger and chaos are but the daring splendour of an unprecedented adventure into the unknown, in quest of one’s inmost Self. In man, in all.
We have reached the turning point of evolution. A new era, a new world are dawning. The superstructures of an entire age are being swept away. This triggers tremendous fears, gigantic resistances build up. Yet the border line has to be crossed, paving the way to that age of the Spirit, heralded by an ever-increasing number of spiritual pioneers, which is the next stage of the evolutionary ascent.
The values of what Sri Aurobindo calls the objective age are growing obsolete. Those of the subjective age are coming forward. There is an urge from deep within, an overall need for introspection, a plunge towards the roots of one’s being, a thirst and quest to give birth from one’s inner dimension to a new being and a new society, expressing, in the multi-farious aspects of life, that sparkle which still keeps eluding man. Yet even this age will be surpassed by the soul’s unending errand towards the unveiling of the Spirit. The transition from the objective to the subjective age, and the prelude to the spiritual age, are the crossroads we have reached. To comply with senescent structures, hampering any further growth from within or from without — or to take a leap into the future, and reveal, and BE the Self and All: this is the choice awaiting all of us. The Atman.
Sri Aurobindo stressed that yoga is the accelerating factor of evolution, since each path of yoga brings to perfection one or more aspects of human nature. But Integral Yoga is the essence of all yogic paths, as revealed by Sri Aurobindo’s experience and early sadhana. In Integral Yoga all parts and planes of one’s being, all one’s fragmented personalities, must be reunited and reorganised around the evolving soul, the flame burning in one’s inmost temple. Integral Yoga emphasises not just the uplifting but the total transformation of the being, from the heights of divine mind down to the most obscure, obstinate and apparently inert layers of Inconscience. A transformation so radical and complete demands the integration and transmutation of our subliminal and subconscient nature as well, of all the ancestral automatisms of the physical mind, a spiritualisation and supramentalisation down to the very cells of the body. The Supreme Consciousness must descend into each energy centre, each plane of the being, each molecule, each atom, replacing entirely the ordinary consciousness and its mechanical laws. This is the path to Immortality.
The answer to the quest of contemporary man, when all the rest has failed, is the journey which has been seen in flashes
by seers of all times. It was up to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to hand over to humankind a path which is a science, a true crucible out of which a species of divine beings is to be born.
The future… Will it be the embryo of a new race, the incubator of a new world — or stagnation into an endless crisis? The glory of the most beautiful fairy-tale ever told, a fairy-tale which is already reality — or ignorance, struggle, division? This is the crossroad. The answer is Consciousness.
The Great Adventure… And truly a thirst, a need, a need — the need for THAT. She said, “…the ‘Something’ one is in need of, the Love one is in need of, the Truth one is in need of, the supreme Perfection one is in need of — and that is all. The formulas… the fewer formulas there are the better. But that: a need, which theThing-alone can satisfy — nothing else, no half-measure, only that. And then, you go!…”
At the Master’s lotus feet
An Aurovilian
Auroville, November 17th, 1993
