object:22.04 - On The Brink(I)
book class:Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
The Double Ladder (2)
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On The Brink(I)
(I)
One of its legs she Swan does not lift.
as it soars upward out of the waters;
if perchance it lifted that also,
there would then neither today nor tomorrow,
nor would there be day nor night
nor would there be dawning any more.
Atharvaveda, 11.4.21
Thus the vedic Rishi. 1
--
Even so when Mother withdrew physically form this earth we presumed that she did so with one foot only, the other foot she left planted here below for us to worship. Well, was that only a presumption or things have changed since?
Here on this earth, we know, a battle was raging is still raging between the Gods and Asuras: men are their agents and instruments. The battle is to decide the destiny of earth humanity. Mother was the leader of the divine army here. Now human beings are a very uncertain quantity. They themselves do not know on which side they are ranging. Some perhaps may know to extent but that does not seem to count much in the actual reckoning of things.
Yes, the pity is that man does not know and yet so much, if not the whole thing, depends on him. For man as he is now is so far removed from godliness and so close to Asuras that the battle upon earth between Gods and Asuras seems to be an unequal game. Man by actual nature is asuric: it is through aspiration that he is trying to be godly but it seems he is now out of breath with his aspiration and has fallen back on his normal nature of the Asura.2
"O Mother, give to our life and mind the Asura's strength, the Asura's energy and to our heart and intelligence a God's character and a God's knowledge."
Man enshrines in him the individualised Godhead, the personal Divine: the possibility of the incarnation of the Divine lies in him alone. Hence the struggle between Gods and Asuras for the possession of the human vessel.
It was the intention of the Mother to implant the Divine upon the turbid soil of normal humanity purifying it of its dross and suffusing it with the heavenly breath. If that is not done, then she will have no other choice but to leave the field altogether to the Asuras, in whatever camp or form they are, to fight it out among themselves and finally destroy themselves in the act even like the Yadavas of old after Krishna's retirement. Some Asuras may like to pretend to be divine precisely to "catch" the voting strength, so to say, of the human being who may still seem to have a prejudice or predilection for divine things; but the truth will be out and the pretenders will be compelled to disclose themselves exactly as they are.
Then only, consequent on the self-annihilation of the Asuras, can this earth be free and open for the incoming of the new race of beings born divine, not made. Whether any remnants of the human race will be left and in what condition, if any part of it could be incorporated or integrated into the new dispensation, is a mystery that will remain so till the actuality reveals it.
But I must not leave it at that for there is always hope and cheer, vistas of escape; the tunnel ends at last and at the end there is always the light. The Lord says indeed: I am Time, the Destroyer of the worlds - kiilo'smi
lokaksayakrt- but he also declares in no uncertain terms his voice of assurance, the resounding bugle-call of his panchajanyathe Divine Conch:
anityam asukham lokam imam prapya bhajasva mam.
...mamekam saranam vraja
aham tva sarvapapebhyo moksayiviimi mil suca.3
*Gila,*IX. 33
"Take refuge in Me alone, I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve."
*Gita,*XVIII. 66
Sri Aurobindo in one of his private notes discloses that most of his disciples were Asuras, the bigger the disciple the greater the Asura. Perhaps they, impelled by a higher Call, came of themselves in order to surrender and be converted to the new life. It may be that that urge wore off in the end and had to be postponed for its fulfilment. It is significant what Sri Aurobindo says in his Hymn to Durga:
"To this ephemeral unhappy world you have come. Love me and turn to me."
***
The Double Ladder (2)
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