SethF1968: 2019

Seth Farber,PhD
seth17279@aol.com

The Message of Sri Aurobindo: God, Romantic Love, and Physical Immortality

Sri Aurobindo is the most overlooked and underestimated sage/ yogi/ philosopher of the modern era. He was so revolutionary that even his own disciples and followers have failed to fully comprehend the most radical aspects of the message of Savitri, which he considered his most important work: its soteriology of romantic love, its (physical) immortalism, its eschatological vision including the eternal union of soul mates or twin souls – in short, its distinctive, if not unique, vision of romantic love as the most powerful redemptive force in the modern world.

According to Sri Aurobindo the ultimate goal of the process of spiritual evolution is not the individual attainment of liberation, not individual absorption in the Absolute( in Brahman), not the individual’s ecstatic communion with God, although these may be foretastes of the end- goal. It is the divine life on earth for all— which he described as the union of heaven and earth, of God and humanity. In his great epic poem Savitri, Aurobindo makes it clear that the attainment of the divine life on earth, the union of humanity and God is integrally connected with---cannot be separated from-- the union of twin souls eternally bonded by love, and thus with the transcendence of death. In fact, according to Savitri, (romantic) love is “the bright link” that unites earth and heaven, man and God. (p. 633 ) Satyavan calls Savitri, his beloved, his “gold link” to God (p.408).

St Augustine famously wrote in Confessions “[Y]ou have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.” But for the protagonists of Aurobindo’s epic poem–and perhaps for many, if not most, human beings-- the ideal of a solitary union with God, without the union with one’s mate,one’s twin soul, could never be fully satisfying. Satyavan tells Savitri, his twin soul, that he has spurned God’s invitation to dwell in heaven for,“heaven's insufficient without thee.” “ Savitri, Godhead and woman, moonlight of my soul /I have turned away from the celestials' joy /And heaven's insufficient without thee.” (p 717). What person in love would not say to his/her beloved, “Heaven is insufficient without you”?

But the story of Savitri, of the doomed lovers, is in some respects the story of every human love. All lovers are doomed, all love ends in death - every love that lasts is aborted by death. Every love on earth ends in tragedy. This is as true of the octogenarian widow whose husband dies of heart failure as it is for Savitri in the bloom of youth who loses her twin soul, Satyavan, after but a year---although the former may not make great drama. Love’s true end is eternity. Thus every lover yearns in the depths of his or her heart to abolish death, to live “happily ever after.”
But of course “science”( but see below) and philosophy and “common sense” deem this a fairytale. Sri Aurobindo was the greatest philosopher/ yogi ever to affirm that this “fairytale” ending is the will of the Divine.(In fact he was one of only two philosophers who affirmed this. Vladimir Solovyov, the great 19^th century Russian Christian philosopher was only other writer of whom I am aware, not translated from Russian until recently, who reached conclusions remarkably similar to those Aurobindo reached years later—however his solitary personal life did not exemplify his ideal, as did that of Sri Aurobindo and “the Mother.” See Vladimir Wozniuk, 2003)

If love leads to suffering, to tragedy, it is not an unqualified good. To the philosopher, death poses the conundrum: Is love good? The question then arises for each person: Should I love? It is rational to reflect on this question and even to make the decision as follows, “I choose not to love because the anguish of losing my beloved to death in the end is too great for me to want to bear.” (I am examining this dilemma from the perspective of the survivor not the deceased for obvious reasons –although I assume life after death.) Modern psychology posits that the reluctance to love is a manifestation of psychopathology, of an irrational”fear of intimacy.” But that is because its examination is superficial: it ignores the dilemma for lovers posed by death itself.

The choice to avoid romantic love was a choice most spiritual masters and seekers before Sri Aurobindo—and after-- consciously or unconsciously made. Since they assumed that the body was eternally mortal, they regarded it as unimportant (if not contemptible) and valorized the immortal soul or, in the case of Buddhists, the cosmic “emptiness.” The inevitably tragic nature of mortal love, in all its fragility, was one reason–conscious or unconscious–that they viewed romantic love and marriage (even when it was based on love) as at best incidental to salvation and at worst a hindrance. In either case, “attachment” to other human beings (e.g., true love), as they saw it, only added to the sum of human suffering. This is why the Buddha advocated “detachment” as the best spiritual strategy for minimizing suffering.

Both Buddhists and Hindus believed the ideal spiritual state was to get “off the wheel” of incarnations, and to attain the annihilation of the individual soul in the bliss of the godhead – in “Brahman” in Hinduism, and in “emptiness” in Buddhism. Even worldly spiritual mavericks, such as Swami Vivekanada and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan–19th and 20^th centuries, respectively-- advocated the dominant world-rejecting Hindu ideal.
In Savitri, Aurobindo is saying through Savitri–in her debate with Death-- that these various other-worldly soteriologies, including the Western ideal of a post-mortem heaven, all based on idealization of post-mortem disincarnate existence, constitute in fact a surrender to death, even itself a kind of death because they are less than a full affirmation and a full embrace of life and love. The point is brilliantly made in Savitri by making Death the advocate of these spiritual soteriologies – and an advocate most insistently of the dominant Hindu ideal of the rejection of life and the eternal immersion of the soul in Brahman.
Sri Aurobindo was the only Indian philosopher , the only yogi who renounced this ideal, affirming in its stead the divine life on earth

A New Act in the Drama of the World

Aurobindo explicitly states that the union of Savitri and Satyavan is “a new act in the drama of the world” and a herald of a greater age. The eternal union of Satyavan and Savitri is necessary in order for them to fulfill their messianic charge and to lead humanity to the divine life on earth. The Mother has said that the character of Satyavan is partly autobiographical–he is, she said an Avatar, an incarnation of God, he represents Sri Aurobindo. (The Dual Power of God, p2) Savitri and Satyavan are the dual power of God, together they are the messianic power that can transform the world. And indeed Aurobindo had noted his union with the Mother was necessary for their own redemptive work.(https://auromere.wordpress.com/ 2011/07/08/how-to-choose-the-right-life-partner Accessed Jan.2019)

Aurobindo had a strong sense of confidence in his mission from an early age, “I know I have the power to redeem the fallen race,” he wrote while still a young man (Reddy,p.61) And he had no doubt that his own mission included the abolition of death In one of his poems (“The Pilgrim of the Night”) he wrote, “And yet I know my footprints path shall be a pathway to [physical] immortality.” (https://www.searchforlight.org/KDSethna/APathwaytowardsImmortality.html, Accessed Jan. 2019) Those of us who are awed by the profound and revolutionary revelations in the voluminous writings of Aurobindo well understand the relief and enthusiasm of the Mother–Mirra Alfassa or Mirra Richard (at that time)--- reported in her journal on the day of her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India where she had traveled with her erstwhile husband, Paul Richard:

“It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth. His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall indeed be established upon earth” (Nandakumar, p. 415, Accessed January, 2019,http://www.auromira.in/index.php/109-about-the-mother-sri-aurobindo/111-29th-march-the-day-when-mirra-alfassa-met-sri-aurobindo)

Most if not all Aurobindonians agree. They venerate Sri Aurobindo and his twin soul and spiritual partner Mirra Alfassa, known as “the Mother”, and affirm not merely their paramount and singular importance, but their divinity. Thus many were enraged with Aurobindo’s controversial contemporary biographer Peter Heehs who dismissed cursorily the idea that Aurobindo might be an “Avatar” –although he evidently did not think it implausible to describe Jesus and Krishna as Avatars.(See Heehs quote at https://auroramirabilis.blogspot.com/2008/09/ accessed January, 2019)

The concept of the Avatar is ambiguous. But to understand Sri Aurobindo it must be understood —as he himself insisted--- – that in any case Aurobindo was not a freak in the process of humanity’s spiritual development. He wrote, “When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar(!) and it is impossible in any other case, you reduce my sadhana to an absurdity and Avatarhood also to an absurdity. For my Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing ...but precisely for the earth-consciousness, to open a way to the earth-consciousness to change.”

(Nirodbaran’s Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 1, p. 135,

Http://savitri.in/blogs/light-of-supreme/sri-aurobindos-avatarhood-and-the-lives-of-sri-aurobindo-by-peter-heehs-vishwas-patel, accssed Jan 2019) To another disciple he explained,

“I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it ..by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake—a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence.”(Avatarhood, https://www.sabda.in/catalog/bookinfo.php?websec=ENGA-EA-045) )

He was not a deux vex machina for humanity’s evolutionary crisis. No, he was himself a highly advanced product of humanity’s spiritual evolution, and thus, as the Mother realized from their first meeting, he presaged our future, he showed us what we could and would become. This would be true whether Aurobindo was an “Avatar” or not since his own definition of Avatar fit right into his evolutionary perspective. (Aurobindo on Himself, Acessed 2019 at https://auroramirabilis.blogspot.com/2008/09)

Aurobindo stated in Essays on the Gita that the purpose of the Avatar was to advance the evolutionary process, to help solve the evolutionary crisis, “to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking soul of the human being can cast itself. ”It is “to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it ” It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation” governing over humanity’s spiritual endeavor. It is to give a “way of self-moulding” by which the individual can grow into divinity.

But Aurobindo continues–and here he differs from many before him–this growth is “no mere isolated and individual phenomenon,” but it is “the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation.., to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection,.. and the overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness.” This is I believe the best description of the work and mission of Aurobindo and the Mother—and it is our work and our mission now–as Aurobindo emphasized. He wrote: “The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha [or Aurobindo/the Mother, Savitri/Satyavan] in external humanity [or in literature–Savitri] has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within our own inner humanity.”

( Essays on the Gita Aurobindo on Himself,http://savitri.in/blogs/light-of-supreme/the-gita-on-avatarhood Accessed 2019).”

From Aurobindo’s Vedic perspective the human soul is divine. That is, in the most important sense what distinguishes the Avatar from us is the unusual-- divine-- nature not of his being, but of his/her mission. He/she is the pathbreaker, the pioneer, the world-redeemer—the messiah. (Aurobindo concept of the Avatar resembles the Messiah, more than any other.) We’ll see later this new model of God-in humanity, this “mould” of divine humanity which Sri Aurobindo intended us to manifest within “our own inner humanity” was exemplified in Savitri and Satyavan -– and also in the life of Aurobindo and the Mother --and it remains “vibrating” in the collective mind of the humanity: The new model is the “dual power,” “the two-in one,”–the goal is the eternal union of twin souls, the marriage of “the eternal bridegroom and the eternal bride.”( See “A Dual Power of God”)

The Two Sides of Sri Aurobindo

I must acknowledge that there is a strange inconsistency in Aurobindo’s writings, which may help to explain why Aurobindonians are so discomforted by the ideal of romantic love as a redemptive force—and why some Aurobindonians deny the manifest sense of Savitri, and why none of the commentaries on Savitri point out the obvious: that romantic love is “the star” of the poem. For example, in Savitri and Aurobindo’s other (early) poems, romantic love is pitted against death, and the outcome of the struggle determines the destiny of his protagonists, if not all humanity.

Yet Sri Aurobindo consistently told his disciples that not only are all sexual relations an impediment to their spiritual work but even the emotional bonds between a husband and wife–love---could only be an obstacle to sadhaks (spiritual aspirants) who sought a higher spiritual goal than that of ordinary “householders”, e.g. those who were practitioners of the yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo (“Integral Yoga”) at their ashram. Thus, in his ashram not only was sex banned but even husband and wife had to sever their emotional ties and place union with the Divine above all. This could be attained through surrender to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother-- theirs was the only union that was sanctioned in the ashram, although of course they did not have a sexual relationship. (Most disciples regarded them as divine, and Aurobindo stated explicitly that Mirra was the Divine Mother.) (.http://motherandsriaurobindo.in/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-03%20The%20Ashram/_Relations%20with%20others/-04_Sexual%20Relations.htm, Accessed January, 2019)

Thus, in his Letters on Yoga Aurobindo wrote

“The initial aim in the Integral Yoga being an absolute surrender and dedication of the whole being to the Divine, any human relation of love between the sexes, however romantic it may appear to our lower nature, is a fatal counter-attraction, and cannot but end in spiritual disaster.” He warned that “there must be no exclusive attachment,. in which one gets glued to a person and cannot make the Divine,.. the sole object of one's love and adoration.” (Letters on Yoga II http://motherandsriaurobindo.in/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-03%20Disciples/Rishabhchand/-01%20English/The%20Integral%20Yoga%20of%20Sri%20Aurobindo/-17_The%20Physical%20Nature%20and%20its%20Purification-2.htm,Accessed January, 2019)

If Aurobindo had not written Savitri one would indeed be forced to conclude

that Aurobindo saw no place for romantic love in the spiritual life. In my opinion

he would thus be denying the most powerful force that exists for the spiritual transformation of the earth, recognized as such in Savitri – he would be denying the “gold link” itself between heaven and earth.

However even in his correspondence with disciples he often qualifies his disparagement of both romantic love and sex. He tells a disciple that it is difficult for the spiritual aspirant to find the right woman for a wife, a “spiritual companion”. “[But [w]hen found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of [spiritual] progress tenfold.” Aurobindo cautioned a disciple that “ so far as the yogic life is concerned the sexual act with one’s own wife is as much harmful as that with any other woman ” But then he added, “Only those who have risen above the human level[to the “supermental” as he calls it]...can possibly make a proper use of the sexual act for a spiritual purpose.” When the disciple asked what happens to lust at this above- human level, Aurobindo responded, “The Higher Power can take up the things in its own way and prevent the harmful effects. Then the method and the act become absolutely different from the human.”

(https://medium.com/@sanjeevpatra/marriage-a-redundant-and-irrelevant-institution-for-spiritual-sadhaks-5cd28ba68f38, Acccessed Jan 2019).

In Sri Aurobindo’s last important essay he amplified this point acknowledging that “the sex principle” could not be excluded from “a divine life on earth,” that it is “in one of its aspects a cosmic and even a divine principle”–it takes the form of Purusha (the male principle–soul) and Prakriti (the female principle–nature) which are necessary for creation and integral in their interchange for the process of the development of life itself. It remains to be seen in what way the sex principle “can be admitted into the new and larger life....[S]ex will have to be refined, submit to the spiritual or psychic impulse and shed all its lighter, frivolous or degraded forms and feel the touch of the purity of the ideal.” (Volume 16 "The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings"

published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry

diffusion by SABDA , http://intyoga.online.fr/supram03.htm.) Aurobindo stops short of saying what is obvious to many spiritual aspirants— sex will have to be transformed from a means of recreational leisure to a ceremony of worship, to a sacramental commemoration of the divinity, the holiness, of the beloved (Sherrard,1976, Sovatsky,1999). Pleasure may be its by-product, it should not be its goal.

Aurobindonians may have been more influenced by the Mother who did not share Aurobindo’s views on romantic love which she repeatedly said was invariably inferior to the love of God. She wrote, “To love truly the Divine we must rise above all attachments. To become conscious of the Divine Love, all other love must be abandoned." (http://motherandsriaurobindo.in/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-03%20Disciples/Jugal%20Kishore%20Mukherjee/-01%20English/The%20Practice%20of%20the%20Integral%20Yoga/-018_On%20Human%20Relationships%20in%20Sadhana.htm) But in Savitri Death makes this argument and Savitri vigorously repudiates it. “I have loved too the body of my God,” she told Death. It is romantic love, love for the spiritual-physical being of the twin soul that forges the union of Satyavan and Savitri; and the Mother herself said she thought that Satyavan was an Avatar, “an incarnation of the Supreme”( A Dual Power of God, p.2)—thus from her perspective even an Avatar can have explicitly romantic feelings. (In the poem Satyavan was not depicted by Aurobindo as an Avatar. Arguably he became an Avatar after Savitri saved him.)

In her own case this distinction between romantic love and love for God was otiose as she repeatedly affirmed that Sri Aurobindo was God-- an Avatar, an incarnation of God. Therefore, she must have felt that her romantic love for Aurobindo – for the physical-spiritual entity of Aurobindo— was elevated above mere human love because Aurobindo was God. She was not indulging in the “inferior” love of another human being—she was loving God.

But for the Mother to make this kind of distinction is to completely contradict the message of Savitri, The mission of the Mother and Aurobindo was to model a new kind of relationship for others, to create “a spiritual mould” for others to cast themselves into, to help the individual to grow into the divine. The Mother contradicts the meaning of her own mission, by implying that her union with Aurobindo is walled off from the “purely human” romantic relationships of others.

Savitri says”I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan/

I have seen the Eternal in a human face.” Every human being who is truly in love experiences God smiling in his/her beloved, although he/she may use other words to describe it.

The distinction between romantic love and love of God is -- from the mystical perspective -- at best an unintelligible distinction since we are all divine, Avatars or not. “I have loved too the body of my God,” Savitri says. As a teacher Aurobindo made the same mistake—to a lesser degree. Nevertheless, both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Savitri and Satyavan are prototypes of the eternal Two-in one relationships that will be characteristic of the next stage of our collective spiritual evolution.

But it was on the issue on sex that the Mother’s ideas were most limited by modern culture and divergent from Aurobindo’s– she described sex as “bestial,” saw no place for it in the divine life (unlike Aurobindo) and looked forward to “the disappearance of certain ungainly protuberances, such as the genital organs of man and the mammary glands of woman.” ( All is She CWM 15: 281, https://aurosociety.org/pdf/All%20Is%20She.pdf Accesed Jan. 2019)

What kind of love bonded Sr Aurobindo to the Mother? “Mother [Mirra Alfassa] and I are one but in two bodies;” Aurobindo said.. https://auromere.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/twin-souls He wrote, “The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness...” “The Mother and myself stand for the same Power in two forms... Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti are only the two sides of the one Divine (Brahman),” Aurobindo wrote. And the Mother had said, "Without him, I exist not; without me he is unmanifest." http://savitri.in/library/resources/lives-of-sri-aurobindo/dec-21-2008)

Nirodbaran wrote, “One of disciples observed that only two persons have realized and put into practice Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of surrender: the Mother surrendering to Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aurobindo to the Mother....The two consciousnesses were one so that when Sri Aurobindo met with the accident [he tripped and broke his leg] the Mother felt at once the vibration in her sleep."(Nirodbaran,1988, Accessed in Jan 2019, Whether they were literally “one” is a moot question, but all who observed were aware of the deep communion between the two of them, and the synchronicity of their thoughts and feelings.

http://www.fromthestars.com/page123.html.) Aurobindo wrote in Savitri

“The Two who are one are the secret of all power” (See A Dual Power of God, p75)

Could this profound and harmonious male-female union have evolved in the absence of romantic love? I think not, not unless love of the Avatar is ipso facto “non-sexual,” non-romantic, non-physical –even when it has aspects of romantic, physical and sexual love! The Mother repeatedly said that she was Savitri. We know they did not have sexual relations but that does not exclude physical attraction. In fact when Mirra realized Sri Aurobindo was going to die she said she told him, “I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought” which evokes the image of astral bodies if not physical bodies merging.

( See http://savitri.in/library/mother/the-mother-on-savitri-a-compilation.)

The trope of melting into each other is quintessentially Romantic– it is the pervasive metaphor for the communion of twin souls in Savitri. Shelley described two lovers, as “one soul of interwoven flame.” (Solomon, 1988,p.42; K.D.Verma,1995) Robert Solomon, in his insightful essay, states that the idea of a “union” between a man and a woman was “the central theme of the Romantic period” (Ibid).

But the idea that the Mother might have romantic feelings, let alone sexual feelings, for Aurobindo as well as a spiritual and intellectual communion with Sri Aurobindo, would be vigorously denied by most Aurobindonians, ( Sri Aurobindo was careful not to reveal very much about his private life, as he famously noted– we know only that the Mother and he did not have a sexual relationship. ) For whatever reason Aurobindonians appear to believe that physical attraction or anything resembling romantic love would diminish the soteriological power and ontological purity of the meeting and union of Aurobindo and the Mother.

Why? Because both Eastern and Western societies have been bedeviled for centuries by a profoundly anti-sexual misogynist culture. Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa both repudiated the misogyny of the culture in a manner that was revolutionary for the time and place but neither freed themselves entirely from the culture’s negative attitude toward sexuality, particularly the Mother. Plato had idealized the concept of eros but Christianity degraded it to “selfish and grasping eroticism,” and non-sexual agape was so highly elevated “to the point of such.. selflessness that it is clear it was an attitude ultimately possible only by God”(Solomon,p.70). This was exactly the attitude of the Mother, raised as she was in the Christian West.

To reiterate again, there was a marked distinction in this regard between the Mother and Aurobindo– evinced in everything the latter wrote. But particularly in Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and plays in which immersed in the Romantic tradition he attained a freedom he did not display in his correspondence with his disciples. Thus Sri Aurobindo wrote the greatest affirmation of romantic love and its soteriological potential –Savitri-- ever written by a philosopher or theologian.

The illustrious scholar R Srinivasa Iyengar, one of Aurobindo’s original disciples and first biographers, compares the first meeting of Mirra Alfassa(later the Mother) with Aurobindo to the first meeting of Savitri and Satyavan–virtually all commentators, including the Mother, agree Savitri is largely autobiographical. Iyengar writes, “The moment Mirra had so ardently looked forward to had arrived at last, and there was a blaze of instantaneous recognition. Sri Aurobindo was clearly the Master of her occult life, the “Krishna” she had met so often in her dream-experiences. Their first meeting and the current of feelings that may have gone through them are echoed in these lines of Savitri: “Here first she met on the uncertain earth The one for whom her heart had come so far. Attracted as in heaven star by star, They wondered at each other and rejoiced And wove affinity in a silent gaze. A moment passed that was eternity’s ray, An hour began, the matrix of new Time” ( Selections from On the Mother, p22,Accessed Jan 2019 at http://www.sacar.in/publications/New%20Race%20Archives/journal-of-intergral-studies/Feb_April_2013/The%20Meeting.pdf)

Sophistry can purge Aurobindo’s meeting –and relationship– with Mirra Alfassa (the Mother) of all romantic feelings–and deem it an unfathomable “ mystery” how the union of male and female Avatars can be effected without any romantic feelings; in the same manner many Christians deal with inconvenient facts about Jesus’ alleged celibacy.

Just now I discovered a webpage by an Aurobindo disciple and I find the same hackneyed memes that have dominated Christianity for centuries– they completely conflict with Savitri’s defense of human love–love for Satyavan, not for God alone. (Https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/sri-aurobindo-a-champion-of-love) This author copiously quoting Savitri, claims human love is inferior to God’s love because it is “based on give and take, or reciprocity.” (This is the same argument conservative Protestant Christians made against romantic love–see below) Ironically the author in support of his argument for the inferiority of human love quotes Death each time, not Savitri! But he did not read Savitri carefully because Savitri answers every argument of Death. Note to Aurobindonians: Sri Aurobindo is on the side of Savitri, not Death! Unfortunately, many disciples have such a low regard for romantic love, they are unwittingly on the side of death—as illustrated by this disciple who unthinkingly imputes Death’s argument in Savitri to Sri Aurobindo!

Of course, the kind of profound human love between adults celebrated by Sri Aurobindo must be based on reciprocity. The goal is the union of twin souls.There cannot be union without reciprocity! The love of Savitri and Satyavan, Aurobindo and the Mother, was reciprocal– on this basis they “grow into” each other. God did not intend for men to be like medieval knights loving and adoring unattainable women who were married to other men for the purpose of breeding and raising royal heirs. This kind of “courtly love” was at best an early stage in the development of romantic love. Savitri represents a vision of mature romantic love.

The same author claims that Sri Aurobindo believed the love for the transcendent divine is superior to human love. This is not true of Aurobindo, although it was true of the Mother. (https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/sri-aurobindo-a-champion-of-love\

Savitri denies this dichotomy –she claims that human love “is the far Transcendent's angel here.’” (p633); To clinch this spurious argument the Aurobindo disciple unwittingly quotes Savitri’s mother who is the foil for one of Savitri’s– and Aurobindo’s- - most impassioned affirmations of the grandeur of romantic love! ( Savitri, pp.432–436)

Aurobindo shows the same kind of inconsistency regarding death–the “villain” in Savitri— as he does towards love. In Aurobindo’s advice to disciples he minimized the significance of death. Here is a statement to a disciple that is typical of what Aurobindo said to disciples:

“What is vital is the supramental change of consciousness - conquest of death is something minor and, as I have always said, the last physical result of it, not the first result of all or the most important - a thing to be added to complete the whole, not the one thing needed and essential. To put it first is to reverse all spiritual values - it would mean that the seeker was actuated, not by any high spiritual aim but by a vital clinging to life or a selfish and timid seeking for the security of the body - such a spirit could not bring the supramental change...” (The Integral Yoga, p.94, https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/37_35/1364_e.htm http://intyog)

It may be true that “a timid seeking for the security of the body” should not play a large role in the spiritual quest but that was not the motive behind Savitri’s battle with Death – it was her yearning for eternal union with Satytavan. This was a motive of which Aurobindo wholly approved in Savitri—which Savitri vigorously defended when Death told her she was merely surrendering to “flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust.” (p.608) Death said her love for Satyavan was merely “a hunger of the body and the heart” (p611) which Savitri romanticized and deified.

“A thrill in its yearning makes it seem divine,”(p. 610) Death tells her, thus echoing the sentiment of religious traditions–toward romantic love-- from antiquity. No, Aurobindo’s heroine says to Death, “My love..came to me from God[and] to God returns.” (p612). In other words, romantic love unites heaven and earth. Savitri says: “Even in all that life and man have marred/A whisper of divinity still is heard” (p.612). Love is “a voice of the Eternal ecstasy” (p.613). She and Savatyan are “twin souls born from one undying fire” (p.614).

Despite the inconsistency in Aurobindo’s statements, and the generally uninspired comments he makes to his disciples about romantic love, it is undeniable that Aurobindo did consider the conquest of death to be essential–as shown by Savitri and his plays and poetry. The conquest of death is clearly central to his vision of the divine life on earth. Furthermore, the conquest of death was an issue that obsessed Aurobindo (I use “obsess” only because unfortunately there is no non-pejorative word in English that aptly describes this often-inspired state)– he did not regard it as “something minor.” This theme runs throughout his poems and plays, even before he became a mystic. One can assume in his own personal life after 1920 –after the Mother came to live with him--conquering death was important and essential largely because of his desire to preserve his union with the Mother--to live happily ever after.

It was as if Aurobindo the guru was unaware of Aurobindo the poet-philosopher. Let us not deny that Aurobindo the poet spoke from a deeper part of his psyche. As one literary critic says of Aurobindo’s plays, “All the plays underline the need for[romantic] love, which is the great solvent of all varieties of evil and can defy death and turn dross into gold.” (See The Triumph of Love in Sri Aurobindo’s Plays by S Krisna Bhatta, Accessed January, 2019 at http://yabaluri.org/CD%20&%20WEB/triumphofloveinsriaurobindosplaysapr75.htm) Aurobindo’s disciple, Dr K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar ,another student of literature wrote, “He is convinced that it is only through[romantic] love..that the entire life of mankind can be transformed. In Urvasie (1896) as well as Love and Death (1899), indomitable love is presented as beating against the gates of mortality and gaining a victory over Death in one or another way” (Iyengar,1985).

These were written before Aurobindo’s mystical experiences. In one of his plays one of the characters expressed bluntly the idea that seemed to inspire all of Aurobindo’s early writings,“….some day surely the world too shall be saved from death by Love.” (Ibid) And this idea, nascent in his early work, reaches maturity in Savitri—the only epic poem love ever written that depicts love’s conquest over death(Bhatta, op. cit).

I take my cues from Aurobindo the seer, the Romantic, not the guru more constrained by time and place and culture. To understand Aurobindo’s writings one must realize how unlike other yogis he was. I have never come across another yogi who affirmed the redemptive power of romantic love. Even Sri Aurobindo’s disciples tend to deny the manifest meaning of his words with the claim that it is all merely “symbolic.” In an important ground-breaking essay on the redemptive power of the union of twin souls, the authors say nothing about the redemptive power of romantic love itself --and even seem to imply that in the new age the union of Aurobindo and the Mother will be the only twin soul union (A Dual Power of God).

Love and Death of the Twin Avatars

It is only when Savitri is united with her twin soul, Satyavan–bound together by romantic love-- that together they become a messianic force for the salvation of humanity, of the earth. Sri Aurobindo himself said that although he could attain union with God on his own it was only when he bonded with the Mother that he was able to be a creative force for the redemption of the earth. (https://auromere.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/how-to-choose-the-right-life-partner, Accessed Jan, 2019)

It is a fact that in Savitri --although rarely emphasized in the hundreds of commentaries written about it-- it is romantic love that conquers death. It is the love of its protagonist, Savitri, for her soul mate, Satyavan, that provides the motivation for her to undertake the endeavor to discover her inner self and to confront, battle and conquer death, and it is in the name of romantic love that Savitri convicts death of falsehood and deceit and defends her own eschatological vision, at variance as it is with the predominant other-worldly soteriologies of the East and West. If Aurobindo’s vision in Savitri is more than a fairy tale, if it is symbolic of deeper truths, then romantic love will have a predominant place in the economy of redemption.

The immortality of the soul– the hallmark of Eastern religion-- does not compensate for the mortality of the body. The death of the body accompanied by the dissolution of the personality and the bereavement of the lover (the spouse, usually) upon the death and loss of the beloved has an unforgettable effect upon the survivor– with this trauma endlessly repeating and reverberating throughout our innumerable life times. Envisioning Satyavan’s imminent death, Savitri asks herself poignantly how long it will be before they will meet again, "how long before the great wheel in its monstrous round restores us to each other and to our love..."(Savitri, p471)This is the human tragedy.

Even Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were helpless against the tragedy of death. Sri Aurobindo faced death stoically but not with care-free indifference. From the accounts of his last days it is obvious Sri Aurobindo was not happy about dying–and leaving the Mother. The Mother claimed it was a sacrifice he chose to make for the good of humanity, and that otherwise he would have lived forever. The true believers among Aurobindonians believe this because the Mother said it–but she gives no intelligible reason why his death should benefit anyone. It is true however that, as she also said, that although Aurobindo was ready, the world was not yet ready for his teaching.

It is also true that their suffering was consistent with Aurobindo’s distinctive concept of the Avatar. “The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, —as did Christ,—secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature,—as did Buddha.” (Essays on the Gita, http://savitri.in/blogs/light-of-supreme/the-gita-on-avatarhood, Accessed in Jan 2019) Unlike the Buddha, Aurobindo and the Mother point the way to a collective transformation—a triumph over death.

The Mother candidly described the impact of Sri Aurobindo’s death upon her. She said it was a “sledgehammer blow” and “an annihilation.” “‘The very idea that Sri Aurobindo might leave his body was absolutely unthinkable.” They had to put him in a box and the box in the tomb for her to be convinced that it had really happened … “Nothing, nothing, no words can describe what a collapse it was for [me] when Sri Aurobindo left.” (Georges Van Vrecken, Beyond Man,p639) https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/other/van_vrekhem-beyond_man.htm#19i

‘I had already had all my experiences, but with Sri Aurobindo, during the thirty years I lived with him (a little more than thirty years), I lived in an absoluteness, an absoluteness of security -- even physical, even the most material security. A sense of absolute security because Sri Aurobindo was there … Not for one minute in those thirty years did that leave me. That was why I could do my work with a Base, really, a Base of absoluteness — of eternity and absoluteness. I realized it when he left: that suddenly collapsed... Nothing, nothing unfortunate could happen, for he was there. So when he left, all at once … a fall into an abyss.” (Ibid 639) (Note how this belies her comment above that human love should be less important than divine love.)

His death illustrates that even the wisest among us, even the “enlightened”

are devastated by death. Aurobindo and the Mother did not take the traditional “self-sufficient “solitary path of the yogi or the monk but chose to love and bond with each other-- to affirm each other’s divine individuality-- and not to love above all the bodiless God or the formless Divine. And because of this fact, death was largely experienced by them as tragedy. If Aurobindo and the Mother were Avatars then even Avatars, like Jesus, are not necessarily accepting of death which separates them from their twin soul. Of course, their apparent defeat by death was only provisional if one believes, as I do, that they were world redeemers whose mission was to end the reign of death. As Aurobindo wrote, “And yet I know my footprints path shall be a pathway to immortality.” “(The Pilgrim of the Night,”1938, http://auromaa.org/the-pilgrim-of-the-night/, Accessed Jan 2019)

The Nostalgia for Paradise– Romanticism in the Modern Age

For centuries the memory of paradise-lost haunted the human psyche. This is why the myth of the Garden of Eden has been the dominant religious trope of Western society until recently. Unfortunately, modern secular society treats it all as superstition and thus death is regarded as normative. Even most religious authorities regard death as normative, and they promote the immortality of the soul or the fantasy of a bodiless heaven as if they were compensations for death and the defeat of mortal love.

Mircea Eliade stated that “the nostalgia for Paradise” or “the mythical remembrance of a non-historical happiness., discernible both in archaic and Christian societies ..has haunted humanity from the moment when man first became aware of his situation in the Cosmos.” (p.71 ) But in modern secular society the nostalgia for paradise has largely faded–it is not the foundation for an eschatology or a religious hope which would ensure that paradise remained on the horizon of the collective imagination, as it did in the past.

Eliade goes on to say that the mystic and the shaman recover this paradise. I would add that the lover recovers it as well. This is powerfully evinced in Savitri which conveys vividly the paradisal splendor of the union or rather the reunion and nuptial relationship of its protagonists. As Savitri puts it ,”My spirit has glimpsed the glory for which it came,/The beating of one vast heart in the flame of things, /My eternity clasped by his eternity /..This, this is first, last joy and to its throb /The riches of a thousand fortunate years /Are poverty ...In sunlight and a dream of emerald ways /I shall walk with him like gods in Paradise. ” (p.435).

Even in secular society the archetype of paradise still pervades the popular imagination, it is reactivated in the lives of every couple who ever falls in love. Thus it pervades popular culture but in a desacralized form -- romantic love is not recognized as a mystical or messianic state, except within rare esoteric sub-cultures. In secular society paradise is not considered ontologically normative–neither paradise nor its foretaste in romantic love has any soteriological or eschatological significance even for the religious imagination. It is not embodied in a foundational myth nor do religious organizations hold out any hope of the collective recovery of paradise.

Eliade notes sadly, “the recovery [by the mystic and the shaman] is only provisional, for neither . . . succeeds in annihilating death; neither succeeds in completely reestablishing the situation of primordial man” (p. 69). Nor of course do the lovers. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother testified in the 20^th century that modern society can make a full recovery. If the manifest sense of Savitri is not denied or overlooked, it is clear that it is a promissory note that death will be defeated, that lovers–all of us--- can recover paradise, eternally.

In his fascination with love and death and the fall,Sri Aurobindo stands in the tradition of Milton and European Romanticism(which he studied extensively as a student in England and as a poet). Morris Abrams, the great Romantic literary critic, wrote that the Romantics, both German and English, “undertook radically..to recast in terms appropriate for their own age the Christian pattern of the fall, the redemption and the emergence of a new earth which will constitute a restored paradise”(Abrams,p.29) This is what Aurobindo did for our own age when he revitalized and placed upon the foundation of his unique mystical soteriology the central Christian trope of paradise regained.

But let us note the distinctive feature in European Romanticism and in Aurobindo’s neo-Romanticism –the recovered unity is not “the simple undifferentiated unity of its origins, but a unity that is higher because it incorporates the intervening differentiations” (p184). It thus fuses the idea of circular return with that of linear progress— denoting the Romantic figure of the spiral, This idea is dominant in Aurobindo.

But the Romantic version of paradise-restored does not recover the immortality

of primordial man/woman. And in both Christian and Romantics version of paradise regained romantic love is at best a metaphor. In Christianity “the coming of the new heaven is signalized by the marriage between Christ and the heavenly city, his bride” (Abrams,p42) – for Christ and the people of Israel. In Wordsworth the marriage is between mind and nature (p.27-9) It is only recently that reconstructed Christians are arguing that there was a holy marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.But in Savitri the hieros gamos between Savitrri and Satyavan, the world redeemers, is depicted by Aurobindo as the herald of a “greater age” when the mortality of humanity will be transcended. .

When Aurobindo proclaimed the victory of love over death—eternal love and immortality–thus implying it is available to all lovers, he carried Romanticism further than its acolytes ever imagined possible. European Romanticism ended in melancholy defeat(Riasanovsky,1992)–--its memory virtually destroyed by the horrors of the 20^th century. In Aurobindo’s epic his Romeo and Juliet vanquish death itself. While modernists poets and critics (eg T S Elliott), cynically decried the naivete of Romantism and celebrated its death Sri Aurobindo (unnoticed in Pondicherry) took up the European Romantic trope, infused it with cosmic optimism and completed its narrative arc.

Romantic Immortalism

The realization of the ideal of the eternal union of lovers, of male and female, Purusha and Prakriti, Shiva and Shakti---based on the attainment of physical immortality-- is the logical denouement, the telos, of the evolutionary dialectic of (romantic)love. Love aims beyond death for a union that is not sundered, over and over (lifetime after lifetime), by death. It aims to forge a new being, an eternal “Two-who are one”(to use Aurobindo’s phrase) or a two-in-one, of which Savitri and Satyavan, and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, were preliminary prototypes. Although Aurobindo wrote that he and the Mother were one soul in two bodies, he more accurately describes this union (of Savitri and her spouse) in Savitri: “in their commingling spirits one forever, Two-souled, two-bodied for the joys of Time.” (p.707)

Although I believe Savitri presents the strongest argument for what I call Romantic immortalism, I must acknowledge here that Sri Aurobindo never states explicitly that the attainment of new eternal romantic unions for all humanity is the goal of the process of spiritual evolution, he never states that the union of Savitri and Satyavan --- of “the eternal bridegroom and the eternal bride”(p.638)—is the prototype of the unions that will be formed in the new age of which their marriage is the herald. This is probably a manifestation of Aurobindo’s ambivalence or reticence but it may also be (at least in part) because Savitri ends before the divine life for humanity is realized, and thus while it alludes to it, it does not describe it in exhaustive detail. The climatic ending of the poem is Savitri’s reunion with Satyavan— and the promise of God that the new age heralded by their union will entail the abolition of death for humanity. (It must be mentioned that Aurobindo was still planning to polish the Epilogue at the time of his death. Nandakumar, p.418)

Although Aurobindo is circumspect in describing the future of love, Savitri presents an extraordinarily strong and consistent affirmation and defense of the spiritual nature of romantic love—unprecedented among Eastern yogis (including Aurobindo’s writing on yoga), unprecedented among philosophers(Eastern and Western) and rare among mystics. “My love [for Satyavan].. came to me from God,” Savitri says. (p612)

Considering the importance of romantic love in the life of Savitri and Satyavan, and the preponderant role it played within Aurobindo’s other poems and plays it makes no sense to argue that romantic love would fade away in the new age, although the Mother seemed to imply just that (see above)\and although there are Aurobindonians who would argue that the only union of twin souls that will occur will be of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, reunited to inaugurate the union of heaven and earth. But Aurobindo could not be more unequivocal about love in the new age: “Yet nothing is lost of mortal love's delight.” Savitri says to Satyavan after his resurrection and their reunion:

“Lo, we have looked upon the face of God,

Our life has opened with divinity.

We have borne identity with the Supreme

And known his meaning in our mortal lives.

Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch

And learned its heavenly significance,

Yet nothing is lost of mortal love's delight.

Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth..

All that I was before, I am to thee still,

Close comrade of thy thoughts and hopes and toils.” (p719)

Romantic love is not replaced by the pure love of God—agape does not supplant eros. Rather they complement each other. The union of Savitri and Satyavan, of “the eternal bridegroom and the eternal bride” is a prototype for all humanity. Of course Auobindo’s union with the Mother, as we know it, was not as full–encompassing body and soul-- as the Savitri-Satyavan union. ”I have loved too the body of my God,” says Savitri. As far as I know this was never addressed or explained–not even mentioned by the authors of A Dual Power of God who argue that Savitri is “a spiritual autobiography of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother” (p.76)

It is possible that Aurobindo did not realize the implications of his own commemoration of “mortal love.” Or it is possible that like many Indians it was not a topic he felt comfortable talking about—except in the guise of the poet. Romantic love is the “Not-Yet” (Ernest Bloch) impinging on our lives today, the fleeting foretaste now of the eternal love unions of the “greater age” yet to come. It would be contrary to the spirit of Aurobindo to underestimate the value for all human beings of the union of twin souls ( no longer mortal)-– and thus to fail to do justice to the most important general point in Aurobindo’s eschatology–that romantic love is the link between heaven and earth, that it is the key that opens the gates of paradise. If this is true then it must be because of the universal impact of romantic love— all come under its spell, from pauper to king.

When we look at those products of the collective imagination, from fairy tales to popular romance (from high-brow to vulgar genres) that express the most fundamental yearnings and aspirations of humanity we find always the same happy ending, described explicitly or by unspoken implication, in the refrain: “They lived happily ever after.” In the depths of every individual’s psyche these words are silently intuitively recognized not as fairy tale, not as psychotic delusion, but as the formulation of our deepest longings and the expression of the will of the cosmic Spirit, spelling ultimately the end of death.

This helps to explain the nature of Aurobindo’s mission to help resolve the evolutionary impasse of humanity. Savitri points to the next phase of humanity’s evolution: the fullest union of male and female– the creation of eternal twin soul unions. This romantic ideal could well be the archetypal lure that will motivate humanity to take the leap into the future.

Vladimir Solovyov in the 1890s described love in terms that anticipated Savitri – his audacious vision, with its Dionysian emphasis, surpassed the Romantics of his century or for that matter the spiritual romantics of the 1960s counter-culture (eg, Marcuse, Norman O’Brown). According to Solovyov, the ultimate messianic state is the union of soul mates–they are the reproduction in finite beings of the union that exists for God and his feminine Other,the world–it is a state of harmony and delight.(Although in Savitri it is Satyavan who is described as the soul of the world.) This was exactly what Sri Aurobindo described as the union of Purusha and Prakriti as embodied in Satyavan and Savitri. “The wedding of the Eternal Lord and Spouse/Took place again on earth in human form.” (p.411) But this must occur in every couple. Savitri and Satyavan, Aurobindo and the Mother are, I believe, the divine prototypes–however vague or imperfect-- for humanity, the divine mould in which human beings can caste themselves (to paraphrase Aurobindo on the mission of the Avatars) .

Solovyov writes in cosmological terms that link the individual with cosmic forces— the eschatological consummation to which Savitri alludes throughout the poem find its theological subtext in Solovyov’s theological formulation: “For God, His other (i.e., the universe) possesses from all eternity the image of perfect femininity, but He desires that this image should exist not merely for Him alone, but that it should be realized and incarnated for each individual being capable of union with it. The eternal feminine itself strives for such a realization and incarnation for it is not merely an inert image in the Divine mind, but a living spiritual being possessing all the fullness of powers and activities. The whole cosmic and historical process is the process of its realization and incarnation in a great manifold of forms and degrees.” (See translation “Beauty, Sexuality and Love” pp 128 in Alexander Schememann, Ultimate Questions:An Anthology of Russian Religious Thought) This historical-cosmic process found its highest expression to date in the life of Sri Aurobindo, in the eternal union of Savitri and Satyavan in Aurobindo’s greatest work, and in the messianic union of Aurobindo and the Mother.

Science and Romantic Immortalism

Fortuitously the centuries old dogmatic belief in the inevitability of death is attenuated when we consider the advances made by science, by gerontology. The gerontologists on the leading edge of science believe we are on the verge of being able to stop or reverse aging. Aubrey De Grey, the gerontologist with the most salient public profile, claims we can achieve virtual biological immortality within 25 years .(https://www.tendencias21.net/Aubrey-de-Grey-Aging-is-emphatically-not-an-inescapable-destiny_a15346.html) Dr George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School believes we will be able to reverse aging within 10 years. (https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/02/george-church-indicates-reversal-of.html)TThey are speaking about lifetimes lasting over a thousand years, or more. Others believe it may take a century or more to develop the ability to stop aging but almost all believe it will be achieved within the forseeable future. (Biological immortality is only a step on the way, since it does not entirely eliminate death.

But a striking fact about gerontology to date is that its understanding of the nature of aging is completely different from the popular conception of aging and death. We know now that death is not the result of a law of physics, a law of nature– when we look at it through biological lens it loses its aura of inevitability.

Biologist Josh Mitteldorf, writes that his friends are confused when he tells them the body does not just wear out. “Friends often look at me quizzically when I tell them this. One says, “But I can feel myself wearing down.” And another: “Nothing works the way it used to. Isn’t that the definition of wearing out?” And again: “Do you mean it’s all in my head, it’s not really happening?” and then a moment later, “do you mean it doesn’t have to be this way?”)This last formulation is getting a little closer to what I mean. . It’s not imaginary but it is not caused by wearing down. There is no physical necessity for aging. ...Living things can repair themselves” (https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2014/04/

Entropy is not a factor in mortality because living things are not closed systems All gerontologists realize death is not a result of “wear and tear”—otherwise animals would not have such widely varying morality age- maximums. If it were there would not be an immortal jellyfish–that never dies, not from biological causes. ( p. 75,Mitteldorf and Sagan) Mitteldorf believes that aging is “an orderly program of self-destruction, orchestrated by gene expression.” Others propose other explanations but scientists agree: we do not have to die.

(https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2014/04 Accessed Jan 20219)

And elsewhere Mitteldorf notes, “the idea that bodies wear out with age is so ancient, so pervasive, and so deeply rooted that it affects our thought in unconscious ways” This is the root of the idea that death is inevitable, that to talk of abolishing death is to engage in fantasy. But death in a sense has already been provisionally defeated–by nature. Growth is the successful resistance to aging, to death. Once we understand that, we realize death is not an ontological limit. The principle which enables the growing being to flourish could enable all of us to transcend death. Scientists would merely have to program nature to do what nature spontaneously did, after nature stops doing it, or else to stop the program of self-destruction. As Mitteldorf notes: “ Organisms in their growth phase become stronger and more robust; no physical law prohibits this progress from continuing indefinitely. Indeed, some animals and many plants are known to grow indefinitely larger and more fertile through their lives..” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43048830_Aging_Is_Not_a_Process_of_Wear_and_Tea

“Still, some people say the “end run” has to come to an end some time. How can repair be “perfect”? Well, it doesn’t have to be perfect. There is nothing perfect about a 20-year-old body, and it is the body’s metabolic choice whether to build itself ever stronger, more resilient and less vulnerable to disease, or allow it to decay, or (in between) to maintain a constant level of youthful robustness indefinitely.

…and indeed, some animals and many plants do go on getting stronger and larger, with lower and lower mortality risk, year after year after year. This is called negative senescence, a fancy word for aging backwards. Most trees do it, as well as lobsters, clams, some turtles, and possibly sharks and whales.

If physics demanded that living organisms always degrade, then growth and development would be impossible.. Evolutionary biologists almost all appreciate this—aging is a problem for evolution, not for physics.”

(http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/11/23/anti-aging-medicine-two-paths-diverge/

What Mitteldorf means is that evolutionary biologists–not physicists-- must explain why we die: Natural selection ought to result in immortality.( Those interested in his explanation can read his book.

In Savitri Death says: “The Cosmic Law is greater than thy will/Even God obeys the Laws he made/The Law abides and never can it change.” (p.654)

But the fact that the body grows in spite of damage mean it has within it the capacity to transcend death, to change “the law”–the process of growth if it did not stop would potentially lead to eternal life, triumph over death. “ Organisms in their growth phase become stronger and more robust; no physical law prohibits this progress from continuing indefinitely”https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43048830_Aging_Is_Not_a_Process_of_Wear_and_Tea

But it stops for some reason. Mitteldorf says it stops deliberately–because death prevents over population and confers evolutionary advantage on groups. “But aging is not caused by wearing down. It is more accurately an orderly program of self-destruction, orchestrated by gene expression. Some aspects of aging appear as accumulated damage.., but on closer inspection even these are seen to be entirely avoidable consequences of the body shutting down its repair systems. https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2014/04/07/no-the-body-doesnt-just-wear-out-as-we-get-older/, Others, like Aubrey De Grey, say the body is just not wired to maintain growth and repair after the age of reproduction–for reasons yet unknown.

But my point is death is a contingency. Gerontology is based on the premise that biology itself has the potential to resist aging. And within this perspective gerontologists are coming up with different ways to reverse or nullify the effects of aging. In an age of Science gerontology has the potential to revive the nostalgia for paradise that used to be the preserve of messianic religion or occultism

For centuries many people in the West –Christians and Jews-- did believe in the advent of a deathless paradise when the Messiah(or Jesus) returned. In America the Great Awakenings fanned these embers of messianic fath. The 2^nd Great Awakening led to a popular revolt against the pessimism and fatalism of the dominant Calvinist-Augustinian version of Christianity— and to the affirmation of a more optimistic universalist interpretation of Christian messianism. The millennialist fever of the 2^nd Awakening led the masses of Christians to embrace the vision of heaven on earth while the more activist types hoped to hasten the coming of the millennium by becoming active in abolitionism or other “progressive” causes (to use an anachronistic modern phrase). (Farber, 2012). (As stated above this universalist perspective was discouraged by the Augustinian tradition in Christianity, continued by Calvinists and today by “pre- millennialist” Christians.)

The possibility of paradise, eclipsed by secularism and conservative evangelical Christianity in the 20^th century, was revitalized by the utopianism of the 1960s counter-culture and the New Age movement—which left their influence upon counter-cultural subcultures of the early 21^st century. The most “utopian” or messianic of the Eastern mystics,Sri Aurobindo, had little influence upon the counter-culture or New Age–largely because of his poetic high- brow writing style which many people claimed to find difficult to understand. Unfortunately, new agers in America were more captivated by escapist Eastern mystics who did not fully embrace the world. Many of these celebrity gurus preached celibacy while they used their positions of power to have multiple covert sexual liasons with disciples. They could not practice what they preached because it was not a genuine solution to the problems of modern men and women. Romantic immortalism is the solution to the tragedy of love and death and the Aurobindo’s writing provides a philosophical basis for the synthesis of Romanticism and biological immortalism.

Of course Aurobindo expected that immortality would be a result of an occult spiritual discipline, not scientific interventions. In fact he had warned of the consequences of the latter since death as he saw it was ultimately a product of a egocentric consciousness and if it was conquered before consciousness had changed it would merely lead to another cul de sac.

Ultimately we need to transcend the ego by the opening of the individual to the cosmos and to God. The gnostic human will be as superior to the human as the human is to the animal. Aurobindo wrote: “We have the realisation of the All in the individual by the transformation of the limited ego into a conscious centre of the divine unity and freedom as the term at which the fulfilment arrives.... This is the supreme birth which maternal Nature holds in herself; of this she strives to be delivered.” The Life Divine, Chapter 7,https://www.urantiagaia.org/eng/spiritual/aurobindo/life_divine1_aurobindo7.htm

Aurobindo wrote, “Death itself as well as suffering, evil, limitation are the creation… of a distorting consciousness which has fallen from the total and unifying knowledge of itself into some error of division and partial experience.” In other words we no longer have an intuitive sense of our unity with all other beings. Our separateness is only one aspect of our reality but it is all that distorted consciousness sees, “This is the fall of man typified in the poetic parable of the Hebrew Genesis. This is the fruit which Adam and Eve… the soul tempted by Nature, have eaten. The redemption comes by the recovery of the universal in the individual and of the spiritual term in the physical consciousness. Then alone the soul in Nature can be allowed to partake of the fruit of the tree of life and be as the Divine and live forever.” The Life Divine, Chapter 7,https://www.urantiagaia.org/eng/spiritual/aurobindo/life_divine1_aurobindo7.html But in Savitri romantic love is the first stage in the recovery of the consciousness of “the universal in the individual. “It is its precondition One the first greatest of the early Romantics, Shelley, was the first to realize that fact. “When love occurs it broadens and does not narrow the heart, enabling the lovers...to see their oneness as evidence of the inherent communion that links them with everything in the universe”(p421).

But will this change in consciousness change the actual functioning of our bodies? Aurobindo believed it would–there is first a transcendence of limited egoic consciousness and a full openness to the Infinite.To quote one of Aurobibndo’s disciples: “{Man] does not need necessarily to die, he does not stand in an obligation to dissolve the forms in which he is at present confined, if he knows the art of connecting his finite forms with the rush of the infinite ocean of Life.... If the ego ceases to be confined to its finitude and if the ego comes to learn and know the truth of the infinity, the imperishable infinity of stability as also the infinity of imperishable flow of Life, and if it comes to know and also applies its knowledge of the Immortal Reality and Immortal Life, then there is no inevitability of these three great deficiencies which seem to be the imperative yoke and law of human life, incapacity, desire and death.”( Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation,Joshi Kireet ...http://motherandsriaurobindo.in/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-03%20Disciples/Kireet%20Joshi/-01%20English/Integral%20yoga%20and%20Evollutionary%20Mutation/-06_The%20Problem%20of%20Death%20and%20Physical%20Immortality.htm

But the point I want to make here is that there is no conflict between Aurobindo’s goal of physical immortality and eternal love and the scientist’s goal of biological immortality. The latter may be a necessary step towards the former, towards achieving an eternal union of twin souls. Why? Well obviously because scientists are close to achieving the goal of reversing aging and extending life—to at least hundreds of years. But also there is a need for a popular immortalist movement and because in a secular scientific age the imprimatur of Science can give credibility to the ideal of immortality and thus help revive in a largely disenchanted world(to use Max Weber’s phrase), the long suppressed nostalgia for paradise.

Aubrey De Grey realized that there is a resistance to overcoming aging–he refers to the “pro-aging trance”–what I call the pro-death trance.:So far he is the only gerontologist who has taken it upon himself to act as a kind of evangelical crusader for the scientific ideal of ending aging. Thus he is making the public aware of the promise that science holds today and helping to raise funds for anti-aging research. Even the secular ideal of “biological immortalitly” is a turn away from the separative egoistic consciousness and necrophilic fixations that afflicts the modern world—and that are manifested in the social pathologies of modern capitalism – from ecological destruction to permanent war.

Science now holds virtual immortality almost within its grasp. The opportunity to realize our messianic vision, to transform our ancient “memory” of paradise into reality, has never been so great. (Nor has humanity ever been so imperiled by the threat of self annihilation.) But the collective will to realize this ideal is lacking. We have been trained to believe it is fantasy and few people are prepared to accept it as an imminent possibility. Without the pressure of a mass movement the power eite may very well suppress anti-aging technologies–since eternal life would be a threat to their power and profit margins, which they value more than eternal life or eternal love.

The Evolutionary Crisis–The Resolutiom

From time immemorial, the death of the body/personality and re-incarnation of the soul has served the species as a primary means and necessity for spiritual growth. I believe the current spiritual- social crisis of humanity— as evinced by the social pathologies that threaten are continued existence--- is an indication that this modality has now outlived its usefulness, it no longer leads to a salutary spiritual regeneration of humanity with each new generation.

Furthermore the rise and development of individuality in the modern age, the decreasing importance of extended kinship networks, the gradual emancipation of women over the last century and the growing realization of an ideal of equality between the sexes, (see Solomon, p. 36, p.43) has led not merely to a deeper intimacy between the sexes but to a growing sacralization of the soul mate or romantic(spousal) union. This is not to imply that society as a whole is post-secular, only that influence of secularism has been waning, as evident in the growing appeal of the idea of romantic love–which is sacral love— which blossomed in the 1960s counter-culture, although compromised by the secular idea of “free love."

As the love bond between spouses, soul mates, twin souls becomes more valued, our yearning for an eternal union with our beloved becomes stronger and more conscious. Thus death becomes more traumatizing and intolerable to the conscious and unconscious mind. From an Aurobindonian perspective death is not an inexorable natural law but an anachronistic product of our lack of spiritual maturity that now thwarts our deepest yearning for eternal union with our twin souls, and is thus the greatest obstacle to our happiness, to taking the next step in our spiritual development and to the establishment of a civilization based on love. Aurobindo calls this the “evolution in the Knowledge” as opposed to “evolution in the Ignorance.”

htps://www.urantiagaia.org/eng/spiritual/aurobindo/life_divine1_aurobindo7.html/

Neither the brilliant work of scientists nor even the contribution of spiritual pioneers is enough in itelf to bring about the age of immortality. Aurobindo said

“No matter how glorious’the crop of saints and hermits devoted to the spiritual life unless the race, the society, the nation, is moved toward the spiritualization of life, or move forward led by the light of an ideal,the end must be weakness, littleness and stagnation”(farber,p.371). It’s time to promulgate this ideal, this vision of physical immortality and eternal love.

It is the loss of any kind of vision of paradise in the modern secular world, any kind of messianic/utopian eschatology, that is the main reasons for the spiritual stagnation that is leading humanity to the brink of self-destruction. We need a rebirth of Romanticism, a new Romantic eschatology, or an immortalist philosophy that welcomes the advances of scientists—of those great scientific pioneers like Aubrey De Grey on the cutting edge of the effort to find a cure for aging. But in order for immortalism to provoke the kind of new great awakening that can save humanity from the abyss, it must be based on the vision of eternal life and eternal love—it must be not secular immortalism but neo-Romantic immortalism.

.The Mother said “ Savitri is the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision.” The vision of the eternal union of twin souls, of “the union of the eternal bridegroom and the eternal bride,” – born of the love of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother– is the key to the recovery of paradise on earth.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

The Message of Sri Aurobindo: God, Romantic Love, and Physical Immortality

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