Date: January 25, 2025
Venue: Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir
Dr. Beloo Mehra was invited by Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir to deliver a talk on January 25, 2025. Inaugurated on 15 August, 1941 at the same location, Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir was the first public institute of its kind outside Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, entirely devoted to the study, practice and dissemination of Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s ideals and teachings.
The evening session opened with a brief welcome address by Shri Sankar Dutta, the secretrary of Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir. The speaker introduction was given by Shri Subrata Sen, the key organizer of the event, and a lifelong devotee with deep association with various organisations related to Sri Aurobindo in West Bengal, particularly working in the field of education.
Dr. Mehra began her talk quoting two lines from Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri.
Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth,
Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven. (Savitri, Book XI, p. 684)
Building upon the truth expressed in these lines, Dr. Mehra elaborated that one of the most significant truths revealed by Sri Aurobindo concerns the essential impulse working from behind the human civilisation’s progressive march toward its ultimate destiny. That destiny is to transform earthly life into a divine life, to bring down the kingdom of God on earth, to establish the true Ram-rajya, the true reign of dharma. All these are different conceptions given to the same aspiration hidden deep in the heart of humanity – that of perfecting Life and World.
She added that this aspiration is there in human heart because, as Sri Aurobindo tells us, it is in truth a Will of the Divine, to make the earth a heaven. But she emphasized that Sri Aurobindo not merely spoke of this declaration of the Divine Will, his was a God’s Labour to bring down that highest consciousness which will make this transformation of earthly life into a life divine possible!
Building on the Vedic Cosmology, Sri Aurobindo has given us an integrally dynamic vision of existence, an existence which is a progressive unfolding or manifestation of the Divine Truth. Dr. Mehra elaborated that the world as it is at present is not the divine creation it is meant to be, but rather an obscure and perverted expression of it. It is not yet the expression of the divine consciousness and will, but that is what it is meant to become, Sri Aurobindo reminds us. It has been created to develop into a perfect manifestation of the Divine under all His forms and aspects―Light and Knowledge, Power, Love and Beauty.
This perfect manifestation will happen only when Supramental consciousness becomes the organizing principle on earth. This is the link-world between the two hemispheres of the Vedic vision – the lower manifestation of matter, life and mind, and the upper hemisphere of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Dr. Mehra said that the tremendous yogic work of Sri Aurobindo, the Avatar of the Future can be seen as bringing forth the next destined future march of the Sanatana Dharma. To expand on this she recounted several relevant passages from Sri Aurobindo’s own writings.
Dr. Mehra spent some time connecting Sri Aurobindo’s yogic work with the Vedic paradigm, and observed that while Sanatana Dharma is essentially eternal, it is also evolutionary in its manifestation and unfolding on earth. This is a significant point, she said, because this is what makes it different from other religio-spiritual frameworks which have led humanity toward more institutionalized or organized religions. She reminded the audience that Sri Aurobindo speaks of Sanatana Dharma as an immense, many-sided and many-staged open framework for a gradual spiritual self-building and self-finding by the individual, so vast and immense and all-inclusive that it could give itself no name, except that it is the Eternal Way, the Sanatana Dharma.
Bringing the audience’s attention to Sri Aurobindo’s experience in Alipore jail, Dr. Mehra said that it is there the truth of Sanatana Dharma was revealed to him. And he spoke about that on 30th May 1909 in his famous Uttarpara speech after his acquittal from the prison and said that it was Sri Krishna himself who showed him the truth of this eternal dharma and charged him with the work of raising India and humanity in the truth of Sanatana Dharma.
Dr. Mehra said that Sri Aurobindo’s entire yogic work was dedicated to this very adesh – for expanding and extending the Sanatana Dharma over the world. But this was not done in an external missionary zeal to spread the dharma. His work was to ensure that the religio-spiritual culture which goes by the name Sanatana Dharma makes its next leap into the future after having gone through the necessary evolutionary stages.
This, Dr. Mehra said, can be fully comprehended when we reflect on the dashavatara which symbolizes clearly the evolution of consciousness and how gradually a higher and higher level of consciousness got established on earth. Rama’s avatarhood of sattwic mental consciousness and Krishna’s of the overmental consciousness prepared the earth for the descent of the next level of consciousness. That was the work of Sri Aurobindo. She further emphasised that what the Vedic rishis had only had a glimpse of, Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. For forty years, since his arrival in Pondicherry in 1910, his tremendous yogic work, his labour divine was to bring down this Truth-consciousness, the Supermind. And he persevered in this despite all the challenges and struggles on the path, the resistances from the earth-nature, the hostile attacks from the Inconscience and Matter.
Dr. Mehra added that while the Vedic Rishis had sung of an ascent to this plane of Truth-consciousness, Sri Aurobindo’s concern was wider as it included the work of ensuring a descent of this Truth-consciousness into the earthly plane, and of transforming the matter, life and mind in its Supramental Light so that their True nature is revealed. This is how he envisioned – rather ensured the possibility of – a perfect divine life on earth.
She further summarised how Sri Aurobindo speaks of three stages of the evolutionary nature of the religio-spiritual culture of India, the Sanatana Dharma. And “only when this third largest sweep of the spiritual evolution has come into its own, we can say that Indian civilization has discharged its mission, has spoken its last word and has crowned and completed in its office of mediation between the life of man and the spirit.” (CWSA, 20: 216). Dr. Mehra added that the descent of Supermind in Sri Aurobindo’s physical or the supramental manifestation of 1956, which opened the way for bringing a divine life on earth, will one day help India fulfil her mission to truly lead the world to its next future! This was the “spiritual necessity of the future” for which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother came to earth and did tremendous tapasya. This is the true fulfilment of Sanatana Dharma, the spiritual core of India.
The talk was followed by a brief Question & Answer session, and some insightful interactions with the members of the audience.