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          The descent and the newness it brings can be visually transmitted by imagining a circle consisting of innumerable points of light. These are the worldwide members of the community. They orbit a luminous Sun at the centre. This is the Mother’s inner chamber as it exists in the creative zone of the physical. They are held to the Centre by the magnetic power of the Soul that it is, and magnified a thousand times by the proportions of its design and by the new alignment it embodies. The Centre IS that Soul, but by virtue of the new precision which alone can bring a true Soul into being via sacred geometry. This lies far beyond any individual’s capabilities, or any group of individuals; and in this instance it is achieved through the Supramental Descent, the line of beings descended from the Sun, as it were, those who bring with them the solar Gnosis upon which the new city-consciousness is founded.
          There is a difference between the field of the Integral Yoga (the Ashram) and that of the Supramental Yoga (the City). Again we may refer to our circle for a better understanding of that difference. In the former we have the same circle of individual lights, as it were, in orbit of a centre. Before the work had matured that Centre was provided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They alone served as the magnetic holding element. Sadhaks orbited this sacred Pair in a relation of point-to-centre exclusively. That was the extent of what was possible in that field.
          We can understand the limitation when we recall that Sri Aurobindo was not satisfied with founding his work on the lines of a traditional ashram. Yet this is precisely what happened, though he was very clear on this point. It is because time had not ripened to permit the new alchemy. In a word, the time had not come. Then on 29 February 1956, these were the very words the Mother heard at the moment of the Supramental Manifestation: ‘The time has come.’ Indeed, from that moment onward a true newness came into being which could not be accommodated in the old field (the Ashram). This was the origin of the City, for that describes the new field: a City-Consciousness. During the period of Sri Aurobindo’s first appearance, the ‘boundaries’ imposed on him by the Time-Spirit would not allow for anything other than a field that could accommodate the Integral Yoga. That was the first foundation. Though he knew it was not the ultimate of his vision, he nonetheless remained within that boundary until ‘the time had come’. But this required a withdrawal from this plane, followed by his return according to a supramental process of clearly defined Laws.
          We have referred to the second foundation as an ‘extended’ field. There had to be an expansion that would accommodate a significant increase of energies for the new processes that were to manifest, a symbolic ‘city’. These would be global; they would have a universal application. The only such universality that issued from the First Field was from the consciousness-beings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves. The collectivity that surrounded them was necessary for amassing energies to permit the functioning of the Integral Yoga, the entire focus of the Work at that time.
          In the First Foundation there was no harmony of the points on the periphery, or the points on the circumference, between themselves. The boundaries of the Work as established by the Time-Spirit permitted only point-to-centre operations. The sadhaks were concerned only with their sadhanas and the experience of the Inner Divine embodied in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
          On the other hand, when the Work had reached a specific degree of maturity that First Foundation could not accommodate the demands a supramental yoga would impose. In a sense we could state that the process then became multi-dimensional.

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