Two hours after Sri Aurobindo’s passing, the Mother announced the news
to the Ashram inmates at 3.30 a.m. on 5 December.
The news spread quickly, and was flashed at once all over the world. Sri Aurobindo’s
body was to lie in state till noon, and the Ashram gates were to be
thrown open to enable all to pay their homage to the Mahayogi.
While Pondicherry was stunned by the news, the sadhaks were
overwhelmed by a sudden sense of desolation. It was as though a
fathomless zero was flung across the world.
Leaders and savants who had known Sri Aurobindo and those who had only
followed his career from a distance or had merely read his works, all
were equally shaken by the news that came over the air in the morning.
The President of India, Rajendra Prasad, said in the course of the
statement that he issued: “India will worship and enshrine his memory
and place him in the pantheon of its greatest seers and prophets.” The
Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, referred to Sri Aurobindo’s
“astonishing brilliance of mind” and described him as “one of the
greatest minds of our generation”. The news took Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel’s mind to the “very beginnings of our struggle for freedom”. Dr.
C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar saw in Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual life “a
reduplication of the quest and the askesis of the Buddha and other
apostles of humanity”. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, then India’s ambassador
in Russia, described Sri Aurobindo as “the greatest intellectual of
our age and a major force for the life of the spirit”. Numberless were
such tributes, and they had the ring of spontaneity; many were wrung
from the heart, many emanated from a genuine appreciation of the poet,
the patriot, the philosopher, or the great sage of Pondicherry.
Sri Aurobindo’s disciples and close associates, of course, could
hardly recover from “the impact of the event and formulate their
reactions. For instance, S. Doraiswami Aiyar could merely say: “I have
been shaken out of my foundations
* The last three lines were one of the three passages dictated last by
Sri Aurobindo as additions to Savitri. The autobiographical slant is
unmistakable.
Page – 735
to grasp the significance of what is apparently the greatest tragedy
to humanity at this critical juncture in its history.” Dr. R.
Vaidyanathaswami remarked that “to the devotees and sadhaks, in the
Ashram and outside it, he had been their Rocks of Refuge, and the
world without him would lose its brightness”.
An English disciple, Morwenna Donnelly, recorded in great anguish of
spirit: Faced by this event, I felt that for the first time I could
understand a little of that desolation of spirit which the followers
of Jesus must have endured between the terrible Friday and the evening
of the ‘first day of the week’.
Jesus had warned his followers that his Kingdom was not of the earth,
and Sri Aurobindo too had often warned his disciples not to visualise
the promised Supramental descent in their own convenient mental terms.
What Jesus had said to “doubting Thomas” was pertinent still: Be not
faithless but believing!
Some disciples who were poets as well were able to invoke out of the
fiery ordeal of their agony itself the “marvel bird” of ever-living
love and gratitude and hope. Thus one of them, the Ceylonese-born J.
Vijayatunga:
Are we sad today? Is the earth dark without light?
Nay, Master, Thou didst not live in vain
Thy life sublime and austere was not spent
For nought…. Holding to the hem
Of Thy garment we shall raise ourselves
To High Heaven, by Thy Grace, if not now
In some distant age, and once again
We shall behold Thee, O Master,
Shining with ever greater lustre, shining
Like the Sun, but unafraid we shall reach Thee
And touch Thee, and be burnt in the Fire
Of Thy love.
By 5 a.m., Sri Aurobindo’s body covered in spotless white silk was
laid in state on a cot, itself covered in pure white, in the room he
had occupied for over 23 years. A painting of the Buddha from Ajanta
adorned the eastern wall, and the whole room was strewn with flowers.
The Ashram inmates had darshan first, between five and six; then the
people of Pondicherry and others who had come from outside filed past
silently and in the most orderly manner possible and paid their
respects to the almost mythical Person who had made Pondicherry his
home for a period of forty years.
Although it was intended at first that the body should be interred in
the Ashram compound in the afternoon, the preparations were suddenly
stopped, and late in the evening an announcement was made conveying
the decision to postpone the interment:
The funeral of Sri Aurobindo has not taken place today. His body is
charged with such a concentration of Supramental light that there is
no sign of decomposition
Page – 736
and the body will be kept lying on his bed so long as it remains intact.
By evening over 60,000 people, young and old, had queued past the
sublime Master – their eyes dimmed with tears and their visible grief
one with the spontaneous and solemn silence. For everyone -for almost
everyone of the sixty thousand – it was a unique moment, a moment
abstracted out of the stream of time when eternity was made out of the
moment. Each took the burden of his (or her) own personality, carried
his own inner climate of the soul; and the figure of the Purusha lying
in the ananta-śayanam posture affected each a little differently
perhaps, yet it was also on the whole a cleansing, cathartic and
chastening experience for most.
One of the inmates, Dara (Aga Syed Ibrahim), had a singular experience
that morning when he walked past Sri Aurobindo’s body lying on the cot
in its snow-white background:
I found myself in Sri Aurobindo’s own room by the side of his cot. He
seemed so peaceful and happy, and the flesh shone with a new lustre
which I had failed to see at the darśan time on 24th November. Why
could I not see it before?… I could not take my eyes off his face
and arms. It seemed to me he was alive. It was certain that he was in
a condition of deep and upward soaring trance just then.76
Many others too had similar experiences. Between 1.30 a.m. and 7.30
p.m. was a stretch of eighteen hours, yet Sri Aurobindo’s body had not
only not shown any signs of decomposition, it had actually acquired a
new lustre and the radiant complexion of life! Death, where is thy
sting? Whose, then, is the Victory?
The Mother described the new lustre as the Supramental light, and
helped Dr. Sanyal also – who at first couldn’t – to see it: “a
luminous mantle of bluish golden hue around him.” And Sethna’s
portrait has almost an epiphanic quality: “Spiritually imperial – this
is the only description fitting the appearance of the body…. The
atmosphere of the room was vibrant with a sacred power to cleanse and
illumine, a power which appeared to emanate from the Master’s poise of
conquering rest and to invade the bodies of all the watchers… as
if… there came pouring down to humanity the life-transcending grace
of the Supermind.” On the 6th, more and more pilgrims – including M.
Andre Menard, the Commissioner for French Settlements in India – had
darśan of the miracle of the living God in a lifeless body! It was
not simply the delay in the body’s decomposition; this was a superb
positive leap of revelation as well, the glow of the Golden Purusha in
majestic repose.
It was noteworthy that Sri Aurobindo’s passing moved deeply all
sections of the community throughout India. Officials and ministers of
the French India Government and of the Government of India in
Pondicherry were among those who paid their homage to the departed
Seer. Floral wreaths on behalf of the President of India and the Prime
Minister were placed before Sri Aurobindo. Telegrams from all corners
of the world poured in continually, and letters and messages piled up
in heaps. In West Bengal, a Government resolution described Sri
Aurobindo as
Page – 737
“the greatest Bengali Seer and savant of recent times”, and as a mark
of respect to him all Government offices, courts and educational
institutions were ordered to remain closed for a day. In Bombay, the
share market, the bullion market, and other markets and many
institutions were closed on the fifth, and in Kanpur, Banaras, and
many other centres too there were similar closures as a mark of
respect to the great patriot who had become a Pilgrim of Eternity.
The press everywhere gave wide coverage to the event, and there were
well-informed as well as appreciative editorial tributes in most
papers. Among the best of these was the Hindu leading article on 6
December:
The news of the sudden passing of Sri Aurobindo will be received with
profound sorrow throughout the civilised world. In an age of rampant
materialism incorruptible witnesses to the supremacy of the spirit are
none too many…. The seer of Pondicherry acknowledged no limits to
man’s capacity to realise the divine in himself, no inhibitions that
might militate against the harmony that alone could establish the rule
of righteousness on earth. He spoke with no provincial accent, nor did
he make dogmatic assertions that might have had the effect of
repelling open minds. His was a universal message and his marvellous
mastery of the written word helped to secure for it a respectful
hearing across the barriers of race and language. For Aurobindo the
prophet the unity of the human family in the Divine consciousness was
not merely a matter of faith, it was a goal to be realised.
A shining page in our history records his heroic part in the struggle
for Indian freedom. Nurtured on the English poets, his ardent nature
rallied early to the call of patriotism, spurning a life of elegant
ease. He brought to public life a burning eloquence, a power of
idealism and a dynamic leadership which roused the land from end to
end and destroyed that consent which had been the charter of
imperialism….
…it must be confessed that the very subtlety of his speculation and
the dazzling opulence ‘of its expression often combine to put off all
except the most hardy intellect and the most persevering will; nor
should it be forgotten that a philosophy that bases itself on the
integral apprehension of truth cannot be understood merely with the
discursive intellect. In insisting that philosophy is not merely ideas
that are talked about but experience that transforms, Sri Aurobindo
was in accord with age-long Indian tradition…. Sri Aurobindo taught
a doctrine which may be correctly regarded as not a negation but an
amplification of India’s immemorial teaching. And generations to come
will honour his memory as that of a great path-finder in the realm of
the spirit.
On the 7th morning the Mother issued a statement that was prayer and
benediction both:
Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst
stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness
which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action.
In unmistakable terms
Page – 738
Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave
the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be
worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in
us be concentrated on the one Will to be more and more perfectly
consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.
At 8 a.m. the same day. Dr. Sanyal and two other physicians examined
Sri Aurobindo’s body 54 hours after life had become extinct, and
declared that the body was still intact showing no signs of
decomposition. This was certified also by Dr. Barbet, the Chief
Medical Officer of French India. Such of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples and
admirers that had come from outside – by car, train or plane – were
permitted to have darśan , but the inmates and the local people who
had already had darśan on the 5th or the 6th were excluded. This
policy of selective darśan was enforced on the 8th also.
For over three days Sri Aurobindo’s body had remained intact: the
golden tint had persisted: the eyes closed serenely had yet radiated
the Greater Life, not the extinction of life. Might it not be that Sri
Aurobindo intended to return to the body? On the 8th December, the
Mother asked Sri Aurobindo in their occult meeting place to
resuscitate, to return to life, but he answered, according to her
testimony: “I have left this body purposely. I will not take it back.
I shall manifest again in the first Supramental body built in the
Supramental way.” That seemed to be final; “the lack of receptivity of
the earth and men”, said the Mother on the 8th, “is mostly responsible
for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding the body”:
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;
Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch.. ,77
But the world-redeemer must redeem the world even in spite of the
world, in spite of recalcitrant humanity:
The poison of the world has stained his throat….
He dies that the world may be new-born and live.78
On the 9th morning, after over 100 hours of Supramental sustenance,
the first signs of decomposition were noticed at last, and it was
decided to inter the body in the evening. The body was placed in a
gleaming rose-wood coffin made under Udar Pinto’s directions in the
Ashram Harpagon Workshop. The box was lined with silver and satin,
with a velvet cushion at the bottom. Sri Aurobindo’s body was covered
with a gold-embroidered cloth, and after India’s Consul-General in
French India, R.K. Tandon, had offered his homage, Champaklal covered
his beloved father’s face with a piece of white cloth, and the lid
carrying Sri Aurobindo’s symbol of the two intersecting triangles with
the water and lotus at the
Page – 739
centre,* all in gold, was screwed on the coffin. It was then carried
by the sadhaks and laid in the cement concreted vault made ready in
the Ashram courtyard under the “service tree”, first planted in 1930,
with its now wide-ranging multiple branches, covering almost the whole
place and giving abundant shade and raining protective grace. The
coffin was placed in such a way that Sri Aurobindo’s head might still
be turned to the east, and concrete slabs soon covered the vault.
Floral wreaths were placed, and sadhaks – first Champaklal, then
Nolini, then the rest – placed potfuls of earth on the covered vault.
There was nothing credal or sectarian about the ceremony. Not a word
was spoken, there were no audible hymns or prayers, and no rites that
indicated adhesion to any particular religion. The enveloping silence
was, however, more eloquent and more profound than all the funeral
orations of the world. The scene, with the sun slowly setting, was
ineluctably symbolic of the happenings.
The Mother in her great silent strength of suffering watched the
solemn proceedings from upstairs, through a window overlooking the
courtyard. Now that her spiritual comrade and Divine co-worker of over
thirty-five years had chosen to withdraw from the scene, who could
weigh the Atlas weight of responsibility that now lay on her
shoulders? But, then, didn’t Sri Aurobindo anticipate it all – and
forewarn all – when he dictated just a few weeks before his passing:
A vast intention has brought two souls close
And love and death conspire towards one great end.79
Death, so-called “death”, was “a beginning of greater life”. Who could
say what the Divine intention was – what was “God’s secret plan”?
Alone, alone, seemingly alone in her immaculate solitariness, alone in
earth’s transforming hour, alone when the “soul of the world that is
Satyavan” is held to ransom by the Asuric hordes of the dark, the
hideous spectres of a possible nuclear war, what was to be the
Mother’s role in the context of December 1950? Again, hadn’t Sri
Aurobindo divined and even created her predicament and also prescribed
her course of action in the great passage in Savitri dictated almost
as the last thing he did as a poet with the vision and the voice
Divine:
As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven
Unastonished by the immensities of space,
Travelling infinity by its own light,
The great are strongest when they stand alone….
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers,
* In Sri Aurobindo’s symbol, the descending triangle represents
Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence – Conscious-Force – Bliss), the ascending
triangle stands for the aspiration from the lower material existence
under the form of Life – Light – Love. The junction of both (the
central square) is the perfect Manifestation – the water is
multiplicity or creation and the Lotus at the centre is the Avatar of
the Supreme.
Page – 740
Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge.
Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge,
Her single greatness in that last dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man. …
For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world.80
At last, “immobile in herself, the Mother gathered force, and gave the
world the mantra of renewal, the Mother’s hymn of gratitude to the
Master in the name and on behalf of all the world and all humanity:
To THEE who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to THEE our
infinite gratitude. Before THEE who hast done so much for us, who hast
worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before THEE who
hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before
THEE we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a
moment, all we owe to THEE.
For days and weeks following, Sri Aurobindo’s closest disciples and
most devoted admirers continued to speculate regarding the meaning of
the mystic holocaust or self-immolation if such it was. The retention
by the body of its natural complexion – if anything the Golden Purusha
only more golden – and of its natural tight organic formation puzzled
many, not least the medical men. Was it not a reversal of Nature’s Law
that Sri Aurobindo’s body – under tropical conditions too, and without
the induction of drugs or special conditions – should have defied
decomposition for over 100 hours, and reposed “in a grandeur of
victorious quiet, with thousands upon thousands having darśan of
it?”81 Neither everyday experience nor medical science would give even
half that much time as the outside limit for a body in the tropics to
resist decomposition after death. And then, – the sustained glow, the
supernal calm, the gracious mien! Did all that drama of immitigable
death and radiant transcendence mean nothing? Was it not more than –
at best – a freak of nature?
“Withdrawal, the great withdrawal!”, they said – but hadn’t Sri
Aurobindo’s life been a whole series of withdrawals? While yet young
in years, he was withdrawn from his home to the residential school in
Darjeeling, and then from India to England. Having qualified for the
I.C.S. (the “heaven-born” Service), he manoeuvred to withdraw from it;
having risen high in the Baroda Service and become Acting Principal of
the Baroda College, he withdrew from that prison of affluent security
and plunged into the maelstrom of politics and revolution; at the
height of his influence after Surat, he withdrew to a quietude of
Nirvanic calm in
Page – 741
a small room in Baroda – then Narayana withdrew him to the Alipur jail
so that he could continue his sādhanā – and still later Sri Aurobindo
withdrew from politics altogether and proceeded from Calcutta to
Chandernagore, and from Chandernagore to Pondicherry; and there,
having won height after height of realisation and accomplished the
God’s Labour of the Arya, he withdrew to complete silence on 24
November 1926; and now, in December 1950, this climactic withdrawal
from the body itself! Weren’t the several withdrawals so many
strategic retreats that were really purposive forced marches, each
“withdrawal” merely signifying that one more phase of his campaign of
conquest was over and another, in another but related field, had begun
? Why, then, regret the “great withdrawal” of 5 December 1950?
Or one reviewed Sri Aurobindo’s divers roles on the terrestrial stage;
a Kacha mastering an alien lore in England but rejecting the
blandishments of Devayani; a young Augustus at Baroda, imposing his
empire on the “realms of gold”; a Perseus or Prometheus of ‘Bhavani
Mandir’; an Arjuna surrendered to Krishna at Alipur; a Vyasa doing a
neo-Mahabharata in the Arya, a neo-Vishvamitra giving us a new Gayatri
in The Mother; a Yogishwara Krishna doubled with a Yogishwara Shiva
playing an invisible hand in world happenings; and on 5 December 1950,
“The Last Great Act of drawing off the ‘halahala’ that his own
Mahakala action had precipitated out of the cosmic ferment”.82
Or one tried to find solace in the classical symbol of the seed dying
to give life to plant or tree. The whole rhythm of existence upon
earth – life and birth and growth and death was a mystery. And the
greater mystery at the heart of phenomenal life was the miracle of
resurrection following the shock of the crucifixion. Nolini Kanta
Gupta said some time after the event:
He has done it: he has made Nature take the final leap. The mental
being with its triple node is at last bundled up and cast into the
Supramental status. As he saw and assured us.
A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour…
Nature shall overleap her mortal step –
the formed seed is now in the womb developing fast and sure, it awaits
the moment to break out into the light of material and universal
day.83
There was a “death” certainly, and there was a phenomenon surpassing
our notions of “death”. The death was unnecessary because, had Sri
Aurobindo been willing to use his Yogic force as he had done on former
occasions, the “disease” couldn’t have made headway and proved mortal.
Not age, not disease, not just these; death was suffered, it was
almost invited. But why? There must have been a capital reason; not a
personal reason, but a cosmic reason – what was it? What was it Sri
Aurobindo hoped to achieve – or avert – by making his tremendous
assignation with the Night?
Since coming to Pondicherry, the whole aim of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga was to
Page – 742
bring the Supermind here into our world, and make it a part of the
earth-consciousness, as ‘Life’ and ‘Mind’ already are. When, during
his interview on 4 February 1943, Dilip asked Sri Aurobindo, “Is your
real work this invocation of the Supramental?” the Master answered
very simply, “Yes, I have come for that.”84 If that was the cardinal
purpose of Sri Aurobindo’s avatarhood and ministry on earth, anything
he did – including his “self-immolation” – must have had a close
connection with that fundamental objective. Even in 1938, the Mother
used to see the Supermind descending into Sri Aurobindo, but it
couldn’t be settled for good in the earth-consciousness, especially in
the physical or the physical mind. In the series of articles included
in The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, Sri Aurobindo introduced,
as we have seen earlier, the “realm between” – the Mind of Light – a
limited or delegated power of the Supermind; and we have the Mother’s
word – reinforced by the experience of the Supramental radiance from
his body from 5th to 8th December – that “as soon as Sri Aurobindo
withdrawal from his body, what he called the Mind of Light got
realised here”. Was it, perhaps, necessary for Sri Aurobindo to
receive the full force of the Supermind in the physical, retain it for
a few days, so that the way might be cleared for the ultimate
Supramentalisation of the earth and man?
It is the mark of the ‘gentleman’ that he would suffer himself, rather
than inflict pain on others or even see them suffer. According to
Nirod, Sri Aurobindo was a “Supramental perfect gentleman”, and had a
magnanimity of the kind described in the lines –
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came.
And it is of Shiva most that Sri Aurobindo reminded Nirod!85 And
Yogiswara Shiva, what was his role in world-existence:
A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie
All suffering into his single grief and make
All agony in all the worlds his own….
The poison of the world has stained his throat.86
If he could himself invite and absorb – even at the cost of
surrendering the material envelope that was his body – the first full
impact of the Supramental descent (as Shiva received the impact of
Ganga cascading in a downpour on the earth), both to make sure of the
descent and to contain and consolidate the gains for the world, why;’
certainly he would do it – as Shiva drank the poison and yet contained
it in his throat! If the victory could be won somewhere somewhen by
somebody, it would become possible ultimately for anybody to win it
anywhere. To open the Possibility was the main thing. And the
sacrifice of his body, as the first physical base for the
demonstration of the Supramental possibility — if that could advance
Page – 743
the date of the total descent of the Supramental light, or ensure the
near descent — well, the sacrifice was worth making. Since, after all,
even without his physical presence, he would be here, one with the
Mother’s consciousness and power, he could also accelerate, witness
and participate in the decreed Divine manifestation upon earth.
“A meditative silence reigned in the Ashram for twelve days after the
passing of the beloved Master,” writes Rishabhchand; “then the normal
activities began, but with a striking difference. One felt a pervading
Presence in the Ashram atmosphere. .. ,”87 On 14 December the Mother
half-admonished the sadhaks: “To grieve is an insult to Sri Aurobindo
who is here with us, conscious and alive.” And on 18 January 1951, she
gave a firmer assurance still:
We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life
in order to help more fully his work of transformation.
He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts,
of all our feelings and all our actions.
The Samadhi itself, visited daily by hundreds in an attitude of
devotion and prayer, seemed to testify to the reality of Sri
Aurobindo’s continued Presence, bathed in the life-giving rays of the
Everlasting Day. In Nirodbaran’s inspired language:
Out of his Samadhi, a thousand flames seem to be mounting up and,
lodged in our soul, burning in an ever rejuvenating fire, while His
Presence enveloping and merging with and radiating from the Mother’s
being and body is pervading the whole atmosphere. One can see His
Presence, hear his footfalls, his rhythmic voice, ever vigilant,
devoid of the encumbrance of the physical body.88
Still Nirod hears the Master’s whisper, “lam here, I am here”, and
with the ear of faith we can hear the words too.
The mystic realisation of his presence in our midst – for his
nectarean presence and beneficence is not confined to the Samadhi
environs or even the Ashram alone – is the Promise of preservation,
liberation and transformation to humanity poised perilously on the
edge of the precipice: the deep Abyss on one side, the steep ascent to
truth on the other. In this phoenix hour, the hour of the unexpected,
when the Asuric and Divine forces are fighting the battle of man’s
future – the battle of Satyavan the Soul of the World – Sri Aurobindo
gives us the all-sufficing Word that his coming will not have been in
vain, that his ministry, “Sri Aurobindo’s Action”, is as pauseless and
potent as ever.
Come, O Creator Spirit, come,
And make within our hearts thy home;
To us thy grace celestial give,
Who of thy breathing move and love.89
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Dec