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<font face="Times New Roman"><i>The Divine Man</i> </font></b>&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
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<font face="Times New Roman">THE core of Sri Aurobindo's teaching, the central pivot on
which his Yoga arid his work rest is the mystery of the Divine
Descent—Spirit descending into Matter and becoming Matter,
God coming down upon earth and becoming human, and as a
necessary and inevitable consequence, Matter rising and being
transformed into Spirit and man becoming God and Godlike. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a truth, a fact of creation—giving the whole clue to
the riddle of this world—that has not been envisaged at all in
the past, or otherwise overlooked and not given the value and
importance that it has. Poets and seers, sages and saints along
with common men from the very birth of humanity have
mourned this vale of tears, this sorrowful transient earthly
life, <i>anityam asukham lokam imam<sup>1</sup>,</i> into which they have been
thrown: they have wished and willed and endeavoured to
change or reform or re-create it, but have always failed, and
in the end, finding it ultimately incorrigible, concluded that
escape was the only solution, the only issue, either like the
sage going out into Nirvana, spiritual dissolution, or like the
atheist stoically going down with a crumbling world into a
material disintegration. The truth of the matter is, however,
different as Sri Aurobindo sees it. The spectacle is not so
gloomy and irremediable. The world has a future and man
has hope. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The world is not doomed nor man past cure; for it is not
that the world has been merely created by God but that God
has become and is the world at the same time: man is not
merely God's creature but that he is made of God's substance
and is God himself. The Spirit has shed its supreme consciousness, that is to say, overtly has become dead matter; God has </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;</b><i><font size="2">The Gita, IX.</font></i><font size="2"> 33
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Page 25<hr align="justify">
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<font face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;</b>veiled his effulgent infinity and has taken up a human figure.
The Divine has clothed his inviolable felicity in pain and
suffering, has become an earthly creature, you and me, a
mortal of mortals. And thus, viewed in another perspective
because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially
God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into
Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of
the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even,
the massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests
itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various modes of the consciousness in
different degrees and potentials till the original summit is
revealed. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But there is a still closer mystery, the mystery of mysteries.
There has not been merely a general descent, the descent of a
world-force on a higher plane into another world-force on a&nbsp;
lower plane; but that there is the descent of the individual,
the personal Godhead into and as an earthly human being.
The Divine born as a man and leading the life of a man among
us and as one of us, the secret of Divine Incarnation is the
supreme secret. That is the mechanism adopted by the Divine
to cure and transmute human ills—himself becoming a man,
taking upon himself the burden of the evil that vitiates and
withers life and working it out in and through himself. Something of this truth has been caught in the Christian view of
Incarnation. God sent upon earth his only begotten son to
take upon himself the sins of man, suffer vicariously for him,
pay the ransom and thus liberate him, so that he may reach
salvation, procure his seat by the side of the Father in Heaven.
Man corrupted as he is by an original sin cannot hope by his
own merit to achieve salvation. He can only admit his sin and .
repent and wait for the Grace to save him. The Indian view of
Incarnation laid more stress upon the positive aspect of the
matter, viz, the role of the Incarnation as the inaugurator and
establisher of a new order in life—<i>dharmasamsthdpanarthaya.
</i>The Avatar brings down and embodies a higher principle of
human organisation, a greater consciousness which he infuses
into the existing pattern, individual or collective, which has
served its purpose, has become otiose and time-barred and
needs to be remodelled, has been at the most preparatory to </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 26</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">something else. The Avatar means a new revelation and the
uplift of the human consciousness into a higher mode of
being. The physical form he takes signifies the physical pressure
that is exerted for the corroboration and fixation of the inner
illumination that he brings upon earth and in the human
frame. The Indian tradition has focussed its attention upon
the Good—<i>sreyas—</i>and did not consider it essential to dwell
upon the Evil. For one who finds and sees the Good always
and everywhere, the Evil does not exist. Sri Aurobindo lays
equal emphasis on both the aspects. Naturally, however, he
does not believe in an original evil, incurable upon earth and
in earthly life. In conformity with the ancient Indian teaching
he declares the original divinity of man: it is because man is
potentially and essentially divine that he can become actually
and wholly divine. The Bible speaks indeed of man becoming
perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect: but that is
due exclusively to the Grace showered upon man, not because
of any inherent perfection in him. But in according full divinity
to man, Sri Aurobindo does not minimise the part of the
undivine in him. This does not mean any kind of Manicheism: for Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation
under given conditions, although within the range and sphere
of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though
it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality,
it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or
bypassed as something superficial or momentary and of no
importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is
real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine
but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance
&quot; carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly.
Did not the very first of the apostles of Christ deny his master
at the crucial moment? As we have said, evil is a formation
necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances
changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted
changes automatically and fundamentally. The Divine then descends into the earth-frame, not merely
as an immanent and hidden essence—<i>sarvabhutantaratma—</i>but
as an individual person embodying that essence—<i>manusim
tanum asritam.</i> Man too, however earthly and impure he may </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 27</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">be, is essentially the Divine himself, carries in him the
spark of the supreme consciousness that he is in his true and
highest reality. That is how in him is bridged the gulf that
apparently exists between the mortal and the immortal, the
Infinite and the Finite, the Eternal and the Momentary, and
the Divine too can come into him and become, so to say, his
lower self. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The individual or personal Divine leaves his home of all&nbsp; bliss—Vaikuntha—forgets himself and enters into this world
of all misery; but this does not mean that he becomes wholly
the Man of Misery: he encompasses all misery within himself,
penetrates as well into the stuff and substance of all misery,
but suffuses all that with the purifying and transforming
pressure of his own supreme consciousness. And yet pain and
suffering are real, cruelly real, even to the- Divine Man. Just
as the ordinary human creature suffers and agonises in spite
of the divine essence in him, in spite of his other deeper truth
and reality, his soul of inalienable bliss, his psychic being, the
Divine too suffers in the same way in spite of his divinity.
This double line of consciousness, this system of parallels
running alongside each other, interacting upon each other
(even intersecting each other, when viewed in a frame of
infinity) gives the whole secret mechanism of creation, its
purpose, its working and its fulfilment. It is nothing else than the gradual 
replacement or elimination, elevation or sublimation of the elements on one line that are transmuted
into those of the other. The Divine enters into the Evil to root
out the Evil and plant there or release and fructify the seed of
Divinity lying covered over and lost in the depths of dead
inconscience. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Divine descends as an individual person fundamentally
to hasten the evolutionary process and to complete it; he
takes the human form to raise humanity to divinity. The
fact and the nature of the process have been well exemplified
in Sri Ramakrishna who, it is said, took up successively different
lines of spiritual discipline and by a supreme and sovereign
force of concentration achieved realisation in each line in the
course of a few days what might take in normal circumstances
years or even lives to do. The Divine gathers and concentrates
in himself the world-force, the Nature-Energy—even like a </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 28</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">dynamo—and focuses and canalises it to give it its full, integral
and absolute effectivity. And mortal pain he accepts, and swallows the poison of ignorant life—even like Nilakantha Shiva </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">—to transmute it into ecstasy and immortality. The Divine
Mother sank into the earth-nature of a human body: </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman"><i><br>
</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword... </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hoping her greater being to implant</font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.<sup>1 </sup> </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But this is God's share—<i>la part de Dieu;</i> for man too as man
has to do his part. Because the Divine descending and accomplishing the work does not mean either of two things: first, it
does not mean that it is a sudden miracle, <i>deus ex machina,</i> a
fiat from the heaven which upsets and bears down everything
before it and practically has no relation, logical or causal with
what precedes and what follows. It is, on the contrary, as we have said, the culmination of a long process, the seal of fulfilment set upon a steady preparation and travailing growth.
The Divine descends when the time is ripe, that is to say,
w hen forces and instruments have been developed, refined,
sharpened and tempered, so that they can harness and wield the Power from above. But for the preparation, the necessary&nbsp; conditions being there, the Grace would not have descended,
although it is also true that but for the Grace, the culmination
and the utter fulfilment would not have come about—there
would have been only a vicious circle or an unending seesaw.
Next, the Descent does not mean either that following upon
it the whole business is done and completed automatically
and immediately or nothing is left to be done any more. Not
so. It means that what has been so long practically beyond
reach, towards which one had to move with uncertainty and
vague effort and in a roundabout way, as though through a
trackless virgin forest or across an uncharted sea, has now been
brought nearer and closer to human grasp, is now made part&nbsp;and parcel of earth's familiar atmosphere, so that any human
being who genuinely aspires and looks for it can find it about
him: there is just a thin veil which has to be put aside a little,</font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman"><br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<font size="2">Sri Aurobindo: <i>Sasitri,</i> Book I, Canto I </font> </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 29</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">into which a little opening is to be made and one comes in contact with or even enters into what one seeks. This means that the
Grace has leaned down to man, but man too has at least to
stretch his arms to touch and embrace it. Furthermore, to make
that Grace permanently active and real in the normal consciousness, one has to labour, work out in fact what is given potentially : the seed is planted for him, it will grow and bloom and
come to fruition provided necessary care and attention are
given to the soil that bears it. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus then the embodied human person who has the embodied Divine Person before his eyes must know how to install and incorporate the Divine Person in him, in his body and
physical existence. That was perhaps the mystery sought to
be conveyed in the Christian sacrament of transubstantiation.
The bread and wine that the initiate has to take in represent —are or become actually and physically, as the Christian
mystics assert—the flesh and blood of Christ. One has to become the Divine Person in flesh and blood, wholly and integrally. As the fossil is a transmutation in stone, grain by grain,
of a living body—organic elements eliminated and replaced
by the inorganic in the very atomic structure and constitution —even so, the living human structure, the mental, vital and physical formation will be translated, grain by grain, atom
by atom into the divine substance by the infusion and imposition of the Divine figure. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Christian mystics themselves, however, do not seem to
have aimed at real physical transubstantiation—although that might have been at 
the back of the older Hebrew sacrament of the Eucharist; the perfection sought by them was to be
enjoyed in Heaven in company of the Father and not on this
earth and in this human body: it was more a sublimation
than a transformation that was their goal. The flesh for them.
was always too weak. </font>
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