Preparing for the Miraculous

2012 and 1956: Doomsday? 111“In the very few places [in the universe] that aren’t ina vacuum, too hot or too cold, we really know of only one:Earth,” concludes astronomer Philip Plait in his book withthe spooky title Death from the Skies! – The Science behind theEnd of the World. “I honestly don’t know if we’re alone inthe Universe; no one does. ... Maybe, just maybe, we reallyare alone. In all the galaxy, in all the vast trillions of cubiclight years of emptiness, ours is the very first planet to harbourcreatures that can ponder their own existence.”Taking all this into account, the statements of Sri Aurobindoand the Mother about planet Earth, which a fewdecades ago may have appeared “occult” or “mystic” tomany, no longer seem so other-worldly. The scientific debateis on and its conclusion is not yet out to see. If scientificmaterialism is the only truth, the whole matter is worthy oflittle consideration, for then everything is anyway a matterof contingency destined to end badly. But if there are othermeans of knowledge, based on capacities and realms whichscientific materialism refuses to recognize in principle, thenour Earth, life on it, and its destiny may be unique and lookforward to a future evolution which will not be cut short inthe near future.Future positiveThe Aurobindian scheme of things is in essence evolutionary.Accepting the gradual physiological developmentof the life forms on Earth, but as an expression of an increasingconsciousness, it asks the pertinent question why Homosapiens would be the ultimate species, for it is clear thatthe possibilities of nature are not exhausted by the humanbeing. “The animal is a living laboratory in which Naturehas, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well bea thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whoseconscious cooperation she wills to work out the superman,