Preparing for the Miraculous

172 eleven talksrule? Berlin and Nuremberg [where in those days Germantop Nazis stood trial] have marked the end of that dreadfulchapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten toovershadow or even engulf mankind, but they too will endas that nightmare has ended.” If one has the faintest notionof Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s decisive interventionsin the Second World War, the fiercest and most deadly ofall wars, and of its significance in human history, one hasto be moved by these words. (The phrase “where is Hitlernow?” may well be the softest worded victory bulletinever.) But then, now that the war was won, why the sombertalk about other engulfing blacknesses which nobody elseseemed to see? Yet the threat apparently increased, for inApril of the following year Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Thingsare bad, are growing worse and may at any time growworst or worse than worst if that is possible.” 3At that point, when Sri Aurobindo was seventy-fiveyears old and after a lifetime of revolutionary avataric Yoga,something at the root of things was blocking the Work. SriAurobindo stated forcefully: “I have no intention of givingmy sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco – a partialand transient spiritual opening within with no true andradical change in the external nature.” 4 The old fiasco wasthe effort of the previous Avatars to change human natureand make spiritual progress in the material evolution possible.In his Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo had alreadywritten: “Not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready can theinner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediatereality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone. But it isRudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand.And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind, tormentedand oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of3 Sri Aurobindo: On Himself, pp. 168 and 169.4 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 1306.