Preparing for the Miraculous

sri aurobindo’s descent into death 183What was threateningthe accomplishment of the avataric mission?In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo wrote: “There can beno artificial escape from this problem [evil, suffering anddeath] which has always troubled humanity and from whichit has found no satisfying issue. The tree of the knowledgeof good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretlyrooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from whichour being has emerged and on which it still stands as anether soil and basis of our physical existence ... There canbe no final solution until we have turned our inconscienceinto the greater consciousness, made the truth of self andspirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into ahigher knowledge; a complete and radical transformationof our nature is the only true solution.” 20 Only Supermindwould do. But the bringing down of the Supermind into thebody of the Earth, the complete and radical transformationof our nature, was precisely what the hostile forces weretrying to prevent at any cost, for it would mean the end oftheir dominion over the Earth and humanity.One reads of many masters in several yogic disciplineswho possessed the power to lay down their body at will.The difference with Sri Aurobindo’s master act was thathe went into death in full consciousness and while keepingthe vital and mental sheaths which, let us not forget it,were supramentally transformed. And this he did not insearch of escape or dissolution, but to intervene and effecta change somewhere at the bottom of existence, in whathe called “the Inconscient,” worse than hell. “He was notcompelled to leave his body,” said the Mother. “He choseto do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond thereach of human mentality.”20 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 650.