Preparing for the Miraculous

250 eleven talksNagin Doshi, at the time a young disciple, wrote to SriAurobindo: “We believe that you and the Mother are Avatars.But is it only in this life that both of you have shownyour divinity? It is said that both you and she have been onthe earth constantly since its creation. What were you doingduring the previous lives?” Sri Aurobindo’s answer, laconicbut so full of meaning: “Carrying on the evolution.” 41These words bring to mind what he wrote about Sri Krishna:“As for the lives in between the Avatar lives, it mustbe remembered that Krishna speaks of many lives in thepast, not only a few supreme ones, and secondly that whilehe speaks of himself as the Divine, in one passage he describeshimself as a Vibhuti, vrishninam vasudevah. We maytherefore fairly assume that in many lives he manifested asthe Vibhuti veiling the fuller Divine Consciousness. If weadmit that the object of Avatarhood is to lead the evolution,this is quite reasonable, the Divine appearing as Avatar inthe great transitional stages and as Vibhutis to aid the lessertransitions.” 42“The Mother’s consciousness and mine are the same,”wrote Sri Aurobindo, “the one Divine Consciousness intwo, because that is necessary for the play.” 43 He wrote“Divine Consciousness” with capital letters. And there isfor example the following statement of which we cannoteven sound the depth: “It is only divine Love which canbear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear whohave sacrificed everything else to the one aim of upliftingearth out of its darkness towards the Divine.” 44In the last years of the Entretiens (Questions and Answers),the Mother explained the significance of Sri Aurobindo’s41 Id., p. 447.42 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 402.43 Sri Aurobindo: On Himself, p. 456.44 Id., p. 152.