Preparing for the Miraculous

the development of Sri Aurobindo’s thought 31would dominate as never before. In fact scientism, “the beliefthat science is or can be the complete and only explanation,”has occupied all the grounds which religion hadto vacate, and is now a worldwide pseudo-religion to beaccepted by every student in any academic institution. Religionand spirituality have not (yet) found the argumentsto counter the physical arguments of science, and scientistslike Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberglaunch their pronouncements from the peaks of theirpopular fame. “A few years ago, Stephen Hawking summedup the scientists’ prevailing attitude to the status of life inthe universe. ‘The human race is just a chemical scum ona moderate-sized planet,’ is how he put it. Most physicistsand cosmologists would echo Hawking, and regard life asa trivial, accidental embellishment to the physical world, ofno particular significance in the overall cosmic scheme ofthings.” (Paul Davies)Were men becoming more psychic, and have they actuallybecome so? Sri Aurobindo’s reasons for saying thisare now very little remembered, and some statements of hisare therefore skipped over out of respect or convenience.It is not possible to understand his and the Mother’s sayingsand writings without putting them in their historicalor biographical context. Although their Beings belonged toEternity, they had chosen, once again, a particular time andplace in history to incarnate. Moreover, it may be said that,because of their love for humanity and because of their avataricWork, they took all facets of humanity more intimatelyinto themselves than ordinary human beings would be capableof or even could imagine.Some of the facts determining their historical backgroundare the following. Spiritism, the belief that the soulsurvives death and can enter into contact with the living,was still at its height. In France, for instance, Allan Kardec