Preparing for the Miraculous

preparing for the miraculous 51In the first place there are their abundant writings andtranscribed sayings covering a period of nearly a century;this literature is considered by knowledgeable personsthe richest in the history of modern spirituality. (Sri Aurobindowas nominated for the Nobel Prize of Literaturein 1950, the year of his demise.) Then there is also the innercoherence of the facts of their spiritual adventure intothe unknown, supported by a mass of direct and indirectevidence. It must be remembered that spiritual matters arenot subject to scientific proof; they can only be confirmedthrough faith and direct experience. What Sri Aurobindoand the Mother are, what they have done, and what continuesto happen as the continuation of the Work done duringtheir lifetime, must ultimately be a matter of personalacceptance based on an open attitude in the mind, the giftof faith in the heart, and an inner empathy resulting fromthe long history of one’s soul.Until recently, that is until about 1970, little was knownabout the facts of their lives. Most of their letters and notes,conversations, Sri Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga and Mother’sAgenda were published after that date, which was also thetime when serious research in archives and other documentarysources began to be made. This means, among otherthings, that the writings of most of the first commentatorsor exegetes remained limited mainly to Sri Aurobindo’sworks in the Arya, the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations,and personal correspondence.No doubt, this literature contained the foundations onwhich Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s avataric missioncould be understood. Books like The Life Divine, The Synthesisof Yoga and Essays on the Gita contained all essentialsof the Aurobindian Revolution. But the Yoga of Sri Aurobindoand the Mother was an adventure into the unknown 77 See talk 2: “The Development of Sri Aurobindo’s Thought”.