Preparing for the Miraculous

74 eleven talksin the practice of his Yoga during the year of his imprisonmentin Alipore Jail (starting in May 1908). His realizationsresulted in a completely new understanding of the rationaleand destiny of the world and humanity. Considering theVedantic premise that “All is That,” he drew the ineluctableconclusion that the Earth and life on it also were That, thattheir essence and their meaning must be spiritual, and thattherefore the aim of life and yoga could not be an egoisticescape into a Hereafter or a Nirvana, but that the aim ofearthly existence had to be the evolutionary recovery of theDivine.As the Mother once said, Sri Aurobindo’s avataric actionwas “an immense spiritual revolution rehabilitatingMatter and the creation.” Sri Aurobindo himself wrote ina letter: “I am concerned with the earth, not with worldsbeyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realization thatI seek and not a flight to distant summits. All other yogasregard this life as an illusion or a passing phase; the supramentalyoga alone regards it as a thing created by theDivine for a progressive manifestation and takes the fulfilmentof the life and the body for its object.” 3Although the evolutionary and supramental vision ofSri Aurobindo is well known, his radical attitude towardsReality, including material reality, is sometimes forgottenor diluted in ways more in line with traditional views. Thefollowing passages from Essays on the Gita may remind usof the true contents of his teaching.“From a clash of material or other forces everythingin this world, if not the world itself, seems to be born; by astruggle of forces, tendencies, principles, beings it seems toproceed, ever creating new things, ever destroying the old,marching one knows not very well whither. However that3 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 91.