Preparing for the Miraculous

what arjuna saw: the dark side of the force 75may be, this is certain that there is not only no constructionhere without destruction, no harmony except by a poise ofcontending forces won out of many actual and potentialdiscords, but also no continued existence of life except by aconstant self-feeding and devouring of other life. The commandseems to have gone out from the beginning, ‘Thoushalt not conquer except by battle with thy fellows and thysurroundings; thou shalt not even live except by battle andstruggle and by absorbing into thyself other life. The firstlaw of this world that I have made is creation and preservationby destruction.’“Ancient thought accepted this starting-point so far asit could see it by scrutiny of the universe. The old Upanishadssaw it very clearly and phrased it with an uncompromisingthoroughness which will have nothing to do withany honeyed glosses or optimistic scuttlings of the truth.Hunger that is Death, they said, is the creator and master ofthis world, and they figured vital existence in the image ofthe Horse of the sacrifice. Matter they described by a namewhich means ordinarily food and they said, we call it foodbecause it is devoured and devours creatures. The eater eatingis eaten, this is the formula of the material world.” 4“War, said Heraclitus, is the father of all things, war isthe king of all; and the saying, like most of the apophthegmsof the Greek thinker, suggests a profound truth. From a clashof material or other forces everything in this world, if not theworld itself, seems to be born; by a struggle of forces, tendencies,principles, beings it seems to proceed, ever creatingnew things, ever destroying the old ...” 5 Words like theseare rarely found in books on spirituality and yoga. Still thetruth is that the world can only be changed by confronting itwithout excluding any of its problems, not by sidestepping4 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, pp. 40-41.5 Id., p. 40.