Preparing for the Miraculous

what arjuna saw: the dark side of the force 87been written about it, but its true significance is to be foundin the sparse comments and statements by Sri Aurobindoand the Mother, providing us with a glimpse of the crucialimportance of that war for humanity, and of their part in it.It may therefore be apposite here to quote once again thefollowing lines from a letter by Sri Aurobindo to a disciple,written in September 1943, when the situation was criticalnot only for the world, but also for Sri Aurobindo, theMother and the Ashram: “Ours is a Sadhana which involvesnot only devotion or union with the Divine or a perceptionof Him in all things, but also action as workers and instrumentsand a work to be done in the world or a force to bebrought in the world under difficult conditions ... It doesnot seem to me that X is wrong in seeing in it [i.e. the ongoingwar] the same problem as in Kurukshetra.”When “more than half” of the Ashram inmates weresympathetic towards Hitler, most of them out of hatred towardsthe British colonial regime, Sri Aurobindo made hisand the Mother’s standpoint clear: “I affirm again to youmost strongly that this is the Mother’s war ... It is a strugglefor an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life ofhumanity, for a Truth that has yet to realize itself fully andagainst a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelmthe earth and mankind in the immediate future. Itis the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and notthis or that superficial circumstance ...“It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, forconditions in which men have freedom and room to thinkand act according to the light in them and grow in the Truth,grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the slightest doubt that ifone side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom andhope of light and truth and the work that has to be done willbe subjected to conditions which would make it humanlyimpossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness,